The Mech Touch

The Mech Trade Association and by extension the Red Association craved power.

It was in the nature of a dominant organization to do whatever it took to preserve their dominance and reduce the ability of others to overturn its reign.

The mechers had never made it a secret that they were cast from the same mold. Their deliberate attempts to castrate the many states of human civilization successfully prevented other human groups from growing too strong during the Age of Mechs.

Ves never really had a problem with that for the most part. The hegemonic model set by the Big Two after the disastrous end of the Age of Conquest led to centuries of growth and stability.

It was difficult to think of another alternative that could have led to a more favorable outcome for human civilization.

Nonetheless, Ves was under no illusion that the mechers and the fleeters were the good guys. They were clearly interested in advancing human civilization, but only a version where they stayed on top!

Every development that might lead the human race to a brighter future but where the Big Two lost out was intolerable as far as they were concerned!

This was why the mechers and fleeters suppressed the Terrans and the Rubarthans anytime they could get away with it. Robbing the first-raters of their masterwork mechs turned out to be a surprisingly huge component in a strategy to prevent the former leaders of humanity from rising up again.

Ves never imagined before this day that masterwork mechs possessed such significance!

It should have been obvious in hindsight. Ves had learned about Senfovon's Ladder of Craftsmanship years ago. He discovered that high-quality mechs helped to drag mech pilots up to their level, meaning that breakthroughs happened a lot more frequently!

Ves thought of how masterwork mechs enriched the Larkinson Clan and boosted the performance of its key assets.

Unique treasures in the form of the Amaranto and the Everchanger had single-handedly turned battles around due to the rare advantages conveyed by their masterwork properties!

The key takeaway from his conversation with Alexa was that masterworks were strategic assets.

The benefits they provided to their owners were so substantial that the addition or absence of just a single one of them directly affected the future of an entire organization!

How many benefits could Ves bestow to the Larkinson Clan if he turned the first production copy of the Fey Project into a masterwork mech?

It was difficult to make a solid prediction, but he only had to look towards the Quint to know that the Fey Project could unlock the potential of a lot of promising mech pilots!

The more masterwork mechs Ves supplied to his clan, the more expert pilots and ace pilots would emerge that could protect the Larkinsons against the looming threats of the future.

Ves did not forget about the fact that the mechers were all spooked by what little they managed to ascertain from Messier 87!

Given that this supermassive galaxy had an insanely high energy level, the aliens who rose up in this kind of environment had to be much more powerful than anything humanity had ever faced in the past.

Ves suspected that only True Gods had a chance of self-preservation if they ever came into direct contact with the natives of the much larger galaxy.

As such, the value of masterwork mechs had shot up even more in the Red Ocean!

After all, back in the Milky Way Galaxy, the only threats the Big Two had to guard against were the Seven Apex Races and the much-diminished Five Scrolls Compact.

While these enemies certainly had the capital to make a comeback due to their deep foundations, the MTA and CFA controlled them well enough to prevent them from gaining enough strength.

It was different in the Red Ocean. The natives of the Red Ocean were already difficult to resist due to their overwhelming numbers advantage. The aliens of Messier 87 were many times more powerful!

Only god pilots, Star Designers and other True Gods could resist the threat posed by all of these dangerous aliens.

Of course, Ves was aware that the Red Fleet most definitely disagreed with this notion. The stance of the fleeters was admirable, but it was also a huge gamble driven by ideological motivations rather than sound logic.

Ves did not want to bet on the possibility that the cult of pure technology was right.

During Operation Night Jazz, the dreadnoughts of the Red Fleet fought admirably and displayed amazing capabilities that had never been unveiled before.

A lot of warship enthusiasts gained confidence. It looked as if the renaissance of warships was close at hand!

However, most people did not agree with this sentiment. Dreadnoughts were incredibly massive and must have cost an insane amount of high-grade exotics and hypers to build!

The Red Ocean was just a dwarf galaxy, and red humanity only occupied a small slice of it. How could the fleeters possibly gather all of the high-end resources to construct a couple of other dreadnoughts?

All of those resources could be utilized to construct dozens of serviceable battleships or entire mech armies of first-class multipurpose mechs!

Perhaps it was his bias as a mech designer that led him to make this conclusion, but Ves believed with all of his heart that warships could not save red humanity in the times to come.

They were too big, too clumsy, too inflexible and most importantly too wasteful!

Every decent engineer pursued efficiency in their work. Why use too units of resources to solve a problem when you could do it with 10 units of resources instead?

Mechs had their fair share of shortcomings, but the synergies they could achieve with mech pilots had unlimited potential.

It was much easier for red humanity to raise powerful enough mech armies due to how much less resources they demanded compared to more conventional warfleets.

"It is not just the mechs that demand attention. The mech pilots can also affect the combat effectiveness of these mech armies."

Developing talents was a matter of life and death in the Red Ocean. Any state or organization that could amass more expert pilots, ace pilots and possibly even god pilot would be the new reigning powers of the new frontier!

Ves even saw how much this new reality tied into the New Elites Program.

The Deep Strike Plan conceived by the Fist of Defiance sounded like a bone-headed scheme at first, but it actually sought to transition human civilization into a more brutal society.

If the plan truly was an awful idea, then the Survivalists would have never given it a chance to get voted upon!

The premise behind the Fist of Defiance's plan was that only a strong but cruel society had a decent chance of resisting the alien powerhouses that might come and knock on humanity's doors one day.

The new status of warlords was originally reserved for the high-ranking mech pilots who would not only serve as protectors, but also leaders who earned their right to rule by relying on their fists!

The mechers deeply comprehended that only a True God could defeat another True God!

While this rule was not entirely true all of the time, it took an excessive amount of resources and planning in order to take down a True God without relying on the strength of a comparable entity.

Even then, the combat effectiveness of True Gods varied a lot depending on their nature and their progression.

A design spirit that was born less than a decade ago like Gaia was one of the weakest and most pathetic existences of this level.

Her roots were weak and her foundation was brittle. She only managed to become insanely strong due to a few coincidences that caused her to become worshiped by a lot of unwitting devotees of Old Earth.

Though Ves was aware that Gaia had been working hard behind the scenes to shore up all of her deficiencies and make up for her fragile foundation, there was no denying that she was a shame to the class of True Gods!

Of course, that did not mean she was a pushover. Her transcendent life state meant that she could still overpower nearly everyone that was not on the same level of a True God!

There was one clear exception, though.

High-ranking mech pilots had nothing to fear from her. God pilots could probably squash her like a bug if they managed to enter into a direct confrontation with the Mother of Earth!

Cynthia had emphasized multiple times that god pilots were the most unreasonably powerful True God-level combatants that she knew of. They had sundered the Five Scrolls Compact and kept all of the aliens of the old galaxy in check!

The might of all of these god pilots was so great that they could confront much older and more powerful True Gods and still come out on top. They were the only ones that had access to the massive synergies derived from the perfect fusion between the best form of willpower cultivation and the most extreme variation artifact cultivation!

All of this highlighted the role of high-ranking mech pilots in human civilization even further.

Any resource that could promote the rate of breakthroughs and accelerate the progression of mech pilots was of paramount importance to the Red Association.

Ves already knew this to an extent due to how much the mechers valued his companion fruits, his Carmine mechs and the transcendence glow.

However, due to all of the excitement surrounding his most notable innovations, Ves had overlooked the extensive benefits that masterwork mechs could supply to their owners.

They were not merely a means to increase the proportion of high-ranking mech pilots in the Larkinson Army.

They could turn the Larkinson Clan from a chess piece into a chess player!

This was especially crucial in the coming decades where the probability of coming into contact with the natives of Messier 87 became ever greater.

All of this led to an important consideration.

Should Ves utilize his bargaining power to force the mechers to keep their hands off his masterwork mechs?

This was an important question, and the answer was not as obvious as it appeared.

Certainly, Ves had gained enough status and importance for the mechers to respect his wishes.

He was sure that if he called Jovy right now and told him to keep his hands off his future masterwork mechs, the Red Association would not come in and take away his more brilliant works.

However, every action had its consequences.

Denying the mechers the right to requisition his masterwork mechs would send numerous messages.

Ves would make a selfish impression that negated some of the contributions he had made to benefit human civilization. He would appear to push back against the premise that he was willing to be a team player.

Keeping a relatively weak second-class masterwork mech for himself would deprive red humanity of an opportunity to nurture multiple powerful first-class mech pilots in the future!

This would have deep political implications. Would Ves truly be better served by destroying a part of the goodwill that he had engendered among the mechers through his many contributions?

On the one hand, the more high-ranking mech pilots that rose up in the Larkinson Clan, the greater its self-preservation ability over the long run.

On the other hand, the better his relationship with the Red Association, the more advantages Ves could gain by deepening his cooperation with this dominant organization.

Which one was the better option?

"It would be nice if I could have the best of both worlds." He sighed.

It was not that simple, though. Even though his craftsmanship had improved by a huge extent ever since Vulcan started to transition into a more authentic God of Craftsmanship, it was not enough for Ves to be able to fabricate masterwork mechs on repeat.

Ves understood his strengths well enough that he worked at his best when he worked on new and interesting tech and designs.

He just couldn't muster up enough passion if he had to fabricate another copy of the same mech design.

Perhaps he and Vulcan might be able to advance their craftsmanship to the point where they could permanently settle on the second rung of Senfovon's Ladder of Craftsmanship, but that would not happen today!

Ves furrowed his brows. "I can't have this dilemma hanging over my head before I produce a copy of the Fey Project. I need to make up my mind before I start my fabrication run!"