The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1155

As soon as Axelar stopped entertaining the audience with his smack talk, Benny firmly carted his hover chair out of the VIP booth and back to his personal starship.

They returned to Axelar’s villa as fast as possible. Benny didn’t want to take any risks. Trying to deal with Axelar when he was sober and free from the influence of recreational stimulants was a lot harder!

To his credit, Benny didn’t make any attempts to abort the impending duel tomorrow. While Axelar may be a wastral of a mech pilot, he still represented the Streon Clan in public!

The surprise announcements that Axelar issued earlier could not be revoked! It was a given that he would enter into a mech duel with the team leader of the Haspel Asps and participate in the Trail of Tears soon afterwards.

All of this meant that Axelar could no longer spend his days as a drug-addled wastrel! Ves deliberately acted to cut off any means of returning for Axelar to return to his previous routine of spacing out on stimulants.

Ves did not forget about the point of this Mastery experience. He did not intend to live a day in the life of an elite Terran clansman.

He only cared about witnessing how a mech pilot handled a hero mech!

When Ves initially displaced Axelar’s core consciousness and took over control, he quickly realized that it was impossible for him to pilot a mech in this condition.

Ves wasn’t a mech pilot! His mentality wasn’t geared towards piloting mechs. Even if he did somehow manage to form a stable man-machine connection with a mech, he lacked the training of how to operate a machine that required at least fifteen years of dedicated training to become proficient in its use!

All of these conditions basically meant that Ves needed to put Axelar’s core consciousness back in control over his own body. Only when Axelar consciously committed to piloting a mech would Ves be able to glean valuable insights on the operation of a hero mech!

Still, getting Axelar to pilot a mech was harder than it sounded like. Ves knew what this wastrel was like.

The instant Axelar regained control over his own body, he’d probably do his best to weasel his way out of piloting a mech and instead order Benny to supply him with another batch of recreational stimulants!

"Hehe. Not this time." Ves mentally chuckled.

This was why Ves went through his extreme measures. He wanted to press Axelar in a corner. Only when this junkie had no way out would he finally do what Ves wanted to see!

All the while, Ves’ control over Axelar’s body slowly deteriorated. The weak but constant attacks from the core consciousness accelerated the drain in spiritual strength.

Soon enough, Ves needed to relinquish control of the body to its rightful owner. Until then, he still wanted to manipulate the circumstances to his favor.

Benny happened to speak up at this time once they returned to the villa.

"Master Axelar, considering the high import of tomorrow’s duel, I can contact a Master Mech Designer from the clan to design your dueling mech."

"No!"

"Pardon?"

"I said no!" Axelar’s body uttered. "I don’t need a mech designer! I’m better than the Masters of the clan! The best mechs are the ones I designed myself! I refuse to bring a mech designed by a stranger into the duel tomorrow!"

"Master Axelar!" Benny looked shocked. "While your ability to design mechs is exemplary, you don’t need to do all the hard work. Please allow a professional mech designer "

"Are you saying that professional mech designers are better than me, an eminent member of the the greatest clan in the Confederation?!" Axelar’s body pressed.

"You are the greatest." Benny had no choice but to say.

"Then that’s all the reason I need to design my own mech!" Axelar arrogantly declared. "If I don’t pilot my own mech tomorrow, then I might as well park whatever garbage mech I’m piloting in the center of the arena and let the Haspel Asps run it through!"

His extreme statements finally managed to fend Benny off from obtaining a mech from the market or enlisting the aid of a mech designer.

Ves had a very good reason to make Axelar pilot a mech designed by ’himself’. If Benny shipped in a mech designed by someone else, it inevitably came in the form of a bloated, feature-rich multipurpose mech.

That was exactly what Ves was trying to prevent!

The Terran mech designers seemed to delight in cramming as many different systems as possible in their mechs. Not a single Terran mech did not come with at least five different weapon modules and more than a dozen additional modules!

Yet as the battle between the Terminators and the Asp demonstrated, versatility was not always the solution. The heavy cannoneer-like mech fielded by the Haspel Asps employed fewer modules than normal, but nonetheless made an outsized contribution to the away team’s eventual victory.

This was adding less redundant gimmicks onto a mech left more space to empower its core functions!

In contrast, the smart metal mech with its infinite amount of transformations never realized its full potential. While it was adaptable to many different situations, pure overwhelming force easily overwhelmed anything it could throw at its opposition!

With the resources and technology the Terrans had at their disposal, it was no surprise that they eschewed the rigidly-defined mech archetypes that was common in the galactic rim. A versatile and adaptable mech could be employed in many different situations and would never become irrelevant.

Yet witnessing multipurpose mechs in action made Ves realize that prioritizing versatility was not always the best idea. He had seen too many mechs that came with numerous possibilities, only to make use of half of them or less.

"More is not always better."

The capacity of a mech constantly divided up even further with the addition of each additional system. As the Asps had already shown, sometimes it was better to impose a bit more limits on the range of options in order to ensure that each system delivered better performance.