"Hihihi!" Marvaine swam in a colorful tropical-themed swimming pool. A few brightly colored yellow toy ducks surrounded him from multiple directions and teasingly led him along the shallowest portion of the pool. "Quack quack quack." "Quack quack!" "I got you!" Marvaine said as he made a small leap and managed to catch the smallest and cutest little duck! Further away, Aurelia who wore a frilly pink bathing suit swam forward while being followed by an army of wet but enthusiastic cats. Her companion spirit Mana floated just in front of the soaking felines and continually encouraged them to persist! "Mew mew mew!" "Muaaa. Muaaa." "Yiaowyiaow." Meanwhile, Andraste who wore a plainer black bathing suit was climbing the stairway that led to the highest diving board. Yet before she could go any further, a certain Rubarthan Sentinel Cat jumped in front of her and made warning noises. "Miaow! Miaow!" "Awww, come on, Clixie. I'm a tough girl! I can handle this height!" "Miaow!" Clixie swiped the air with her claws in an intimidating fashion. The red-headed girl's face drooped. "Alright. I won't go further. Sheesh!" 𝚏𝗿𝗲𝐞𝐰𝚎𝕓𝐧𝚘𝘃𝗲𝐥.𝐜𝚘𝕞 Andraste soon walked along the second-highest diving board before proceeding to jump and performing a clumsy spinning dive! "Wheeeee!" Clixie tumbled into the air right after the little girl! "Miaaaaaaaaow!" As the children laughed and the cats meowed like cats, Ves and Gloriana laid on the benches positioned a short distance away from the pool. Although another battle was on the horizon, Ves and Gloriana wanted to relax and take their children on a small excursion. This was why they decided to pay another visit to the Vivacious Wai and visit one of the recently built swimming pools in Dawn City. Of course, even if they had taken their children out to enjoy a day of fun, the two mech designers couldn't get rid of their workaholic tendencies. Each of them sat in front of projected design suites and calmly tinkered with their own mech designs. Ves was in the process of finalizing the Eye Project. It should have been completed weeks or months ago, but all of the recent changes in circumstances compelled him to rethink his work a bit and incorporate a few new additions. The commercial marksman mech still retained its basic premise. Its connection to Vulcan granted the mech pilot a better understanding of the target's weak points, key components and other useful technical information. What changed was how extensively the Eye Project provided detailed information. It no longer gave its mech pilots a few obvious nudges. Instead, it was capable of supplying rich information, as much as the mech pilots were willing and able to absorb! The more Vulcan familiarized himself with a particular mech model, starship class or alien tech base, the greater the details that he was able to provide! The delivery mechanisms were also important. Previously, the Eye Project was only able to impart information directly into the mech pilot's mind through the man-machine connection. While Ves still retained this delivery method as it was fast and efficient, he also added an option to enable the Eye Project to translate its own findings into a digital format. This was a considerable expansion in functionality! This effectively meant that the Eye Project could serve as an observer or a scout for a larger mech unit. Even adding a single copy of this rifleman mech was enough to grant an entire mech force fairly detailed information about the technical strengths and weaknesses of their opponents! If that was not enough, Ves also imparted the Eye Project with its own cultivation method! Given the worsening prospects of red humanity, Ves chose to stop holding back a bit and expanded the functionality of the Eye Project. He developed a simplified edition of the Lesser Larkinson Guardian Mantra with the intention of pairing it with a commercial mech that he expected to sell quite well in the following years. The Minor Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra was not as fast and efficient as the Lesser edition. Its lower intensity meant that it was stabler and easier, making it a lot less strenuous for design spirits to manage the cultivation of so many living mechs. Ves also tweaked the deity cultivation component of this simplified mantra to favor his design spirits a little more. Every living mech that cultivated the Minor Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra supplied up to 50 percent more spiritual feedback to any connected design spirits than the other editions! This would definitely slow down the cultivation progress of the Eye Project and his future commercial mech models even further, but Ves knew the importance of differentiation. Only when there was room for more premium offerings would Ves be able to profit from designing more high-end mechs that offered better cultivation performance for vastly inflated prices! Aside from that, Ves did not want his Larkinson Army to get upstaged by rival mech forces. The Larkinson Clan earned much of its fame and prestige due to the demonstrated strength of its exclusive mechs. If hundreds of other mech forces were able to smash alien fleets with just as much ease as the Larkinson Army, then the latter would no longer be able to earn as much renown anymore! As Ves put the finishing touches on his cultivation-enhanced Eye Project, Gloriana briefly uttered a small sound of surprise. "What is it, honey?" "Dulo Voiken and Juliet Stameros have just completed their first live testing sessions of their recently completed Woodpecker Project. The performance of their work has slightly exceeded their expectations! Let me pass on the footage they just uploaded to our internal database." A new projection appeared that showed several gunmetal gray lancer mechs charging towards a thick and suspended plate of salvaged transphasic hull plating. The mechs shared a decent resemblance to the Transcendent Chargers, but featured a more modern and slightly flexible construction. Their acceleration was respectable but not too noteworthy among their mech archetype. This was because Dulo and Juliet solely treated the Woodpecker Project as a second-class mech. The only aspect that did not fit the pattern was its weapon! Each lancer mech held exceptionally long blast lances that were tipped with red. The bulbous appearance of these lance tips made it clear that they were anything but typical! As the lancer mechs accelerated closer, they eventually thrust their lances against the thick metal plate with great force! Normally, the suspended hull plating should be too thick for the lancer mechs to do anything more than drill a small hole on the surface, but the actual outcome was much different this time! The lance not only pierced deeper into the salvaged starship plating, but its red tip also exploded almost instantly afterwards, causing it to generate an internal rupture that left behind a decently sized crater! The other mechs that arrived in sequence repeated this action and drove their red-tipped lances into the same point, causing this section to become increasingly thinner and more fragile! By the time the last lancer mech drove its weapon into the expanded weak point, the metal plating had been completely breached! "That isn't all, Ves." Gloriana said. Once the new lancer mechs completed their initial charges, they pulled out a second red-tipped lance from their backs and extended it to their full lengths. The mechs then proceeded to test their capabilities against a transphasic energy shield. When they drove their lances against the shield, they inflicted a combination of kinetic and explosive damage. Each time the lancer mech struck, they inflicted damage far surpassing the normal attacks of any standard mech! Although the new lancer mechs ultimately failed to take down the transphasic energy shield, Ves did not look down on them because of that. The results attained by such a small quantity of mechs was impressive. If more lancer mechs had joined the attack, the transphasic energy shield would have easily collapsed! "These are good results." Ves remarked. "The Transcendent Chargers are more effective against mechs and unshielded targets, but the Woodpecker Project is much more optimized to quickly break open a hole in the transphasic energy shield coverage of an enemy starship." He recognized the advantages of Dulo and Juliet's new mech, considering that he had occasionally contributed to it by making it alive and connecting it to the Phase King for enhanced transphasic penetration. He hadn't been involved in much of the detailed technical development of the lancer mech design project, so he hadn't been certain whether the Woodpecker Project would be able to live up to its promises. From the results of this testing session, Ves could already conclude that it was bound to become a staple mech for at least a handful of mech legions! "The new Redlance as Dulo and Juliet have decided to call their newly completed model should be ready for mass production, just in time for the upcoming battle." Gloriana spoke. "Our mech forces probably won't be able to field more than a company of them, and their assigned mech pilots won't have enough time to master them thoroughly. The good news is that Dulo has also developed another blast lance model that is optimized for our Transcendent Charger model. They can be fabricated en masse with much greater ease, so the Eye of Ylvaine will able to launch hundreds of explosive charge attacks in the next battle." All of that was good news. Both the Redlance and the Transcendent Chargers with updated weapon loadouts should play a considerably more effective role against alien warships! So long as they were able to concentrate their damage onto a single segmented transphasic energy shield, it was possible to blow upon a hole in an alien warship's energy shield coverage with considerably greater speed and effectiveness! However, Ves understood quite well that everything had a price. The Redlance's mech frame itself was not too exceptional in terms of cost and performance. It was quite a fast and efficient machine, proving that Juliet and Dulo had spent a lot of effort into reducing waste. That did not change the fact that its disposable blast lances added a considerable cost and resource burden to the Larkinson Clan! "How much phasewater is needed to make these blast lances?" Ves asked. "The final amount that Dulo has settled upon is 5 grams." Gloriana responded. "His explanation is that anything less will decrease the penetration and destabilization strength of the blast lance too much. It will take a considerably greater quantity to breach the transphasic defenses of a starship, which is not desirable. More phasewater is always better, but the diminishing returns from this point onwards make it increasingly less economical. The current quantity happens to be a decent compromise between penetration power and cost effectiveness." Ves couldn't help but wince when he heard that each blast lance required 5 grams of phasewater in order to produce. A few grams did not sound like much, but when Ves thought about how a squad of Redlances or Transcendent Chargers could typically carry four of these weapons each, the total expenditure could easily exceed several kilograms of phasewater! What was worse was that these transphasic weapons were not enduring weapons such as energy rifles or swords. They were more akin to transphasic grenades that had been attached to the end of long poles! Each time a mech used up a blast lance, that was 5 grams of phasewater down the drain! A single relatively short engagement could easily cause the Larkinson Army to lose 5 kilograms of phasewater! If the Larkinsons were unable to claim at least that much phasewater from the spoils, then that meant that they had suffered a considerable loss! "We shouldn't use these extravagant transphasic blast lances on every occasion." Ves said with a frown. "Has Dulo Voiken designed a non-transphasic version of his blast lance?" "He did." Gloriana answered. "Their performance is considerably worse, but should still be powerful enough to down most mechs and alien starfighters with a single direct hit." That mollified Ves a bit. "That is good. I need to make another pass on their design before it enters into mass production. I can't allow the new living mechs to enter into service without a cultivation mantra!"