Chapter 6654 Old Friend As an upstanding member of the Friday Coalition, Carlos Shaw held resemblance to his past self. He went through several medical treatments to heal the old war wounds that hadn't been fully healed after he lived through the last Bright-Vesia War. He also forgot about his former life as a Brighter and tried his best to integrate into the Friday Coalition. He embraced his identity as a second-rater. He tried to become a successful mech designer in his own way. With the support he received over the years, he managed to become a qualified second-class Journeyman Mech Designer, though he struggled to keep up with the competition. Carlos would definitely be the first one to admit that he was no Ves Larkinson. He was not even particularly excellent compared to the Journeymen of the same generation within the Friday Coalition! However, Carlos knew first-hand what it took to stand out in the mech market. This was why he had devoted his life to promoting a vision for mechs that was at least somewhat original and uncommon. He succeeded by developing a Class I design philosophy revolving around Triple Combination Mech Design. It was basically an approach towards designing three separate mechs meant to operate in groups of three. What was special was that all three mechs should be able to combine with each other and form a combination mech that was controlled by all three mech pilots! Under certain circumstances, the power of this single large combined mech should allow it to produce results exceeding what it could have done if the mechs remained separate! However, the conditions to realize this improvement turned out to be hard. The mech pilots either had to be siblings who lived together with each other for a long time, or they had to be veteran soldiers who were close friends with each other and served in the same unit for multiple years. Without a great degree of understanding and camaraderie, any attempts to combine forces and form a single combined mech was bound to end up in disaster as the left hand contradicted the right hand! It was pretty clear that Carlos Shaw clearly took a lot of inspiration from the works of Ves and Master Huron. He did not deny the fact he got inspired by their works. Carlos took pride in his own mech designs and did not feel ashamed that he was borrowing the concepts and best practices of better and more superior mech designers in order to accomplish his goal. It was too bad that it was hard for Carlos to gain traction in the mech market. His products mostly remained theoretical exercises as they generated little interest on the mech market. Aside from small groups of oddball mech pilots who wanted to gain the upper hand in mech competitions by betting on his triple combination mechs, Carlos failed to establish a strong brand in the Friday Coalition and other states. It did not really help that he used to be a third-class mech designer until recently and that he used to be associated with the infamous Devil Tongue. This was why Carlos remained a dependent mech designer all of the time. He did not have the capital to start his own mech business and achieve rapid growth like his old friend. Carlos did not feel jealous about this, or blame his own incompetence for failing to do the same. One of the lessons he learned when working with Ves was that designing mechs should always be the primary occupation of a mech designer. It sounded obvious, but way too many mech designers got distracted by business affairs or wasted a lot of time by playing politics. This was why Carlos tried his best to keep his head down and continue to remain productive during his work hours. He did so by studying the textbooks of the Clarion University of Mech Design and working on his assigned mech design projects under the leadership of Master Huron. Becoming a dependent mech designer meant working for others. Carlos did not have the luxury to devote all of his time to design his own mechs. Instead, he had to use his growing expertise to solve problems for the mech design projects led by Master Huron or one of his trusted subordinates. Carlos did not find anything wrong with this practice. He might not be able to realize his own vision, but he continued to learn much about what it took to design a good mech by studying the good points about Master Huron's design philosophy. When Master Huron was in a good mood, he would even set a bit of time aside to teach Carlos a few tricks of the trade! Today was not a good day, however. Master Huron looked troubled when Carlos arrived to start another work day. "Is that… another Auto Heretic?" The newcomer asked as he entered one of the Master Mech Designer's well-equipped workshops. "It is, but this one is different from the ones we have seen before." The bald older man spoke even as he continued to work on studying the lone Carmine mech. "This is not one of the many variants where third parties attempt to differentiate their own works by blending Professor Larkinson's design philosophy by addin in their own specialization." When Carlos stepped closer, he looked up at the Auto Heretic Version B and could spot many different design quirks that he immediately recognized as Ves' work. It was definitely him who was partially responsible for designing this mech. He may have convinced a Master Mech Designer to share the burden with him, but he dictated most of the design choices and design direction for this historic project! To be honest, Carlos only had admiration for his old friend by being the first to solve one of the biggest problems in modern mech design. If Ves did not mysteriously align himself with human traitors and rebels and seek to sow chaos and division within the entirety of human space of the Milky Way, Carlos would have been more open about his admiration for his old friend's work! He still did not understand what was happening to be honest. How could a Red Ocean mech designer release a line of mech models in the Milky Way? More importantly, why did Ves become hostile towards the Big Two and what great purpose did he try to accomplish? Carlos was unable to answer these questions, much to the disappointment of his past interrogators. Ves had grown too quickly. He had already made a lot of progress in forging his own legend after leaving the old galaxy behind. Carlos understood his old friend less and less with each passing year. This was one of the reasons why he failed to figure out the Auto Heretic design. Carlos let out a sigh and pushed this personal failure aside. "Are you still trying to decipher the Blood Pact, Master?" He asked as he floated up to the cockpit where he found Huron studying the cockpit seat. As the interface that was responsible for physically connecting the mech pilot to the mysterious organic components of the Carmine System, the cockpit seat with its many blood channels had been the subject of a huge amount of studies. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂 Many mech designers wanted to know the secret behind Blood Pacts and how it enabled a norm to control a mech! While most never achieved anything useful, Master Huron was one of the rare exceptions. "I am getting closer." Master Huron said. "The latest and most disruptive work of your 'old friend' is becoming more and more familiar to me. I think I am getting closer to understanding his mindset and attitude. I can see more and more parallels between his Carmine System and my lifelong experience with working on neural interface technology to achieve interconnectivity. I do not consider him to be my unofficial disciple for nothing." "I think you should be more careful about your statements. The MTA and the leaders of the Gauge Dynasty won't be happy with you for expressing so much support to a mech designer who inflicted a lot of damage to their interests." Master Huron nonchalantly shrugged as he continued to pick apart the cockpit seat with his manual tools. "It doesn't matter. None of them will punish me for saying so. We are living in a Free Zone now, remember? The only Safe Zone in this star sector is the Centerpoint System. Every other star system is no longer under the regime of the Big Two. It is only a matter of time before Auto Heretics become more ubiquitous than normal mechs in this region of space. My fellow Fridaymen do not care at all about how my unofficial disciple used to be their enemy and only want to pilot their own mechs." He was right. The Auto Heretics could not be stopped. The demand for them was so high that they even managed to inflict the most damaging blow to the Big Two since the start of the Age of Mechs! "Even if you are correct, our leaders still need time to adjust their mentalities. You should refrain from making too many statements in support of Ves before the Gauge Dynasty and the other coalition partners finally change their policies towards living mechs." "They're too slow, Carlos. Ever since they won the Komodo War, they have lost their competitive drive. The Hexers always made sure to keep our leaders sharp and focused. Now that we have solved this threat, the Friday Coalition is becoming more and more muddled. The setbacks we have suffered only reinforces this impression. We are not handling the problems resulting from losing access to the Friday Colonies and the uncontrolled proliferation of Carmine mechs well. Our current leaders are too prideful to admit defeat and reverse their ban on living mechs." The ban was turning into a joke. More and more people including other Fridayman violated this rule just so that they could become Carmine mech pilots. The Friday Coalition was pretty much the only holdout in the Yeina Star Cluster. Pretty much every other third-rate and second-rate state in the neighborhood had already embraced their new reality as occupants of a Free Zone and allowed their citizens to make use of Carmine mechs! Of course, the states did not want these new Carmine mech pilots to use their powerful machines to pick fights with others. They were all trying to experiment with policies aimed at limiting the abuse of these powerful war machines. Some policies were more successful than others. The ones that saw more success were usually the ones that did not outright ban conflicts involving Carmine mechs, but instead sought to divert the fighting away from populated areas to minimize collateral damage. The competitive mech scene suddenly experienced a huge resurgence as a result. Many Carmine mech pilots wanted to test their skills against each other. A huge demand had emerged for relatively safe and controlled ways for Carmine mechs to clash against each other without going for the kill. Rather than risk their lives and Blood Pacts in real wars, the Carmine mech pilots strongly preferred to become mech athletes and earn fame and fortune in the mech games! Whether the states succeeded in diverting the energies of a lot of enthusiastic Carmine mech pilots by organizing a lot of new mech competitions remained unclear. Carlos had a feeling that these efforts might not be as successful as most people hoped. As one of the people who used to know Ves on a personal basis, Carlos had always known that he could bear a grudge. Ves also had an awful habit of resorting to extremes if he ever had a chance to retaliate. Though Carlos had already broken off with his old friend at this point, he still paid close attention when Ves appeared in the Smiling Samuel Star Sector one day and used his works to trigger the collapse of the Vulcan Empire! Somehow, Carlos had a strong suspicion that Ves repeated his old playbook, but at a much larger scale than before!