The Mech Touch

　　With the agreement of the Quint, Ves fully proceeded to complete the Enlightened Warrior design. After swapping out its old galaxy rim-level parts for Red Ocean heartland-level parts, the entire mech performed a bit more powerful in almost every aspect.

　　Offense, defense and mobility all scored better across the board. The Enlightened Warrior only had two significant shortcomings.

　　First, the Enlightened Warrior did not benefit from the specialties of the other Journeymen in the Larkinson Clan.

　　It did not benefit from Gloriana's optimization, Ketis' sword enhancements, Juliet's mobility boosts, Pellier and Coslone's physical strengthening or Sara Voiken's defensive hardening.

　　These were serious shortcomings that meant that his Enlightened Warrior model would become even less attractive as a commercial product.

　　"I'll just have to drop the price by 20 percent or so in order to make it on par with other comparative mech models." Ves shrugged.

　　Price adjustments were the best and most convenient way to manipulate the popularity and sales volume of any product. Ves was even prepared to suffer a small loss just to make sure that enough third party mech pilots turned into his test subjects.

　　"That will be my real profit, hehe!" He grinned.

　　Dropping the price never failed to move inventory. Even if his products were much shoddier than now, there were always suckers that couldn't resist buying a mech that was sold far below its apparent worth.

　　As for whether those buyers possessed the expertise to understand why the Enlightened Warrior was not able to command a higher price, that was none of Ves' business.

　　He did not even plan to disclose that the Enlightened Warriors were truly able to help mech pilots break through. Though its users would quickly realize that there was something special about the model, unless a lot of mech pilots broke through in quick succession, no one would believe that Ves had managed to turn the impossible into the possible.

　　And if this opportunity also came with certain unanticipated or undesirable side effects? Too bad. Everything had a price. Even cheaper products exacted their toll on their buyers one way or another.

　　"Well, let's proceed with finalizing the design."

　　He had almost entirely shut himself off to everyone in order to rush this design to completion. Gloriana had already stopped talking to him once she recognized he was in one of those obsessive moods again.

　　Though she was clearly upset with him, she was a mech designer as well. She fully understood when mech designers were struck by inspiration, they would not easily stop what they were doing.

　　As the expeditionary fleet almost reached the Pellysa System where it intended to stay for a while in order to sell off much of the plunder taken from the Titania, Ves was putting the finishing touches on his variant design.

　　Just like his other recent designs, the Enlightened Warrior centered around three major themes.

　　In the earlier stages of the design process, Ves placed a lot of emphasis on compatibility and tutelage. These focus areas comprised the basic functionality of his Enlightened Warrior design. They were the reason why it existed.

　　"That's not enough, though."

　　The reason why the Enlightened Warrior was called that way was because Ves hoped that it could increase the chance of mech pilots breaking through.

　　The mechanism that he wanted to use for that was to employ a weakened version of the glow of the Aspect of Transcendence.

　　It was easy enough to put Lufa in as a secondary design spirit for the Enlightened Warrior, though the Quint had to make a bit of room to accommodate the guest.

　　Ves didn't encounter any challenges in tuning Lufa's glow so that it suppressed everything except for the mech pilot's greatest obsessions and convictions. This was already enough to turn the Enlightened Warrior into a mech that was capable of inducing breakthroughs.

　　"It's too strong, though."

　　Even if Lufa only arrived at a later stage and only occupied a relatively small portion of the design, his altered glow was already quite powerful!

　　"Probably too powerful!"

　　Ves had to dampen it so that it did not produce any unintended messes in the cockpits of his Enlightened Warriors. His customers certainly wouldn't be happy if the glow based on the Aspect of Transcendence blasted his heads apart!

　　Forget about his customers, the MTA would definitely intervene if it turned out that his mechs were lethal to his own users! With the Simile Halifax constantly monitoring everything that went on inside the Spirit of Bentheim, there was no way he could shift responsibility!

　　"I wonder what Jovy thinks about my work." Ves deliberately said aloud.

　　He didn't worry too much about the MTA understanding the true nature of the Enlightened Warrior. Jovy and his staff could watch all they want, but the spiritual design of his latest project was only visible to himself.

　　That reminded him of something. The MTA Journeyman never got back to him on his offer.

　　"What's taking him so long?"

　　Ves thought that his offer was fairly simple and that Jovy should be pouncing on this opportunity.

　　Evidently, he underestimated the decision making process surrounding this issue.

　　He turned his attention back to his almost-complete mech design.

　　The issue he was trying to decide upon was how he should set the strength of Lufa's transcendence glow.

　　If he made it too strong, then Ves was afraid of inducing severe distortions to the personalities of users of his new variant. The Enlightened Warrior didn't necessarily have to explode any heads to constitute a threat to its own users!

　　Yet if he made the glow too weak, then what was the point of including it in the first place? Ves seriously doubted that it would make any difference if it was this weak.

　　"It's the safest option, though."

　　Ves constantly hovered between tuning the strength of the glow from 3 percent to 50 percent of the strength of the Aspect of Transcendence.

　　He did not dare to go any further than 50 percent even though Ves thought it was unlikely to lead to any fatalities. He needed to adopt a safety margin just in case he miscalculated.

　　"It's still a bit iffy, though."

　　He did not think there was any point of going lower than 3 percent either. Below that point, Ves didn't feel anything.

　　As Ves continued to struggle over this issue, he suddenly gained a bright idea.

　　What if he made it variable? What if he could allow his Enlightened Warriors to change the strength of its glow just like he did for his old Doom Guard design?

　　However, Ves did not think it was a good idea to hand over control of this dial to the mech pilot.

　　"They'll probably misuse it and end up killing themselves." He guessed.

　　The stupidity of mech pilots knew no bounds. Despite their training and despite their courage, they were not known for making the most rational or optimal decisions. Ves could already envision them turning it to the maximum even when their mental conditions were unable to cope with the pressure.

　　The question then was who should be in control of this power dial? The mech?

　　"That's a bad idea."

　　The Enlightened Warriors may have been designed to facilitate breakthroughs, but they probably weren't the best at judging the health of their own mech pilots. What if they made a mistake? What if they pushed their own pilots too far? Ves could not discount the possibility of accidents if he let a young, inexperienced and not too bright living mech take charge of such an advanced function!"

　　That left… another mech.

　　What if he handed over control to the Quint?

　　This was not as crazy as it sounded. Although Ves did not trust the Enlightened Warrior mechs to use this setting responsibly, the Quint was much better in this regard.

　　The mech possessed the intelligence and judgment to use it to good effect. Drawing from its first-hand experiences of Joshua and Casella's breakthroughs, the Quint probably had a good idea on when mech pilots were being pushed to the brink of apotheosis.

　　At that time, the pilots only needed a single push to tip them over, and Lufa's transcendence glow could probably provide that push!

　　The more he thought about it, the more Ves became convinced this was the right solution. Though the Quint would have to become more involved in regulating all of the copies of the Enlightened Warrior design, the rewards that it would gain from experiencing breakthroughs by remote more than made up for the effort!

　　After all, whenever a mech pilot broke through, the release of energy provided a huge burst of spiritual feedback to the mech and to a lesser degree the design spirit.

　　Everyone benefited!

　　When Ves used this argument on the Quint, the living mech acquiesced easily enough.

　　FINE. IT IS NOT AS IF I AM ALREADY DEVIATING FROM A NORMAL MECH. YOUR IMAGINATION IS THE MOST DANGEROUS WEAPON YOU POSSESS, CREATOR.

　　"Aw, shucks. Thanks for the compliment."

　　With that taken care of, Ves implemented the solution into the spiritual design of the Enlightened Warrior before he finalized the design.

　　As Ves took a step back in order to study the design from a holistic perspective, he had to admit that he had certainly done a decent job.

　　The variant was not too unrefined. He had collaborated often enough with Gloriana to work more diligently on his mech designs. He also hit himself over the head with the Hammer of Brilliance in the later stages of the design phase in order to borrow Vulcan's insights.

　　"It's still the product of a solo project though."

　　The design choices he made were highly individualistic and that resulted in a number of quirks that made the Enlightened Warrior stand out further. They were not that big of a deal mostly as Ves mostly focused on enhancing the piloting experience.

　　Part of that resulted in enhanced defenses to the upper chest where the cockpit and other important parts rested.

　　Even if the mech pilot was forced to eject, the separated cockpit was based on a premium license that offered greater speed and damage resistance than more standard models.

　　"The Enlightened Warrior is all about the mech pilot, after all. It wouldn't be a good training mech if it can't keep its precious users alive."

　　Aside from that, the Enlightened Warrior design came equipped with a relatively good but ordinary energy rifle. Ves was not allowed to spread his luminar crystal weapons outside of his own clan and fleet, so he had no choice but to fall back on more conventional human technology.

　　"At least it's simple."

　　If the buyers of his mech weren't interested in the default rifle, then they could just choose to buy seperate weapon models using those instead. Just like any other ranged humanoid mech, the Enlightened Warrior was able to seamlessly adopt many different weapon models as long as they adhered to the same technical standards.

　　Once the Spirit of Bentheim produced twenty copies of his new variant design, Ves would definitely ensure that they came equipped with the new model luminar crystal rifles that had become standard issue in the Larkinson Clan.

　　Its other properties were relatively average even among the four different configurations. This was no different from the base model.

　　"The look is different, though."

　　The Bright Warriors were coated in resplendent gold by default but he couldn't be that ostentatious for his variant.

　　After thinking about it, he decided to coat it in a light but relatively neutral shade of blue. It made the mech look a bit less threatening, which was exactly what Ves tried to achieve.

　　He didn't want to scare any of his future test subjects by suggesting that the Enlightened Warrior was based on prior experiments that led to bloody test chambers…

　　"Nope. My new variant is not related to all of that stuff. There's not a hint of red in its appearance!"