The Mech Touch novel Chapter 395

Ever since Ves debuted the Blackbeak BP-A-01, no one showed any interest in licensing the design. The MTA valued its licensing cost at a whopping 3 billion credits. For the same amount of money, a mech manufacturer would be able to afford another mech production line.

Therefore, no company casually licensed someone else’s design.

"Who licensed my design?"

"A medium mech manufacturer called Arkadis Mech Design and Production. It’s founded by Gillian Arkadis, a twenty-year old veteran in the business."

"A woman?"

"Yeah, and she’s an Apprentice Mech Designer as well, just like you. Some of the analysts in the business are really perplexed at her decision. She’s a proven mech designer who graduated from the Ansel University of Mech Design, is more than capable of coming up with her own designs that are substantially more polished than your own work."

A graduate of the AUMD meant she was a true insider in the Bentheim mech industry. She wouldn’t lack for connections to obtain a favorable licensing agreement from her fellow mentors and alumni.

Ves had been in the business long enough to know that the mech designers connected to the AUMD considered themselves to be the most foremost mech designers of the Republic.

They often treated anyone who graduated from inferior institutions as second-class mech designers.

They also regarded mech designers who became fortunate enough to study at a more prestigious foreign institution with a lot of wariness and apprehension. Many mech designers who originally came from the Bright Republic had forsaken their old home in favor of trying to make it big in the prosperous Friday Coalition.

Ves happened to enjoy the rare distinction of falling into both of the fore-mentioned categories. Someone like him was something of a pariah in their circles.

So it came as a huge surprise that an AUMD graduate like Mrs. Arkadis decided to license his latest commercial design. _{freёwebnoѵel.com}

"Send me what you’ve gathered so far of Arkadis and her company."

Gavin transferred a bunch of files to Ves, who quickly skimmed them over. He did not find anything unusual, but neither did he see any compelling reason why Arkadis would want to work with his Blackbeak.

"All of her products so far are light mechs." Ves noted with emphasis. "She designs a large variety of landbound and aerial light mechs, but none of them have anything to do with the Blackbeak, which falls into the medium weight class. Has her company shown any indications of gearing its production lines into producing the base model?"

"As far as we know, Arkadis Mechs is still in the process of delivering a major order to a large client. Even if they wanted to begin production immediately, they still have to work on their current backlog."

"So we won’t know what she’s doing with my design until at least a couple of months have passed."

All in all, both Ves and Gavin could only scratch their heads. Ves figured that Mrs. Arkadis might have noticed the charm inherent in the Blackbeak design and wanted to figure out its secrets by working with the license.

"Do you think she’s trying to reverse engineer your secret sauce?"

All Ves could respond to that was wish her luck. Without any insight into the X-Factor, she had no chance of replicating his work.

"If it’s so easy to copy my work, Elemental Mech Engineering would have already released a Striker variant of the Blackbeak."

Ves did not forget about EME, which entered into a special licensing agreement with the LMC to produce the bronze label Blackbeaks. Ves always had the sense that Andar Neverland, the founder and chief designer of EME, wanted to do the same.

So far, the EME hasn’t released anything of the sort even after many months of producing the bronze label mechs. This indicated that Mr. Neverland achieved nothing that was good enough to go public.

"Keep an eye on Mrs. Arkadis and her company. It might be that she only licensed my design on behalf of someone else. Try to find out if anyone else is connected with this event."

"Will do, boss!"

Ves hung up after that and leaned back on his chair. No matter what, the fact that someone licensed his design under normal conditions meant that his prestige enhanced once again.

Many mech designers constantly pumped out new designs every couple of months in the hopes that others picked them up. Entire design studios lived off this kind of business model.

The better the designs, the more they earned. The beauty about running a mech design studio was that it cost almost nothing to design a mech. Sure, the studios had to invest in a lot of infrastructure, but the cost of setting a design studio paled in comparison to setting up a mech production plant.

"That 3 billion credits will come in handy."

Currently, Ves published the Blackbeak under his own name, so all off that money went into his personal accounts. Added on with the money that he already earned from other sources, Ves actually owned a lot more cash than his own company.

Ves had plans for his money, but that could wait until he finished his current project. He hadn’t forgotten his main vocation. "I shouldn’t get too distracted by all the money flying around. It’s great that someone licensed one of my designs, but I can earn a lot more if I sell the mechs myself."

He dove back into his work on optimizing his design. He had become very proficient at this work, so he constantly improved on his design with each subsequent iteration.

At a certain point, every improvement only increased the performance of his rifleman mech by a fraction of a percentage point. The extra work put into further optimization wasn’t worth his time anymore, although many other mech designers disagreed.

"I can only continue to perfect my design if I have a lot more manpower and processing capacity at my disposal."