Chapter 2453: Impoverished Charlatan After adding the Ferocious Piranha design to the pile of completed projects, Ves studied the final remaining project. The Cat's Paw design was the last one to be completed for a good reason. The heavy artillery mech was so big that it simply demanded a lot more work to take shape. Designing it was a great endeavor. It did not help that Ves and Gloriana were the only mech designers who effectively worked on it. As a second-class mech, the machine codenamed Cat's Paw contained a wealth of advanced components with very advanced features. The powerful weapon loadout consisted of a pair of heavy Xcordon gauss cannons, a pair of heavy positron beam cannons and a pair of light pulse cannons all needed to rely on a host of supporting systems to function correctly. Ves and Gloriana had to cram a lot of different systems into the Cat's Paw. While a heavy mech possessed a lot of capacity, it carried a lot of weapons, each of which imposed additional demands. The internal volume of the design quickly filled up with power systems, damage control systems, heat management systems, targeting systems, sensor systems, communication systems and other necessities such as armor and ammunition bays. Even though Ves had already reached the standard of a second-class mech designer, he still needed to strain his mind in order to fit the pieces of the puzzle together. Fortunately, this was something that Gloriana excelled at. Previously, she prioritized the Valkyrie Redeemer Project due to its importance to the Hegemony. Ves did not begrudge her obvious favoritism, but he was a little disappointed that her priorities were skewed. If she was a proper member of the Larkinson Clan, she should have devoted her efforts to finishing the Cat's Paw Project first. The Valkyrie Redeemer exclusively benefited a client while the Cat's Paw directly strengthened the Larkinson Clan. "Well, it's okay." He shrugged. Producing the Cat's Paw was difficult. Compared to the other mech models that were exclusive to the clan, the Cat's Paw far exceeded them in cost, scope and complexity. In fact, Ves wasn't confident that the LMC was able to fabricate the second-class artillery mechs in its current state. He would have to outsource its productions to the Hexers or wait until his clan finally received its factory ship in order to commence production! "Even then, I'll have to prepare all of the advanced materials needed to produce this difficult mech!" The Cat's Paw was an expensive and difficult-to-produce machine. Even if Ves and his crew managed to establish a working production line, the production rate was bound to disappoint. Was it worth it? Definitely! Once the factory ship produced enough Cat's Paw mechs to fill up her bunkers, the Larkinson Clan gained a very powerful mobile bulwark! Its budget was at least 50 percent higher than that of the Valkyrie Redeemer. While comparing heavy artillery mechs to light skirmishers was like comparing apples to oranges, looking at cost was a good way to judge the power of a machine. "It costs 600 million hex credits to fabricate one of these big bastards, and that only accounts for the cost of materials and licensing fees." The actual cost was higher because Ves had to account for the cost of running the factory ship, the wages he needed to pay for the production crews and many other factors. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢 Rather than see it as a downside, Ves instead considered it a boon. The power of the Cat's Paw was so impressive that it should serve his clan well for at least a decade. Its usefulness could even stretch on longer if he committed to implementing incremental updates. In comparison, the Bright Warrior was already on its way out. Its current performance could no longer keep up with the demands of the growing Larkinson Clan. The troublesome aspect about the modular mech platform was that it was a third-class mech that incorporated a couple second-class elements, most notably its armor system. This meant that elevating its performance was not as simple as replacing a few outdated components here and there. Ves would have to rip out most of the internals of the Bright Warrior and design something completely different in their place. To put it simply, if Ves wanted to improve the Cat's Paw, he could simply make enough changes to produce version 1.01 or even 1.1. For the Bright Warrior, nothing less than a Mark II version sufficed. "Ugh. That's going to be a major project at least. Should I start on it right after the wedding or should I wait a few more years?" Once Ves finished looking over the expansive technical design schematics of the Cat's Paw, he was very satisfied at how it turned out. While it still required more time to test and optimize even further, its foundation was sound and its performance parameters were already up to standard. The only issue was that Ves was still unsure about its spiritual characteristics. Of all of his design spirits, only a handful directly enhanced the performance of ranged mechs. The newly-upgraded Illustrious One provided a noticeable boost to crystals and components based on luminar technology, but the Cat's Paw utilized conventional weapon systems. The Solemn Guardian played an indispensable role in popularizing the Soldier product line, but that was solely due to its duty-based glow. "My clansmen already have the Golden Cat." This left him with Ylvaine. Not James, but the spiritual fragment version of the prophet. "Is there even a difference between the two these days?" Whatever the case, of his entire collection of design spirits, Ylvaine was the only one that was capable of providing active targeting assistance to mech pilots. Unlike the predictive targeting systems sold by dedicated equipment developers, the assistance provided by the design spirit worked on entirely different principles. As long as Ylvaine assisted the mech pilots to the fullest extent, they were capable of hitting critical targets with unerring accuracy! Of course, Ves already noticed that this help did not come for free. During the Sand War, Ylvaine carefully rationed the ability to the most dedicated Kronon marksman mech specialists. These days, Ylvaine was forced to ration its existing spiritual energy reserves even more! When the Friday Coalition turned the Ylvaine Protectorate into its puppet state, the Kronon Dynasty was forced to scrap all of its Holy Soldier and Deliverer mechs. The loss of hundreds of thousands of Ylvainan mechs directly crippled Ylvaine's spiritual feedback. These days, it was only able to harvest the spiritual feedback of a small number of exiled Ylvaining mech pilots. That was enough to sustain its existence, but it was not enough fuel any further growth. "I guess you'll have to rely on quality rather than quantity." Ves surmised. The Cat's Paw mech should help a bit, but Ylvaine's still wasn't optimistic. He needed the help of an expert pilot in order to gain a singular powerful source of spiritual feedback. "Maybe I can do something about that as well." With his current capabilities, producing expert pilots was no longer an impossibility. While Ves didn't think he could produce expert pilots on command, he could probably invest in a batch of 100 promising mech pilots and produce a yield of 1 or 2 expert pilots after a couple of years. The yield would be drastically higher if he subjected the pilots to a lot of intensive combat! The only reason why he hadn't done so already was because his clan already attracted too much heat. "This will have to wait. For now, I should be happy with Cat's Paw mechs piloted by regular Ylvainans." Ves ultimately did not add too much to the Cat's Paw spiritual design. Its Ylvainan mech pilots already received a huge morale boost when they piloted a mech blessed by the prophet. The only triggered ability he added to the design was a more refined and reliable version of the Deliverer's Guided Aim ability. The concept was the same. Ves expanded upon it by adapting it to the different weapon systems of the Cat's Paw. He also tried to optimize and ease any possible input from Ylvaine in order to reduce the cost of activating the Guided Aim ability. Ves contemplated on adding another triggered ability, but nothing came up. The heavy mechs were so cumbersome that they would likely spend most of their time slotted in a bunker. There was a limit to what they could do in their positions. "This is enough, I suppose. Aside from the requirements mandated by the standard template, I don't need to add anything else. The mech is already strong enough." In the end, he tweaked and finalized his contribution to the mech design. He sent it back to Gloriana so that she could bring it to completion by herself. "Well, that's it. I'm free now." He felt liberated now that he effectively completed six mech design projects. As this was the first time the LMC adopted such a hefty schedule, Ves wanted to make some changes for the next round of projects. Enough time had passed for the combined fleet to reach the border of the Nyxian Gap. As this was a special moment to everyone, Ves headed to the bridge in order to witness the crossing. "We're almost out." Calabast noted. She had already arrived to bridge by the time that Ves entered through the blast doors. "I guess everyone is sick and tired of staying one more day in the Nyxian Gap." "That's an understatement." The two chatted a little as the fleet came nearer and nearer to the border. Once the fleet finally passed through the invisible barrier, the Larkinsons and Hexers finally got rid of their persistent unease. Ves noticed the difference even more. When he peeked into the imaginary realm, he no longer witnessed the mighty vortex that held the Nyxian Gap together. He only saw a huge mass of darkness in its place. A lot of Larkinsons turned emotional for a moment. Some had tears in their eyes while others spontaneously hugged each other. Even the Kinners manning the bridge cheered and celebrated the occasion! "We're safe again!" "No more pirates!" "I need a vacation!" Once the Larkinons regained their composure, they quickly readied themselves for the critical moment. Right now, the combined fleet exited into the middle of nowhere. It was too difficult for the MTA investigation fleet to travel to these precise coordinates, so Ves had agreed to bring his fleet to a star system in the vicinity. "Commence FTL travel." With bated breath, many Larkinsons and Wodins observed the captured warships as every other ship and mech distanced themselves from the potential hazards. Though the engineers had worked hard on the Gravada Knarlax, the Ailing Frey, the Cartin Motiva, the Livid Seven, the Artis Fly and the Sundown, no one was able to ensure that they worked normally. After some final checks, the first pirate warship initiated her FTL drive. The armed frigate called the Sundown easily slipped into FTL. When the captain of the warship successfully communicated back to the fleet with a borrowed quantum communication node, a lot of people slowly let out their breaths. "The Sundown reports that all of her essential systems are running normally!" The Artis Fly followed suit. Then came the destroyers. The Livid Seven and the Cartin Motiva exhibited no problems, but Ves grew a little worried when the Ailing Frey came next. The ship suffered a lot of damage during the previous battle. Fortunately, the emergency repairs held up as the ship reluctantly zipped away. Then came the largest and riskiest ship of all. The Gravada Knarlax lost huge chunks of her structure. She even lost one of her primary turrets. With all of this damage, no one was sure whether she was able to reach another star system. Yet with all of the effort put into inspecting, repairing and tuning up her FTL drive, the damaged warship eventually disappeared as well. "Success!"