The Mech Touch

is to require a few more months to develop a solid foundation to design a mech, evidently he underestimated her artificially-elevated intelligence and concentration attributes.

As long as she was motivated, it wasn ’t impossible for her to make great strides!

”I ’ll let you finish your little project. ” He said in a gentler tone.

”Thanks.
It won ’t take too long.
I think I only need an hour to put the finishing touches on the scale model. ”

Ves loved mechs.
His entire life revolved around mechs.
Even if he lacked the ability to pilot them, he never stopped adoring them.
Mechs would always be a part of his life.

To design mechs was a dream to him.
To become so successful in this job that he had advanced to become a de facto Journeyman in a scant few years was an amazing opportunity to work with mechs on a higher level.

Therefore, Ves couldn ’t help but feel happy when he was present with other people who were passionate about mechs.
He enjoyed his recent interactions with Professor Ventag and he enjoyed seeing Ketis becoming more and more capable of designing mechs on her own.

Both of them loved their craft!

As Ves stood a few paces away in order to give Ketis enough room to work with, he casually studied her work ethic.

For some reason, he felt like he saw echoes of himself in the amount of diligence she put into her work.
Having observed Ves at work plenty of times, it appeared that Ketis acquired some of his habits.

Ves didn ’t know how to feel about that.
The amount of concentration she put into her work was so much that she even stopped registering his presence after a few minutes!

In fact, as long as Ves could nudge her in the right direction, she might even be able to imitate some of his methods with regards to shaping the X-Factor of her creations!

The notion of passing along some of his extremely valuable and exclusive knowledge on the X-Factor popped up in his mind.

It quickly left his mind soon after.

How could Ves reveal such secrets so easily? Even if he trusted Ketis by quite a bit, it wasn ’t to the point of sharing everything yet.
For now, Ketis would be best served with focusing on developing her own specialty rather than inherit a limited version of his own.

A few more minutes passed by until the small 3D printer finally spat out the last scaled-down parts of her variant.
Ketis did not skimp too much on the materials she used to present her design in the best possible light!

She moved over to a workbench where she already laid out various precision tools.
She picked one of them up and used them to assemble the parts into a complete mech miniature in the span of less than an hour!

The little mech was as tall as two palms and was very heavy for its size.
When Ves stepped forward and picked up the menacing-looking mech, he had the odd sensation that he held a Blackbeak that shed its kite shield in order to dedicate itself to wielding a single sword!

”This variant bears a lot of resemblance to its base model. ” Ves commented.
”Maybe a little too much. ”

”I didn ’t want to mess too much with its internal architecture.
I ’m not confident enough yet that I can rearrange them into something more suitable for swordsman mechs. ” Ketis admitted.

”Before we go into further detail about its expected performance, tell me about the concept and vision for this variant.
What is its purpose? ”

”I haven ’t named it yet.
As you can tell, I started off with your Blackbeak design and attempted to turn it from a knight mech into a swordsman mech.
The difference between the two mech types may be big, but they share a lot in common.
It helps that your Blackbeak design is already geared towards offensive use.
I got rid of the shield, slightly increased the size and strength of the arms and replaced its one-handed sword with a two-handed greatsword.
I mostly kept its excellent armor coverage intact, though I shaved off some portions here and there to increase its mobility, agility and range of motion. ”

Aside from some other minor adjustments, the changes she described was pretty much the extent of her work.
It didn ’t sound like much, but then again most variants never strayed too far from the parameters of their base models.

”First off, I ’m very pleased to see you go as far as to attempt to change the mech type of an existing mech design.
Usually, mech designers who want to develop a swordsman mech variant will just license an existing swordsman mech design and work from there as all of the essential elements are already in place. ”

”I know.
I wanted to do that as well, but your library of licenses isn ’t very extensive.
Since I don ’t have the means to license an existing swordsman mech design, I thought why not work with one of your own mechs? The Blackbeak design is a great design for my purposes! ”

”That sounds great and all, but what is the overarching concept behind this design? ”

”I guess it ’s my attempt at designing a premium swordsman mech.
It adopted much of the same defenses and endurance of its base model.
While it is not as tough as the Blackbeak, it possesses enough brute force to hack aside most opponents standing in its way! ”

Ves shook his head in disappointment.
”Is that all? You just wanted to design a swordsman mech so you made some adjustments to the Blackbeak design before handing it an oversized swords? ”

”Uhh, yeah. ”

”So you haven ’t set any distinct vision for your variant? Have you forgotten my teachings already? ”

It appeared that Ves had been a little remiss in his teaching.
It became quite clear that despite the amount of concentration she put into the design of her variant, she did not have a clear picture of what she wanted to design from the start! The variant she eventually came up with was just a collection of various ad-hoc decisions without any overarching strategy in mind!

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