Chapter 6613 Ultimate Module: D-Chamber Okay, so the crazy idea to add a way to 'Demoncast' the souls of deceased enemies onto the mech pilot got shot down. In hindsight, Ves may have been trying to force it too much. He couldn't help it. He valued Demoncasting and wanted to apply it on a mass scale. Ves did not mind too much that he had to withdraw this crazy idea. There was no harm in coming up with new proposals. Even if it ended up too impractical to ever get implemented in his seventh generation living mechs, he still managed to exercise his imagination and maintain a proactive mindset. Besides, he already developed a less extreme proposal that applied the same principles to a more innocuous target. "If you don't want me to apply Demoncasting to the mech pilot, then let's switch it up to a more acceptable target." Ves said after he gave up on his initial proposal. "My next design application cannot serve as a core component of seventh generation living mechs. It can only be implemented to the Null Project as an Ultimate Module." He began to project the design of the Null Rifle to Ketis. Ballistic weapons were low tech, so the design of the weapon did not encompass a lot of sophistication. The Null Rifle possessed the typical characteristics of a mech-grade assault rifle designed to unload a lot of bullets in a short amount of time. It boasted a high firing rate, relatively high recoil, medium accuracy and relatively low effective range. Persistent heavy use could quickly cause the weapon to overheat. The barrel had to endure a lot of abuse and might even have to be scrapped after a single long engagement! However, the materials used to construct the barrel of the Null Rifle were fairly common and could easily be recycled. All in all, the Null Rifle was a cheap and serviceable weapon that could do its job but not much else. The only unusual quirk aside from its optional belt-feeding system that could supply it with rounds on a continuous basis was the secondary chamber. Ves had clearly invested more time and attention on designing this second chamber into the rifle structure. "Is this the Ultimate Module?" Ketis guessed. "What does it do? It looks as if it does nothing aside from holding a single round. Have you designed a super bullet?" "No." Ves shook his head. "It is just a Null Round. I don't want to develop a separate ammunition type for this feature because that will just increase the logistical burden of the Null Project, which is not conducive to mass adoption. It is not a big problem to use basic Null Rounds for this Ultimate Module, because it is called the D-Chamber." Ketis took a moment to process what she just heard. While the current idea was not as crazy as the last proposal, she could still recognize several questionable points about the implementation. The name was already enough for Ketis to figure out what Ves had in mind. "I see. You still haven't given up on Demoncasting. If my guess is correct, then the Null Round in this special chamber will be subjected to a form of Demoncasting when the Null Project mech is engaged in battle. Any fairly strong enemy soul that is captured by the living mech will be pressed into the Null Round, which will hopefully cause it to undergo a qualitative transformation and grow stronger to the point where its power has far surpassed its existing limitations. The resulting D-Round must be fired quickly to inflict a much more painful blow onto an enemy target or risk destroying the D-Chamber from within. The mech pilot can also choose to eject the D-Round and store it in a fortified storage container to save the D-Round for later use." "I don't see this idea working out as well as you think. First, can a component as small as the D-Chamber even induce the process of demonization?" "It works because it is an Ultimate Module." Ves patiently responded. "Have you forgotten the working principles of Ultimate Modules? They are the body of the companion spirit of a living mech. This means that it can possess a complete function from the main machine. In this case, I intend for it to imitate Helena's Death Feather technique which is apparently very effective at inducing demonization." Ketis did not bother to ask about the Death Feather technique and how Ves learned that it was good at producing demons. "Minor Demons cannot come from any soul as far as I know. Will the Null Project mechs be able to harvest enough eligible souls in a typical battle?" "They should be as long as they fly close enough to a large enemy warship. Their senior officers are usually strong enough, though the exact numbers and proportions can vary depending on the alien species." This was not an ideal circumstance, but it was the best Ves could do given the limitations. "What about the crucial steps needed to transform a Null Round into a so-called D-Round? I cannot see how your D-Chamber can possibly reproduce a process that actually requires a large System-provided Demoncasting Forge." "I don't know yet." Ves admitted. "I need to conduct an experiment to figure out whether it is viable. I should have enough time during this marathon to obtain the answer. Don't forget that a full Demoncasting Forge needs to account for a lot of different variables. It needs to be able to work on larger objects, produce more powerful effects and accommodate an incredible variety of Demoncasting Molds. My D-Chamber will function as a much more constrained version of a Demoncasting Forge that only serves to apply a single Demoncasting Mold to a single Null Round." Ketis still looked skeptical. "I fear that you are overestimating your E-engineering capabilities. We have only Demoncasted a single product, and you are already dreaming about replicating the entire Demoncasting Forge in a more limited and miniaturized form. I do not know whether you understand the depth of your arrogance." Ves grinned and shrugged. "At least I have the will and ambition to surpass the current. limitations of mechs. I have to try, because how else can my Null Project save the day? At worst, I will just leave out the D-Chamber and replace it with another Ultimate Module. I still think I can make it work. The most difficult problem I need to solve is to learn what a Demoncasting Mold actually is and how I can imitate it in a smaller form." After Ves introduced his secondary idea to Ketis, he shifted his attention back to his seventh generation living mechs. Ves was not done with trying to distinguish his seventh generation work from the previous generations. He still wanted to turn it into a serious accomplishment that served as a strong attraction to the mech market. It not only had to be a strong selling point, but also serve to provide additional help in winning the battles in the frontlines. The Red War loomed tall over the mech industry. Many mech designers would be more than willing to fight on the frontlines if it made a difference, but they were merely non-combatants. Even if they formed a Blood Pact with a Yellow Jacket, they wouldn't be able to make a mistake in the short term. Just because they understood how to put a mech together did not mean they could control it as proficiently as a professional pilot. What else could he do with his seventh generation living mechs? Perhaps he could popularize existing solutions that Ves previously kept exclusive to his clan. Battle formations came to mind. The ability to manifest the power of design spirits in the material realm and change an entire battle around by launching a powerful attack could be used to snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. The demands of battle formations was hard, but it was not impossible for other groups to be able to reproduce the trump cards of the Larkinson Clan, The Glory Seekers were a good example of that. They had employed battle formations that summoned the power of the Daughter of Death so many times that the native aliens specifically had to devise a counter to their antics. Nowadays, anytime a troop of Valkyrie mechs clumped together, the native alien warships would quickly launch devastating missiles and torpedoes at them, seeking to disrupt or destroy the mechs in massive explosions! The Glory Seekers wised up, though. The clever Hexers often tried to bait out these missile volleys in advance by pretending to form a battle formation. They even formed five or ten different battle formations, of which only one or two were genuine while the rest were decoys! Due to how effectively the death-aspected battle formations were able to depopulate entire warships that lacked the protection of strong defensive hyper technology, the presence of Penitent Sisters and Glory Seekers on the battlefield was enough to restrain the native aliens! They could no longer fight as aggressively as before and had to widen the distance between warships in order to prevent them all from getting swept in a single battle formation pass. This already constituted a strategic advantage. What if more alien forces had to alter their tactics and take this threat into account? The conditions to reproduce a battle formation were tough, but not impossible to meet. The forces that acquired the appropriate mechs just had to gather the right mech pilots and train them to cooperate with each other on a deeper level than usual. Ves could already imagine the sight of battle formations terrorizing the border regions. No alien force would be able to unscrupulously invade a star system without the fear of suffering massive losses! However, there was one issue that restrained him from including battle formations to his seventh generation living mechs. Most design spirits could not bear the repeated energy consumption of channeling lots of power in the material realm. Nothing came for free. All of those death energy attack waves sapped a lot of juice out of Helena. Perhaps his eldest sister may have grown to the point where she may be able to support the occasional summons of the Hex Army, especially if Ves took the upcoming proliferation of the Rule Breaker Project into account. Once the Milky Way embraced the first Carmine mech line in their galaxy on an unprecedentedly huge scale, both Lufa in the Aspect of Transcendence and the Daughter of Death were bound to receive a huge amount of spiritual feedback! However, this did not really affect other design spirits all that much. Ves knew that it was possible for them to exchange spiritual energy with each other, but they all had to go through the costly and inefficient effort to convert it into a form that was more digestible to them. It just was not worth the effort unless they were literally starving. Ves shook his head. There was no need for him to trade away his trump card to give red humanity a better shot at holding onto the frontlines. The aliens might outnumber the red humans, but the latter still showed enough signs of being able to cope with massed cannon fodder. The true threat consisted of phase lords who exerted a disproportionate effect on the battlefield. With the ace pilots who used to fight in the middle zones getting transferred to the upper zones in a hurry, the situation in the former was bound to deteriorate. Ves did not fault Human High Command for making this sacrifice. The best strategists and planners that red humanity had to offer must have made extremely detailed calculations. Their logic for this strategic shift was sound, though the human cost was extremely heavy. "I can't save all of red humanity, but what I can do is help with filling up this gap as much as possible." He was still a Senior Mech Designer and a young one at that. While he may have become famed for introducing powerful innovations that changed how red humanity fought, Ves was not able to whip out a massive game changing invention on demand. The best he could do for the time being was to introduce the Null Project, a ranged mech that had the potential to inhibit the performance of phase lords. A single rifleman mech armed with a ballistic rifle might not be able to make a difference, but what about a hundred? What about a thousand? If all of them unloaded their magazines filled with Null Rounds onto a phase lord, they may actually be able to weaken the phase lord to the extent that he would rather retreat from the battlefield than to risk serious harm! Since the Null Project was largely centered around the use of special ammunition, Ves began to think about how the mech could amplify the effectiveness of their attacks even further. The inclusion of mech-directed auxiliary qi cultivation instruction should already be enough to slightly promote the breakthrough rates of mech pilots in the medium and long term. That would not do enough to relieve the short term crisis that engulfed red humanity. Ves needed to introduce a more immediate solution.