The Mech Touch novel Chapter 337

Ves hardly blinked when he allocated 180 million credits to Melkor. He used to be like his cousin.

Now, he easily spent millions of credits like he was drinking water. As his career progressed and his company grew, he set his sights beyond the Bright Republic.

Once his personal fortune and company funds both surpassed a billion credits, Ves stopped equivocating about his bank balances. He could obtain practically anything for sale in the Bright Republic. _{fгeewёbnoѵel.cσm}

This was also why he thoughtlessly delegated the matter of procuring new production equipment and mechs to his subordinates.

"Purchases of this level hardly excites me anymore. Even the selection of a new 3D printer worth several billion credits is a chore in my eyes."

Ves used to agonize over spending tens of thousands of credits, but in less than two years he grew to a height immeasurable to his previous self.

"This is progress. This is growth."

His wealth extended not only to his credit balance, but also to his other so-called currencies. Due to the strong momentum behind the Blackbeak, his Design Points broke through 200.000!

"I can’t forget about my merits from the Clifford Society either."

He currently possessed around 300 merits, which was a handsome sum for a Knight of the Society. For now, he hung on to those merits until he needed to purchase something exclusive from the Coalition, such as a high-tech license or a supremely advanced production machine.

"I’m sitting on a lot of credits, DP and merits."

For now, Ves did not feel any sense of urgency to spend all of this wealth. Three major priorities occupied his mind right now.

"First, I have to come up with a rifleman mech design within three months."

"Second, I need to get the Avatars of Myth up and running."

"Third, I have to ingest my Transcendence Pill as soon as possible, preferably before the Mech Corps comes calling."

That last point proved to be the thorniest. According to the item’s description, the pill could knock out Ves for up to 88 days. This was far too long!

"I can easily design another original mech in that time!"

Ves did not doubt the pill’s abilities. Going under for three months or less in exchange for breaking the limits that humans back was a no brainer to everyone else.

"The problem with me is that I’m too indispensable."

After a long absence, the LMC required a steady presence. Ves intended to be present in his company as he worked to design a rifleman mech. Disappearing for several weeks or months again would destabilize the company again and erode everyone’s loyalties.

Ves summed it up in a single sentence. "An absent boss is not worth putting forth your passion in your work."

Besides, Ves couldn’t afford to go under unless Lucky finished his level-up process. His gem cat still hadn’t roused himself from his egg. Occasionally, the bony egg emitted strange signals.

The first couple of times it happened, SASS thought that someone tried to spy on the old workshop. Once they traced it back to Lucky’s Egg, Ves had been forced to move the egg to a makeshift vault. The signals his cat kept emitting constantly tripped the alarms.

"I really miss you, Lucky."

He hoped his cat finished his evolution soon. Until then, Ves did not dare have any designs on his pill.

Ves got back to work. Once he finished his paperwork for the day, he turned his thoughts to designing a rifleman mech.

"I can recycle most of the components used in the Blackbeak design, but I’ll definitely have to supplement my licenses."

At the very least, he had to obtain licences for a laser rifle, a ranged targeting system and a collection of minor auxiliary components designed to boost the accuracy of a mech.

Ves considered spending merits to obtain premium versions of these licences, but he reconsidered after some time.

"The difference between laser rifles isn’t so big."

Laser rifles formed the single most abundant category of mech arms. Practically every mech squad featured at least a single mech with a laser weapon. This ubiquity led to a lot of progress in the field of laser weaponry. Humanity had pretty much exhausted all of their latent potential. Making any further progress was excruciatingly hard.

The market only got to taste a big jump in performance once they reached the next generation of mechs. The top designers and weapon manufacturers in the galaxy had managed to overhaul the conventional design of laser weapons and increased their power by twenty percent across the board.

This was significant progress!

The comprehensiveness of the new design meant that not only first-class mechs wielding laser rifles worth as much as an entire planet got to benefit from the power boost. Much of the innovations being released at the next generation could also be applied to the lowliest mech-sized laser rifles.

Unfortunately, the Mech Corps kept the advancements to themselves and a handful of powerful developers for now. Ves had no way of getting his hands on a nextgen weapon design.

He would have to make do with currentgen offerings.

"An expensive laser rifle will drive up costs. If it’s too advanced, then nobody on the field will be able to service such a weapon."

Ves had already familiarized himself with the mainstream second-class laser rifles developed by the Coalition for their own use. All of them took advantage of the properties of exotics abundant in Coalition space but scarce everywhere else.

In order to fabricate a second-class laser rifle, Ves had to get his hands on a reliable supply channel for these exotics.

Even though third-class laser rifles couldn’t hold a candle to the power of second-class weapons, Ves still decided to go for a more basic weapon for this reason.

He spent a couple of hours browsing the MTA’s catalog for interesting component licenses. He bookmarked a couple of laser rifles and other components for later.