The Mech Touch

When Ves notified Maikel and Zanthar Larkinsons that he wanted to have a discussion with them, the two Apprentice Mech Designers understood quite well that their reckoning had come.

This was the moment where the two younger Larkinsons had to account for their decisions and the progress that they had made since the start of the Age of Dawn.

Many people had welcomed the Hyper Generation and managed to take off like a rocket after they successfully took advantage of the new opportunities.

Ves was the definite example of this kind of a success story. It took remarkably little time for him to develop many useful inventions, most of which did not seem to have any direct relations with mech design!

It was only after he released his historic Yellow Jacket models that he cemented himself as the most successful mech designer of the younger generations.

No one dared to accuse him that he had gone astray in his mech design career anymore!

It was not easy for other mech designers to grow up in the shadow of such a giant of the industry.

How could other Larkinsons possibly harbor any pride and conceit towards their own works when they paled in comparison to the celebrated works of their patriarch?

In that sense, Ves had a negative impact on the workforce of the Design Department. Mech designers were humans as well. They possessed the capacity to feel envy, jealousy and inadequate.

A lot of mech designers working for the Design Department must be suffering from a case of inferiority complex. Continuing to work for a highly successful mech designer who had not yet managed to realize his own design philosophy must have exerted a lot of pressure on all of his juniors.

Ves was only just beginning to comprehend the severity of what it was like to work under him. Maikel and Zanthar suffered the worst from this problem as they had received his personal tutelage. It was absolutely unacceptable for them to end up as ordinary mech designers after receiving so many privileges!

Whether Ves had inadvertently 'ruined' the two trueblood Larkinsons that he once hoped could inherit his burdens and prop up the Larkinson Clan would soon become clear.

Zanthar did not take much time to compose his words. He began with an apology.

"Before I explain the current direction of my research, I want to say sorry to you for failing to meet your expectations. You must have looked forward to having me take over your knowledge related to luminar crystal technology and carry forth your research. The alien tech fascinated me for a time, but the more I studied it, the less I cared about it. Energy weapons don't excite me as much as big explosive cannons. I never became satisfied with the mechs that I have designed that made use of luminar crystal weapons."

That was a regretful outcome. Ves felt a little disappointed that Zanthar failed to embrace luminar crystal technology, as it had lots of promise.

The sting was not as painful as it should have been.

"It's okay." Ves said. "Another mech designer has taken over the mantle of furthering the development of luminar crystal technology. We are far past the point where I have to rely on an Apprentice like you to develop the future iterations of luminar crystal weapons."

"I am glad that you managed to bring Harry Haikkonen into the Design Department." Zanthar said with a smile. "He talked to me multiple times in order to collect my own opinions and insights on luminar crystal technology. The more we exchanged with each other, the more I became impressed by his love and diligence towards this alien tech. I already concluded by the end of our first talk that he could take luminar crystal technology much further than I can ever manage."

"Okay, Zanthar. Since you have decided to abandon luminar crystal technology, what have you been doing instead?"

The younger mech designer assumed a more eager posture as he was ready to share his true passion.

"As I have mentioned a moment ago, I adore big guns. I want to arm all of my mechs with large and heavy cannons so that they can blow apart enemy mechs, warships or whatever else they are assigned to destroy. I think that I will mainly design heavy artillery mechs in the future, but I am also willing to design other mech types if there is enough demand. I don't necessarily love the cannons themselves, but the explosive munitions that they can launch towards their targets. I like anything that explodes. It doesn't matter if they come in the form of artillery shells, missiles, rockets, torpedoes or mines. My design philosophy is all about making them stronger and deadlier. That is what I have been spending much of my free time on. I have dedicated years to developing an original new technological paradigm of explosive munitions that requires a completely different form of defense to withstand."

Ves immediately grew intrigued. The focus on munitions sounded familiar. He had recently completed his collaboration with Lord Richard Brownstone, who reveled in developing exotic new rounds for his kinetic weapons.

So far, the biggest difference between the two was that the Rubarthan Senior Mech Designer preferred to work with solid projectiles, while Zanthar had taken a liking for explosive projectiles.

That was not enough to make the latter special. It was easy for mech designers to develop new explosive shell types. What mattered was that their solution offered superior performance at affordable prices. Not many professionals were able to meet this standard.

"Oh? I can hear the passion in your voice. You also sound confident in your current research direction. What is it exactly that you have been working on as of late?"

Zanthar Larkinson used his comm to call up footage of a test run of his munitions.

He had taken a generic heavy artillery mech and replaced the standard munitions of the artillery cannons with his own custom-developed ordnance.

The test involved a heavy artillery mech firing the new explosive shells at a target dummy protected by a fixed azure energy shield.

Under normal circumstances, a heavy artillery mech had to fire dozens of explosive shells to exhaust an azure energy shield of this strength level.

Boom!

When the generic artillery mech fired the first shell, the projectile slammed against the surface of the energy shield and exploded, just as predicted.

There was nothing special about the blast. It was moderately powerful but that was all. The azure energy shield rippled slightly and in a pattern that suggested that the explosive shell was laced with hyper materials.

So far, Ves had not seen anything that distinguished this shell from the ones that any mech force could buy off the shelf.

What was special about Zanthar's work?

It was then that he noticed a subtle detail.

His gaze only strayed briefly towards the target dummy, not expecting to find anything amiss, which was why he became surprised that he noticed a change.

"Did you manage to spot it, teacher?" Zanthar grinned.

"The damage unleashed by that detonation… partially bled through the azure energy shield and affected the target dummy! Even if only a fraction of the power of the explosion has ultimately managed to dent the exterior of the dummy, this is already a major accomplishment!"

It was not unheard of for weapons and munitions to be able to partially or completely bypass energy shields.

It was a lot more difficult to accomplish with the most powerful transphasic hyper energy shields, but as long as the circumstances were right, there were still ways to penetrate or bypass this layer of projection!

The most familiar instance to Ves was Saint Tusa and the Dark Zephyr's ability to employ the Leap of True Freedom to bypass every obstacle on a conceptual level and reach their destination on the other side of a powerful energy shield in an instant!

Whether Tusa managed to pull it off by phasing through a completely different dimension or a more direct form of teleportation, he was one of the few mech pilots that could completely ignore any barrier.

The Phobos piloted by Venerable Zimro Belson also possessed a similar if lesser capacity to bypass active transphasic energy shields. Some of the fiends spawned from the GEIST System were able to pass through these barriers and quietly infiltrate the interior of enemy starships and find a way to open up a gap in the defenses to let in other destructive fiends.

Then there was Lucky whose phasing ability had continually improved ever since he gained this power. As far as Ves was aware of, the gem cat was able to pass through weak to moderate strength energy shields with difficulty.

Given that he already witnessed instances where stuff got through energy shields in the past, Ves shouldn't be particularly surprised that Zanthar had also managed to find a way.
Stay tuned with m-v l|e'm,p y r

There was a huge difference, though.

As the footage of the test continued, the heavy artillery mech slowly fired its heavy artillery cannons one by one.

Every explosive shell launched by this machine struck the dome-shaped energy shield at slightly different angles.

Much of the explosions ended up getting blocked by the energy shield, but there was always a small proportion of destructive energies that somehow managed to pass through the protective layer and impact the target dummy!

After firing over a dozen explosive shells, the dummy still managed to retain its original shape, but it clearly looked as if it got beat up by a mob.

Ves grew impressed. No matter how Zanthar managed to attain this result, the use of multiple shells that otherwise did not appear to be remarkable indicated that the cost of his new innovation was not too high!

This was incredibly significant as the previous examples were all special cases that demanded a huge amount of investment in order to produce those results!

As for the heavy artillery mech in the footage, all Zanthar needed to do was to load in experimental shells that were probably economical enough to mass produce!

The biggest issue was that the explosive munitions were clearly half-baked at this stage.

The bleedthrough rate was not high enough to grant the attacker any advantages, but this was just the start.

The difficulty in this line of research was the first step!

As long as Zanthar managed to figure out a way to pass at least a tiny amount of damage through an energy shield, he had successfully created an opening which he could expand in his follow-up research!

He just needed to figure out how exactly he managed to bypass the energy shield and how to multiply the yield until he created a form of munitions that could inflict effective damage onto targets protected by barriers!

"How did you manage to produce this result?" Ves eventually asked.

"E energy." Zanthar straightforwardly answered. "I took inspiration from the Destroyer of Worlds and how she is able to make her main cannon attacks so amazingly powerful. I don't dare to hope to reproduce what she is able to do with her god-like power, but what I wanted to create for the mech community is a more affordable and widely available means of enhancing the power of explosive munitions that anyone can use. The answer I came up with is to imbue the explosive ordnance with their spiritual equivalent. Think of it as implanting E-bombs into physical bombs. If everything goes right, I will eventually be able to develop a Class II Design Philosophy that will probably be called E energy Explosive Munitions or EEE Munitions in short."

"That… might actually work."

Ves never imagined that E-technology could be used to produce such an interesting concept!

"It took a lot of time and experimentation for me to get this far." Zanthar said in order to explain why he remained stuck as an Apprentice for so many years. "I studied much of the internal notes, articles and textbooks that you have written on living mechs in order to develop the right E-munitions. That was not enough for me to achieve a breakthrough in my research, so I also approached the researchers over at the T Institute for advice and additional study material. That helped a lot, but what truly allowed me to get so far is the use of my companion spirit."

In order to prove how much he had dedicated himself to this line of research, Zanthar proudly unveiled his companion spirit.

"Mawah! Mawah!"

A green cat made out of swirling and volatile energies emerged from Zanthar's forehead!

"Meet Alfred. I took inspiration from the Destroyer of Worlds and focused on growing a cat that could enhance the power of any explosive device. So far, he is able to do a decent job at that. In fact, the main reason why I have been able to achieve limited success in my research so far is because I have attempted to reverse engineer the explosive imbuement ability that Alfred has naturally developed according to my own desires."

Ves had a sense of deja vu when he gazed upon Alfred.

The green cat reminded him a lot of a much more powerful orange cat!

Ves found it rather shameless that Zanthar attempted to solve his problem by copying the companion spirit of the Destroyer of Worlds.

It was also incredibly cheap for Zanthar to produce his research results by trying to reverse engineer the ability of his own companion spirit!

However, no one could fault him for figuring out a much more convenient way to realize his ambitions.

"This is… brilliant." Ves honestly expressed. "I applaud your ingenuity. You have managed to produce a result that hardly any other mech designer can imitate by relying on the resources and advantages at your disposal. You have not wasted them at all. I have much greater confidence that you will be able to break through as a Journeyman as long as you have managed to raise the bleedthrough rate above single digits!"