Despite the restrictions that Ves had to work with, he maintained a pleasant cooperation with Optaar Integrated Solutions. The company and its engineers were highly professional and did not treat him with too much contempt despite his status as a second-class mech designer. Of course, it was impossible for Optaar to exhibit awful customer service. The competition in the New Rubarth Empire was too great, and small companies that actively pissed off its customers would quickly get swept away by their rivals! Professor Reylon Kavanaugh often looked annoyed whenever Ves faced a technical problem that couldn't be solved by ordinary engineers. Nonetheless, the chief developer of the Seferath series patiently assisted his client for the sake of how much the Larkinson Clan was willing to pay for Optaar's services. Since the Seferath AQ-3M required up to 8 kilograms of phasewater to make, the development company was entitled to receive just as much phasewater as payment! There was a huge difference in profitability between the AQ-1L and the AQ-3M. Every development company wished to sell as much of their top-end transphasic products as possible because the profit margins were that much better! Ves fully understood that he was paying a disproportionate amount of money and resources in the development of the Ghost Project. Whatever budget he drafted at the start of this expert mech design project had long become irrelevant ever since he treated it as a passion project! It was times like these where he patted himself on the back for all of his past decisions. If he hadn't gone through all of the effort into building his own clan, starting risky expeditions and designing highly marketable commercial mechs, he wouldn't have been rich enough to completely disregard the expense of this extravagant expert mech design project! Almost no low-tier expert pilot that had only broken through a relatively short time ago enjoyed such luxurious treatment. Venerable Zimro Belson was going to be a lucky man for being able to pilot a resilient machine whose performance was comparable to that of a high-tier expert mech! Although Ves constantly had to exercise his problem-solving skills whenever he worked to integrate the Seferath AQ-3M into the expert mech design, everything else proceeded a lot more smoothly. Master Benedict Cortez occasionally dropped by in order to handle the selection and integration of the all-important resonating exotics. Ves hadn't really been involved in this process as he already had his hands full with wrangling the high-tech transphasic active stealth system. He entrusted this important matter to his wife and Master Benedict. Both of them had done this many times already. After examining and performing many tests on Venerable Zimro, the two mech designers finally selected a pair of resonating exotics to serve as the key materials for the Ghost Project. "We spent more time than we thought on trying to find the best combination of resonating exotics for the Ghost Project." Gloriana explained to her husband. "We first identified four different priorities that we would want to enhance for our expert stealth mech." "What are the priorities?" "Stealth, defense, assassination and mobility. Each of these properties are worthwhile amplification candidates in our opinion. We have found suitable resonating exotics that relate to each of these areas. Once we have formed a comprehensive list, we explored the combinations of different resonating exotics to determine which ones provide us with the greatest performance boosts and the lowest possible interference. It was not easy for us to figure out the best ratios and combinations. I hope you appreciate our hard work." Ves leaned over and embraced her in a sideways hug. "Thank you for helping with this matter. You have truly resolved a significant burden with our work. Can you share your results?" "I can. Master Benedict and I have eventually formulated several excellent combinations, but we think that one of them is the best." She waved her arm and activated a projection that displayed two different materials. She gestured at the strangely colored metal bar on the right. "This is Emdar Alloy, a recent product made by a metallurgy company based in the Red Ocean. It is a first-class resonating exotic that can only be made out of several different first-class exotics that can only be sourced in the upper zones. Producing it is also troublesome as it requires the developer of his alloy to start a difficult production process that results in a large proportion of unqualified output. The lesser alloys are sold as second-class products, which are much more reasonably priced. We would have chosen to use one of them if you hadn't completely exploded our design budget." "You can thank me for that." Ves grinned. Gloriana lightly swatted his arm. "Since you have reassured me that our clan can fully bear the expenses, I have decided to settle for Emdar Alloy for several important reasons. The main one is that its function is crucial to the effective performance and the survivability of our Ghost Project. Emdar Alloy can significantly reduce the emissions of an expert mech." That caused Ves to widen his eyes. While her words did not sound exciting to a layman, Ves fully understood how important Emdar Alloy could be! It was exactly the resonating alloy that the Ghost Project needed in order to supercharge its stealth operations! The emissions of a mech basically exposed its existence and coordinates to an enemy. The stronger the emissions, the brighter the machine showed up on sensors. It was extremely difficult to dampen the emissions of a mech. One of the main reasons why stealth mechs were so fragile was because it took an enormous amount of capacity to contain and reduce their emissions! This problem became even stronger once the stealth mech became more powerful. The more energy they burned up, the more heat theft accumulated! Active stealth systems such as the Seferath AQ-3M did not just camouflage a mech so that it blended into the surroundings. They also included heat absorption systems that could contain a massive amount of waste heat. So long as they did not reach their limits, they could keep a stealth mech silent and undetected for hours or even days! However, it became a lot harder to keep a stealth mech if it became even more powerful. There was no need for Ves to rethink how immensely powerful the Ghost Project would become. Expert mechs were powerhouses without exception and Ves had made this particular project even more excessive due to his desire to elevate its performance as best he could! All of that power turned the Ghost Project into a more effective expert mech on the battlefield. Ves envisioned it working together with other friendly mechs to ambush and assassinate critical enemy assets! However, obsessing too much over battlefield performance clearly reduced the runtime of its stealth systems. The Ghost Project would undoubtedly generate a massive amount of thermal energy by engaging in all kinds of heavy exertions. This made the Ghost Project a lot less capable of completing lengthy infiltration missions. Ves did not like this because he was thinking about employing this hidden blade against other parties outside of the battlefield. Emdar Alloy neatly solved this problem, if only to a limited extent. "In truth, there are many resonating exotics that can produce similar results, but Emdar Alloy has several advantages aside from its high compatibility with Venerable Zimro Belson." Gloriana continued her explanation. "What I appreciate the most is that its resonance interference is remarkably low. It is much easier for us to find optimal combinations because the effective performance of other resonating exotics does not deteriorate as much." "That is also nice." Ves sounded impressed. Lower resonance interference meant that the Ghost Project could not only mount another key material, but also integrate a greater quantity of general resonating exotics before reaching a limit. "Finally, Emdar Alloy is remarkably easy to resonate with, especially if the expert pilot in question is highly compatible with this material. Venerable Zimro will not have to exert much strain to reduce the emissions of his expert stealth mech to an adequate level. Of course, he can also exert much more effort into minimizing the detection rate of the Ghost Project to the utmost. He will probably resort to this option in battle against hostile expert mechs." Ves raised his eyebrow at that. "Do you think that Emdar Alloy can help with enabling our Ghost Project to approach a hostile expert mech undetected? You should know how good the intuition of demigods can be. They can detect threats to their lives even when they are asleep!" "I cannot say anything certain about that, Ves." Gloriana shrugged. "This is the first expert stealth mech that we have worked on, and we do not have access to a lot of documentation. Master Benedict doesn't have much exposure to these types of machines either. He had to leverage his own network of contacts to provide us with the necessary information." "Oh." "To satisfy your curiosity, Emdar Alloy does indeed help with improving the Ghost Project's chances to assassinate a target expert mech. It does more than dampen an expert mech's emissions. It also dampens the more noticeable effects of true resonance. This vastly increases the fault tolerance of our work." All in all, Ves had to admit that Gloriana and Master Benedict had truly made a fantastic choice. The effects of Emdar Alloy satisfied multiple priorities, from improving its assassination chances to extending its active stealth runtime. The only downside was that it was too damn expensive! Ves did not dare to look at the price tag for fear that he would reject the purchase of this specialty material. Fortunately, the Larkinson Clan could exchange Emdar Alloy for a couple of tons of salvaged first-class alloys or a few random pieces of valuable intact alien tech. Ves was even willing to trade away several kilograms of phasewater if that was what it took! "What did you choose as the second key material?" He asked his wife. His wife pointed at the second projection which depicted a piece of raw ore. "Denissium Maximum is a natural first-class resonating exotic that can directly amplify the lethality of the Ghost Project's attacks." His wife clearly disliked the name of this resonating exotic. She looked as if she was about to vomit when she uttered it on her lips! "So what's so special about Denissium Maximum?" Ves asked with an amused expression. "I don't want to talk about it too much. Suffice to say, it is an excellent material that can help with launching a single fatal or crippling attack. When an expert pilot resonates with it, the expert mech's weapon will become 'charged' over time, and can only maintain this state for a short amount of time. Once the machine launches an attack, the charged weapon will strike with the force of multiple superimposed attacks. I think you can imagine how much damage this can do. The stronger the expert pilot, the faster he can charge a weapon and the more he can raise the upper limit of its charge." Ves looked impressed! The name of this resonating exotic might be silly, but its effects were absolutely incredible! If the Ghost Project could charge up its weapon so that it could unleash an attack that was 5 times, 10 times or 20 times stronger, then it might be able to assassinate an unsuspecting expert mech no matter if there was a resonance shield in the way! "What's the downside of this material?" "It is a first-class exotic, so you can already deduce that it is expensive. Its resonance interference is high, so it can only truly be paired with a 'gentle' material such as Emdar Alloy. Furthermore, its resonance load is high, so you shouldn't expect Venerable Zimro to be able to charge the weapon of his expert mech more than a handful of times. This limitation will ease once his resonance strength improves over time, but do not expect any miracles at the start." Ves smiled. "It is already good if the Ghost Project can successfully assassinate a single enemy expert mech."