After Ves and Venerable Brutus had their private moment, they moved the mech workshop along with Gloriana and Ranya. It turned out that Gloriana tweaked and updated the Star Dancer’s design in the last couple of weeks. Because of her limited involvement in the design of her brother’s expert mech, she could only propose some minor improvements. Gloriana brought her brother to a projection of the Star Dancer’s design and enthusiastically showed off some of her latest efforts. She improved considerably when she worked alongside Ves, so it wasn’t a surprise for her to be able to correct some of her shortcomings in her existing products. Normally, a mech designer did not bother to update a mech design. Any revisions they wanted to do could wait until they comprehensively combined all of the corrections as well as tech upgrades in another revision. Ves himself wanted to wait until he became more proficient in next generation mech design before he designed the Aurora Titan Mark II for example. Of course, if a mech designer really cared about a design or customer, there was nothing stopping them from publishing minor updates. Expert mechs were some of the most important machines to the mech community. With the insanely high skill of expert pilots, even minor differences might result in drastic swings in battles! With so much at stake, mech designers involved in these prestigious design projects often continued to iterate on them despite finishing the job! In this instance, Gloriana had an extra reason to pour more effort into updating the Star Dancer. Her brother’s life depended on it! Since she possessed the capability to work on its design, she would do her best to draw out as much strength out of it as possible! Ves made sure to keep a distance from the siblings. He held back his curiosity and tried his best not to listen in or study the projected design. An expert mech always incorporated numerous advanced technologies and design applications. The Star Dancer almost certainly incorporated many innovations exclusive to the Hexers or the Wodins. Since Ves wasn’t formally involved in the project, he had no right to be exposed to the Star Dancer’s design! "Miaow." While Gloriana outlined her improvements, Clixie somehow ended up in Brutus’ arms. The severe-looking brother finally softened his grave expression and played with the cat in his arms. "Huh. Turns out being a cat person runs in the blood." Ves remarked. "Meow." Ves turned to the cat biting at his shoes and kicked his naughty pet away. "I know you’re anxious to return to the Scarlet Rose, but we can’t leave yet! Be patient and make do with Gloriana’s snacks!" "Meow meow!" Lucky angrily swung his tail at Ves before skulking off. Ever since they were rescued by the Glory Battalion, they hadn’t been given an opportunity to return to the ship they hijacked from the Fridaymen. Neither Lucky nor Ves were pleased! With all of the Breyer alloy the mysterious escape pod could produce, Lucky felt wrong to be deprived of what he considered to be his rightful prize! After all, it was mostly due to his abilities that they managed to conquer the Scarlet Rose! As for Ves, he formed a lot of ambitions for this valuable material. It wasn’t any day that Ves randomly found a seemingly endless source of Breyer alloy! As long as the loop he discovered continued to supply him with materials, he could use it to build a lot of powerful assets! He formed a lot of ambitious plans. Depending on the maximum sustainable output of Breyer alloy, he could completely transform his life in a couple of years of time! Yet now that Gloriana not only dragged him away from the Scarlet Rose, but also placed a prize crew onto his newly-conquered ship, Ves couldn’t help but be worried. It had already been several days. Before he departed, Ves made sure to halt the loop and keep the anomalous escape pod shut in its launch tube. Would the escape pod and its frightening occupant remain in place? Ves didn’t know the answer to this question. As time continued to pass, he couldn’t help but dread what might happen. It would be awful if the Hexers discovered this secret! Any day now, the mummified woman might wake up, or her escape pod might start appearing on the Stellar Chaser! Any change was detrimental to his interests. Ves was not among his Avatars, Battle Criers or Sentinels right now. Every single ship in the fleet belonged to the Wodins! There was nowhere he could hide this anomaly. Once the Hexers discovered the potential worth of the self-replicating escape pod, they would probably claim it for themselves! Fortunately, nothing happened so far. The Hexers didn’t appear to have discovered the unusual escape pod. The undermanned prize crew tasked with running the Scarlet Rose were too busy repairing all of the damage and neglect she accumulated over the past month. While Ves chatted with Ranya, Lucky decided to take solace in Gloriana’s company. At least she never kicked his body for no reason! "Meow." "Oh Lucky! Are you hungry, little buddy?" "Meow!" "Hihihi! You’re so cute. I’ve got plenty of shiny minerals stashed in my workshop. I’ll go grab some." While Gloriana left for the storehouses, Lucky jumped up to the work table and called for Clixie. "Meow." "Miaow." The furry cat squirmed out of Brutus’ grasp and landed next to Lucky. The two cats pressed against each other and conserved in their cat language. In the meantime, Brutus stared at Lucky in fascination. Gloriana returned soon afterwards and fed Lucky a chunk of medium-grade exotic, much to the cat’s delight! While Lucky crunched the hard mineral with his teeth, Brutus glanced at his sister. "I thought you only had one cat." She casually stroked her hand on Lucky’s back while he was occupied with his latest snack. "Oh, Lucky here isn’t mine. He belongs to Ves!" "Truly? While I’m not as good at understanding technology as you, this cat looks extraordinary! Even I know that any creature that is capable of eating exotics is just as valuable as Clixie, if not more!" "Don’t bother asking me where you can find a cat like Lucky. I’ve already tried to search where I can buy one myself, but not even the Terrans and Rubarthans are offering a mechanical creature that is anywhere close to him. He’s unique as far as I know, and Ves upgraded him several times. His tiger stripes weren’t there before!" Brutus spent some time twinkling his eyes at the fascinating cat, but in the end he got back to listening to Gloriana’s work. An hour went by until he finally returned to the Serendipity. The fleet was still in unfriendly space. The Crecia Republic was no friend of the Hexadric Hegemony. While unlikely, the chance the Fridaymen might launch an ambush on their fleet was still a possibility! With the departure of Brutus, Ves felt a lot less tense. Even when he was far away from Brutus, he still experienced the expert pilot’s influence in the form of his force of will. Expert pilots always influenced their surroundings with their expanding spiritual manifestations! Even when Brutus decided to give Ves a chance, he still felt as if he was being scrutinized all the time! With such an expansive force of will, Ves had to go to the opposite side of the Stellar Chaser in order to escape its reach! "What an overprotective brother!" Ves muttered and shook his head. He found it curious that all of the other expert pilots he met before did not interact with their surroundings as much as Brutus. Why did the latter’s force of will react more actively to the presence of people? Was it due to the nature of his force of will, or did the Hexers utilize some methods to grant their expert pilots more strength? "Maybe the second-rate states truly grasped a method to enhance the strength of expert pilots!" Even if that was the case, it wasn’t anything Ves could access for now. His identity and power was wholly insufficient to access such secrets. Besides, Ves didn’t really have to worry about expert pilots for the moment. For now, he should focus on strengthening the mundane mech pilots under his employ. The foundation must be built up first before he could think about adding upper-level strength to his forces! As the ships finished cycling their FTL drives and transitioned into the higher dimensions, they would soon be arriving back to the Ylvaine Protectorate. Unlike before where Ves had to avoid enemy pursuit, the Wodins clearly weren’t as concerned about any possible attacks. They directly charted a fairly direct route back to the Ylvaine Protectorate in order to leave the Crecia Republic as soon as possible. Ves looked forward to reuniting with his family and subordinates. He still had a lot to do when he reached the Kesseling System. Both the LMC and the new family needed to find some new directions to focus upon for the upcoming years. Already, a lot of time had passed since he made the decision to leave the Komodo Star Sector. With the Five Scrolls Compact’s shadow starting to loom over this star sector, Ves felt more and more compelled to get away as fast as possible! At the very least he had a very clear goal to work towards now. With the opening of the Red Ocean Dwarf Galaxy, he could couch his decision as something other than a cowardly decision to avoid danger! "I still have a long way to go before I’m qualified to enter the Red Ocean." Thinking about all of the MTA merits required to earn passage through a beyonder gate continued to be a thorny problem. Even many mech designers from the first-rate states weren’t capable of earning so many merits! Ves had to find ways to make extraordinary contributions to the MTA in order to accumulate so many merits in a short amount of time! More and more, the thought of partnering up with others capable of earning MTA merits came to mind. As long as he and Gloriana found eight more partners, they could split up the burden amongst each other! Trying to earn with 10 million MTA merits sounded a lot more doable than trying to earn 100 million MTA merits! Yet whenever he thought about sharing power and resources, Ves quickly rejected the option. There was no way Ves was willing to put his trust in others! Only Gloriana deserved his trust! As for others, forget it! After Ghanso and the Bright Republic screwed him over, Ves vowed to never put his life in someone else’s hands again! "With my abilities and advantages, I can definitely find ways to earn lots of merits!" He needed to start with completing missions for the Rim Guardians right away. The sooner he began to earn some merits, the sooner he was done! "I’ll have to put all of my efforts on promoting William Urbesh to expert candidate as fast as possible!" While there was still plenty of time left to complete this task for the Rim Guardians, Ves believed he already took far too much time. If not for his kidnapping, he probably would have been able to move on already! Ves gained a lot of inspiration and enjoyed a lot of time to think over his plans in recent times. Along the way, he didn’t neglect what he should do with Silent William. As long as he succeeded with his experiment, then not only should he be able to elevate William to expert candidate, but also any other mech pilot with spiritual potential! Of course, Ves couldn’t make much use of this experimental method lest he draw the MTA’s attention to himself. Besides, Ves only formed some assumptions in his mind. He still needed to test them thoroughly, and to do that he needed lots of test subjects!