The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1004

Due to the threats on his life and concerns about his recovery, Calsie and Ketis couldn’t stay for long. They said goodbye shortly after and brought Lucky away as well.

Ves had mixed feelings seeing Lucky being brought away. Several times during the meeting, he continually wrestled with the temptation of accessing the System. It truly pained him to see it go out of reach like a drug addicts seeing his next fix taken away from him. In fact, the yearning he felt right now was so strong that he became aware of how unhealthy it was to fixate on the System!

"I’m not addicted!"

He shouldn’t have lost his composure like that. Even though the System helped him out a lot, he was also painfully aware of its contentious past. Whether the fabled Metal Scroll truly existed or not, Ves did not want to become a convert to the beliefs of the Five Scrolls Compact and begin to worship the System as a god.

"I feel like I need some perspective."

Spending years without the System opened up his eyes to the life of normal mech designers. It was hard for them to improve themselves, but their experiences during their struggles shaped their design philosophy and strengthened their mentality.

Something obtained from his own efforts was much more rewarding than redeeming something from the System!

Ves predicted if he continued to use the System as his personal shopping mall, he would have eventually grown so dependent on its conveniences that he would have completely lost the heart to struggle.

Without a will to fight and improve against all odds, how could Ves ever hope to make the jump from Senior to Master? As omnipotent as the System appeared, the only knowledge it offered was settled science and insights that already existed.

If Ves advanced to Senior purely by the System’s merit, he would have lacked the crucial practice and experience in improving himself and seeking out new innovations. How could such a lame an inauthentic Senior Mech Designer ever hope to develop his design philosophy into completely uncharted territory?

Therefore, Ves shouldn’t be so hungry to make use of the System again! At best, he should regard it as a supplement to accelerate his mech design career. The entire way he approached the System previously needed to be completely changed.

His ultimate goal was to enable him to advance to Master on his own strength!

His other goal was to become less dependent on the System!

Therefore, instead of improving himself directly with the use of the System, he would rather gain the foundation that allowed him to improve through his own effort.

"Well, all of this is a consideration for the future. For now, there’s no point thinking too far ahead." He muttered.

Now that the System fell firmly out of his reach, he stopped thinking about it and turned his attention to his immediate future. What would happen after the military hospital finished their treatments?

As nurses dropped by to feed him or attend to his needs, he kept asking them, only to receive an empty answer.

"I’m just a nurse, Mr. Larkinson. Someone else will decide on your next assignment."

These nurses truly knew nothing, so Ves stopped bothering them on this question. He actually felt a little discomfited at the lack of information flowing his direction. He could truly use a little clarity right now, but it appeared that the Mech Corps didn’t bother with him during his month-long recovery period.

So Ves pretty much treated his stay at the hospital as a safe and uneventful reprieve from the war.

Two weeks after his first admittance, Ves recovered well enough to be able to exit his hospital room. Each day, his guards would lift him onto a hover chair and brought him outside his stuffy hospital room to get some fresh air and interact with the other patients.

He met plenty of recovering servicemen during these daily airing sessions. Some of them looked like important people and would always be accompanied by a pair of guards. Others turned out to be regular people who for some reason or another had been lucky enough to obtain their treatment at this premier facility.

Talking with these injured soldiers spiced up his days, and Ves always enjoyed chatting with them even if neither of them talked too much about their experiences.

To many of them, this recovery period offered them a much-needed vacation from the fighting! Therefore, they would rather talk about the latest matches of the mech games than how the fighting progressed at the frontlines.

It kind of felt like being back at the Larkinson Compound to Ves.

Aside from these idle interactions, the Mech Corps had been generous enough to loosen their visitor policy for him. This simple measure assured Ves somewhat that they still valued him to an extent.

Though her duties kept her very busy, Captain Melinda Larkinson tried to visit as often as she could.

Out at the rooftop courtyard of the main hospital building, Ves idly stared out at Dorum’s cityscape. Melinda found him there and walked over to the side of his hover chair.

"Aren’t you afraid someone will hack your chair and force it to fly over the ledge?"

"This chair is powerful enough to remain afloat. Even if it fails, I can still make use of an emergency antigrav module to stall or slow down my fall."

Besides, the guards standing behind his back would do their best to catch him in the air as well.

"Still, for someone who recently survived an assassination attempt, it’s awfully reckless of you to tempt fate."