The Mech Touch novel Chapter 14

Reading through the Mech’s specifications, Ves felt all of his satisfaction disappear. He accomplished the difficult task of building a highly advanced mech, to be sure. His lack of understanding and his poor proficiency with the equipment caused several problems with the mech. The Caesar Augustus he fashioned paled in comparison to a factory standard stock model. Several criteria showed a few percentage points of deficiencies.

Those percentage points might as well be a chasm in the mech market. When pilots wanted to buy a stock mech, then they at least demand them to adhere to standards. There was no way any sane pilot paid full price for a substandard licensed copy.

Ves took the time to search up the Caesar Augustus and its variants, what few they were. Unlike in the real universe, the Caesar Augustus enjoyed a little more popularity. Logistical issues such as limited energy mattered little when you played Iron Spirit’s shorter game modes, such as the 1v1 and the 2v2 arenas. The tricky problem of frequent repairs could be solved with a wave of the hand as the game took care of everything as long as you had gold or credits to spend.

The players who bought the Caesar Augustus tended to be more affluent than normal, but also demanded more of their mechs. Their willingness to pay a little more for a higher performing mech didn’t help Ves at the moment because his own product was trash.

"Still, I have no choice but to get rid of it. I’ve pumped a fortune of credits in its virtual construction. I should at least be able to recoup the cost."

With no other choice, Ves switched to the sales page and put his first Caesar Augustus on sale. He put a tentative price of 45,000 credits. The price range made it seem like a deal, even if it didn’t perform up to spec.

[Caesar Augustus CA-1]

Tier: 5-star

Base Model: Caesar Augustus CA-1

Purchase Price: 750,000 gold (-50%)

Premium Price: 45,000 bright credits

Hopefully some schmuck will snap it up without reading the specifications too deeply. Otherwise he’d have to go back to the store and lower the price again in order to get rid of it faster. He still lacked a lot of credits and had no reserve left to build another virtual mech.

"I’ll check back in a few days." Ves said hopefully, but he could not keep out the grimness from hsi tone. "One thing’s for sure. If I want to untangle this cluster fuck, I desperately need to become proficient in electrical engineering."

Ves checked his Status, and found he had gained enough DP to afford the first Skill in the Skill Tree. As a major skill category, Electrical Engineering was cheap to learn but very expensive to master, but that was a problem for later. Right now, he spent 200 DP to acquire the first tier of the skill, which the System called Incompetent.

Raw information and knowledge streamed into Ves’ mind. More knowledge than he could handle tried to nestle within in his brain in a span of minutes, and it almost caused him to blank out. He dropped to the floor and tried to hold his screams as he held his head. Countless irrelevant pieces of data pressed against his mind.

Lucky even got frightened enough to jump up to a cabinet, wary of any intruders.

The pressure eased off after ten or so minutes. Ves let out deep breaths as he tried to regain his composure. Most of the data seemed to have been tossed to the back of his mind, inaccessible for the moment. Perhaps the subsequent skill upgrades unlocked portions of it. Strange.

In order to regain his calm, he took a break, taking Lucky out for a walk. He and his father lived near this stretch of forests and plains for many years. The house of his childhood in the suburbs had been sold, the new owners taking in the property with gusto. Instead, his father moved to build a second-hand modular workshop just outside the town. Its location closer to nature afforded better privacy and made sure nothing else got damaged if his workshop blew up for some reason.

"Do you remember a life before the System gifted you to me?"

The gem cat meowed with a puzzled tone as he explored the nearby bushes.

"Don’t know, huh?" Ves said as he stretched his arms and raised his head to look at the wispy colorful sky. "This is my home planet. I lived her for almost my entire life. The only time I left was when I went to college in the capital."

The planet Rittersberg seated the government of the Bright Republic. They heavily controlled the climate in order to make it optimal for human to live there. Sprawling cities, fancy villas and vast stretches of Terran and indigenous wildlife turned it into a paradise, an expensive one, but idyllic nonetheless.

Still, Ves vastly preferred the rugged and untamed lands of Cloudy Curtain. The terraforming corporations who transformed the ball of rock into a live-sustaining planet only stuck around to do the bare minimum. They left with their fat paychecks even as incongruities popped up. The local air smelled different than the standard Terran norm. The summers never lasted long and it was cloudy pretty much every day.

This was his home. He was an inhabitant of Cloudy Curtain first, and a citizen of the Bright Republic next. Few woes occurring in the rest of the galaxy concerned him here on this quiet planet. This corner of the galaxy was on the outskirts of civilized territory. It held few stars, not much exotic resources and only a few small alien polities shared the Bright Republic’s rimward borders.

Mech battles only happened occasionally. Besides the wars between the Republic and the aggressive Vesia Kingdom, the most the Mech Corps had to handle were lone criminals and small bandit groups too weak to prey in the bigger neighborhoods.

This led to a life of peace and stability, an enviable state of affairs for some people. His father purposely left the livelier planets of Rittersberg and Bentheim in order to make his home in snoozy Cloudy Curtain. When Ves grew up on this planet, he felt no different from his classmates and other people around him. Only when he studied at Rittersberg did he realize that the rest of the galaxy moved in different speeds.

It both scared and excited him.

Eventually, Ves firmly entered this complicated, murky world in order to fulfill his dream to become a mech designer. Just this decision alone brought him into contact with the government, trade associations, suppliers and more. He felt connected to the galaxy, as if anything he did affected the rest of human civilization. Only a little, but it felt as if his existence mattered.

"Hm, what kind of crap am I thinking? I should go back to work." Ves decided, and led Lucky back to the workshop.

In the meantime, he made a call to Melinda.

"Hi cousin."

"Hey Ves, I was about to mail you back this weekend."

"So do you have any results you can share with me?"

Melinda sent a few documents over the interplanetary comm. "The Caesar Augustus is a rare beast, so the Mech Corps never officially purchased any of its models. However, it did come into contact with a few models piloted by pirates fleeing the authorities of the bigger empires. They even captured one intact, more or less."

"I’m looking forward of what you can do. Be sure to give me a call and show off your work when you finish a design!" _{freёwebnovel.com}