The Mech Touch

Once the expert pilots all enjoyed a few days to rest and process their battle experiences, they gathered together in a meeting room located in the upper decks of the Spirit of Bentheim.

Every expert pilot that arrived in the compartment silently acknowledged each other but did not take the initiative to chat.

None of them were in the mood to joke around. The Battle of Fordilla Zentra still weighed heavily on their minds, and some of them needed more time than others to return to their old selves.

After several minutes of silence, Ves, who was still wearing his Unending Regalia, finally entered the room with a handful of his honor guard.

Even though the presence of the latter was completely redundant in this gathering, Nitaa and her colleagues still considered it to be their duty to guard the patriarch at all times.

Besides, if nothing else, the bodyguards made for convenient cargo holders. Nitaa's current armor was weighed down by the Larkinson Mandate, the Hammer of Brilliance and a few other useful goods such as a spare P-stone.

"Ladies. Gentlemen. I'm glad to see you're all healthy and alive." Ves began as he sat down at the head of the table. "The previous battle has taken a toll on all of you. Before we address the items on the agenda, let me apologize to you first. Each of you had to fight in unfavorable circumstances due to the numerous mistakes and misjudgements that I have made. This battle could have been avoided. Even if we did end up fighting the dwarves anyway, I should have at least made sure that Joshua and Jannzi already received their expert mechs."

"It's not your fault, Ves." Tusa said as he crossed his arms. "Well, it kind of is, but it's not as if you went out to punch the dwarves in the face. The most you're guilty of is negligence."

Jannzi sneered but she didn't speak up, which was a very welcome decision to Ves and the others. Everyone already knew her stance and she didn't need to repeat them in front of this small and closed audience.

"I'm not interested in going through this apology theater." Venerable Orfan said. "What I want to know is how soon you'll be able to fix my Riot. It's broken! If the dwarves ambush us again, I sure as hell don't want to deploy in space with only one intact limb on my expert mech!"

The others were curious as well. Of the four expert mechs, only the Amaranto was still in decent condition. The others were incapable of exhibiting the same peak performance as before!

Ves smiled at the expert pilots. He expected that to be the first topic that would come up today.

"Fixing your expert mechs isn't as easy as assigning a couple of maintenance crews to glue the broken parts back together. Your machines are tougher, more mechanically complex and more demanding in material quality than ordinary mechs. Out of everyone in the Larkinson Clan, only my wife and myself possess the requisite skills and knowledge to fully restore your expert mechs. Given the complexity of their designs and how time consuming it can be to work with Unending alloy, it will take weeks before they're as good as news."

That did not sound like good news to the expert pilots.

"That's not a short amount of time. What if the dwarves ambush us in the next few days?"

"What are you saying, exactly?" Venerable Orfan scratched her head.

"Ves is saying that he and his wife can only do one thing at once." Jannzi said with a grim look. "If the two of them spend the following weeks repairing your damaged expert mechs, they won't be able to spend any time on their current design projects."

Understanding dawned upon Venerable Joshua. "It will take longer for Jannzi and I to receive our expert mechs?"

Ves looked quite impressed at Jannzi. He didn't think she was smart enough to catch the implications of his message.

"She's correct." He said as he gave both Joshua and Jannzi a measured stare. "Look, I understand that you don't want to wait any longer to receive your promised machines, but we all have to make sacrifices. Our clan's immediate priority is to restore as much battle strength as possible in the fastest possible timespan. It will take at least a month to complete another expert mech design and it will take more than a week to fabricate the actual machine. We can fix up all of our damaged expert mechs in at least half of our time and bring back three fully-functional expert mechs back to our mech roster. If the safety of our clan comes first, then this is the logical choice to make."

His logic was irrefutable. The Dark Zephyr, the Riot and the First Sword had already proven their amazing effectiveness before. Fixing them up provided the clan with an immediate and certain boost in strength.

Of course, Venerable Joshua and Venerable Jannzi had to accept the fact that they needed to wait longer until they received their presents from the Larkinson Clan.

"Work on your two expert mech designs isn't being suspended while we work on restoring our existing expert mechs." Ves told the two. "The Design Department still has plenty of design teams that are constantly working on solving low-level problems and optimizing our existing solutions. When we get back to full speed on the design projects, we will be able to finish them a little sooner."

This hardly provided any consolation to the two, and what Ves was about to say would make their moods drop even more.

"To be honest, the work on our damaged expert mechs might take longer than a couple of weeks. Gloriana and I… are thinking about doing more than return them to their original conditions. The Battle of Fordilla Zentra has clearly proven the excellence of those machines, but it has also exposed clear vulnerabilities that we can conveniently address now that we are performing extensive work on them anyway."

This came as a surprise to all of the expert pilots.

"Are you planning to refit our expert mechs?" Venerable Dise asked.

Ves nodded. "That's right. I don't think I need to show you any footage to make you become aware that your expert mechs aren't as durable as we like. While I'm already satisfied with the durability of the Unending alloy armor systems of your expert mechs, I'm not as happy with how vulnerable the internals turned out to be. In a duel against expert mechs, it is crucial for you to be able to put your trust in the resilience of both their insides and outsides. If you are constantly trying to avoid incurring damage because you don't want your internals to be subjected to too many concussive shocks, then that will inevitably shackle your performance. That is not ideal."

Though his audience agreed with his sentiment, there were still a couple of questions.

"I thought the designs of our expert mech are already as good as you can make them. How can you fit something better?"

"How much time will it take to design the refit? If it takes more than a month.. then maybe you should postpone it for later."

Ves confidently smiled. "Don't worry about the practicalities of this round of refits. We just picked up the remains of six valuable dwarven expert mechs. Together with our other high-value salvage, we can send them over to the Graveyard in order to extract any high-quality exotics and materials that can still be reused. With a large batch of superior materials in hand, we can work towards replacing the more vulnerable internal components of your expert mechs with upgraded versions. Of course, we don't have time to research how to improve their technical performance, but simply substituting more fragile materials with tougher alternatives is not a time-consuming task. My wife has already begun to survey your expert mechs and the salvage that we can employ to perform this comprehensive durability upgrade round."

Venerable Tusa, Venerable Orfan and Venerable Dise were all pleased with this initiative. The latter two especially valued this upgrade because they suffered the worst out of all of the four with actual expert mechs during the previous battle.

"So how much tougher will our expert mechs become after you're done?" Venerable Orfan eagerly leaned forward and asked.

"Beats me." Ves shrugged. "We haven't even completed a survey of the materials of the salvaged dwarven expert mechs that we can use. However, if I have to make a guess, then the upgrade will likely be quite substantial. The general dwarven mech ideology is to design their machines to be tough. Even their lighter machines are more resilient than normal. There are many cases where we can use harder materials or even repurposed dwarven armor plating to strengthen the internals of your machines. The balance and mass distribution will change as a result, but we will try our best to keep them as similar as possible."

"Can you give us a figure?"

"Hmmm… I would say that the durability of the internal architecture of your expert mechs will likely receive a boost of 20 percent on average. This is a generous upgrade that will allow you to fight with a lot more confidence against other expert mechs next time."

While this degree of improvement did not sound revolutionary, it was nonetheless a hefty increase that could definitely make a difference in combat. In circumstances where both combatants were roughly even, a difference of 20 percent could definitely lead to an edge where the Larkinson expert mech would be able to win 9 out of 10 times!

This was because the increase in defense not only allowed the powerful machines to increase their fault tolerance and last longer, but also granted their pilots greater leeway to perform risky moves!

Of course, only half of the expert pilots present in this meeting were happy with these changes.

Venerable Stark raised her hand. "What about my Amaranto?"

"You did a good job in preserving the integrity of your expert mech. It has hardly suffered from any direct damage. We only need a couple of days to perform light repairs on the components and systems that have endured excessive strain. We don't plan to upgrade the Amaranto, though."

"For what reason?"

Ves looked apologetic. "The value of your expert mech lies in its offensive power, and it has already reached the limit that our Design Department can achieve at the moment."

"You can do a lot to upgrade its defenses." Venerable Stark pointed out. "It's one of the reasons why I wasn't able to perform at my best for much of the battle. If my mech was as durable as the Dark Zephyr, those two Slug Ranger expert mechs wouldn't have hounded me for so long."

"We are aware of that, and we intend to do something about it, just not now. Refitting a masterwork expert mech is much more difficult than refitting a normal expert mech. We can't perform too many modifications at once and their quality has to conform to the same standard of quality as your existing machine."

"I see…"

Ves decided to give her a bone. It wouldn't do to neglect the MVP of the last battle and their most effective expert pilot at this point.

"We don't intend to keep your Amaranto as fragile as it is now. Much of the reason why we couldn't improve the defense of your expert mech is because we don't have access to any better tech and materials at a reasonable budget. That will drastically change once we reach the Red Ocean. Once we get there, we can slowly master new tech and procure stronger and more remarkable exotics to upgrade not just the Amaranto, but all of our other expert mechs as well. The development on your machines never stops."

"Does that count for our expert mechs as well?" Venerable Joshua asked with a hopeful tone of voice.

"Yup." Ves grinned. "It's easier to implement upgrades in designs that haven't been realized yet. I will make sure that it is absolutely worth the wait before you are able to pilot your new expert mechs!"

The recent battle had taught Ves and the other Journeymen of the Larkinson Clan a lot about all of the challenging battle conditions that expert mechs had to endure. Many of them had to revise their assumptions, which caused them to change their minds about some of the solutions they applied to the finished expert mech designs.

As long as they processed their gains, they could apply all of the lessons they learned on the Bulwark Project and Chimera Project without much hindrance! This would ultimately translate into a clear performance difference between the earlier batch of expert mechs and the ones that had yet to be made!

Venerable Jannzi directed a serious glance towards Ves. She was truly impatient to pilot a new and improved Shield of Samar, but her future goals relied too much on piloting a powerful expert mech for her to urge Ves to make haste.

If she had to wait a few months longer to get her dream machine, so be it! The power she would gain from piloting an excellent expert mech would more than make up for the lack of opportunity to practice with a powerful machine!