The Mech Touch

Searching Patricia's quarters turned out to be a fruitless venture.

She brought nothing useful to Ves. What personal effects she left behind largely consisted of clothes and cosmetics.

Of course, she didn't need to bring anything else. She was just supposed to be serving alongside a monitor on behalf of the Coalition Reserve Corps.

This was a fairly boring duty that demanded little of her. Aside from providing Aisling with her insights on the Bright Republic, Patricia did not need to do anything else.

The only meaningful gain he secured was getting a better insight on Patricia.

For some reason, Ves believed that there was a good chance that he would encounter her again in the future.

Though they both came from the same state, they somehow ended up on opposite sides.

While she was just an Apprentice for the time being, the confidence she exuded when she stated that she was steadily working towards Journeyman impressed him a lot!

"She'll definitely be worth watching once she advances to Journeyman!"

He left her abandoned quarters in disappointment. Getting an impression of her personality was not worth wasting two hours of his limited time.

"Hopefully, Aisling left something better behind!"

He followed the same routine on Lady Aisling's quarters.

Unlike the rooms assigned to Ves and Patricia, Aisling clearly enjoyed better digs!

Her stateroom was twice as large as his own, and much of the space was taken up by larger furniture and wasteful decorations.

Unlike Patricia, Aisling clearly brought more stuff!

Her wardrobe alone contained four times as much clothes! She even brought along more shoes!

Of course, just because her quarters were filled with her personal effects didn't mean that Ves could make use of them. In truth, many of her possessions consisted of trinkets such as miniatures of her previous mech designs.

While there was some value to studying her handmade miniatures, there was little value in doing so during his current predicament.

He could study her work later when he had the luxury to return to mech design!

Unfortunately, as Ves searched her quarters further, he only found more objects that either satisfied her vanity or were related to her profession.

It took half an hour before he encountered his first useful find.

"What's this, Lucky?"

"Meow!"

While Ves had been going through Aisling's effects, Lucky had been phasing through the deck and bulkheads in an attempt to uncover hidden pockets.

Ves half expected to find nothing. There was no reason for Aisling to bring anything too sensitive or valuable for her assignment. Just like Patricia, she shouldn't be bringing anything superfluous to her duties.

Instead, Lucky managed to dig out a strange vial containing some sort of glowing blue fluid.

Ves had no clue what he was holding. Yet he intuitively sensed that it was very valuable.

"Is there something else in the stash where you found this vial?"

"Meow."

"Nothing at all? Not even a data chip or something?"

"Meow!"

Without any documents or other objects, Ves did not know the value of this vial.

He could make some guesses, though. The contents of the vial reminded him a lot of a gene boost elixir.

The ones he was familiar with acted as primers that increased a person's tolerance towards genetic modification.

Ves obtained an entry-level boost from Master Olson. He gained a follow-up boost after undergoing an operation at the Starlight Megalodon.

The value between these boosts differed substantially.

While an entry-level boost was already valuable, a second phase priming agent could be worth as much as the Scarlet Rose!

Though his vision grew hot for a moment, his rationality quickly reasserted itself.

How could Aisling be so careless as to bring along a second phase priming agent to this mission?

She should never be carrying something so valuable without more protection!

"Unless.. It's not for her. Perhaps it might have been prepared for an upcoming trade!"

Ves recalled that Aisling ended her monitoring assignment early. In exchange, the CRC passed some other assignments to her in order to make up for her premature return.

"Is this a part of her makeup assignments?"

He couldn't really tell. There was something special about the vial that prompted Aisling to store it away in a hidden stash in her quarters.

Whether it was a gene boost elixir or some other valuable substance, Ves couldn't immediately make use of it, let alone identify it right away.

"Maybe her terminal contains some information."

He left aside the unmarked vial and sat down behind her desk. With Lucky's assistance, he managed to gain entry into her files.

"Well, well, well, it's not as empty as I thought!"

Unlike Patricia who maintained a very light footprint, Aisling clearly didn't possess the same concerns. She dumped all sorts of files and documents in the storage space of her personal terminal.

While her files were locked behind numerous passwords and encryptions, Lucky easily solved them all, revealing all of their contents to Ves without any further hindrance!

He combed over Aisling's haphazard file structure. Many of the files were related to her former and current design projects.

He not only encountered Aisling's design schematics, but also her notes, logs and explanations!

The former only provided him with some reference value. The former combined with the latter allowed him to imitate her mech design!

While Ves didn't feel any desire to engage in such a shameless action, he could still gain a deeper insight into her specialty!

"Wait a second.. these design schematics are very familiar!"

Four of the folders contained the full design documentation of the mechs stored in the mech hangar!

Each of those dormant mechs were actually her own work! She designed and built all four mechs to serve as her honor guard of some sorts.

If Ves hadn't sabotaged their neural interfaces, then he would have definitely failed in his hijacking attempt!

As it was, without any mech pilots, the mechs basically turned into metal statues. There was no way that Ves could take advantage of their strength.

Nonetheless, that did not mean that Ves discounted them entirely. At the very least, if he didn't have anything else to do, he might as well study Aisling's work in order to deepen his understanding of second-class mechs!

If he combined personal inspections of the mechs with studying Aisling's design files, Ves would definitely be able to grasp the essence of their designs!

This was considerably valuable to Ves as he didn't really have many opportunities to inspect a second-class mech up close!

Out of curiosity, Ves delved into the documentation related to her specialty. He immediately encountered pages of pages filled with calculations, projections and incomprehensive jargon.

Ves only possessed a shallow understanding of neural interface technology! His scattered learning on this subject only encompassed the tip of the iceberg!

If Ves wanted to gain a technical understanding of neural interconnectivity, then Ves had to develop an actual foundation in this field!

"Did she leave any useful learning material behind?" He wondered.

He immediately stopped exploring her design files and turned his attention to her other folders.

Ves encountered various irrelevant documents related to Clarion University and Master Huron. They encompassed subjects such as offering to tutor some important students and becoming a consultant to the Sundered Phalanx.

According to the correspondence logs, Aisling refused the offer to join a clandestine mech design team related to the Gauge Dynasty's mech military.

Ordinary individuals would never be given the opportunity to say no, but Aisling was different!

As a direct disciple to a Master, she enjoyed a more privileged status in society!

Ves idly browsed her correspondence further

While she didn't deliberately obfuscate her information, she still exhibited some care in avoiding anything too sensitive.

The most he gained out of reading the messages she sent to her friends, colleagues and her Master was that she was a very wanted partner for collaboration, especially when it came to mechs designed for small scale military units and mech athlete teams of all things!

The former made a lot of sense. Neural networks worked best when they tied a small number of mech pilots together who shared a lot in common.

Outside of close relatives, the only people who qualified were those who underwent the exact same rigorous training that shaped their attitudes and personality traits in the same direction!

Ves did not expect Aisling to be involved in the design of mechs proposed for group sport competitions!

"The mech games circuit of the Friday Coalition is much more popular than the scene in the Bright Republic!"

The mechs, mech pilots and diversity of competition formats were on an entirely different level! A lot of money passed around in this industry due to the sheer number of fans they attracted!

Not only the Fridaymen, but many other fans from the Bright Republic and other third-rate states watched the matches!

Ves personally didn't waste any time in watching them since second-class mechs were too far away from him. He regretted this decision now as he would have gained a much better feel for these types of mechs if he witnessed thousands of battles.

He turned his attention back to the correspondence. It turned out that neural interconnectivity was a high risk, high reward addition to group sports mechs.

Competitive teams who wanted to gain an edge in teamwork were all interested in leveraging the power of neural networks!

Though neural networks increased the chance of incurring brain injuries and other neural problems, to mech athletes who wanted to win at all costs, even a 5 percent increase in effective performance was worth the risks!

Reading through all of this correspondence not only enlightened him to the demand for neural interconnectivity, but also expanded his horizons of the mech games circuit.

He couldn't help but consider what it would be like to follow Aisling's footsteps and design some mechs for a professional mech athlete team.

Depending on the league and team tiers, mech designers stood to gain a lot of money!

As mechs served as one of the main victory factors, their designs were very crucial!

In the team correspondence, Aisling received offers that rewarded her with 2 to 5 percent shares of a mech athlete team's seasonal profit! As long as her mechs continued to be used, the cols would keep rolling in her bank accounts!

However, to a mech designer like Aisling, she had little interest in the monetary remuneration.

What interested her more was exposing her work to an incredibly huge audience base!

Though the offers she received only came from teams competing in the lesser leagues, this was still a very great opportunity to build up a reputation and expose her work to many future customers!

Unfortunately, the offers vastly reduced when the Komodo War erupted. Most mech games leagues suspended their matches while the rest reduced their scope.

It couldn't be helped! In the long-awaited war against their hated rivals, the Fridaymen couldn't afford to indulge in too much entertainment!

"What a shame."

Ves developed a slight yearning to participate in group competitions.

What would it be like to introduce mechs with powerful glows to the mech arenas?

The crowd would definitely go wild when they experienced the glows in person!

He became more and more interested in this idea. It was a very good idea for him to gain a reputation in a new and unfamiliar market!

Sadly, the Komodo War ruled out any attempts to gain exposure through this method. If not for this massive conflict, Ves would gain the confidence to elevate a smaller team to prominence!

"Oh well." He shrugged. "Maybe I can find some opportunities elsewhere."

After a bit of thinking, he found that Gloriana and him were very well suited to design a suite of mechs tailored to a competitive team!

"This idea has a lot of promise! I should get back to it when I have the chance!"

For now, he needed to resume his inspection of Aisling's personal files.