It was impossible not to hear everyone’s opinions.
Someone laughed. Someone gasped. One even whispered, "We can finally fight him now!"
Luca, however, was too focused on the fact that he’d get another mecha today to care about what they were all saying.
He was excited.
He’d seen the research and the data, but he’d never really piloted such a mecha before, so to him, this would be a great experience!
Better yet, he was going to get a model commonly used by soldiers before they switched to manual mechas. So, he figured this was going to help him in their plan to upgrade the duchy’s fleet.
See, while he’d love to outfit everyone with biomechas, upon testing, it seemed like one must at least have an A-rank spiritual ability to run the basic biomecha properly.
And yet, even with this barrier to entry, which already slashed at the number, it would still be impossible to provide that many energy crystals to everyone, given the rate at which they were producing them.
Not to mention how much CP it would take to make that many biomechas!
With all that in mind, he went through multiple design iterations, and after trying to adapt the synapse reactor of an advanced biomecha into a basic one, he ended up with an estimated cost of 445,000 CP.
Each.
And that’s not counting the 800,000 CP advanced biomecha he was planning on making for his father, who was really the only other person who qualified for it.
The costs were staggering, and at one point, Luca considered entering the contaminated zone to gain more CP. However, that took a backseat due to their exams.
So, in the end, he came up with a feasible plan that would have woken the dead masters with how "feasible" he made it sound.
17 biomechas in three months, well, nine inside the space.
Last time, it took him more than 200 space hours to finish D-29, or roughly 9 days. But he’d learned from almost hurting himself and Xavier, so he’d decided to allow for about 2 weeks each.
More or less, and he was seriously hoping it would be less, because he had special projects that needed his attention, too.
But maybe he should think about all this later, as he’d need to see and test this mecha so he could contribute to the combination mecha upgrade design they’ve been working on.
The class began with both instructors standing at the front. Instructor Moore explained the baseline structure of combination mechas while Instructor Falco detailed how spiritual resonance worked with the system.
Luca took that moment to quietly pull up the specs of the mecha assigned to him.
He scanned everything—joint calibration, feedback response, spiritual absorption nodes. His attention lingered on the dominant-side limb balance. Not bad...but it could be better.
He made mental notes as the others started pairing up and entering their machines.
The drills started simple:
Movement.
Close-combat form.
Mid-range artillery.
Then flight.
And while most students found it familiar, Luca experienced the difference immediately.
This mecha didn’t respond like his biomecha, nor did it even resemble the mecha from the duchy. The movement wasn’t fluid—it felt delayed. Like a secondhand echo instead of a clean signal.
The joints weren’t wrong or haphazardly connected, but they weren’t tailored to him or for maximum efficiency.
And the spiritual pathways? Messy. Not optimized. It drained energy in chunks instead of flowing smoothly and consistently. Instead, this one seemed to be focusing on particular parts.
By the time the last drill finished, Luca hopped out of the cockpit and walked over to Instructor Moore.
"Sir, am I allowed to calibrate and make improvements?"
Moore blinked. "...You mean now?"
Luca nodded. "It won’t take long."
The instructor gave him a cautious yes, and the next thing they knew, Luca had popped open a compartment and pulled out his toolbox.
Heads turned.
What was he doing?
Luca crouched beside the mecha’s arm joint, propped open the panel, and muttered something about limb weight distribution.
He adjusted the tension in the mecha’s shoulders. Rebalanced the dominant arm with a slight weight correction.
He even tweaked the internal absorption grid to direct flow into the stabilization system, just so the pilot wouldn’t burn too much energy holding a basic stance.
Within minutes, he was done.
Nothing exploded.
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