Chapter 6616 9 Months By the time Ves presented his idea to make living mechs the incubators of artifact spirits, Ketis looked a lot more impressed than before. "You know, you should have started with presenting this proposal instead of what you previously had in mind." The woman said. "You are too obsessed with Demoncasting. The thought of trying to reverse Demoncast a human soul by using dead alien souls as fuel sounds insane on so many levels that you should have known better. At least now you are relying on more known and familiar phenomena to put this solution together."" Ves had a different thought on the matter. "I know that the implementation of hyper keystones is a lot more palatable to everyone, but it will probably take a year or longer for this policy change to start producing widespread changes. After all, the freshly produced Null Projects need time to grow into third order living mechs. Then they need to perish in battle, but not to the extent that their hyper keystones got destroyed in the process. Only then can they be used as the artifact spirits of high-level artifacts or anything that comes close to their level. Then these powerful new artifacts need to be shipped to their users, who will probably need more time to get used to their new gear and learn how to make optimal use of their special capabilities." He hated the fact that it took so many steps to produce a meaningful strategic shift in the Red War. Every step took a certain amount of time and effort to complete. The more steps between the start and the end of the supply chain, the greater the overall delay! In comparison, his previous idea was much simpler in concept. Most of the steps took place inside his living mech. As long as the mech fought on a battlefield and managed to get close enough to a bunch of dying aliens, the Null Project would already satisfy the most crucial requirement. The actual casting process was really simple. No other external factors needed to get involved at this point. So long as Ves devised the actual mechanics of this spiritual process and integrated it into a standard mech design, he only needed to sit back and wait for changes. Perhaps the process may take months to produce results, but Ves still expected lots of mech pilots growing stronger and more capable of fighting the native aliens after the reverse Demoncasting attempt finally yielded results! The outcome may turn out to be dangerous or risky, but that only excited Ves. Even a failed result was better than no result. He would just have to return to the design of the Null Project and tweak the parameters in order to finetune the special functions. Alas, Ketis' reaction was a powerful indication that the rest of the mech community might not look upon this proposal with favor. Ves did not dare to neglect her advice, nor dismiss her feedback as worthless. She represented the common sense of red humanity. Many other people would probably react in similar ways if they learned about what he had cooked up in his mind. Even if Ves was not able to turn this insane idea into reality, just voicing it would cause his reputation to plummet! He could hardly afford to tarnish his reputation when he needed as much backing as possible to maintain his current privileges. This was why Ves readily agreed to shelve his earlier idea and adopt the current one instead. "Is this the extent of what you have in mind for your seventh generation living mechs?" Ketis asked. "Yes. My seventh generation living mechs need to make a statement, and I think this is enough of a package to make people take my upcoming products seriously. The combination between mech-directed auxiliary qi cultivation instruction and hyper keystones will not produce an immediate improvement on the battlefield, but as long as our side can hold the line for a few months, the first changes will begin to be felt. High-level mech-grade artifacts have the potential to immediately boost the combat power of expert mechs and ace mechs, which will subsequently help them cope against phase lords." Ketis also grew more optimistic about the prospect of high-level artifacts falling into the hands of powerful mechs. "This may be crucial in closing the gap against phase lords armed with Saint Piercer arms. Whether high-level artifacts can resist the damage inflicted by superdimensional weapons or not, at least our side will be able to retaliate much more effectively than before. That should restrain the enemy champions and rein in their aggression." All of this sounded great, but nothing was certain yet while Ves had yet to produce any solid results. This was why he directed his attention back to the current session. "We are already a few months into the marathon." He said as he reflected on how he and Ketis spent their time so far. "I think it is safe to say that our plans couldn't keep up with our changes. I do not necessarily think that is bad. Our primary goal is to prop up red humanity by giving it the resources and tools that are necessary to put up a better fight against the native aliens." "Which we are still doing but in another way." Ketis added. "Agreed. We initially thought we could get this done by earning lots of AP, upgrading the Dimension Observatory and absorbing an expensive enlightenment fruit from the Tree of Possibilities. Instead, we have used most of the time we have earned from completing a number of Missions to invest in our personal projects. In hindsight, this is even better, because we can meet our goal by relying on our existing capabilities rather than depend on the System for a huge knowledge infusion. That said, we need to adjust our planning and rethink our AP allocation." The two mech designers briefly listed out their AP revenue and expenditures and performed a few calculations. They roughly tried to predict how extensively they could milk the remaining batch of Missions. I determine much longer they could afford to remain inside the System Space. Soon enough, Ves and Ketis found themselves at a crossroads. "We have two choices." He said. "Since we have given up on exchanging enlightenment fruits, our only AP expenditures left in our planning are the planned upgrades to the Dimension Observatory. I think we need to earn at least 1000 AP between the two of us in order to bring it up to a useful enough state. That is a heavy investment with an uncertain payoff. The alternative to this is to drop this demand entirely and just use all of that AP to extend our stay in the System Space by 2 years or so. We can get a lot of work done during that time." The way he put these two choices made it sound that it was a braindead choice to go for the latter. A Senior Mech Designer and a Journeyman Mech Designer who also worked as a swordmaster could truly conduct a lot of valuable research and complete half-a-dozen high-quality design projects during this time! "Three years have passed since the start of Age of Dawn." Ketis said. "Our society has gone through a huge amount of changes during that time. Red humanity has already diverged enormously from the folks back in our original galaxy. While many people have contributed to these changes, I still think that the two of us can unleash a set of changes that can put our civilization year ahead of the curve if we can develop our ideas for 2 additional years." Time was the scarcest and most precious resource of a mech designer. The ability to earn additional time was one of the most valuable and subversive benefits offered by the Mech Designer System! While the prospects of being able to extend their stay for 500 to 700 additional days sounded like a dream to any mech designer, the problem was that the individual in question was still human! Ves stared directly into Ketis' eyes. "Will you be able to endure 2 years of isolation from your children and your fellow sisters of the Swordmaiden Mech Legion? Even if we leave the System Space for very short intervals in order to remind yourself who you are doing this for, this may end up doing more harm than good. You will still suffer from a sense of temporal dislocation with the people who remain in reality." The swordmaster lowered her head. She felt conflicted about this matter. She was supposed to be stronger than this, but Ketis the mother did not want to prolong her stay to such an exaggerated extent. "Given the stakes... I am willing to do what is necessary, but... I would truly prefer it if we can end this marathon under a tighter schedule. "Mhmm, I understand, Ketis. To be honest, I would prefer it if we stick to a semblance of our original plan as well. I invested an entire Upgrade Track into establishing the Dimension Observatory. I hate for it to remain unused. Let us try our best not to come up with any further distractions and cause our plans to become outdated yet again. We have already devised enough stuff to shock red humanity once we emerge from the System Space." The two mech designers were determined not to get carried away by future whims or bursts of inspiration. No matter how tempting it sounded to explore a fantastic new idea, it was not wise for them to bite more than they could chew. They should focus on digesting their current gains first in order to make sure they could present concrete gains to a race and civilization that urgently needed a short-term boost! This was what they set out to do since this pivotal meeting. Ves continued to split his time between completing Missions and fleshing out the Null Project. Not only did he have to figure out a way to reproduce Demoncasting in a miniaturized form in order to create the Ultimate Module for the Null Project, he also had to develop the key systems that would define his seventh generation living mechs! Ketis meanwhile continued to flesh out her new swordsmanship paradigm and began to formulate numerous extraordinary sword styles that conformed to the so-called School of Reformed Swordsmanship. It was not enough for her to publish a manual filled with vague explanations about Heaven, Earth and Man. She wanted to give sword practitioners of every skill level in the Red Ocean a clear roadmap on how they could systematically progress to the next rank. So long as she herself was able to move closer to advancing to the rank of sword saint, other swordmasters would be able to accomplish this as well! While there were not a lot of pure swordmasters in the new frontier, as long as they were able to make quick progress, they might be able to attain their sainthood in time for them to intervene in the ongoing war. Sword saints by themselves were too weak to make a difference, but the story was different if they formed a Blood Pact with a powerful Carmine mech and formed a Life Sword Pact with a high-level mech sword artifact, possibly with the help of a companion 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦 spirit. Equipment could make all of the difference for sword practitioners! This was why Ketis especially devoted so many pages on the Earth portion of her new paradigm! More months passed by as Ves and Ketis fell into a comfortable routine. Their occasional breaks and talks turned inconsequential as they remained focused on their priorities and refrained from making any further alterations from their plans. Before they knew it, 9 months had passed since the start of their marathon. Both mech designers were approaching the end stage of their stay in the System. Ves had completed the first iteration of the Null Project. This meant that he had devised plausible solutions to all of the problems that he had set for the two variations of this deadly ranged mech. Ketis had not only completed the minor update to the Stormblade Samurai Mark II design, but also rewritten her epoch-defining manual multiple times. Knowing that many people would take her work as gospel, Ketis became a lot more careful about mentioning her claims. She expanded upon some of the seculative portions of her writing and made sure to add more empirical proof to back up her bold assertions. She also removed the more fantastical claims that she was not able to back up with anything solid. All in all, both mech designers had reached a state where they could shock human society with the work that they have done over this magical stretch of time! "Alas..." For all of their successes, the pair of mech designers also failed to meet some of their goals. They completed less Missions than anticipated and earned a bit less AP in the process. All of the time they spent on their personal projects had severely affected their Mission-clearing efficiency. Since the two of them needed to spend 1 AP each to extend their stay in the System Space, there came a point in time when the two needed to cut their stay short, lest they end up losing more Ascension Points than they could earn!