Ves left the job of establishing contact to his publicist. Gavin worked efficiently and contacted the Fireflies for a sponsorship offer.
To Gavin’s surprise, Jarle expressed interest in obtaining a custom virtual ch. That left the door open to negotiations, which Gavin and Jarle’s agent quickly hamred out.
Since the deal did not require much formality, the two sides ca to a simple understanding.
In absolute terms, Ves provided Jarle with an exclusive customized virtual DarkSpear. He’d design the unique machine after a talk with Jarle over the comm and after he received a list of specifications.
Since they wanted to get this done as quickly as possible before the new duelling season began, Ves would not take more than a few days to complete the custom design.
Once Ves had done his part, Jarle would pilot his custom job and promote the DarkSpear model for a certain number of hours per week. The ch athlete and strear would continue to pimp the DarkSpear model for a month.
The actual contract looked a lot more complicated, but put simply, Ves got his first spokesperson for the huge and largely untapped Bentheim market.
Gavin visited the workshop to brief Ves on the contract and get him to sign a few docunts. He also had a lot of questions about the deal.
"Isn’t it premature to expand your brand presence in Bentheim? I thought we already agreed on our marketing strategy. Diverting too much attention on the virtual market makes no sense. The real and virtual markets are too different from each other. Even if you spend a lot of effort on your virtual models, your actual earnings won’t increase by all that much."
Ves understood Gavin’s doubts, but he had to grow his ability to earn lots of DP. "I don’t entirely agree with you on that point. Marcella tells that many of my custors who bought the Mark II beca convinced of its craftsmanship after trying out so of my virtual models. In addition, higher sales figures of my virtual product lines will also translate to confidence in the quality of my real chs."
"It will be a blip in the ocean. Jarle is hardly the most popular celebrity from Bentheim. Without a constant dia presence, your brand will quickly fall into obscurity."
His words rang true. As the local cca of ch production and export, Bentheim was saturated with thousands of brands. At the LMC’s current scale, it had no hopes of competing with these long-established household nas.
Still, Ves didn’t need to put in a lot of effort to cobble up a custom virtual DarkSpear, and he got plenty of short-term benefits out of the weeks-long promotion. As long as his sales for his latest virtual ch surpassed ten thousand units, he’d earn 100,000 DP in total. Ves needed the huge sum to shore up his skills and attributes to design a decent original ch.
Despite Gavin’s skepticism, Ves still went through with his plans. Before Gavin left, he wanted to ask a question that had been burning in his mind for a while.
"Boss? I’d like you to clear sothing up for ."
"Yes?"
"Well, it’s like this. I’ve been analyzing the sales patterns of your virtual chs and compared them to your peers. One pattern happened to stand out like a sore thumb. Your custor retention is off the charts. Anyone who buys one of your virtual chs is several tis more likely to buy another ch designed by you. This usually doesn’t happen to newcors in the market."
Consurs never really paid attention to the ch designer when they purchased a product from the low-end of the virtual market. They only cared about specs and their personal feelings about the ch.
Most ch designers who started out wished to make a na for themselves and their businesses. A ch manufacturer with a steady amount of repeat custors would never have to worry about missing their sales targets as long as they didn’t screw up.
"I’ve focused a lot on improving the piloting experience." Ves answered simply. "I’m guessing that my custors have caught on its benefits. I’m sure you’ve found that out yourself when you asked around."
"It’s beyond that. So of your custors are oddly attached to their chs, to the point where they treat them as affectionately as pets. I’m rather concerned because this effect is very pronounced in certain cases. It reminds of the Farund Affair."
"Heavens no!" Ves imdiately denied. "I haven’t ssed around with the neural interfaces. This is nothing like the Farund Affair."
The Farund Affair stood out as the first and only case where a company managed to brainwash its custors with its virtual chs. Back then, the simulator pod manufacturers competed against each other on how well they could make their simulations co to life. They all increased the intensity of their neural interfaces with each new generation of pods.
This uncontrolled growth of neural intensity led to so companies taking advantage of this phenonon by ssing around with the neural interfaces of their chs. Most tried to be subtle and added a minor addictive elent to their interfaces. For a couple of years, these shady companies saw steady growth as their models grew in popularity.
Farund Inc. obviously didn’t get the ssage. Its brash CEO jacked up all of the settings to the maximum. In the short term, his company rose like a rocket as sales ballooned almost exponentially. It beca a major sensation in the virtual market as its models beca increasingly dominant in the ch simulator gas of that ti.
Sadly for Farund, the good tis didn’t last together. A few ch designers got suspicious and started poking around at Farund’s many designs. Their actual specs were nothing special, but each test pilot beca instant converts the mont they piloted the virtual chs.
The horrifying consequences of Farund’s chs finally ca to light when researchers found out about the tampered neural interfaces. The scandal ruined the company overnight and the MTA arrested all of its executives and ch designers. They only took a week to sentence them to death.
Even then, many of its victims required years of therapy in order to wean off the urge to pilot any of Farund’s chs. A million or so of its most devoted fans had played with the virtual chs for so long that their condition beca practically incurable. The MTA took them all in and nobody had ever heard from them again.
These days, virtual chs received much closer scrutiny. Iron Spirit certified every virtual ch submitted to its marketplace and they often flatly refused any ch that included non-standard neural interfaces. In addition, manufacturers of simulator pods cleaned up their act and pulled back so of their most extre innovations.
In this light, Gavin’s question made little sense. Even if Ves had any nefarious intentions, he’d never get away with it with all the precautions introduced after the Farund Affair.
After Gavin made the arrangents, Ves faced a projector which fizzled into the image of Captain Jarle Brenthill. The man truly looked gifted in both looks and talent. Even Ves felt a little bit oppressed when faced with a celebrity of this magnitude.
"Hello Jarle. It’s nice to et you."
"Likewise." The ch athlete responded perfunctory while he studied Ves. "You’ve got a sturdy body. Are you working out?"
"Ah, no. It’s due to a mishap that ssed with my genetics."
"Well, I still have so training to catch up to, so I’ll make it short. First, I got our resident ch designer to form up a list of what I’d like to include in my custom ch. I’d appreciate it if you can et at least two-thirds of what I’ve noted down."
Jarle sent the virtual docunt over to Ves, who opened it up and skimd through the points. The ch athlete’s priorities had been formatted in precise language that told Ves exactly what to do. That made his job much easier than if he rely had a brief talk with Jarle.
"I see that you wish to change the DarkSpear’s default weapon from a spear to a pair of daggers." Ves carefully noted. The docunt even included an exact set of dinsions for the pair of blades. "This... I can see why you prefer the daggers, but my ch favors forward montum over agile footwork. Those weapons will not be a good fit for my current fra."
"Don’t worry about it. I’ll make it work. As long as you can increase the range of motion and the responsiveness of the arms, I’ll be okay with my baby."
"The arms are already optimized for thrusting and absorbing shocks. If you want to increase their range of motion, I’ll have to take away so of its other abilities."
"Then do so. I’m fine with such a trade."
Fortunately, Jarle set realistic expectations for his custom ch. He set a few other reasonable conditions that Ves agreed to without much objection. As a consummate professional who piloted dozens of chs in his career, he knew what kind of limitations ch designers faced. Most professionals picked up on so basic knowledge from the design world as they ca into contact with different chs.
Only spoiled brats like Vincent Ricklin who only ever trained with one or two models asked for sothing as dumb as a codpiece for their chs.
Overall, Ves understood Jarle’s desires for his custom ch and it was his job to make it into reality. After cutting off the connection after an hour of discussion, Ves mulled on how to go about this project.
His main concern was to preserve the model’s excellent X-Factor. Ves faced a difficult puzzle in that the X-Factor for the DarkSpear had already been set in stone. Even if Ves updated its design in the future, the assassin ch always beca defined by its ability to charge from stealth.
Ves recalled the few tis he went back to a design and changed the schematic. The Marc Antony Mark II ca to mind. Ves did not really depart from his vision, but he made such a radical redesign that it could even be considered an entirely new variant rather than an update from the Mark I.
Even then, Ves did not stray too far from his original vision. He rely defined them in explicit terms so that he had a better grip on the just-developed Triple Division technique.
For this project, Ves considered whether he could grant his custom design an entirely new gestalt.
"It’s worth a try. I doubt this will end badly. At worst, I’ll just scrap my work if I end up with a muddle-headed design."
He activated his design suite and loaded in a copy of the DarkSpear’s design schematic. When Ves looked at the assassin ch, he felt that every shape and marking hid a portion of the Last Spear’s will. For a mont, Ves dreaded the thought of tearing this ntal creation apart.
He shook his head. "What am I hesitating about? It’s just a copy."
Even if he butchered this particular copy, it didn’t affect the main design. While he intuitively thought that every permutation of a design should share the sa strain of X-Factor, in reality each copy took on its own separate existence.
This was one of the biggest reasons why the X-Factor could never show its full strength in the virtual world. The virtual chs never lasted long enough to develop its history.
With this perspective in mind, Ves steeled himself and visualised a knife in his mind. With the ruthless care of a pet owner about to end the life of a suffering dog, he struck at the image central to this image.
CLANG!
The Last Spear’s manifestation showed up at the last possible mont and parried the ntal knife with his spear! The rebound from the failed strike rattled Ves to the point where he took a few steps backward.
The image associated with the DarkSpear had developed its own instincts for life. It could even detect a threat against its existence and put up a defence!
Ordinarily, Ves would rejoice that he developed his X-Factor to the point where it developed a form of autonomy. Now, it made things harder, for Ves found to his surprise that the Last Spear’s manifestation possessed just enough strength to withstand his ntal attacks.
In essence, Ves could not even overco his own creation!
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