The Larkinson Clan wrapped up its business at Ulimo Citadel. After pacifying it, executing their pirate captives, repairing so of their damaged chs and searching the entire place for loot, the Larkinsons no longer needed to linger.
A week after the Battle of Ulimo Citadel, Ves commanded his task force to travel to the edge of the Nyxian Gap.
They were finally ready to end this excursion.
A lot of cheers rang throughout the fleet as Ves made this announcent. Though everyone already expected this result, they fully put down most of their fears now that the clan patriarch made it official.
No one wanted to fight pirates anymore! The smaller pirate gangs were so weak that the Larkinsons hardly gained any aningful lessons from crushing them. The larger pirate groups on the other hand always employed forbidden or unusual ans of retaliation which dealt a disproportionate amount of damage.
The Larkinsons were tired of fighting against those that played dirty!
The old war veterans within the clan already longed to return to civilized space. At least the enemies there fought with normal chs ard with normal weapons.
Joining the large fleet as it slowly left was the addition of ten captured pirate ships. Each of them were still being swept by various crews, but that did not stop the Larkinsons from employing them as makeshift transport ships to bring ho all of the loot from Ulimo.
In addition to that, a lot of carriers boasted a lot of free space after the conclusion of the battle. So of their spaces were occupied with broken chs that could still be restored. Other spaces held broken parts or packed containers.
During this quiet journey, Ves brought his students and assistant ch designers to the Redfeather. The crowd of ch designers attracted a lot of attention as they approached the Shield of Samar.
The heavily-customized Aurora Titan ch conveyed a powerful impression on everybody. Its gold-coated Breyer alloy exterior conveyed a sense of mass and density. The sheer thickness of its armor plating and tower shield made any human standing next to it feel small!
"Wow!" Maikel gasped. "Even though we're surrounded by the glows of different Bright Warriors, this one still manages to retain its own presence!"
The Shield of Samar's glow was stronger and more enduring than any other Aurora Titan. Ves sensed considerably more life from the ch. He eagerly studied its feel and carefully observed its spiritual foundation.
Visiting Jannzi's personal ch was the right choice. Now that he was looking for it, he observed several developnts that already caused the ch to stand out from other LMC chs!
While Ves studied the ch in his own way, his assistants admired the ch from their own perspectives. Even if they knew little about the spiritual aspects of ch design, they still sensed sothing unique from the Shield of Samar.
"Just look at this ch." Rina Orion uttered with an uncharacteristically gentle tone of voice. "This is more than a machine. There is a beating heart that is in tune with its ch pilot."
"What are you talking about?" Soone else scratched her head. "I admit the ch is fantastic, but it is a stretch to say it has a beating heart."
"You wouldn't understand."
If Ves heard Rina's words, he would have paid a lot more attention to her. If the forr citizen of the Coman Federation managed to sense more from one of his works, then that ant she might be more compatible with his design philosophy than others!
She already chose her own path, though. She was still committed to specializing in targeting systems.
"This ch should have been heavier." Catherine Evenson thoughtfully remarked. "Its mobility is almost as bad as a heavy ch while its defensive properties could have been significantly stronger. The super-dium weight class is hardly ever used for good reason."
Dukan French nodded in agreent. "It's slow and unwieldy. It's a de-facto heavy ch. It just lacks the mass and so distinctive elents. It's a bit of a pity that its attack capabilities are limited. There is still a lot of extra room for a rifle or a cannon module."
The Shield of Samar may be the fad ch of an honorable expert pilot, but the people who approached the ch were ch designers. It was in their nature to study different chs and decipher their distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Hardly any chs were sacred in their eyes!
Overall, the Braves did not have much good to say about the ch. Certainly, its defensive capabilities were formidable, especially after its latest overhaul replaced its older armor plating with Breyer alloy.
However, this upgrade pretty much negated the utility of its weak polarizing module. The defense it offers was very paltry compared to the sheer resilience offered by its armor plating!
The Aurora Titan design was one of Ves' more radical ch designs. It pursued extre defense and sacrificed almost everything to achieve this goal.
That didn't make it a popular seller. If not for the discovery that its glow was sowhat effective in shielding against other glows, it would have been relegated to the LMC's archives.
The Aurora Titan's utility hardly increased even with this discovery. While more and more battlefields featured LMC chs, they were still far from ubiquitous. The smaller outfits were especially leery of buying an oversized space knight with hardly any mobility or flexibility.
"Hm." Ves rubbed his smooth-shaven chin. "The Aurora Titan design sorely needs an update."
He wasn't in a hurry to do so, though. He already had a lot of projects on his plate. Right now, he didn't believe he could design a substantially better iteration of the Aurora Titan with the sa budget and other constraints.
The Shield of Samar was different. As a custom ch, its budget vastly exceeded that of its regular counterparts. Now that Jannzi advanced to expert pilot, Ves had to raise the limits of the ch even further.
The budget of an expert ch was huge! A typical second-class expert ch could cost between several billion hex credits to a hundred billion hex credits!
Since Ves wasn't short on money or resources these days, he wanted to aim a bit higher for the first expert ch iteration of the Shield of Samar. Even if he decided not to use Unending alloy to strengthen its structure, he was still willing to spend up to 50 billion hex credits to supplent or replace its Breyer alloy exterior!
"Breyer alloy is good, but it's far from the most resilient second-class material out there. The best Fridayman and Hexer chs actually enjoy considerably better protection."
It was a bit premature for him now to consider these design choices. Gloriana and him hadn't even decided who they wanted to pull in to assist their expert ch design project!
He focused on his primary goal for this visit, which was to figure out a ans to instill more individuality in his future works.
As Ves spent more ti on observing the Shield of Samar with his spiritual senses, he finally realized how it expressed its individuality.
His eyes widened as he realized that the Shield of Samar's spiritual foundation wasn't as bland as he was used to! It had actually changed as a whole!
"This.."
It was as if Jannzi's extensive use of the Shield of Samar slowly altered its spiritual foundation.
Compared to regular Aurora Titans, the Shield of Samar not only possessed a stronger spiritual foundation, but also showed greater signs of identity!
What Ves previously likened to an empty plot of land on which he could build a house was actually more animated than he thought.
It was the soul of a ch!
While every properly-fabricated ch derived its spiritual foundation from the design, once it took shape, it was able to develop further into a unique direction.
This growth and developnt mainly affected the spiritual foundation. Therefore, the key to increasing the individual expression of a ch lay in facilitating this natural process!
"Why is the Shield of Samar so much further along this transformation than my other chs?" He frowned.
There were many LMC chs in his clan. Just this hangar alone was filled with Bright Warriors!
Due to one of his policies, the Avatars of Myth tried to reassign as little ch pilots as possible. Ves hoped that every ch pilot developed a close and personal bond with their ch just like Jannzi had accomplished with her Shield of Samar.
Yet despite piloting their chs for many months, Ves hardly observed any aningful changes yet to the Bright Warriors around him. Their individual character remained largely uniform, which showcased how difficult it was for a ch pilot to truly grow their chs.
"It will probably take years of dedicated use for anyone to notice a substantial difference!"
That was too long! Not every ch pilot was like Venerable Jannzi or General Axelar Streon. Both of them possessed the willingness and ans to stick to a single ch for the rest of their lives.
That did not an that his other custors were able to adopt this model. Developing a strong dependence on a single ch was good as long as the ch existed. Yet a lot could change over the years.
It could end up destroyed in battle.
It could turn into an obsolete ch design as its original designer no longer published any revisions.
Another possible problem was that most ch pilots did not own the chs they piloted. They could be reassigned or kicked out of their outfits at any ti.
Finally, it was very costly to customize and upgrade a ch. No ordinary outfit would waste money on such an expensive and inefficient endeavor.
All of these reasons ant that Ves shouldn't view Venerable Jannzi's developnt trajectory as an example. What he truly needed to do was to co up with a different developnt trajectory that was much more suitable for the mass market.
He felt like he was missing sothing. He turned his attention back to the Shield of Samar.
"What makes you different?"
Out of all of his chs, the Shield of Samar was the only ch that had experienced two consecutive breakthroughs of its pilot. This was probably the reason why it had advanced so much.
Ves knew that every breakthrough released a lot of spirituality in the form of force of will. The ch pilot in question burst through a bottleneck, causing their force of will to temporarily reach a very high level of strength.
It couldn't last, though. Over ti, the ch pilot in question lost control of the excess energy.
What happened to this excess energy?
Most of it should have dissipated and drifted off into the imaginary realm.
But.. what if so of that stuck around? What if the ch, which possessed an intimate and active bond with the ch pilot through the man-machine connection, absorbed so of these byproducts?
"Does the Shield of Samar.. possess Jannzi's essence?"
A radical theory popped up in his mind. What if the Shield of Samar 'advanced' to a higher state by absorbing Jannzi's spiritual emissions?
Though it was just a guess, it made a lot of sense! Force of will was alive. If the Shield of Samar absorbed so of it, then not only would it beco more in tune with the source, but also gain the vigor to develop a more unique character!
This was the key he sought to increase the individuality of his chs!
On its own, his chs weren't able to grow on their own. They needed to be used for a long ti by their ch pilots to diverge from their original molds.
The main downside to this gradual process was that the change didn't happen fast enough. chs weren't humans, after all. The life they possessed was too deficient.
"If the ch is lacking sothing, why not take it from the ch pilot?"
As long as he was able to incorporate this process in his ch designs, then they would be able to acquire an individual character a lot faster than before!
"Still, such a process can be extrely dangerous!"
In order to increase the life of a ch, the ch pilot had to make a sacrifice.
"Nothing cos for free!"
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