Chapter 4119 Beyond Normality Professor Anton Mendoza became paralyzed for more than a year. The realization that he had been following the wrong path and worked towards a dead end in mech design was a substantial blow to his life as well as his design philosophy. It became so bad that he was forced to take a break from his duties. His conflicting thoughts simply left him unable to deliver adequate work because he constantly questioned his usual design solutions. What previously looked fine and serviceable suddenly became inadequate and not sufficient in his warped perspective. It left him feeling so incompetent that he wasted hours and hours of work time to refine his solutions or come up with other methods to present a better possibility. While his delays would have been mildly acceptable if he was able to deliver measurably superior results like what Carmin Olson had done, the problem was that Anton failed to improve the performance of any of the designs he was responsible for during that time! "Stop what you are doing and go home to rethink your design philosophy and approach towards mech designs." A Master Mech Designer spoke to the once-reliable Anton in a tired voice. "You must take a good look at yourself and your work and discover how you want to go forward. Do not return until you are able to meet our requirements again." The time he spent 'at home' was one of the most miserable periods of his life. He felt as if he was spending entire days in a dark and dim room. Sometimes, he opened up his desk terminal and played with the design interface, only to shake his head and discard whatever he had been doodling into the garbage bin. "This can't work! Why can't I make anything work?" Ask him to design a regular implementation, and he would be able to deliver one in time with minimal problems. Ask him to design an element of a mech that was supposed to perform at least three percent better than normal, and he would become completely lost. Professor Anton Mendoza discovered to his dismay that his long pattern of pursuing greater efficiency through developing stable and incremental design improvements left him unable to develop greater innovations. When he looked back on his entire body of work as a mech designer, he recognized that every instance of improvement amounted to gradual evolutions over prior generations. While that served him well up to this point, he was unable to spark any substantial revolutions in his design approach that could allow him to make substantial leaps forward! The fact that Professor Carmin Olson had exercised her design abilities to a greater degree and became proficient at pulling out one revolutionary design solution after another was a testament to her superior if risky approach. "It is no wonder she has not only caught up, but also surpassed my level in mech design recently!" Professor Anton gasped. This realization was a major blow to his ego and psyche, one that sent his mentality to a dark pit that he seemed helpless to climb out of. For months he spent his time in a fugue where he became disgusted by his prior work and wished that he had taken a more bold approach. When it seemed that he couldn't dig himself out of this dark and bottomless abyss, his friends and colleagues from work became increasingly more concerned about him and forcibly pulled him out of his house. "You can't hole yourself up in your bedroom and eat nutrient packs all day! You need to take a sabbatical, Professor Anton. Come. Let us take you on a tour throughout the Friday Coalition. You should see what the mechs of the Gauge Dynasty and the Konsu Clan are like. Maybe you will find the answer that you need from their machines." Professor Anton proceeded to travel around for three whole years. Though his friends and colleagues couldn't accompany him all the way, there were plenty of other mech designers from different locales who were more than willing to tour him around for a fee. Although he never found his light after a single encounter with a different mech, he slowly pulled himself out of his malaise as he observed one mech after another. He slowly reacquainted himself with his original love and appreciation for mechs. By looking at them from the perspective of an enthusiast rather than a professional, Anton slowly regained his motivation and drive for his work. It was only near the end of his tour as he happened to attend a public parade organized by the Carnegie Group that he encountered the spark he needed to reignite his passion and drive for mech design! An expert rifleman mech flew around in the air and unleashed one resonance-empowered shot after another at a high-quality practice bot. As a Senior Mech Designer, Professor Anton happened to recognize the weapon model. He knew that the gun shouldn't be powerful enough to punch through the practice bot's armor. Even if the expert rifleman mech was able to add extra power to its shots, the energy still shouldn't be sufficient to inflict heavy damage. What happened completely proved him wrong. The practice bot's sturdy and high-quality armor plating offered almost no resistance as the energy beam pierced from one end to the other end of the machine! By the time the expert mech shot the bot full of holes, Professor Anton sat frozen at his seat for many more minutes. This single demonstration made a profound impression on his views. As he finally ended his tour and returned to the territories of the Vermeer Group, he finally found a viable way forward. "I… can't break the rules on my own. I don't have an innovator's mindset." Professor Anton frankly admitted to himself. Decades of adopting the same approach to his studies and work had fixed him onto a path that left him with limited options. However, it was still necessary for him to make the jump if he ever wanted to make himself worthy enough to break through to Master. "Then… if I cannot do it myself, then I will do it with the help of another!" His solution? Work with expert pilots! These were the only individuals that he could have access to that were able to distort the laws of nature just by experiencing strong thoughts and emotions! Everything about them was a walking contradiction of science. Although the MTA no doubt conducted a lot of studies on the metaphysical powers and properties of expert pilots, to a simple Senior like Anton Mendoza they were beyond the reach of conventional science. "And that is exactly what I need to give my work the push it needs!" When he finally returned to work, he did so with a solid direction in mind. He almost immediately applied to work on expert mech design projects. Though his superiors weren't comfortable with granting his request right away, Professor Anton followed his old methods once again. He returned to his old duties and performed his job with no complaints. He presented reliable results and did everything to meet everyone's expectations. At a certain point, he not only rehabilitated his reputation, but also accrued enough merits to assist with the design of a low-tier expert mech! "My hard work has paid off!" He sighed in relief. That started a string of projects where Professor Anton applied himself to the expert mech design projects as best as possible. He spent more hours behind the design terminal than others. He took on all of the crappy, tedious and most time-consuming assignments. He studied additional knowledge on how to design expert mechs and what to pay attention to in order to accomplish better results. He spoke to every expert pilot that he could gain access to in order to understand their mentalities and how they were able to do the impossible. Although opportunities to participate in expert mech designs were few and far in between, he did not give up and tried to earn high evaluations from his peers and supervisors in the few instances he got lucky. Eventually, he was entrusted with more responsibility and was allowed to make a more substantial contribution to a ranged expert mech design! The resulting expert mech of the Blue Cavalry bore his signature efficient energy transmission systems, allowing it to expend significantly more power in practice sessions or retain more energy at the end. His work apparently satisfied his superiors to the point where he finally received the opportunity to lead an expert mech design project a year later! Of course, he was only tasked with designing a relatively basic and affordable low-tier expert mech for an expert pilot that had only recently broken through. "The name's Leif Stixson." The expert pilot of the Vermeer Group introduced himself in a rather relaxed tone. "So you're the Senior who's in charge of my new expert mech?" Professor Anton smiled as he tried his best to hold in his excitement. "That is correct, Venerable Stixson." "Hmm. You don't look like much. I was really looking forward to having a Master design my first expert mech." "Our Masters are currently preoccupied with other vital design and research projects. While I cannot promise you that my work will be as good as theirs, I have prior experience with working on expert mech designs. You are in good hands, Venerable Stixson." Since Venerable Stixson was a rifleman mech specialist, Professor Anton felt right at home. Due to the rather low budget and limited resources of the design project, there was not much room for experimentation or innovation, which imposed a lot of constraints on Anton. If he was his old self, then he would have abided by these restrictions and tried his best to optimize the mech design within the boundaries set by reality. However, the Professor Anton Mendoza of today was completely different from the Senior Mech Designer who bore the same name a few years ago! Although his work up until his point looked almost identical, his true ambitions were no longer as modest as before. "This will be the turning point of my career!" He claimed as his eyes burned with passion. "This will be the mech design that will help me break through my current limits!" As he began to conduct his work and lead his design team, his work did not appear to be unusual at first. He deliberately came up with a boring and limited draft design to keep everyone comfortable and to reassure everything was fine. He did what was expected of him and provided conventional design solutions that seemingly led the expert rifleman mech design in a steady and stable direction. What no one knew was that Professor Anton secretly spent time on a parallel expert rifleman mech design that was substantially different from the proper version. The newer and less familiar design incorporated riskier and more radical design solutions, some of which Professor Anton had been working on for more than a year. Although he wasn't quite sure whether his new and improved design work could pass muster, he felt good about what he was doing. There was only one problem. "It doesn't go far enough!" Anton banged his fist against his desk in frustration! "My latest work is more than an evolution, but far from reaching the point of a revolution. What am I missing?! Why can't I push the efficiency of my design even further?" Although he had great confidence that his more unusual version of the expert mech would be able to achieve better results, the differences were still within the range of normality. "Normality is not what I am trying to accomplish! My goal has always been to break through the boundaries that everyone has taken for granted!" He became more frustrated and angry with himself as considered his deviating work to be a failed attempt to reinvent himself. He tried to tweak his work over and over before he finally recognized that this was not the right approach. "I need to go further." He concluded with bleary, red-shot eyes. "My expert mech isn't exceptional enough at this point. I have to break more rules!" His thoughts became increasingly more frenzied as he brainstormed for more solutions. If he let go of the rules and boundaries that had constrained his work before, what more could he accomplish with his design philosophy?