The Mech Touch novel Chapter 666

The grudge match between the so-called mech champions of the Castle Breakers and the Omen of Misfortune consumed the entire Independent Harbor. Practically every pirate, treasure hunter, trader, mercenary and so on had a high inclination of being fans of mechs, and nothing excited them more than witnessing a duel to the death.

It was as if the same thing on Harkensen III happened all over again!

Ves ignored the duelling fever growing hotter around him as he pressed his escorts to push aside the bystanders a little further. The poor interior planning of the space station caused the streets to become more crowded than normal. There were too few routes to the mech arena!

The Vandal security officers had to move exceptionally delicately if they wanted to avoid injuring or crushing any of the clueless visitors pushing against their exoskeleton suits. One wrong move could easily rip a man’s arm off his sockets or cave in an entire skull!

"How far is it to the bank?" _{freeweɓnovel.cøm}

"Just five-hundred meters more!"

"Damnit, it will take half an hour to reach it at this rate!"

Meanwhile, Ves turned his mind back to contemplating his recent insights. His latest one happened to sound crazy, but it happened to fit with his observations.

To be a good designer, one had to be crazy!

Every good mech designer he met possessed a lot of depth. Some kept it better hidden than others, but Ves made a bold guess that not a single mech designer above the Journeyman rank could escape this fate!

Not even the Star Designers idolized by trillions of mech designers throughout the galaxy!

When Ves recalled the biographies describing the extremely eccentric behaviors of the Armorer or the Polymath, it all made sense to him. Obsession and faith had propelled these extreme mech designers into reaching a height few humans had ever reached!

If this inescapable rule applied to everyone, did it apply to him as well? How would his fatal flaw look like?

Ves didn’t have to wring his mind to obtain his answer. He quickly came to the most probable conclusion. "If there’s any negative trait that has defined my career so far, it has to be my penchant for risk-taking!"

Several times now he faced important choices where a rational outlook of the situation should have pushed him to take a safe or normal option.

Instead, Ves acted like an addicted gambler at a shuttle race, and spontaneously put his entire fortune on one of ten racers. With the odds of winning only amounting to just ten percent, it simply didn’t make sense for him to place a bet at all!

Somehow, the risks and danger involved enticed him a lot. It threw him into Groening IV, it compelled him to take part in the Glowing Planet campaign, and it was responsible for a lot of unnecessary risk-taking during his time with the Vandals.

Ves craved excitement!

And he couldn’t even blame the System on that. Perhaps it had always laid dormant in his mind, but the moment he gained a stroke of sudden luck and obtained his father’s gift that allowed him to change his fate, he had been pursuing these moments of serendipity with a feverish breath.

He was being too greedy! He wanted more, and he had a disturbing tendency to disregard all kinds of warning signs in the pursuit of greater profit!

Perhaps in his warped mind, the warning signs had the opposite of cautioning Ves away from a reckless choice.

They instead acted as enticements luring him closer into the abyss!

"Out of every possible negative trait that could have been magnified, the design gods have forced me to embrace the lust for excitement from my Larkinson bloodline!"

Of course, it was pretty dubious to blame his affliction to the metaphorical existence of the Larkinson bloodline. Even within the Larkinson family, many believed their tendency to volunteer for service or seek out other opportunities to prove their courage came from the constant stories their aunts and uncles constantly repeated to the young ones.

Nurture, rather than nature was to blame for their adventurous spirits.

Still, regardless of its origin, the craving of excitement hidden deep within Ves had taken a life of its own. As Ves continued to develop his mind through his experiences and Attribute upgrades, his thoughts grew stronger but also more extreme. While his optimized his mind to design mechs with greater proficiency, the side effects also amplified everything else.

This was the root of the issue. To become a better mech designer, his mind needed to be transformed, and this process was anything but surgical and precise.

Now that he formulated this theory, everything related to mech design became increasingly more sense. The explanation not only explained the eccentric behavior of well-known mech designers, it also offered a recipe to develop a mech designer’s mind.

Ves automatically threw a glance at Ketis, who was helping the group push through the crowd. If there was anyone who could test out his theory, it was Ketis, a newly advanced Novice with practically no track record to speak of. She was as blank of a paper as Ves could obtain. Though her personality already exhibited some strong traits, Ves gained the ambition to mold her according to his desired shape!

Instead of designing mechs, Ves graduated to designing mech designers!

The stupendously absurd prompted him to burst out in laughter. "Bwhahahahaha! What genius! This is brilliant! Hahahaha!"

He abruptly stopped laughing when he realized what a fool he was making himself out to be. It didn’t help out he looked like a decked-out pirate VIP, either. Nolsen, Ketis and the other Vandal guards looked at him with aghast expressions. How could their normal and friendly-looking mech designer suddenly display an outburst of madness?