Once the expert pilots all enjoyed a few days to rest and process their battle experiences, they gathered together in a eting room located in the upper decks of the Spirit of Bentheim.
Every expert pilot that arrived in the compartnt silently acknowledged each other but did not take the initiative to chat.
None of them were in the mood to joke around. The Battle of Fordilla Zentra still weighed heavily on their minds, and so of them needed more ti than others to return to their old selves.
After several minutes of silence, Ves, who was still wearing his Unending Regalia, finally entered the room with a handful of his honor guard.
Even though the presence of the latter was completely redundant in this gathering, Nitaa and her colleagues still considered it to be their duty to guard the patriarch at all tis.
Besides, if nothing else, the bodyguards made for convenient cargo holders. Nitaa's current armor was weighed down by the Larkinson Mandate, the Hamr of Brilliance and a few other useful goods such as a spare P-stone.
"Ladies. Gentlen. I'm glad to see you're all healthy and alive." Ves began as he sat down at the head of the table. "The previous battle has taken a toll on all of you. Before we address the items on the agenda, let apologize to you first. Each of you had to fight in unfavorable circumstances due to the nurous mistakes and misjudgents that I have made. This battle could have been avoided. Even if we did end up fighting the dwarves anyway, I should have at least made sure that Joshua and Jannzi already received their expert chs."
"It's not your fault, Ves." Tusa said as he crossed his arms. "Well, it kind of is, but it's not as if you went out to punch the dwarves in the face. The most you're guilty of is negligence."
Jannzi sneered but she didn't speak up, which was a very welco decision to Ves and the others. Everyone already knew her stance and she didn't need to repeat them in front of this small and closed audience.
"I'm not interested in going through this apology theater." Venerable Orfan said. "What I want to know is how soon you'll be able to fix my Riot. It's broken! If the dwarves ambush us again, I sure as hell don't want to deploy in space with only one intact limb on my expert ch!"
The others were curious as well. Of the four expert chs, only the Amaranto was still in decent condition. The others were incapable of exhibiting the sa peak performance as before!
Ves smiled at the expert pilots. He expected that to be the first topic that would co up today.
"Fixing your expert chs isn't as easy as assigning a couple of maintenance crews to glue the broken parts back together. Your machines are tougher, more chanically complex and more demanding in material quality than ordinary chs. Out of everyone in the Larkinson Clan, only my wife and myself possess the requisite skills and knowledge to fully restore your expert chs. Given the complexity of their designs and how ti consuming it can be to work with Unending alloy, it will take weeks before they're as good as news."
That did not sound like good news to the expert pilots.
"That's not a short amount of ti. What if the dwarves ambush us in the next few days?"
"What are you saying, exactly?" Venerable Orfan scratched her head.
"Ves is saying that he and his wife can only do one thing at once." Jannzi said with a grim look. "If the two of them spend the following weeks repairing your damaged expert chs, they won't be able to spend any ti on their current design projects."
Understanding dawned upon Venerable Joshua. "It will take longer for Jannzi and I to receive our expert chs?"
Ves looked quite impressed at Jannzi. He didn't think she was smart enough to catch the implications of his ssage.
"She's correct." He said as he gave both Joshua and Jannzi a asured stare. "Look, I understand that you don't want to wait any longer to receive your promised machines, but we all have to make sacrifices. Our clan's imdiate priority is to restore as much battle strength as possible in the fastest possible tispan. It will take at least a month to complete another expert ch design and it will take more than a week to fabricate the actual machine. We can fix up all of our damaged expert chs in at least half of our ti and bring back three fully-functional expert chs back to our ch roster. If the safety of our clan cos first, then this is the logical choice to make."
His logic was irrefutable. The Dark Zephyr, the Riot and the First Sword had already proven their amazing effectiveness before. Fixing them up provided the clan with an imdiate and certain boost in strength.
Of course, Venerable Joshua and Venerable Jannzi had to accept the fact that they needed to wait longer until they received their presents from the Larkinson Clan.
"Work on your two expert ch designs isn't being suspended while we work on restoring our existing expert chs." Ves told the two. "The Design Departnt still has plenty of design teams that are constantly working on solving low-level problems and optimizing our existing solutions. When we get back to full speed on the design projects, we will be able to finish them a little sooner."
This hardly provided any consolation to the two, and what Ves was about to say would make their moods drop even more.
"To be honest, the work on our damaged expert chs might take longer than a couple of weeks. Gloriana and I… are thinking about doing more than return them to their original conditions. The Battle of Fordilla Zentra has clearly proven the excellence of those machines, but it has also exposed clear vulnerabilities that we can conveniently address now that we are performing extensive work on them anyway."
This ca as a surprise to all of the expert pilots.
"Are you planning to refit our expert chs?" Venerable Dise asked.
Ves nodded. "That's right. I don't think I need to show you any footage to make you beco aware that your expert chs aren't as durable as we like. While I'm already satisfied with the durability of the Unending alloy armor systems of your expert chs, I'm not as happy with how vulnerable the internals turned out to be. In a duel against expert chs, it is crucial for you to be able to put your trust in the resilience of both their insides and outsides. If you are constantly trying to avoid incurring damage because you don't want your internals to be subjected to too many concussive shocks, then that will inevitably shackle your performance. That is not ideal."
Though his audience agreed with his sentint, there were still a couple of questions.
"I thought the designs of our expert ch are already as good as you can make them. How can you fit sothing better?"
"How much ti will it take to design the refit? If it takes more than a month… then maybe you should postpone it for later."
Ves confidently smiled. "Don't worry about the practicalities of this round of refits. We just picked up the remains of six valuable dwarven expert chs. Together with our other high-value salvage, we can send them over to the Graveyard in order to extract any high-quality exotics and materials that can still be reused. With a large batch of superior materials in hand, we can work towards replacing the more vulnerable internal components of your expert chs with upgraded versions. Of course, we don't have ti to research how to improve their technical performance, but simply substituting more fragile materials with tougher alternatives is not a ti-consuming task. My wife has already begun to survey your expert chs and the salvage that we can employ to perform this comprehensive durability upgrade round."
Venerable Tusa, Venerable Orfan and Venerable Dise were all pleased with this initiative. The latter two especially valued this upgrade because they suffered the worst out of all of the four with actual expert chs during the previous battle.
"So how much tougher will our expert chs beco after you're done?" Venerable Orfan eagerly leaned forward and asked.
"Beats ." Ves shrugged. "We haven't even completed a survey of the materials of the salvaged dwarven expert chs that we can use. However, if I have to make a guess, then the upgrade will likely be quite substantial. The general dwarven ch ideology is to design their machines to be tough. Even their lighter machines are more resilient than normal. There are many cases where we can use harder materials or even repurposed dwarven armor plating to strengthen the internals of your machines. The balance and mass distribution will change as a result, but we will try our best to keep them as similar as possible."
"Can you give us a figure?"
"Hmmm… I would say that the durability of the internal architecture of your expert chs will likely receive a boost of 20 percent on average. This is a generous upgrade that will allow you to fight with a lot more confidence against other expert chs next ti."
While this degree of improvent did not sound revolutionary, it was nonetheless a hefty increase that could definitely make a difference in combat. In circumstances where both combatants were roughly even, a difference of 20 percent could definitely lead to an edge where the Larkinson expert ch would be able to win 9 out of 10 tis!
This was because the increase in defense not only allowed the powerful machines to increase their fault tolerance and last longer, but also granted their pilots greater leeway to perform risky moves!
Of course, only half of the expert pilots present in this eting were happy with these changes.
Venerable Stark raised her hand. "What about my Amaranto?"
"You did a good job in preserving the integrity of your expert ch. It has hardly suffered from any direct damage. We only need a couple of days to perform light repairs on the components and systems that have endured excessive strain. We don't plan to upgrade the Amaranto, though."
"For what reason?"
Ves looked apologetic. "The value of your expert ch lies in its offensive power, and it has already reached the limit that our Design Departnt can achieve at the mont."
"You can do a lot to upgrade its defenses." Venerable Stark pointed out. "It's one of the reasons why I wasn't able to perform at my best for much of the battle. If my ch was as durable as the Dark Zephyr, those two Slug Ranger expert chs wouldn't have hounded for so long."
"We are aware of that, and we intend to do sothing about it, just not now. Refitting a masterwork expert ch is much more difficult than refitting a normal expert ch. We can't perform too many modifications at once and their quality has to conform to the sa standard of quality as your existing machine."
"I see…"
Ves decided to give her a bone. It wouldn't do to neglect the MVP of the last battle and their most effective expert pilot at this point.
"We don't intend to keep your Amaranto as fragile as it is now. Much of the reason why we couldn't improve the defense of your expert ch is because we don't have access to any better tech and materials at a reasonable budget. That will drastically change once we reach the Red Ocean. Once we get there, we can slowly master new tech and procure stronger and more remarkable exotics to upgrade not just the Amaranto, but all of our other expert chs as well. The developnt on your machines never stops."
"Does that count for our expert chs as well?" Venerable Joshua asked with a hopeful tone of voice.
"Yup." Ves grinned. "It's easier to implent upgrades in designs that haven't been realized yet. I will make sure that it is absolutely worth the wait before you are able to pilot your new expert chs!"
The recent battle had taught Ves and the other Journeyn of the Larkinson Clan a lot about all of the challenging battle conditions that expert chs had to endure. Many of them had to revise their assumptions, which caused them to change their minds about so of the solutions they applied to the finished expert ch designs.
As long as they processed their gains, they could apply all of the lessons they learned on the Bulwark Project and Chira Project without much hindrance! This would ultimately translate into a clear performance difference between the earlier batch of expert chs and the ones that had yet to be made!
Venerable Jannzi directed a serious glance towards Ves. She was truly impatient to pilot a new and improved Shield of Samar, but her future goals relied too much on piloting a powerful expert ch for her to urge Ves to make haste.
If she had to wait a few months longer to get her dream machine, so be it! The power she would gain from piloting an excellent expert ch would more than make up for the lack of opportunity to practice with a powerful machine!
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