The Mech Touch

He had to admit that Calabast opened his eyes to the greater considerations of the Komodo War. The process and outcome of the war not only affected the locals, but also their neighbors!

With so many interests mingling and colliding with each other, it took someone much more adept in politics to make sense of this murky swamp.

At his level, Ves could only look out for himself and the Larkinson Clan while trying his best to give the Hexadric Hegemony a leg up. There was only so much his unique mechs could do to swing the geopolitical situation.

He eventually shrugged. "Whatever. I'll just do what I can from my corner. Even if the Fridaymen call upon their allies, the Hexers won't overlook this possibility."

The Fridaymen had always been better at diplomacy than their Hexer counterparts. Ves found it a bit distressing that the Hexers never adopted a friendlier face towards outsiders.

Instead, the Hexers always sneered or condescended the way that every other state aside from their own treated men as equals to women. Even if forging a couple of allies was in their best interest, the female supremacists simply couldn't get past their dogma in order to present a friendlier image of themselves!

"Goddamn bigots." Ves quietly cursed. "Why are you making it hard for me to ensure my mother's continued existence?"

If any foreigners wanted to meddle in the Komodo War and lend a hand to the Friday Coalition, Ves would definitely add their names to his list!

Whether he would follow up on them and teach them a lesson depended on the circ.u.mstances.

From a mech designer's perspective, competition was a natural process to their profession. No mech designer sold mechs in isolation. Each successful product merited at least some response from the designers of competing mech models.

Therefore, it was not particularly wrong for foreign mech designers to develop mechs that targeted his own work. No mech designer would experience much pressure to improve and push their limits if they did not feel the need to go through all of that trouble.

Ves immediately felt the difference. Ever since he resumed working on his projects, he forced himself to work much harder. The urgency of the situation and the importance of delivering products that could withstand the upcoming competition caused him to neglect his other priorities in favor of focusing fully on progressing his mech designs!

Fortunately, he was not the only one who became fired up. When Ves shared his understanding of the competition they faced, Gloriana became eager to see how her mechs compared against the machines that their adversaries came up with. As someone who constantly pursued perfection, there was no better lesson to learn from than failure!

"I don't mind Fridayman Masters picking my finished work apart." Her physical projection calmly stated during one of their private design sessions. "I am not blind to my inadequacies. There is no reason for me to feel that I am the best mech designer when I'm only a Journeyman. Obtaining the personal tutelage of a Master Mech Designer is one of the most difficult forms of assistance that mech designers can obtain. Even I failed to get apprenticed to a Master from the Hegemony. Now, there are dozens, if not more Masters emerging out of the woodwork who plan to teach us a lesson!"

Both of them were of the same mind, it seemed. Ves was worried whether Gloriana might buckle under the pressure, but it seemed she wasn't as fragile as he thought! Her immense belief in her own design philosophy provided her with a very strong backbone!

As a result, neither became depressed. Instead of looking at this development as a threat, they instead preferred to see it as an opportunity!

Normally, the phrase 'teaching a lesson' entailed beating someone up. Certainly, no Journeyman liked to get bullied by a Master, let alone several gangs of Masters!

That did not mean that the beatings that Ves and Gloriana would endure were senseless. As long as they set their egos aside and studied how the Masters picked apart the flaws of their mech designs, the pair would definitely be able to come up with something better next time!

There were already clear signs that a number of formidable mech designers started working on researching a counter to glows.

"There are a lot of mech designers and mech companies who have licenced our mech designs all of a sudden!" Gavin excitedly reported one day. "At least half of our new customers are Fridaymen, but there are plenty of Vicious Mountainers and Majestic Tealers. There are even mech designers from Winged Serenade trying to figure out what makes our product tic!"

This amounted to a lot of money pouring into the coffers of the LMC!

Just a single Doom Guard license cost 400 million hex credits. This was a considerable amount of money to most people, but not enough to trouble Masters and state-backed mech institutions!

Therefore, all of these Masters and organizations who licensed the Doom Guard also picked up some other licenses along the way. The Desolate Soldier, the Aurora Titan and many other LMC mechs presented a lot of research value to those who set out to counter them. How could they defeat their targets without knowing what they were dealing with? A lot of Fridayman and foreign Masters simply decided to license the LMC's entire mech catalog!

Ves shook at the thought of how much money that entailed. "How.. how much money does that entail?"

"It's only been a few days, but… we have almost acc.u.mulated a trillion hex credits. While the rate of licensing has slowed down since the initial wave, we project that we'll be able to earn another trillion hex credits in the next couple of months! In fact, we predict that when your Valkyrie Redeemer model successfully debuts on the battlefield, we might see another spike in licensing depending on its battle performance!"

Only a few months ago, earning a trillion hex credits sounded like a distant dream.

Ves had to make a very c.u.mbersome deal with DIVA in order to obtain a factory ship that was worth this amount of money.

He had to win a nigh-impossible design duel against Jovy Armalon, whose design philosophy consisted of outright cheating, in order to earn another trillion credits!

Those were very exceptional circ.u.mstances that couldn't be repeated. Ves had to rely on the LMC's regular mech sales to slowly fill up his coffers.

He did not expect that the sudden demand for his licenses would present him with another trillion hex credits, with an additional sum of money to follow!

For a moment, Ves felt bewildered. He looked at the projection of his assistant in a daze.

"What do you want to do with the money, boss? The Larkinson Assembly has already come up with a lot of ideas. Some of the assemblymen want us to procure better combat carriers. Others want to use the money to order another capital ship. Right now, the debate is centered around whether to spend the extra trillion on a fleet carrier or an ark ship."

Ves abruptly shook his head. "It's not a good idea to expand our fleet too rapidly. I think it's best to transition to the sh.i.p.s we have already ordered first before looking ahead. It's a very daunting operation to move from our old third-class sh.i.p.s and become accustomed to operating second-class sh.i.p.s. Don't touch the money and put it into our reserves. I'll discuss the matter with the Larkinson Assembly after I return from the Nyxian Gap."

"Do you at least have a preliminary idea on how to spend that money?"

"I am not against procuring other capital sh.i.p.s, Benny. It is just that now is not the time. As for my choice of sh.i.p.s, I think we should continue to invest in increasing our security and deterrence factor. Ark sh.i.p.s sound nice, but they don't have that much combat value. I'm more inclined to go for a fleet carrier."

Ves wanted to invest heavily into a good fleet carrier. The vessel needed to be bigger than his upcoming factory ship in order to accommodate as many mechs on a long-term basis as possible. This was why he believed that investing 1 trillion hex credits was not sufficient.

Fleet carriers were the closest equivalents to warsh.i.p.s to many people! They were more than mech transporters. Not only did they feature an incredibly resilient structure, they were expressly designed to support the functioning of bunkers mechs as much as possible without breaking the rules.

This meant that a fully-crewed and outfitted fleet carrier effectively functioned like an armed cruiser! All of the mechs that fired from the hull bunkers took on the role of secondary weapon batteries. If not for the lack of primary weapon mounts such as Omega Lasers or spinal-mounted kinetic weapons, a fleet carrier might be enough to threaten genuine warsh.i.p.s!

"Let's not get ahead of ourselves." Ves warned his assistant. "Make sure the Larkinsons on your side don't entertain any delusions."

"Understood. I'll be sure to tell the other clansmen that we need to hang on to the money."

Even after the call had ended, Ves still felt the situation was a bit surreal.

In truth, his situation wasn't actually rare in the mech industry. Any powerful mech designer immediately earned a windfall whenever they published a good mech. Developing effective responses to the most popular and successful mech models was actually a productive interaction that benefit both sides.

Of course, Ves and Gloriana had to be good enough to endure the pressure! There was no doubt that their works would become irrelevant if they failed to keep up with the competition.

Due to the stimulation of increased competition, the pair invested a lot more passion and enthusiasm in designing their next mechs.

Both the Valkyrie Redeemer Project and the Cat's Paw Project benefited considerably from their heightened motivation.

The former especially became a priority. The Hex Army's growing demand for the Blessed Squire vindicated their beliefs that their products could make a difference in the Komodo War!

The medium aerial marauder mech served a very different role from the Blessed Squire. Intended to be piloted by female Hexers, the highly-mobile mech was meant to skirt around the main engagements that involved a huge amount of mechs.

For this reason, the Valkyrie Redeemer had to become as self-sufficient as possible. It had to be versatile enough to fend off a variety of threats while being able to run away from opponents that were too strong to defeat.

This was a very different approach from the Blessed Squire, which was almost completely incapable of fighting on its own. Even a squad of Blessed Squires couldn't achieve much aside from standing their ground and passing their energy to each other!

So far, the design process went well. The Valkyrie Redeemer was not actually that complicated. Ves and Gloriana mainly struggled to fit in as many features and as possible into an aerial frame that was designed with mobility in mind.

Fortunately, Hexers were quite generous when it came to the budgets of female mechs. Since they were piloted by women, they needed to be strong enough to reflect the superiority of their gender.

After a bit of back-and-forth with DIVA, Ves and Gloriana eventually decided to set the maximum budget at 400 million hex credits!

This was the double the budget of the Blessed Squire!

Even though the supportive knight mech was considerably larger and more massive, the faster and nimbler Valkyrie Redeemer would nonetheless make use of better components, many of which were miniaturized to a greater degree.

"Our Valkyrie Redeemer needs no support in order to pay for its cost!" Ves confidently stated. "Only a small squad of Valkyrie Redeemers is enough to harass the Fridayman from range or up close!"

A small problem soon arose after their design project advanced past a certain stage.

While there wasn't much of a problem to arm their Valkyrie Redeemer with a pulse submachine gun, integrating its spear and shield combination was another matter!