The Mech Touch

Ves felt quite accomplished after he completed his work on the Valkyrie Redeemer design.

The auto-enhancement function he developed was a more purposeful way of enhancing the spiritual foundations of his mechs.

Even without this function, his mechs would have gained a boost regardless, but the process wouldn't be as efficient.

Now, any mech that was lucky enough to be the carrier of a breakthrough would definitely be rewarded for its contribution. It was only fair for the lucky mech pilot to share some of the benefits.

Just to be sure, Ves implemented a hard ceiling of 25 percent saturation of base foundation.

At 50 percent saturation, the mech in question became capable of killing its own pilot. While the odds of this happening were very minor, the fact that the victims all consisted of mech pilots with spiritual potential would have massive repercussions.

Ves did not want to be responsible for killing off an entire population of future expert pilots!

"The MTA will definitely hunt me down once it finds out!"

He set the limit at a percentage of the base foundation because he needed to account for expansions of the pool.

Considering that referring to percentages of saturation of base foundation quickly got tiring, Ves invented a new unit of measure to express the level of enhancement of any given mech.

"As the inventor of this new and unprecedented phenomenon, I have the right to call it however I like. Since I'm naming a new unit of measurement, let's call it.. the Ves scale!"

Of all of the possible choices he could make, he settled for his own name! An intense wave of pride and accomplishment burst from his mind!

"Yes! That's it! What a brilliant choice! I deserve a prize for my fantastic naming sense! Hahaha!"

As Ves erupted in laughter, Lucky woke up from his nap and studied the current state of his owner.

"Meow!"

The cat recognized that type of laughter and instantly knew he needed to be somewhere else! He quickly phased his body and dove straight through the deck!

Ves took no notice of his cat. Instead, he became engrossed with the illusion that he had joined the ranks of the greatest scientists of human civilization!

Many pioneers in science who discovered and quantified a new unit of measurement put forward their own names. This was an ancient and long-standing custom in the scientific community.

"As long as other qualified people accept my unit of measurement, then it's settled!"

Right now, Ves was the only one who was versed in spiritual foundation enhancement. The rest of human civilization had no clue what the Ves scale actually stood for. This meant that his voice was the only one that mattered.

As Ves cast his vote on his suggestion, he won the naming competition by default. After all, he won 1 out of 1 total votes!

"I have made history today! Hahahahaha!"

In his mind, he had reasons to be proud. He formally joined the ranks of other shameless scientists such as Isaac Newton, Blaise Pascal, Anders Celcius, James Watt, James Prescott Joule, Heinrich Rudolf Hertz and many other people that often showed up in science textbooks.

Perhaps in the distant future where he finally felt secure enough to publicize his methods, every mech designer would eventually make use of the Ves scale throughout human space!

To define the unit of measurement, he arbitrarily equated 25 percent saturation of the base spiritual foundation of a fresh Bright Warrior mech to 25 Ves.

Since each mech was able to grow their spiritual foundation over time, thereby stretching what a certain percentage of saturation actually meant, it was important for him to come up with an absolute rather than a relative unit of measurement.

After all, 25 percent of a single glass of water was a lot smaller than 25 percent of an entire swimming pool!

He made sure to record the degree of strength that corresponded to different amounts of Ves in to calibrate his internal Ves meter.

"Alright, that's done!"

Once he was done with admiring his new unit of measurement, he turned his attention back to the Valkyrie Redeemer. So far, it was the only mech design that incorporated the experimental new auto-enhancement function.

"Its target audience shouldn't be weak, but just to be sure, it's best not to exceed 25 Ves for any LMC mech used by outsiders.

LMC mechs with 50 Ves already became deadly. Machines with 100 Ves became deathtraps to every mech pilot that induced the hostility of their own machines.

The relationship between the mech and mech pilot mattered a lot! An LMC mech with 100 Ves could still offer a huge amount of help to mech pilots that truly respected it and treated it with care.

Yet because Ves couldn't account for the behavior of mech pilots outside of his clan, he needed to take the worst-case scenario into account.

"If there are any Hexer mech pilots in the Hex Army who frequently abuse their own mechs, then I don't want to be responsible if their machines hit back!"

Aside from shielding him from liability, setting a hard cap of 25 Ves also ensured that his products wouldn't attract too much attention from the public.

While any mech that reached 25 Ves was still able to grow and develop a unique character remarkably quickly, only a few mechs would ever be able to hit this maximum. The odds of mech pilots of the Valkyrie Redeemers breaking through was miniscule, and the advancement of expert candidates did not unleash as much energy as true apotheosis.

"Even if the chances are small, I can't endanger the few winners."

For now, it was only safe to handle mechs with higher Ves if Ves directly controlled their usage. He could only do so if the mechs remained in his clan.

The mechs piloted by the expert pilots when they broke through during the previous battle were all off-limits to others. The Quint that measured a whopping 150 Ves was the most dangerous of the surviving custom mechs.

Even if the masterwork mech did not mean to harm any Larkinson mech pilots, its presence alone was enough to crush a mech pilot's head!

The Quint was sacred to Ves. He did not want one of his greatest works to tarnish itself by bearing the guilt of killing one of its own users!

In order to ensure that no one developed any crooked ideas about mechs such as the Quint, Ves wrote up a formal order and passed it to Major Verle. The clan needed to impose a new structure to restrict the usage of the most dangerous mechs.

In addition, he also wanted to explore ways to set up a reward structure around spiritual enhancement.

Mech pilots that earned a lot of Larkinson merits in battle or elsewhere should be allowed to exchange them for boosting their assigned mechs.

Right now, he wasn't sure whether it was still necessary to enhance the foundations of the mechs used by his clansmen. With 5 expert pilots and 9 expert candidates, the Larkinson Clan could not handle any more breakthroughs.

"It will be different in the future."

When the Larkinson Clan expanded and matured, he wanted his mech forces to have a structure in place that automatically enhanced every LMC mech by a modest amount. That was the extent of the freebie that mech pilots received.

"If they want more, they have to work for it. This is the best solution."

People cherished something less if they did not have to sacrifice anything to obtain it. Ves wanted to keep his mech pilots motivated, so dangling this mysterious reward after some time would definitely give them another reason to push themselves.

With that out of the way, he returned to the Valkyrie Redeemer design and carefully inspected it from top to bottom several times. Once he made sure that the mech did not contain any problematic issues, he packaged up the files and sent them to Gloriana.

Sure enough, she called him less than a minute later.

"You've finished the Valkyrie Redeemer design?" She asked with a hopeful glint in her eyes.

Vs nodded. "Yes. I've updated the documentation to describe the changes I've made to its glow and.. some other aspects. In particular, the retraction dial opens up a lot more options. The glow of the Valkyrie Redeemer has definitely become more remarkable."

The one regret he had was that the mech may score high on uniformity, it did not offer that much individuality. The auto-enhancement function helped a bit, but it was effectively limited to expert candidates.

That did not conform with his desires. Ves constantly sought new ways to improve the performance of regular mech pilots, not the privileged elites.

Gloriana quickly studied the updated design files. She stared long and hard at the design schematics. Though she couldn't see the changes that Ves had made, she could feel them, if only a little bit. Her perception of spiritual energy was still lacking.

"The mech feels.. more real. More emotional. More eager to deliver death." She spoke. "I'm quite happy with it! Compared to the Blessed Squire, the Valkyrie Redeemer is more advanced in every way. We can truly prove to the Hegemony that our work is transformational."

She rambled for a few minutes how it was a great honor to help the Hegemony crush the Coalition and 'liberate' the entire star sector.

"So what will you do with the design now that it's complete?" He asked.

"Ah, as I said, I'll handle our communications with the Hegemony. I will send it to the Hex Army and some government institutions so that they can rigorously test and verify our work. As long as they don't spot any serious flaws, the Hex Army will soon be able to field them in battle."

"How long will that take?"

"The stakes are higher, now. While our mechs are powerful, the Hexers are also apprehensive at their effects. They need to perform much more rigorous testing than we have ever performed. I would say the Valkyrie Redeemer will truly make its debut in one or two months."

"That's a rather long time."

"It would have been far longer if there wasn't a war going on. The Hex Army is usually very strict when it comes to introducing new mech models into its lineup."

"Maybe the mech will finally be able to show off its prowess at the date of our wedding. That would be a nice wedding gift."

"What a great idea!" Gloriana gushed. "I will definitely have to pass on this suggestion to the Hegemony. All of the foreign dignitaries that we've invited to the wedding will doubtlessly become impressed when they see how easily our Valkyrie Redeemers are able to crush the Fridaymen!"

They chatted a bit more about the design. Ves tried his best to convey some of what improved or added without going into details. As Gloriana was already familiar with his work, she was able to figure out a lot by herself.

"The Valkyrie Redeemer marks another evolution in my development." Ves summed up. "The innovations I've implemented have made this mech very different from our previous works. Every mech we design in the future will at least be able to reach this standard."

Both of them were happy with what they accomplished. Just like Ves, Gloriana accomplished some breakthroughs of her own. She had finally begun to digest the many insights she harvested from examining the masterwork mechs and receiving instruction from Master Willix.

If she hadn't improved by such a considerable margin, then the anonymous mech designers who optimized the Valkyrie Redeemer would have been able to make a greater difference.

Ves already looked forward to the next wave of mech design projects. He wanted to translate all of his gains into better mechs, both for the Hex Army and the Larkinson Clan!

He wanted to design so many mechs that he felt that the current limits were not enough anymore. Engaging in just 2 major design projects and 4 minor design projects meant that Ves would have to spend years to finish all of the high-priority mech designs on his agenda!

"Honey?"

"What is it, Ves?"

"Have you ever thought about expanding the Design Department?"