The Mech Touch

Chapter 7130: The Importance of Relationship Building

Ves experienced a sense of fulfillment after the birthday party came to an end.

Aurelia and the other kids had a lot of fun. What he was most pleased with was that his oldest daughter was not a doll and actively sought to participate in more grown-up affairs.

A part of Ves lamented that Aurelia did not make the most of her childhood to be a kid. The weight of expectations along with her abnormal development caused her to mature a lot faster than other kids of her age.

Still, the Red Ocean was nothing like the Milky Way during the Age of Mechs.

Red humanity lacked the strength to enforce peace. The native aliens were already bad enough. The arrival of the mutated voribugs put human civilization in the new frontier into an even more precarious situation.

As such, Aurelia herself already recognized that she could not afford to be carefree during her most formative years.

She had already inherited a strong sense of responsibility from her father. Growing up within a clan as active and enterprising as the Larkinson Clan shaped her values and personality in ways that did not conform to average society.

Ves did not know whether to praise or condemn this development.

In any case, he was glad that Aurelia eventually chose a development track that would allow her to gain the initiative if she ever found herself in the midst of combat.

So long as she was not helpless when confronted by enemies, then he would not have to worry himself to death over her safety.

When Ves and Gloriana got back together in the evening, they watched over the Microplanet from the Tarrasque.

Now that the party had ceased, the mechers in cooperation with the collies began to dismantle everything. The entire miniature planet had to be reshaped in order to accommodate the demands of the next deep-pocketed client.

This entailed terraforming at a rapid speed. Entire continents had to be made and unmade. New oceans took shape. An entire city’s worth of structures assembled at a rapid speed.

The collies had to be involved in order to remove the formation anchors that had previously been used to conduct a mysterious ritual. The workers carefully disassembled the crystal pyramid along with all of the other formation anchors hidden beneath the surface.

Although the spell array was not useful for other purposes, the precious exotics and hypers used to make the formation anchors could still be recycled or repurposed.

They could even be altered to perform similar rituals at other locations, though that required formation masters to do a lot of troublesome recalculations.

In any case, the mechers had already conveyed their appreciation to the Larkinsons for the information they collected from the ritual.

They never told him what they were looking for, but Ves guessed that they had been trying to expose cosmopolitans and sympathisers to the Cybernetic Empire among other traitors.

The Red Association was not doing so well these days. The continuous setbacks put the mechers in a weak position. This was the time to consolidate their internal affairs and make sure that those with different intentions did not get any chance to inflict any damage.

Of course, Ves still did not think the RA would be able to magically solve all of its problems. He had witnessed more and more signs that the god pilots and Star Designers were increasingly pursuing their own goals.

Whether that would lead to the fracturing of the Red Association remained to be seen, but it was undeniable that the different factions were increasingly growing further apart.

Ves might be able to gain a much better overview of this hidden trend if he was an insider, but unfortunately that was not the case.

All he could do was to stand by the side while the mechers continued to engage in their secret dance.

Oh well. There was nothing he could do about it. All he cared about at this point was that his collaboration with the mechers on the development of the first Polymetal mech remained unaffected.

The Web Mistress was the guarantor of the mech design project, which meant that the Mech Supremacist Faction would take the lead on the collaborative mech design project.

That eased his concerns as the Mech Supremacists got along with the others pretty well. They only cared about the primacy of mechs, which was a common goal shared by other factions.

The Mech Supremacists weren’t as numerous as the Expansionists.

They did not push for radical innovation like the Transhumanists.

They also did not try to steer the course of red humanity as insistently as the Survivalists.

The Mech Supremacists only cared about keeping mechs on top of warships and other alternative combat platforms.

They were perhaps the purest faction of the Red Association as they were more keen to uphold the standards of the mech industry.

Ves regarded them as the glue that contributed the most to keeping the RA together. Hopefully, they would be able to prevent the other big leaders from going their own way, though they may have already failed in the case of the Huntsman.

When Ves dutifully summarized the gains and losses from the latest talks, Gloriana looked slightly pleased.

"It is good that more and more groups seek to cooperate with us. It shows that they deem us useful enough." She said. "The new deals will allow us to gain access to a large amount of advanced technologies, high-grade resources and technical support. We need all of that to design superior expert mechs, ace mechs as well as first-class multipurpose mechs. It is not enough to rely on our internal capabilities. We are far behind the larger groups when it comes to access to proprietary technologies and amassing stockpiles of strategic resources. We can obtain some of the best of the Red Association, the Red Fleet and the Cybernetic Empire by designing the mechs that we always wanted to realize. That is an ideal outcome as far as I am concerned."

She was mostly correct, but Ves did not let down his guard because of that. Everything had a price.

"We are growing much more reliant on our external partners to speed up the growth of our clan and raise the sophistication of all of our mechs." He told her. "We are becoming dangerously dependent on our allies to maintain our core operations. If we ever lose our allies or turn into galactic pariahs, all of our operations will be crippled at once. If we are forced to do everything ourselves, our output will become a pale shadow of our peak."

"Then that makes it all the more important for us to maintain as many partnerships as possible." Gloriana easily concluded. "Do you think we will experience any challenges on this front?"

Ves paused in order to consider this matter. "Not in the short term, but who knows what will happen in the future. I think we should be careful and not make too many assumptions of how the future will unfold. If the native aliens or the mutated voribugs are able to breach our defensive lines and ravage large portions of human space, a reckoning will come that can completely reshape the balance of power in the new frontier. We cannot rely on our allies to take care of us when they already have their hands full with saving their own hides."

His wife did not take this too seriously. "I am sure we will be fine. What we need the most is time. All of the gains we have made today will make us stronger. Think of how rapidly we have grown since the start of the Age of Dawn. If we are able to develop in peace for a decade, I can scarcely imagine how much bigger our clan has become. While it is unreasonable for us to expect to catch up to the likes of the Cybernetic Empire, I am sure we can rival a small first-rate state in power if nothing else."

That was a bit difficult to determine. The Larkinson Clan at least needed to develop its own territories in order to match a first-rate state in terms of population, resource gathering, industry and other factors.

"How quickly can we complete the revisions to the Riot Mark III Project?" He asked instead.

"It was hard at first to implement the new alloy formulas into the mech design, but now that I have become a little more familiar with the teachings of the Resonance Smith, my progress is accelerating. Borrowing the processing power of the Red Association has also sped up my work. I should be able to complete the revisions in 5 days or less. If you are in a hurry, you can assist me in my work. We should be able to complete our work roughly a day faster if that is the case. Venerable Rosa Orfan is dying with impatience, you know."

"Then she can temper her patience a little longer." Ves coolly responded. "While we have completed most of our chores in Yernstall, there is still plenty of stuff for me to do before we depart for the Rubarthan Pact. While you are working to complete the latest revisions to the Riot Mark III, I would like to spend the remaining days we have left over at the Astral Octagon."

That caused Gloriana to frown. "That means we will be delaying our departure. The mutated voribugs will continue to devour more Rubarthan lives and territories."

"We are not their only hope, Gloriana. This is important. I have been away from the center of the Red Collective for too many months. The mechanical avatar that I have left behind over there has allowed me to keep track of surface events, but nothing beats being present in person. I need to visit my office and take a look for myself. I have heard the collies are currently in a heated debate over the possible inclusion of the Cybernetic Empire."

The Red Collective was founded with the intention of giving it jurisdiction over systematic cultivation.

In exchange for allowing the RC to become the primary authority in charge of regulating human cultivators, the new superorganization gave every participating state or organisation access to its research, resources and other forms of assistance.

The Red Collective did all of that with the continued input and consideration of the people and major powers of red humanity, which fixed the biggest ’flaw’ of the Red Association and the Red Fleet.

The Upper and Lower Councils continued to function as intended, with the latter doing most of the lifting.

From what Ves had heard, the lower councilors had done a good job of expanding and refining the legislation to respond to the needs of the masses and to ensure the RC played a productive role in society.

As for the upper councilors like Ves, all they needed to do was to check up every once in a while and put their rubber stamp on the bills that had managed to survive the Lower Council.

Certain upper councilors were more active in voting against certain bills that threatened the interests of their principals.

They occasionally dropped opposition after the masterminds of the bill agreed to make changes or include provisions.

However, this was a rather delicate dance as those very same concessions might piss off the original supporters.

Ves never showed any interest in this politicking. He had meticulously kept himself out of the mud fights, preferring to maintain a neutral stance whenever possible.

He had yet to encounter a bill that threatened his interests so much that he felt compelled to use his influence to block it. This would probably happen sooner or later, though Ves did not exactly know when.

This made it all the more important for Ves to reconnect with the collies and get up to speed with the developments that they were reluctant to share to outsiders.

Gloriana made one request. "If you are visiting the Astral Octagon, then can you seek help from the collies about your phase lord cultivation? They should know how to tackle this problem better than others. It would be reassuring if they can solve your problem or find a means to mitigate the risks."

Ves nodded. "That is one of the reasons why I wanted to stop by the headquarters of the Red Collective."

He had neglected this issue long enough.

One way or another, Ves needed to find a way to reclaim sovereignty over his entire physique!

Sev could not be allowed to stay and compromise his control over his own body!