The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1623

Chapter 1623 Beyonder Ticke

By the time Councilor Dorothea Veyron finished her second announcement, almost every human in the galaxy was left shocked, stunned or excited!

Most members of the MTA and CFA reacted just as surprised! The Big Two always kept this secret tight until the right moment to unveil it had arrived!

From one end to the other end of human space, everyone became interested in this wondrous substance called phasewater and the dwarf galaxy that supposedly offered it in abundance!

Conversation about these topics broke out everywhere! Even mech designers temporarily forgot about all of the innovations introduced in the latest generation aside from the minidrive!

Many of them always dreamt of designing an FTL-capable mech! If humanity was locked in the Milky Way Galaxy, then most of them would never be able to fulfill this dream.

Yet it was different if they managed to achieve passage to the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy!

In the early stages of humanity's conquest of Red Ocean, phasewater was probably ripe for the picking! As long as prospectors reached a star system unclaimed by existing powers, they could quickly harvest some phasewater before a colonization fleet or larger force arrived to claim it as their own!

This provided many opportunities for average mech designers to gain the privilege of building and selling FTL-capable mechs!

Designing and profiting from such fantastic machines not only provided endless riches, but also invigorated the progression of any mech designer!

No matter what, a mech with FTL capabilities would always be vastly more powerful and sophisticated than a mech that was dependent on a mothership to move around!

The design seeds of Ves and Gloriana seethed with excitement as they envisioned designing and building such fantastic mechs!

"We should take a look at the MTA's portal to see what it takes to obtain passage through the beyonder gate!"

A seemingly endless amount of humans simultaneously accessed the galactic net and visited the portals of the CFA and MTA!

If the Comm Consortium hadn't made some rapid adjustments to spread the load, the galactic net would have been crushed by the sheer amount of humans flooding its network!

As Ves visited a series of pages set up specifically to handle inquiries about the latest announcement, his eyes immediately ballooned when he viewed the price.

"At full price, a group needed to pay 1 trillion mech credits to secure passage for a single ship!"

The price was the same for any vessel up to a capital ship, so it didn't matter if someone wanted to travel to the Red Ocean in a tiny corvette or a massive ark ship!

Obviously, Ves figured that the Big Two did not wish to waste their energy in conveying smaller ships. The bigger, the better!

This humongous price made both Ves and Gloriana sick!

This was a ridiculous amount of money! Ves recalled that the typical monthly salary for a CFA captain amounted to just 100 mech credits a month!

Who could pay such an enormous amount of money? Only the wealthiest individuals and organizations of the first-rate states could afford to pay this money upfront!

As for anyone else, forget about it! Even Ves believed he wouldn't be able to accumulate so much money in a hundred years!

By the time he scrounged up so many mech credits, the conquest of the Red Ocean would have been well underway by then! He would have missed all of the easy opportunities to harvest phasewater and design lots of FTL-capable mechs!

While Ves still remained in shock, Gloriana recovered first and read further.

"The full price for a so-called 'individual beyonder ticket' is only directed to the top organizations of human space! We don't have to consider this option! There are other options available!"

He read further and saw that a different beyonder ticket could also be obtained by redeeming MTA merits or exchanging it for something exceptional!

"It costs 1 trillion MTA merits to obtain a fleet beyonder ticket." Ves relaxed a bit. "However, this ticket is valid for an entire fleet of up to 20 ships!"

Was 1 trillion MTA merits a lot? Certainly!

However, it was a lot more generous than paying with mech credits. The ticket encompassed multiple ships, which was clearly a better deal!

The only issue was that MTA merits could not be exchanged with money! It could only be earned by completing their missions, earning their favor, making contributions or submitting valuable mech-related methods or techniques!

The MTA obviously encouraged mech designers to cough up their deepest and most valuable trade secrets!

As long mech designers submitted innovative new theories, methods and techniques, they could earn a decent amount of merits.

Still, 1 trillion merits was still far out of reach to most individual mech designers! Not even a Master would be able to accumulate so many contributions!

Fortunately, the MTA made several accommodations to make the exchange more bearable.

"Multiple people can pool their merits together." Gloriana pointed out. "Although the limit is set at ten people at a time, at the very least we don't have to bear the burden by ourselves!"

This accommodation basically encouraged cooperation between multiple powerful people, thereby forcing them to share power or make other arrangements.

"The MTA also offers cheaper fleet beyonder tickets!"

A second-class fleet beyonder ticket cost only 100 million merits, while a third-class fleet beyonder ticket corresponded to a measly 10 million merits!

The downside of these lower ticket grades was that the fleet and all of its crew and passengers had to fit the same class or lower.

For example, if Ves and Gloriana wanted to reach the Red Ocean, they had to redeem enough merits to obtain a second-class fleet beyonder ticket. This was because of the presence of ships and citizens originating from a second-rates state.