The Mech Touch novel Chapter 449

While Iris devoured every detail about the Inheritor design she was allowed to access, Ves practically sat motionless as he struggled to come up with an approach that worked.

Before the Mech Corps assigned him to the Vandals, Ves never truly collaborated with another mech designer on a joint design. Sure, he modified plenty of existing mechs and he briefly worked together with another mech designer during a competition, but those didn’t concern true mechs.

The Inheritor design spawned hundreds of mechs and formed the backbone of the Vandal spaceborn mech contingent. Due to the constant minor updates to its design, a lot of variations existed within the mech regiment, but all of them roughly shared the same commonalities.

This also happened to include their spiritual stunting. They never had the chance to develop even a hint of life from the onset their design came into being. To someone like Ves who exhibited a basic appreciation for almost every mech, this attitude of treating them as disposable commodities irked him in a very fundamental way.

That mentality clashed squarely against his budding design philosophy.

What he faced right now was perhaps one of his greatest test in his career. Even if no one would put him to task for failing to come up with a solution, he would still feel bad for himself for letting the Inheritor mechs be deployed into battle in their grossly inadequate states.

To find a viable approach to this seemingly impossible task, Ves needed to go back to the root of his theory on the X-Factor.

What did he wish to accomplish?

"I want the Flagrant Vandals to succeed with as few losses as possible."

"I want the Inheritor design to receive more appreciation to increase the odds of success."

"I want the Inheritor to be a mech that possesses just enough life to be of assistance to its mech pilot."

What means did he possess to engender the X-Factor into a design or mech?

"I can work on a mech in person and infect it with my focused mentality."

Ves already proved this method worked. The spiritual entity of a mech was a smorgasbord of all the emotions and thoughts of the people who worked on the mech and its design. This was why his gold label mechs possessed such a strong X-Factor and why the mechs the MTA materialized into being appeared clinically dead.

As much as Ves knew for certain that this method worked, the amount of labor involved was exorbitant. There was a reason why the LMC sold less than a hundred of his coveted gold label mechs despite their enviable profit margins.

It required too much personal attention from him, and he had better things to do with his time. Forcing a mech designer to fabricate a mech in person was like forcing an architect to construct a house by hand.

"This is the dumbest solution available to me. It works, but it’s not practical."

To truly affect every Inheritor at once, Ves needed to affect a change in its design, and subsequently allow it to be passed on to the mech technicians who applied his changes into the existing mechs.

Ves had never done anything like this before. The challenge daunted him because we was treading completely new ground, and unlike before, he did not have access to his precious Mech Designer System to cheat his way out.

Still, System or not, Ves had never relied on its help to progress his understanding of spirituality and the X-Factor. Everything he gained so far had been products of his own enginuity. Mostly.

He turned back to his original goal, to find a way to induce a comprehensive improvement of the X-Factor in each copy of the Inheritor. To do so, the design itself needed to acquire measurable amount of X-Factor.

"According to my theories, all it takes is my personal involvement."

Ves possessed a substantial amount of Spirituality, far beyond a regular human being. This enabled him to imprint his thoughts onto an existing mech with some effort. The same should apply to working on an existing design.

To sum it up, it did not matter what kind of changes he made to his design. As long as he did it extensively enough to leave his fingerprints on the design, its X-Factor should definitely be contaminated by his thoughts. Perhaps enough to foster some kind of life in this deadbeat design.

All of this sounded as if he came up with a solution to his problem, but in fact Ves was no better off than before. "I can’t think up a way to improve this design."

Therein lay the rub. With several Apprentices and a Journeyman working day after day on this design, its level of optimization had reached an insane level. Even if they focused on cutting costs rather than increasing its performance, so much time had passed and so much work had been done that a newcomer like Ves wouldn’t be able to spot any holes in its design.

Ves turned to Iris, who tucked her coiffed blond hair behind her ear. Perhaps she noticed his stare, because she turned her head and looked at him with a questioning expression. "What is it, Ves?"

"Ah, I’m still brainstorming some ideas. I’ve thought of several ways to improve this design, but they can’t be applied because Professor Velten won’t allow it to exceed the hard limits imposed on it. I can’t get around these limitations."

Not normally at least, but with the help of Iris he may be able to accomplish something. "I’d like to work together with you for something."

"Uh, what?"

"When you come up with some modifications, bundle some of mine in them as well. I’ll try and come up with some ways to compliment your work so that they’ll mesh well together. Then, let’s serve our work in front of Professor Velten and see whether she’s still willing to reject our combined solution."