The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1211

With the help of his design seed, Ves managed to complete the first iteration of the Transcendent Messenger design in less than three months.

Ordinarily, Ves considered three months of design work to be a rush job. The Aurora Titan design required twice as much time.

Yet now that he advanced to Journeyman, he worked roughly twice as fast as before without any negative impact. While the Transcendent Messenger still needed to go through a couple of rounds of prototyping before Ves was ready to finalize the design, he at least had something to show after all of these months.

Both Ves and Ketis took a step back and admire the full-scale projection of their work. Although it only existed in a virtual form for now, the Transcendent Messenger already carried an air of power, aggression and faith!

"I really didn’t think we’d get this far so fast." Ketis said while she idly petted Lucky who draped himself on her shoulders.

"Meow."

While Lucky’s hard feelings towards Ves subsided a bit over the last couple of months, the cat still preferred to cuddle with Ketis!

The only times when Lucky drifted over to Ves was when he fed his pet exotics as snacks. Outside of that, the cat taunted Ves with a swish of his tail and drifted elsewhere!

Ves shook his head and ignored his traitorous pet. "It still lacks a lot of optimization though. Getting the internal architecture to work the way I wanted to took a lot more effort than I thought."

Designing a hero mech was never a simple task. Ves spent a lot of thought on how to balance the design. It needed to engage in both melee and ranged combat at the same time without unduly compromising them both.

He admittedly drew some inspiration from Lord Javier’s Loquacious Raphael. As a custom high-quality hero mech, it bore the most resemblance to his Transcendent Messenger.

Although Ves looked down on blindly copying from someone else’s design, he couldn’t avoid getting inspired every now and then. Ves made sure to fully understand and put his own spin on anything he adopted from other influences.

Ketis continued to admire the form of their design. "You really have a thing for appearances, Ves. You’re the only mech designer I know who invests so much in making your mechs look pretty."

"It’s warranted this time." Ves retorted. "As a ceremonial bodyguard mech, appearances matter. The Ylvainans already have a fetish for turning their mechs into expressions of faith. Their customs are actually a lot more amenable to me than the functional style that is prevalent in other states."

To most mech designers, all of the extra cosmetic additions added to the maintenance burden of the mech without providing any concrete performance improvements.

Many mech designers didn’t possess that much artistic ability anyway. Rather than invest so much time only to make their mechs look kitschy and the work of an amateur, they would rather stick to clean and functional forms.

It was different in states like the Ylvaine Protectorate. Every competent mech designer needed to invest in the visual design of their mechs in order to sell more mechs. Driven by profit and cultural norms, the Ylvainan mech industry became very developed in this area.

Ordinarily, this meant that Ves needed to meet very high standards to gain the approval of the local Ylvainans.

This stumbling block may have tripped many other foreign mech designers before, but Ves was a clear exception. He was not only accustomed to spending a lot of effort on the visual design of his mechs, but he also had the benefit of hosting an amplified remnant of Ylvaine’s spirituality in his mind!

The spiritual fragment heavily influenced the artistic direction of the Transcendent Messenger. Ves still possessed a shallow understanding of the Ylvainan Faith. Much of the symbols and motifs the Ylvainans incorporated into their mech designs flew right over his head.

Having a piece of the founder of the Ylvainan Faith in his head neatly compensated for this shortcoming. In fact, Ylvaine’s spiritual fragment was probably the most authoritative source on the faith in the Protectorate, and it happened to be fully at his disposal!

Of course, hosting a remnant of the prophet wasn’t all that great. Its nagging expressions of approval and disapproval steered Ves into adjusting his behavior to conform to Ylvainan sensibilities.

"Before we fabricate the prototype, I should report back to the client." Ves stated. "I haven’t met with Madame Cecily for a while."

"That woman..." Ketis began. "There’s something about her that’s.. odd. I get the feeling she’s always hiding something from us. Aren’t you supposed to be her business partner or something?"

Both of them had interacted with each other before. Only Ves was aware of Madame Cecily’s true identity. For Ketis to sniff out something odd about Madame Cecily signified that her intuition was very sensitive in this area.

Ves ruefully smiled at her. "People like Madame Cecily are always more than they seem. We’d be fools to trust them at their word. The reason why I partnered up with her is that we can both further our goals by banding together. She can gain a lot more from me by joining hands rather than stabbing me in the back."

"That doesn’t sound like a very stable partnership."

"I disagree. A transactional relationship that is purely based on mutual benefits is probably more reliable than a relationship that is largely based on sentiment and trust. The latter will always be at risk whenever one side suffers from a mood swing or doesn’t like the other side anymore."

Ketis frowned. "Is this what business relationships are supposed to look like?"

"Personal relationships are different from business relationships. A marriage involves very different dynamics from a business alliance. Don’t confuse the two, Ketis. I’m not married to Madame Cecily. I’m a business partner of hers. Know the difference."

Ves decided they spent enough time gawking at their mech design. He shut down the projection and tidied up their workplace. The two mech designers along with Lucky exited the mech workshop and boarded their regular shuttle to travel back to the guest compound.