Chapter 2618: Joshua's Next Steed The sudden emergence of augmentation contracts excited the Larkinson Clan! Not just mech designers, but also other professionals became interested in signing such a fantastic deal. Exobiologists, engineers, ship captains, mech pilots and other people were already applying to sign this new contract! The storm that arose from this development was so disruptive that Ves was forced to cease his personal experiments and leave his mancave. In order to avoid wasting too much time on pointless arguments, he decided to discuss this problem with his two closest confidantes. "Major Verle. Calabast. Come in and take a seat." Ves called as the two leaders entered his main office. Once they arrived in front of Ves' desk, they took their seats. "You cooked up quite a huge problem for us." Major Verle began. "You moved too rashly, Ves." Calabast leaned back on her chair. The woman patted her lap with her palm, causing Lucky to wake up from his perch on the desk. "Meow." The gem cat flew over. When Calabast stretched one of her legs, Lucky plopped his body over her sinuous shin. Ves called up a document that estimated the total cost of augmentations if everyone requested a high-class implant. "I never expected that word of this contract would spread beyond the Design Department. While it is incredibly expensive to sign this deal with a mech designer, our profession is very good at making money. That makes this agreement worthwhile. As long as the mech designer doesn't die in an accident or something, our Design Department will definitely earn a high return on investment. This isn't necessarily the case in other sectors." Major Verle sighed. "You're right. Investing 100 billion hex credits to augment a mech designer is definitely worth it because there is the possibility of earning back multiple times this sum. The same cannot be said for a mech pilot. Perhaps in one battle, that pilot might die an ignominious death. That is 100 billion hex credits down the drain. Even if the mech pilot remains alive throughout his entire service, the actual benefit we get in return might not even be worth a billion credits. It makes a lot more sense to invest in a higher-performing mech. You'll get much more bang for your buck in this instance." That was true. The fact of the matter was that the Larkison Clan simply couldn't provide so much welfare for every single clansman. Calabast raised another object. "I don't like this contract, Ves. It has an element of exploitation in it. Have you forgotten what I said to you? What you've introduced will only bring the Larkinson Clan closer to the Vraken Dynasty. Treating your clansmen as investments and adopting a mentality that is largely centered around profit and loss will turn the entire clan into a hypercompetitive rat race. Larkinsons will be forced to outdo each other, or else they will be unable to pay off their debt in their lifetimes!" She expressed a lot of ire. Ves realized that she had a point. While it wasn't wrong to improve the capabilities of his people, the wrong approach might do more harm than good. "I don't want to sacrifice happiness for performance. That was never my intention." Ves quickly replied. "Then figure something out." The three of them swapped ideas with each other. They discussed several options and solutions. With the help of Calabast's personal insights, they came up with a new and more cohesive plan. "Augmentation contracts can improve the performance of our key personnel, so we can't give them up." Ves summed up his thoughts. "However, there is no need to extend them to the general population. It's too excessive and puts too much strain on our finances. We will establish a very strict list of occupations that are eligible for this deal. For now, that includes mech designers, naval engineers, researchers, senior officers, expert candidates, expert pilots and a bunch of other people." These professions all played an essential role to the clan. Boosting their capabilities either improved the profitability of the LMC or increased the survivability of the Larkinson fleet. Even if augmenting certain people wouldn't actually deliver a profit to the Larkinson Clan, it was still worth it to do so for other reasons. One of the most important principles added to the augmentation contract was that it did not impose a debt on the signee! This was one of Calabast's main demands. "If the Larkinson Clan begins to operate like a business, your clansmen will behave in a way that aligns with that. This is not conducive to the happiness of your people. A bit of competition is good, but too much of it will warp our culture." "We can still lose a lot of money, though. The augmentation contracts are bound to become a burden to the balance sheet." Major Verle pointed out. Calabast remained confident. "We can handle it. As long as Ves is around, we'll always be able to make more money." It was very difficult to quantify the profits and losses with this new arrangement. Ves found it difficult to accept such a murky outcome. Still, the price was not too big. "As long as we limit the eligibility of this contract, our clan won't have to pay too much money upfront. Our finances will be able to bear it, though our spending on other assets will definitely be affected." Ves concluded. This was the end of the matter. After Ves introduced the added rules, the excitement throughout the clan had died down. There simply weren't enough people who were important enough to apply for this deal. Ves knew that in the future, the burden may even be less. As long as the clan grew more prosperous, the parents might be able to use their earnings to set their children up for success. Even regular clansmen might be able to earn enough Larkinson merits to obtain some decent augmentations early in their lives. Since most augmentations were irreplaceable, this meant that augmentation contracts lost effect to those who already improved their capabilities. All in all, the augmentation contract was tailored to poorer clansmen who managed to work their way up through a combination of hard work and talent. Augmenting their capabilities yielded the most drastic increase in benefits! When Ves returned to his personal workshop, he resumed one of his personal projects. Before he was ready to prepare the Quint for another mech pilot, he had to put together a new mech for Venerable Joshua. While Ves could have assigned Joshua to one of the clan's many existing second-class mechs, this was a wasteful option. An expert pilot was capable of unleashing much greater performance if he piloted a better mech. It would have been best if Ves was able to deliver an expert mech to Venerable Joshua, but that was not an option in the short term. He had no choice but to take a step back and give the expert pilot the best possible LMC mech that he had ever designed up to this point. He actually had two mech models to choose from. The more unconventional one was fabricating another Devil Tiger to Joshua. These days, ASMAS was no longer unaffordable to Ves. A basic batch of pure ASMAS cost as much as two to three Hexer combat carriers. Gloriana probably had to make a lot of sacrifices in order to deliver a batch to him, but that was in the past. However, ASMAS at this price range was quite limited in performance. In fact, it couldn't even process Unending alloy! The only way to improve the capabilities of the initial batch of ASMAS was to upgrade it. This was insanely expensive, so much so that it was better for Ves to buy a more expensive brand of ASMAS right away. Ves did not do so. No matter how much he paid, the nanomaterial he had access to simply wasn't capable of processing first-class alloys. "Besides, the Devil Tiger is an outdated design. With my current design ability, I can design a second-class iteration that performs a lot better right out of the gate." Even then, Ves rejected this option. The Devil Tiger was a one-off experiment in his mind. Ever since his mother snatched his first masterwork mech, it belonged solely to his father. It wasn't safe to revisit his Devil Tiger design. The risk of someone associating the original with any derivative mechs was too great! Ves had little choice but to switch his selection to one of the most powerful mobile mechs he designed. The Valkyrie Redeemer and its variants immediately came to mind. He crossed out the base model and the regular variants. While each of them had their strong points, their overall performance was too average. To be honest, he really wanted to build a Valkyrie Brunhild. Its production cost was around 1.6 billion credits. The Brunhild variant not only incorporated a shield generator, but also infused a modest quantity of Rorach's Bone in its frame! The mech was incredibly suitable for Hexer expert candidates. The mech was powerful enough to protect the lives of future expert pilots, but not expensive enough to break the bank. It was too bad that Ves lacked one of the most crucial requirements to fabricate a Valkyrie Brunhild. While it was not a problem for him to purchase the materials required to fabricate a second-class mech-grade shield generator, he didn't have any way of obtaining Rorach's Bone! He knew that the Friday Coalition and the Hexadric Hegemony harvested a lot of Rorach's Bone during the Glowing Planet Campaign. However, both states treated it as a strategic material, so they were very careful about using it up. For now, only expert mechs and other high-end mechs incorporated this incredibly useful material. Ves turned his eyes to the stepped-down version, the Valkyrie Avenger. The Avenger variant cost half as much as the Brunhild variant. It employed a cheaper and non-regenerating armor system while also leaving out the shield generator. This was sufficient for most elite Hexer mech pilots, but Ves found it rather tasteless. For an expert pilot like Joshua, the Valkyrie Avenger was too weak while the Valkyrie Brunhild was unattainable. Since neither of these options were viable, Ves decided on a third solution. He designed another variant. In order to save time, Ves did not design a proper variant. Instead, he used the Valkyrie Brunhild as a base and stripped it of every element that Ves wasn't able to deliver. He replaced the entire armor system with one based entirely out of Unending alloy. Even though Ves wanted to save up this precious material for Venerable Joshua's actual expert mech, it was not a big deal to make use of it straight away. He could always recycle the Unending alloy at a later date. While Unending alloy possessed different properties than the mix of alloys employed by the armor system of the Brunhild, it was not very troublesome to perform a direct replacement. "Bygul, please optimize the armor plating layout of the rear leg sections of this design." Ves commanded. [Optimizing now. This process will take an estimated time of 5 minutes and 32 seconds.] The electronic cat dutifully said in his clipped voice. Ves smirked. With the immense processing power of the ASTERA AI core at his disposal, this kind of work no longer took hours or days to complete. If he wanted to, he could customize his new Valkyrie mech even further. While that was an attractive prospect, it took too much time to tailor the mech to Venerable Joshua. Ves didn't want to spend weeks or months on what was supposed to be a temporary stopgap solution until Venerable Joshua obtained a proper expert mech. There was another reason why he didn't want to design a custom mech. He wanted to pass on the mech to an expert candidate once Venerable Joshua moved on to an expert mech. The Valkyrie mech had to be universal enough to accommodate other mech pilots. "Besides, if I want to customize the mech even further for a specific mech pilot, I'll have to bring in Gloriana." That was not conducive to this little experiment!