The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1255

During the two months of travel, Ves spent most of his time puzzling over the Skull Architect’s designs.

Wary of traps, Ves approached them with caution, causing him to take a bit longer than he liked to achieve significant progress.

With his Spirituality still in recovery, Ves keenly felt the difference between his current state and his optimal state.

His passion, energy and drive suffered a lot, forcing him to push through his work even if he would rather do something else.

"A mech designer must be dedicated to his craft." Ves whispered to himself. "How can I call myself a lover of mechs when I can’t sustain my interest through tougher times?"

He considered his difficulties to be a test of his perseverance. It was easy to get caught up in designing mechs when he enjoyed the experience. Yet Ves couldn’t always keep delaying until he entered in the right mood.

Instead of treating his debilitated state as a disadvantage, he instead saw it as an opportunity to train himself. Only by pushing through adversity would he be able to make the most gains!

Therefore, despite his low energy, Ves managed to summon up enough motivation to keep working on the designs.

He didn’t linger too long on the Caskar Pike. After studying it over and over again, Ves concluded that the spaceborn missileer mech didn’t possess any hidden traits.

The Skull Architect tasked him with designing a variant, so that was what he did. Aside from tweaking the design and its programming to make it easier to pilot, Ves also imparted it with a pale image to add some life to his variant.

While Ves didn’t infuse his image with his precious spiritual energy, he figured that the X-Factor of his design would not be any less than that of the Blackbeak.

"That should be sufficient to give the mech pilots of my variant a modest push. I don’t have to pull out all the stops."

It was rather refreshing to Ves to design a variant. While he became accustomed to designing original mechs, he felt like he had gone back in time to the start of his career.

"It’s like I’m getting back to basics."

When he designed an original mech, he entered a completely different mindset. He controlled every aspect of a mech design, but bore all the responsibility of its success and failure.

With variants, Ves merely had to look for opportunities to improve or change the configuration of the base model to fall more in line with his own vision.

Aside from finishing up his variant for the Caskar Pike, Ves also started to tinker with the Toroz Ruby, a spaceborn striker mech, and the Jinven, an aerial marksman mech.

The latter two mechs possessed a bit more depth, but not too much. Through careful and meticulous study, Ves found areas in which he could make worthwhile tradeoffs that vastly improved the overall piloting experience of his variants.

While he couldn’t maintain the same level of performance, the various tricks he employed significantly lowered the burden on the mech pilots of his variants.

"Mech pilots should always prefer my variants over the base models unless they’re elites."

Elite mech pilots such as Taon Melin from the Ylvaine Protectorate or Lord Javier from the Vesia Kingdom were already rare in civilized space.

In a barren, undeveloped region like the frontier, it was simply too difficult to train true elites that could pilot the Skull Architect’s mechs to their full potential.

Therefore, Ves immediately knew without a doubt that if the Skull Architect started to produce his variants, his sales would instantly double or triple.

"I really hope he doesn’t. I don’t want my mechs to be used by thousands of pirates."

The Skull Architect was a very principled mech designer. He refused to compromise the performance of his original designs even if the market demanded change.

Such a mech designer would definitely struggle with the decision to publish his variants.

"Well, it’s not like I can influence his decision." Ves shrugged. "I’ll just see what he does with my work. Perhaps he only needs my variants for research purposes."

He chugged along inside his stateroom for the rest of the journey to Centerpoint. He took no notice of the destinations he passed along the way. Even when the Barracuda entered the territory of the Friday Coalition, Ves did not express any interest in visiting them despite their various attractions.

Despite his dread towards his upcoming visit to the sector headquarters, Ves saw no point in trying to delay his journey. He already developed numerous contingency plans where he prepared a number of strategies to deflect suspicion.

While the MTA posed a threat to him, they weren’t enemies. The concerns of the Association went far beyond figuring out the eccentricities of a single oddball mech designer.

They possessed much greater priorities, such as ensuring their dominance over human space, suppressing the Five Scrolls Compact, keeping recalcitrant states subservient, maintaining parity with the CFA, guarding against alien threats and most importantly propping up the galactic mech industry.

"Lately, the Big Two seem to be preoccupied with other matters."

Ves observed various situations where the CFA and the MTA should have intervened, but chose not to. That was very unusual as the Big Two loved to throw around their weight.

While the CFA eventually mobilized to the frontier in order to fend off the wave of sandmen aggression, the MTA hardly moved out at all in the last couple of decades. The more he witnessed their inaction, the more he suspected that they were gathering their strength.