Chapter 6098 Competence Breeds Ambition 6098 Competence Breeds Ambition Ves had reasons to think about setting up secret organizations. The most important demands were to ensure they remained totally obedient to him while also hiding their connection to their founder. This was almost impossible to attain because the Red Association and to a lesser extent the Red Fleet constantly monitored everything within their reach! Privacy was a nonexistent word to the mechers. They constantly liked to snoop in other people's business. They were especially interested in tracking the exploits of different mech designers. Ves already knew without asking that he was probably the most compelling mech designer to monitor. This was because he always managed to come up with crazy and subversive innovations! To be honest, Ves felt incredibly stifled by all of the RA babysitters hanging over his head. Compared to the time before the onset of the Age of Dawn, Ves could no longer act as unscrupulous as before! Although his dramatic rise in status opened up a lot of new doors to him, Ves was not entirely satisfied with the benefits he gained. He was an innovator by heart. He yearned to develop new technologies and release radical new innovations. His ability to do so was dependent on many factors. Resources, tech, knowledge, manpower, connections and so on all affected his ability to come up with new stuff. While he was doing pretty well these days, Ves still felt constrained in his work. There were many instances where he felt the need to hold back. With the Bluejay Fleet literally hanging over his head, there was no way the mechers would turn a blind eye on him like before! Tier 3 galactic citizenship came with both privileges and obligations. The Red Association designated Ves as a vital contributor to human society. This meant that he had little choice but to play the role imposed by everyone's expectations. If he dared to behave in a matter that was grossly unbefitting his reputation and status, then the backlash was bound to be fierce! Ves felt as if the supposedly well-meaning mechers and other people were constantly tying him down with more and more shackles. They wanted to bind him so firmly to the existing order that he would firmly become their slave! He resented this gilded cage. No matter how high his status had become, what did it matter if he was unable to experiment to his heart's content? This was why he had already begun to think about developing a few secret organizations. The difficulty of doing so undetected was high. The Red Two were anything but incompetent, and the future addition of the Red Collective would add another layer of difficulty. Nonetheless, Ves felt compelled to find a workable outlet of his creative energies. He had so many ideas in his mind that he could never execute in the open that his head would burst if this continued! Ves only felt true fulfillment when he was allowed to express his true nature. Gavin's suggestion just gave him the impetus to forward his plans. With his accumulated knowledge, he should be able to create a masterwork avatar and disguise it to the point where no one could possibly associate it with his true identity. So long as he gave his avatar a bunch of capital to work with before sending it off to one of the more lawless and chaotic places of the Red Ocean, his creation should definitely be able to gain a foothold! However, Ves needed to choose the time and place carefully. The Red Two and the first-rate colonial superstates had eyes and ears everywhere. The cost of exposure was far too great for him to bear. Ves had two choices to make. He could wait until the war started to take a serious toll on red humanity. Once the existing order started to deteriorate, the restraint imposed by the mechers and the fleeters should correspondingly weaken. There should be a lot more room for clandestine operations at that time! Not just Ves, but also the Terrans, Rubarthans, cosmopolitans and other chaotic forces would definitely pounce on the opening and stir the pot even further. By that time, Ves' secret organization would definitely be able to blend into the background. So long as it remained discreet enough, no one powerful enough should have any reason to pay close attention to what he was doing. Ves could also choose to make a bolder and more daring choice. Who said his secret masterwork avatar had to come in the form of a human? Since he could choose to make a cat avatar, he could also choose to fabricate an alien avatar! His eyes shone as he contemplated this radical idea. The prospect excited him! There was so much more he could do in alien space! Red humanity only occupied a corner of the Red Ocean. The rest of the dwarf galaxy fell into the hands of the 13 major alien races, with the Red Cabal acting as the closest thing to a galactic council. However, Ves studied enough news articles, archive entries and intelligence reports to know that the local galactic community was a lot more divided and decentralized than it appeared. If not for the pressure exerted by the extragalactic human invaders, the Red Cabal would never be able to coordinate all of the alien forces in the Red Ocean! The 13 major alien races did not like each other at all. There were numerous instances of generational animosity among them. Some races wouldn't hesitate to wipe out their old rivals if they saw an opening! The individual alien civilizations were not united either. Space was big, and the slow speeds of native warp drive technology had caused a lot of different regions to turn into semi- autonomous fiefs. Local groups ruled their own slice of territories like kings. The intensifying Red War may have forced a lot of these local and regional alien power blocs to contribute a lot to the war effort, but that did not mean they surrendered all of their power to the Red Cabal. Just like human powers, the native alien powers possessed their own selfish interests! The conflicts and rivalries within alien space were just as intense if not more in human space during the Age of Mechs. Ves loved to operate in this kind of environment. So long as he could hide in the cracks and avoid the attention of any big players, he should have a lot of room to operate! Compared to trying to be sneaky in human space, Ves had much less compulsions about restraining himself within alien space. So what if he experimented on the minds, bodies and spirits of orven, puelmer or nunser test subjects? They were not human, so Ves had no reason to acknowledge their rights! He could be as ruthless and decisive as he wanted. So long as he possessed a certain amount of military force, he was confident he could handle smaller problems. As for the larger ones? His alien avatar could always cut its losses and run away. If his avatar truly became cornered one day, then Ves could always trigger it to self-destruct, blowing up everything with so much power that no evidence would remain to link it back to its creator! Ves had to work hard to maintain his composure. This was not the time to be hasty! Even though he was already starting to consider whether he should create an orven or a puelmer avatar, it was useless to consider these matters at this time. He needed to wait until the alien offensive finally commenced. Human space was too calm at the moment. Ves did not even dare to think about any improper ideas. He turned his attention back to Gavin. The assistant was not done gushing about the true splendor of the Terran people. His stay at the Streons had a very strong impact on his views. "Our clan appears to be doing better every year, but our foundation is still very shallow." Gavin spoke. "Much of our prosperity is propped up by you and several other brilliant mech designers. The breakthrough of Saint Tusa has thankfully given us another pillar that we can depend upon, but we cannot completely count on him now that we are in wartime. We need to speed up the growth and development of the Premier Branch in order to make sure our clan can persist and hold onto its existing assets if you are taken out of the picture." "What do you have in mind for the Premier Branch? Are you dissatisfied about how it is developing currently?" Gavin briefly paused. "We are not doing bad per se, but we could be doing a lot more. You are not an ordinary entrant into first-class society. You are a tier 3 galactic citizen and the father of the Red Collective. You should be able to leverage that and more to a much greater extent. One example is debt. Our clan is already borrowing money from the Yem-Tar Trade and Commerce Bank, but we are still severely underleveraged by the standards of other organizations. We should borrow as much funding until we have reached our limit and use the money to expand our foundation. One way to spend it all is to massively increase our colonization efforts of a star system within the territory of the Nayald Ancient Clan! Since you have bought the rights to do this, we should not neglect this opportunity! Ves recalled that he had traded away 5 percent ownership of the Living Mech Corporation for this speculative opportunity. The Nayalds already promised to grant an interest-free loan worth 1.5 trillion MTA credits to the Larkinson Clan. This was already enough to construct a decent colony settlement on a planet, but it was always better to spend more. The greater the upfront investment, the faster the colony turned from a money sink into a profitable fief! "I have neglected this colonization opportunity." Ves admitted to Gavin. "I am too busy with my projects to pay personal attention to this matter. Another department should have taken charge of this responsibility." "That is true, boss, but the planning and preparation required to build a functional first-class colony settlement is enormous. I have mentioned before that our clan and especially our Premier Branch is lacking in senior administrators and officials. Our progress is terribly slow. At this rate, it may take half a decade before we can build the initial form of our first-class colony." That was indeed a bit too slow. "If you think that progress is too slow, then you can intervene on my behalf. You told me that you have become much better at making deals with the Terrans. Let's put your capabilities to good use." Ves decided. Gavin had been waiting for this answer. "Thank you, Ves! I will try my best to live up to your expectations! Please keep in mind that it will still take a few years for our colony to get up and running. Progress will heavily depend on the stability of the front. If the alien offensive hits us hard, then…" "I understand. I don't think that our clan should continue to put much effort into building up a colony that will inevitably become vulnerable to alien raids." To be honest, Ves did not harbor too much interest in such a colony at the moment. He was much more interested in taking control of Reticula Corein V. Though the planet had recently caused a lot of misery to the Larkinsons, it had also proven the value of Solus Gas. No matter what, Ves deeply wanted to establish a stable, large-scale gas harvesting operation on the planet! It should not take long before Task Force Solus decided to take action against the Emperor Tree. The Larkinsons over there wanted to complete this task quickly before the native aliens started their big offensive. Ves definitely intended to ride along the Everchanger and witness the upcoming assault on the Emperor Tree. The Larkinsons could not tolerate the existence of this calamity plant anymore!