Living together with Gloriana aboard a single ship was an entirely new experience to Ves. While he had to get used to Gloriana’s idiosyncrasies such as her expression of her faith, all in all he felt as if he stepped into a paradise. After spending so much time alone, he began to rediscover the pleasures of life. Talking, hugging, kissing and working together with Gloriana brightened his life like never before. Whereas before his life revolved around his work, the addition of a woman by his side introduced a lot of brightness in his daily routine. His days with Gloriana brought so much pleasure and contentment to him that his paranoia flared up from time to time. How could he be so lucky to mesh so well with another mech designer? It sounded too good to be true! For this reason, Ves never let up his vigilance. He continually sent out Lucky to harvest more data from the Stellar Chaser’s databanks. He also sent out his spiritual projections to inspect each and every crew member aboard the ship to see if they weren’t hidden Compact agents or anything. Nothing. Ves found nothing suspicious about his girlfriend among his nightly investigations. She appeared to be exactly as she presented herself as, and that confused him for some time. As someone who frequently lied and resorted to misdirection, he couldn’t really understand how Gloriana could be so honest and forthright to everyone. From all of the communication logs he skimmed over, he never got the impression that Gloriana exhibited any hypocrisy or duplicity. "She doesn’t have to." He realized. "The life she has led is different from mine." She never had to fight for her life. She was protected around the clock by well-equipped guards and mechs. She mostly resided in the safest places in the Scimitar System and the rest of the Hegemony. In addition, Gloriana did not have any interactions with scoundrels, pirates, spies and other scum. She never needed to adopt a flexible attitude to protect herself or get ahead in life. Her mother and the Wodin Dynasty had already paved most of the way for her success. Gloriana enjoyed an enviable life. Though she still had to work hard on her account in order to meet her mother’s incredibly high expectations, she only needed to be a good mech designer. She didn’t even have to sully her hands by engaging in politics, which was an important factor in keeping her pure! It made sense once Ves regarded Gloriana as a product of the Wodin Dynasty. With thousands of descendants, each Wodin born into their name was expected to fulfill a specific purpose. Just like many other noble houses or dynasties, those who disgraced their families or ended up as good-for-nothings would be stripped of their esteemed names! As a prominent and future high-ranking mech designer, the Wodins obviously treated Gloriana as a treasure to their entire dynasty. They did not raise her to become the next matriarch. They raised her to become their principal mech designer! Though Ves wasn’t completely comfortable with this arrangement, he knew it was a fair one. He wasn’t really sure what that meant in terms of their relationship. Would he become a potency of the Wodins once he married her? If they expected him to worship the ground that women walked upon, then he would definitely take issue! Still, the joy he gained in his life far outweighed his concerns. In any case, becoming a potency of the Wodin Dynasty meant he also enjoyed their protection. Nonetheless, if Ves wanted to earn the Wodin Dynasty’s approval, he had to show to them that he could bring much more value to them than any other potential suitor to Gloriana! The suggestions that she put forward troubled him continually. "Producing a bunch of masterworks derived from excellent second-class mech designs will kill two birds with one stone." She told him during their cuddling time in the lounge. Their cats cuddled together as well below their feet. "Not only will you be able to prove you’re better than the Journeymen from the Hegemony, but we can also earn an incredible amount of hex credits in the process to fund our upcoming expedition! It’s a perfect solution!" Ves smiled awkwardly at her. "I admire your enthusiasm, but you ask too much of me. Crafting my first masterwork mech a few months ago was just a fluke. I keep telling you over and over again that masterworks can never be produced on demand!" "We don’t have to make too many masterworks! Just a handful is enough for us to afford a factory ship!" "How can that be?" He frowned. "As far as I know, the factory ships up to Hegemony standard are ludicrously expensive!" She smiled and patted her forearm. "Oh, you silly boy, you underestimate the value of high-quality custom mechs. There are many wealthy scions in the Hegemony who would gladly pay a lot of hex credits to pilot a mech that can bring out the most of their strengths. If their mech is a masterwork on top of that, they can not only be assured that they are piloting the best that their money could buy, but they can also earn a lot of prestige from owning such a prized and rare machine!" He understood both of those arguments. He knew that wealthy and powerful mech pilots like Lord Javier of House Eneqqin or Lady Miralix of House Laterna were willing to pay enormous sums to maximize their chances of success. In their perspective, spending five to ten times the price of a standard mech was more than worth the expenditure if they achieved a lot of success in battle! In their societies, success in battle directly translated into greater reputation, which would pay them a lot of dividends in the future such as being appointed to senior leadership positions. As for masterwork mechs, they were so rare that each of them were pretty much regarded as trophies. Their excellent craftsmanship and exquisitely optimized performance would definitely earn the admiration of peers! While their actual performance did not differ too much from non-masterwork mechs, the symbolic value they held simply couldn’t be bought on demand, which justified their insane price premiums! "In other words, wealthy people are willing to spend insane amounts to satisfy their vanity." He summed up. "Vanity is not inherently bad when it gets you ahead." She added. "When I tell you that Hexers are willing to fund our factory ship to obtain an excellent masterwork mech, I really mean it. One thing you have to know about the second-class mech market is that it features a considerably higher price ceiling than what you are used to! The scions of the matriarchal dynasties are even willing to pay a thousand times the price of a standard mech to pilot an excellent, custom masterwork mech!" Translated to the Bright Republic, that meant that a mech pilot from one of the founding families was willing to pay 60 billion credits or more for a custom masterwork mech! Such an immense price tag was more expensive than many expert mechs, and it was mostly due to the fact that it was a masterwork! Ves shook his head. "Even if I can accept that there are moneybags in the Hegemony who are willing to invest so much in a masterwork mech, that still leaves the fundamental problem of making them. Why are you so sure that we can produce not one, but several within a decade?" Her grin widened. "Have you forgotten about my specialty?" He had grown more and more familiar with what she was capable of. Her design philosophy and her high standards pushed her to excel in almost every matter concerning mechs. Whether it was offense, defense or mobility, she sought to develop a thorough understanding of all of them in order to ensure that every aspect of her work was as flawless as possible! If not for the incredible capabilities and processing power of her Erestal-015 implant, she would have never been capable of keeping up with all of her studies! In any case, her targeted focus on designing and building the perfect vessel meant that her design philosophy applied to her mech designs in a very odd manner. The best way to describe it was that her design philosophy imposed an effect that was opposite to Murphy’s law. What could go wrong might not go wrong. Any weak points and flaws in her designs became a little less serious in practice. The reason why her design philosophy fell under Class IX rather than Class I was that this effect did not necessarily interfere with other effects applied to mechs. Instead, her design philosophy helped them perform better by mitigating some of the flawed and suboptimal implementations! It was no wonder the MTA regarded her so highly. Her specialty effectively amplified the specialties of other mech designers in collaborative design projects! The extreme and diverse range of possibilities of Class IX design philosophies mostly produced garbage, but occasionally a gem like Gloriana came around to redeem her class! Of course, at this stage the effect was barely noticeable. It also remained to be seen whether Gloriana could progress to the point where it was worthwhile to involve her in a project. However, Ves remembered that her specialty also played a role in fabricating mechs aside from designing them. She already told him that she always fabricated her custom mechs in person to achieve the most ideal result. Having studied some of her project logs, Ves recalled that the quality of her end products always turned out to be high. When Ves connected these outcomes to her specialty, he began to make a very bold realization. He looked shocked at her. "Don’t tell me.. your specialty is geared towards producing masterworks?" "Hihihi! You guessed it!" She raised her hands towards her mouth. "How can I design the perfect vessel but fail in the execution? Such outcomes spoil much of what I am working towards! For this reason, achieving the highest quality possible in producing a mech has always been my second ambition! Nothing brings more fulfillment to me than succeeding in creating a masterwork mech!" The ambition she set forward frankly scared Ves. Almost no one could reliably produce masterwork mechs! Not even Master Mech Designers could consistently produce them, and some still hadn’t managed to produce them despite their formidable skill! "From the rumors I’ve heard, only Star Designers are able to make masterwork mechs on demand." He spoke. "There are exceptions. You know that, right? Some mech designers have managed to achieve this threshold at the Master-level." "You’re not a Master." Ves pointedly retorted. "You’re still a Journeyman, and a very young one at that. Specialty or not, at this stage in your progression, you are incredibly far away from producing masterworks on a consistent basis." She never let up on her optimism. "That may be true, but as long as I make some progress, my chances of making one may become high enough that we can succeed in producing at least a couple of masterworks in the next decade!" "Why are you so confident?" "Because I have you, a mech designer who has already built his first masterwork! Do you know how hard I tried to approach the mech designers in the Hegemony who have made similar achievements? It’s incredibly hard for them to take notice of me, especially because they are already esteemed Seniors or Masters who prefer to collaborate within their own networks!" "And you think that working with me can solve this problem?" "Why not?" She smiled. "I believe in you, Ves. What’s more, I believe that combining our design philosophies will allow us to achieve remarkable results!" She sure expected much out of their union! Whether their collaboration projects actually achieved the outcome she expected was still in question. "I don’t think we’ll be able to make enough masterwork mechs to fund our entire grand expedition." He was afraid she would go mad or something if they failed to meet this goal by the time he wanted to depart. Surprisingly, she wasn’t as intolerant as he thought. "That’s okay, Ves. We should just do the best we can and earn as much money as we can make in the next few years. If we still come up short, we can always cover our deficit by drawing upon outside investment. The Wodin Dynasty and various external parties would be glad to invest in our ventures as long as we show at least some promise together." That sounded a lot more reasonable. Combining both solutions to fund their grand expedition gave them enough flexibility to go forward regardless of their results!