The Mech Touch

Even though the Amaranto, the Everchanger and the Minerva had proven their worth in combat on many occasions, their illustrious battle records could not compensate for the harsh reality that their tech and material standards had fallen behind the times.

While the Phobos was admittedly not as strong in direct combat as the aforementioned masterwork expert mechs, he did not need to be. His powerful active stealth system along with all of his spiritual advancements enabled him to defeat powerful opponents before they had any chance to retaliate!

This was enough to acknowledge the Phobos as the masterwork that best reflected Ves' current strengths as a mech designer!

The Larkinson Clan would have praised the creation of the impressive expert stealth mech if not for the fact that the Phobos was supposed to be a clandestine asset!

The majority of clansmen did not even receive any notification of this impressive addition. They still thought that the Mars was the latest masterwork mech that Ves and Gloriana jointly fabricated.

However, it was pretty much impossible to hide such a massive development in certain well-informed circles.

Davute, the Friday Coalition, the Hexadric Hegemony, the Mech Trade Association and who knew what else already learned that the Larkinson Clan not only completed its long-awaited Ghost Project, but also attained a much better end result!

The implications of this were frightening.

There simply weren't a lot of expert stealth mechs in human space. The mech community considered them to be a rarity because most of the pilots assigned to this mech type simply did not possess the qualities of a demigod.

Venerable Zimro Belson was a rare exception to this pattern, and thus granted the Larkinson Clan an extremely potent weapon that far too many other parties lacked!

No matter whether they were Davutans or Fridaymen, many people who understood the ramifications of an expert stealth mech began to raise the threat level of the Larkinson Clan to a higher degree!

The most frightening aspect about the Larkinson Clan was not that it could muster up a lot of powerful mechs and raid another planet like Pima Prime, but that it could quietly eliminate a lot of enemies without leaving behind any trace!

No traces meant no proof.

No proof meant that the Larkinson Clan could essentially get away with a lot of dirty deeds!

Even if the Larkinsons built up a well-deserved reputation for honor and uprightness, no one was naive enough that it employed stealth mechs just to serve as sneaky scout units.

With so many rumors flying around, it was impossible for the Larkinson Clan to refute all of the stories.

In fact, it was more beneficial for the Larkinsons if other people knew that their chances of suffering retaliation became much higher!

Still, Ves was not entirely comfortable with exposing the existence of the Phobos before he had even completed his first serious mission.

He would have preferred to keep his new expert stealth mech hidden and use the element of surprise to utterly crush a powerful but complacent adversary!

"Oh well."

A day after the fabrication run had ended, Ves reluctantly applied to the MTA to inspect his latest masterwork mech and issue another batch of masterwork certificates.

He did not really care too much about collecting his eighth masterwork certificate, but he understood that it was a life-changing accomplishment for Miles Tovar and Cormaunt Hempkamp to receive their first award of this kind!

"I'm not sure whether the MTA will recognize their contributions, though." Ves furrowed his brows. "Their involvement in the previous fabrication run was not that much to begin with, and my insistence on taking over a greater portion of their assigned work makes them look even worse."

Miles and Cormaunt still benefited enormously even if the mechers did not award them with masterwork certificates in the end.

This was because the experience of contributing to the creation of a masterwork mech was already incomparably precious!

The subsequent masterwork transformation also granted the two Journeymen a lot of new insights and inspiration. They should make a lot of gains in their work after they digested all of the observations they made!

The same applied to Ves. The spiritual foundation of the Phobos was strong and highly developed despite being born just a day ago! No other living mech could have matched the latest expert mech on this front just after their own creation!

The only exception was the Dullahan Project, but that was a special case. The expert space knight not only inherited a substantial amount of power from the Shield of Samar, but also formed a Blood Pact with Venerable Jannzi, enabling the both of them to facilitate each other's growth!

"The Phobos has a lot of secrets."

He felt deeply uncomfortable about displaying it to the mechers. He knew from past instances that they would bring a small troop of mech designers and engineers so that they could meticulously examine and record a new masterwork mech from top to bottom.

Ves still did not exactly know why the MTA put such a high emphasis on masterwork mechs, but he had already formed a lot of possible guesses.

"Well, the MTA will find a way to examine it one way or another, so I might as well invite them and get this over with as soon as possible."

The Phobos was currently in his weakest and most rudimentary state, and Ves intended to keep him that way for the time being.

This way, the mechers would only be able to record the expert stealth mech's properties when he had only formed a single rune corresponding to the Path of the Hidden Stalker.

Ves had already studied the Phobos extensively enough to conclude that the new expert mech only needed to experience a small amount of growth to form his second 'rune'!

"If this was a roleplaying game, then the second rune corresponds to reaching the second stage of an evolutionary process."

It was similar to how the mech community divided expert pilots into low-tier, mid-tier and high-tier buckets.

The difference here was that the differentiation between expert pilots was an artificial construct.

These new 'Ascension Runes' as Ves had taken to calling them possessed a lot of depth and mystery.

Ves could tell that they had nothing to do with the Kingdom of Mechs.

Instead, he theorized that his newly created Ascension Paths had accidentally contacted a deeper spiritual rule or phenomenon that was related to these strange runes, either before or after the masterwork transformation!

Every rune had a meaning. Ves could clearly sense that the Ascension Rune floating in the spiritual foundation of the Phobos possessed intrinsic power that remained active at all times.

Ves looked thoughtful. "This falls in line with the first ability that I have outlined in the Path of the Hidden Stalker."

The main purpose of this Ascension Path was to make it harder to detect. The first ability was one of the most important evolutionary upgrades because it was meant to fool the sharp intuition of opposing expert pilots!

These powerful soldiers and warriors had honed their senses and instincts on the battlefield. Their advancement had caused them to become a lot better at detecting anything that felt wrong or threatening.

If Ves wanted to turn the Phobos into an assassination unit that could take out an enemy expert mech in a single blow, then the Path of the Hidden Stalker had to put heavy emphasis on circumventing more unconventional means of threat detection!

He did not know how much this new Ascension Rune affected the stealth capabilities of the Phobos. He would have to test his new expert mech in order to make this determination.

Hopefully, there would be a way to deactivate the Ascension Rune so that he could make accurate comparisons.

As Ves continued to study and go over the data on the latest fabrication run in his office, he began to develop the urge to give all of his other mechs access to his latest innovation as well!

"These Ascension Paths should be useful to every living mech!"

While he already decided to apply them to all of the mech design projects that he had yet to complete, he was a lot more interested in applying them to his existing living mechs for the time being!

He was deeply curious to know whether granting them access to Ascension Paths would only affect their future growth or whether it would unleash the hidden potential that they accumulated over their lifetimes!

Ves did not have enough theory or data to make accurate predictions. The only way to learn the truth was to conduct an actual experiment on an older expert mech.

He already had one powerful candidate in mind. Aside from the Shield of Samar which existed no more, there was no better machine to test out the applicability of his Ascension Paths!

The implications of this latest innovation were enormous to his design philosophy as well as the lives of every living mech.

No longer would they have to grope in the dark and figure out how to evolve on their own!

While Ves was incapable of creating a 'Kingdom of Living Mechs', his design spirits could serve as adequate substitutes!

Not only were his design spirits more alive and responsive, but they could all come up with their own ideas, ensuring that the Ascension Paths would have plenty of variety!

Besides, Ves liked it a lot better when he did not put all of his eggs in a single basket.

The Kingdom of Mechs may serve as an incredibly powerful tool for humanity, but it was also an obvious target to any serious enemy!

Ves preferred it a lot more if the keepers of his Ascension Paths were spread out across several dozen different design spirits.

Just as he was about to rise to his feet so that he could pay a visit to one of his third order living mechs, the door suddenly opened.

His wife marched inside as if she owned the place. The dismay she showed a day earlier had already disappeared.

"Ves! We need to talk!"

"Uh, what is it, dear?"

Gloriana placed her hands on her hips. "Do you remember that I told you that the Vraken Matriarchal Dynasty decided to send one of its ace pilots to the Glory Seekers? She is almost here. You should get ready to meet her and take a look at her ace mech. The finest Hexer engineering went into its design. Prepare to be amazed."

"Uh, okay… I look forward to the ace pilot's arrival, I guess."

"I also wanted to discuss our latest theories on masterwork mechs." Gloriana briskly continued. "I have examined a large amount of data and conducted a thorough analysis. I admit that my theory was not as close to the truth as yours. That is not to say that it is completely correct. I am merely acknowledging that it has made a small amount of progress. I still have a chance to make subsequent discoveries that can supplement our theories further. There has to be more criteria that determines whether a mech deserves to become a masterwork. Matter and spirit are only two of the broad categories that we have identified. There should be other variables that can help us create masterwork mechs with greater ease."

Although Ves vaguely sensed something wrong in his wife's arguments, he agreed with her overall idea.

He too felt that there was way more to masterworks than just perfecting their physical and spiritual forms.

Perhaps it was fame.

Perhaps it was technological advancement.

Perhaps it was the power of love.

Whatever the case, Ves and Gloriana had to fabricate a lot more masterwork mechs if they wanted to have any chance of identifying additional key variables!

"We still have a heap of ongoing mech design projects that are close to completion, right?" Ves asked. "Those are good opportunities for us to put our latest theories and ideas to the test. Now that I have figured out how to make third order living mechs on demand, our chances of turning those future works into masterwork mechs should be a lot higher!"

Gloriana smirked. "That is exactly what I had in mind. Please prepare as best you can. The Bloodripper Project and the Greenaxe Project may not be as innovative as the Phobos, but they are still Larkinson expert mechs in their own right. They deserve a chance to excel in the upcoming war between Davute and Karlach."

Ves dropped his smile. The reminder of the fact that neither of those two expert mechs would become a part of his expeditionary fleet soured his mood.