The Mech Touch

The next day, Ves handled his daily chores before paying a visit to the design lab that he had not visited in many weeks.

This was the downside to going on a business trip. He became so caught up in other affairs that he got cut off from the intimacy of the mech designers who earnestly worked to make the Larkinson Clan more prosperous.

His relationships with the various mech designers also deteriorated due to isolation.

So much had happened during his last trip that it seemed as if an entire lifetime had passed. Continue the journey on m|vl-em,py-r

Ves could barely recognize people such as Viktor MacMillan, Harry Kaikkonen, Adrian Marceau and Kelsey Ampatoch.

Only his relationship with Alexa Streon remained the same, and that was because they corresponded on a regular basis due to their master-disciple relationship.

Perhaps it was not all that bad for him to develop a bit more distance from the other mech designers.

Ever since he appointed Gloriana as the director of the Design Department, she had become their go-to leader.

It was better for his wife to manage relations with all of these restless talents as Ves simply did not have the time to waste on such trivial obligations these days.

Ves was completely fine with maintaining an aloof and distant image to these mech designers.

His many accomplishments already caused a huge gap in status to emerge between himself and his fellow professionals.

Even now, many of them looked up at him with eyes filled with awe and worship.

The Father of Carmine Mechs was not an empty title.

The Larkinson mech designers couldn't believe that the person who single-handedly broke the genetic aptitude tyranny was the very eccentric Senior Mech Designer who they ultimately worked for! It was no wonder that he had remained so busy in the past half year!

Each of the lead and assistant mech designers felt incredibly lucky to be able to enter the clan and join the Design Department before Ves made his historic contribution to society.

So many people would have killed to be in their place!

In any case, since so many mech designers looked at him with starry eyes, Ves felt it was appropriate to hold an impromptu announcement.

He briefly exchanged glances with Gloriana before he addressed the gathered mech designers.

"Good morning, everyone. You have all seen the broadcasts of what I have done over at the Yernstall Central Star Node, so I will not bother repeating redundant information. Now you know why I have remained absent in the design lab all of the time. The Swarm Project's confidentiality was so high that I could only work on it in the more secure design labs deep inside the Tarrasque. Now that the existence of Carmine mechs and the Carmine System is out of the bag, there is no need to go through such lengths to protect our secrets anymore."

Everyone reacted differently to the revelation that they were in the presence of the man who made mech piloting possible for every human.

Ves could not perceive their true feelings in their faces, but he could sense it in their spirits.

Some of them felt jealous or envious of him. Others only had the purest admiration for his historic accomplishments. Then there were the arrogant and overconfident Journeymen who thought they could match or surpass his accomplishment one day!

Ves silently marked the mech designers who fell in the latter group.

Only mech designers who did not get overly affected by other people's works and harbored big dreams about realizing great mech of their own had a higher chance of attaining greatness than others!

"The Carmine Revolution is upon us." Ves stated. "We have entered a historic period where the demand for a large variety of Carmine mech designs is overwhelming, but the supply for them is vastly insufficient. Already, third-party mech designers are busy at work with designing variants of the original Yellow Jackets, but there is only so much they can reshape a wasp mech before they override the effects of the Carmine System."

A Carmine mech could only work if its Carmine System remained functional.

Since it was a set of organic components that worked entirely based on E-technology, it became especially important to preserve Ves' design philosophy in the mech design.

However, the more other mech designers tried to mess around with one of the Yellow Jacket designs, the more their own vision and design philosophy replaced the original essence that made it so valuable.

Go too far, and the Carmine System simply stopped functioning entirely because it had been reduced to a collection of useless organic tissue!

It was absurd to convert a low-end first-class Yellow Jacket into a high-end first-class multipurpose mech while still retaining the ability to form a Blood Pact!

There were only three ways to solve this problem.

The first solution was for Ves to design a high-end first-class mech of his own that could be used as a base for a proper first-class multipurpose mech.

The distance between the two was much smaller, so there was a higher chance of preserving the Carmine System.

The second solution was for a brilliant rational mech designer such as the Polymath to figure out how to simulate Ves' design philosophy and design a proper first-class Carmine multipurpose mech.

Ves personally had little confidence that this could happen without his personal tutoring. Better Masters had tried and failed to simulate his design philosophy because it was so counterintuitive and fundamentally different from the established paradigms in the field of mech design.

The third solution was for him to realize his design philosophy and advance to the rank of Master Mech Designer.

Doing so would allow him to permanently carve his design philosophy to the Red Kingdom, thereby turning it into a public good that every mech designer could access. This was the most proper and systematic solution to disseminating the special design applications of successful innovators.

Since the second and third solutions were not viable at the moment, Ves could only address the needs of the mech market by focusing on the first solution.

Everyone else knew this as well, which was why they were looking at him with eager and hungry expressions.

Ves began to grin at his people. "Since the Yellow Jacket alone is not enough to satisfy market demand, we will have to make up for that. I don't intend for our Design Department to exclusively focus on designing Carmine mechs going forward, but we will definitely have to design a handful of them in order to give our society what it needs the most. For now, we will embark on two different Carmine mech design projects. Both of them will center around the concept of a training mech that can easily be upgraded into a fully capable combat mech after the bonded mech pilot has completed his academy training. While my complete ambition is to release a Carmine mech for every major mech archetype, my time and energy are limited, so I will only start with a rifleman mech and a swordsman mech for the time being."

Everyone understood the logic behind the choice.

"I am sure that each of you are clever enough to understand that these two upcoming Carmine mech designs are also meant to serve as the templates of many different derivative Carmine mechs. I do not have the time to design all of those mechs in person, so that is where you come in. There are a broad range of specializations in our Design Department, so after we have concluded the two projects, I will leave it up to you to design the remaining Carmine mechs based on the archetypes that we have yet to employ."

This delighted a lot of Journeymen!

"The work that you will soon embark upon will set the standard for Carmine mechs in different product categories. Your Carmine mech designs might not be the best, but with my supervision, you can be sure that the Carmine Systems integrated in your derivative works will remain fully functional, so you can rest assured that you can fully realize your own vision in your projects."

This was a small but important advantage that could only be attained by mech designers who worked alongside Ves!

Whereas third-party mech designers had to restrain their eagerness to transform an existing mech design into unrecognizable variants, the members of the Design Department faced no such limitations!

Ves just had to show up every now and then and make small contributions to the ongoing works to ensure his touch still remained alive and well.

This was the crucial advantage that would ensure that the works of these Journeymen were bound to grow popular and occupy an undeniable place in the history of mechs!

"I cannot understate the importance of the Carmine mechs that we will design over the course of the next year or two." Ves seriously stated. "Each of us are less than a century old. Not a single Master Mech Designer is among us. It would be ludicrous to think that we can design a series of historic bestsellers that may also serve as the standards upon which other mech designers will use as the measuring sticks to their own interpretations of Carmine mechs. The opportunity to work on these vital Carmine mech design projects is a privilege, not a right. I expect for each of you to step up and carry your own weight. It would be best if you can develop innovations of your own that can make our collaborative works shine brighter. If we find out that you are not able to keep up with our demands, we will not allow you to work on the initial batch of Carmine mechs that we will release in the next few years."

He normally didn't care too much about what the Journeyman Mech Designers worked on at normal times, but this was different.

The early phase of the Carmine Revolution was all about setting standards and creating a base upon which all other Carmine mechs would flow out from. Ves felt an undeniable responsibility to ensure that the public properly adopted and familiarized itself with this wonderful new product category.

The care and attention he dedicated to the integrated of Carmine mechs in the Red Ocean completely contrasted to his much more reckless and haphazard attempt to dump the Rule Breaker Project into the Milky Way!

"Ngh…" Ves groaned a bit as he nursed his forehead.

Whenever he made this comparison, he felt as if his head was about to split in half. It was too difficult for him to maintain two completely contradictory approaches towards mech design.

It would have been better if two completely different mech designers tackled these separate priorities on their own, but that was not possible.

Ves could at least keep them somewhat separate if he worked on them sequentially, but that was not possible either.

His mother expected him to complete the Rule Breaker Project in a couple of months, and he could not afford to delay the development of his new set of training and combat Carmine mechs either.

He could only hold in his discomfort and forge his way ahead. So what if he became a model mech designer in one galaxy, and an utterly depraved war criminal in the other galaxy?

At least he would be able to service the needs of more people than most mech designers dared to imagine!

One of the fastest ways for mech designers to progress was to make a difference in the lives of many people through his works.

The more people he affected with his mech designs, the more a mech designer made his mark on society, thereby making his presence more real and substantial!

Nobody could become a Master Mech Designer by hoarding his mech designs and refusing to share them to the wider community.

Ves enjoyed the rare but extremely precious advantage of being able to cater to two different mech markets as opposed to one!

If he leveraged this advantage properly, it might not be unrealistic for him to advance to the rank of Master Mech Designer only a few years later than the Polymath!

"I probably won't be able to beat her record, but I will get close enough that it doesn't really matter."

Of course, Ves did not forget about the other requirements. He still needed to make a lot of progress in designing his elemental Carmine mechs.