Despite all of the excitement that took place as of late, work had to continue. Ves chose to devote most of his design time on the Minerva Mark II Project. The high-end mech design projects had risen in priority. There were too many expert pilots and ace pilots that needed to receive updated machines. The longer they had to wait, the more their strength remained suppressed during the following months and years of fighting. That did not mean he neglected his other projects. He still tried to keep up on developments related to the Arboreal Project as well as the unnamed Mergewater mech project that he was supposed to work on with the Hunting Association. Aside from that, Ves had to spend a bit of time supervising the development of the Elemental Universe. As one of the people who understood the building blocks of the MSTS the best, he had to spend a bit of time tutoring the new programmers and engineers of the new Elemental Universe Consortium how to adapt their work to a spiritual construct. Programming code tended to behave a little differently when applied to purely spiritual systems! It was as if a computer system possessed the ability to process feelings and emotions! This added a lot of new variables as a depressed setting could result in a chain reaction of bad outcomes! It was difficult for many programmers to get accustomed to the impaired predictability of spiritual systems. They had to deal with potentially fickle entities that could easily turn 2 + 2 = 5 according to their whims! On the other hand, the Elemental Universe opened up a lot of new possibilities that people could never imagine when they worked on conventional virtual reality programs. The option to induce actual emotions and make users experience the threat of death in a more authentic fashion massively increased the realism of many false settings! The new consortium had specifically hired a lot of young, highly qualified and most importantly creative virtual reality developers. These newly employed workers possessed the drive and vision to fulfill the promise of the Elemental Universe, especially when they were given room to contribute their own designs. Despite their enthusiasm, it would still take at least half a year before the most basic form of the Elemental Universe would be ready for general usage. The upgrade to the MSTS was simply that big. Ves just hoped it would be implemented in time to make a difference. New and old pilots already made good use of the basic version of the MSTS. Several changes enabled Vulcan to support more frequent usage, which allowed the soldiers to polish their skills and gain more experience during this tense and critical period of time. Ves continued to count the days until the Tortuous Scream arrived. He had already implemented a plan to enact a phased transfer of the Premier Branch. He did not want to start too late and risk getting overtaken by unexpected surprises. To that end, the Larkinsons had already begun to transfer all sorts of heavy assets and supplies to the ships of the Bluejay Fleet. At this time, the Premier Branch already acquired enough first-class combat carriers and transport vessels to form a small fleet in itself. It did not really amount to much, though. This was why Ves agreed to embed the ships into the existing structure of the Bluejay Fleet. This would keep Admiral Gori Tensen in charge and make sure that everyone was part of the same chain of command more or less. Ves knew better than to add more confusion by propping up his own naval leaders. Perhaps he might have tried harder to put his own people in charge if he was living in a time of peace, but now that every red human was under threat of extinction, Ves had little choice but to put his trust in Admiral Tensen and all of the other mechers and fleeters. With all of these concerns weighing down on him, Ves did not dare to entertain too many distractions and tried his best to complete his contribution to the Minerva Mark II. The Victrix originally envisioned by Gloriana was quite fun to design. His wife had already designed much of the physical structure of the living fey, but she thoughtfully preserved enough room for Ves to add his own visual flair to the construct. For example, he designed the wings of the highly articulated owl fey to produce a green glow when they were active. He also made the eyes larger and more expressive. They glowed in bright purple and contrasted nicely with the white living fey. He dedicated more time than he would have liked on designing the crown. It was quite hard to visualize a crown that would work when placed on the head of an owl as opposed to a human. Still, the silvery crown might not be too obvious, but it added a clear sense of authority to the Victrix without making it too overbearing. As much as he would have liked to continue his effort to elevate the appearance of the living fey, he couldn’t afford to spend too much time on its looks. He already spent enough time on thinking about how he wanted to tackle this assignment while he was working on improving the exterior of the Victrix. The Victrix was more than just an Ultimate Module. It was a living fey, so it needed to be able to act independently and project power well outside of Casella’s Command Field. "How can this be done?" He came up with one theory. The Victrix functioned as an extension of the Minerva Mark II. Eleiha functioned as an extension of the Saint Commander. Both the mech and mech pilot possessed their own ’companion spirits’. What would happen if Eleiha resonated with Victrix? Ves had a very large suspicion that this would produce a result that far exceeded the sum of its parts! Though he did not have any way to test this theory at the moment, he was so confident in this interaction that he was willing to bet on its success. As Casella’s companion spirit, Eleiha technically did not possess extraordinary willpower of her own. The silver winged snake was a natural qi cultivator that granted Casella the ability to exert control on a hostile mind. The Saint Commander never used Eleiha this way because the companion spirit was limited by how far she was able to move from her principal. Creating the Victrix should not only grant Eleiha the ability to move much further away from Casella, but also allow her to act as a conduit to channel the Saint Commander’s willpower! In short, the Victrix had the potential to become powerful enough to be treated as a slightly lesser copy of the Minerva Mark II! "It would be like having two Minervas on the battlefield!" Of course, this was not quite the case. The Minerva and the Victrix should be fully capable of projecting Casella’s Command Field in two different locations. What the two should not be able to accomplish was to double the Saint Commander’s capacity to Commandeer and Enfeoff friendly units. Casella was currently able to Enfeoff 40 mechs. Once she received her upgraded mech, Ves expected that to increase by at least 50 percent. If Casella was able to temporarily upgrade 60 mechs to Barons, that did not mean that the Victrix would be able to Enfeoff another 60 mechs. "The most likely possibility is that the two have no choice but to share the same quota." If Casella Enfeoffed 30 mechs, then the Victrix could only do the same with 30 mechs at most. This showed that the Victrix was not an instant game changer if her only power was to extend the range of the Minerva’s Command Field. If Ves wanted this to change, then he had to incorporate an ace mech-grade resonating exotic into the living fey. Gloriana already selected an ace mech-grade resonating exotic for the mech frame of the Minerva Mark II. Saint Commander Casella Ingvar had already completed a test conducted by the Red Association that provided a quick overview of which resonating materials she was compatible with. The test was not as extensive as Ves wished, but he and his wife were able to find a good match. Mindstorm Alloy was a very recent development that mixed both resonating materials and mind-attributed hyper materials to form a mix that could grant individuals with strong minds the ability to generate powerful psychic storms! These storms were not as violent as they sounded. They were mostly able to disturb the minds of enemies in wide areas depending on the strength of the ace pilot. What made Mindstorm Alloy very compelling to Ves and Gloriana was that it synergized better with a Mentalist Crystal than other mental-oriented resonating materials! Both Ves and Gloriana felt that Mindstorm Alloy was a good addition to the Minerva Mark II. One of the shortcomings of the ability granted by Mindstorm Alloy was that an ace pilot could only use it to generate a storm inside his domain. This was not as much of a problem for Casella as her Command Field was much larger than the Saint Kingdoms of typical ace pilots! Originally developed for other ace commanders, the inventor of Mindstorm Alloy had made it available to others in the hopes it would make red humanity stronger. One of the other good points about Mindstorm Alloy was that it possessed medium resonance interference. This meant that Ves and Gloriana could still add another resonating exotics to the Minerva Mark II design so long as it was not too onerous. That was what Ves was doing at the moment. He scrolled down the list and tried to pick a material that would satisfy his requirements. Enjoy new chapters from freewebnovel "The selection is not as big as I would have liked." The Red Association’s database listed many resonating exotics that were permanently out of stock since they could only be found in the Milky Way! Though Ves could wait for the Oblivion Gate Consortium to gather the desired resonating exotics in the Milky Way and transfer it over to the Red Ocean in the next trade, that was still months away! It was better if Ves stuck to a resonating material that was developed locally like Mindstorm Alloy. "What else can I choose?" After a bit more browsing, he narrowed his selection to two different ace mech-grade resonating exotics. Neither of them were perfect, but they fit the needs of Saint Commander Casella and the Minerva the best. ST-668 Archon was a resonating alloy that effectively multiplied the true resonance of an ace mech when its Saint Kingdom was actively connected to sentient life forms. The definition of sentient life forms naturally encompassed humans, but could also include aliens and even living mechs! In other words, the greater the amount of Larkinson mechs that Casella Commandeered, the more extensively ST-668 Archon amplified her true resonance! This brought many benefits, from increasing the Minerva Mark II’s overall defenses to directly increasing her Enfeoffment quota! Of course, ST-688 was not perfect. It took a lot of active connections to ramp up its effect to a significant degree. It was worthless if the Minerva Mark II was left by herself. A few hundred people hardly made a difference while a thousand would only provide a minor boost. ST-688 Archon therefore specialized the Minerva Mark II in large battles. As long as Saint Commander Casella developed her resonance strength further and participated in battles involving millions of mechs, she should easily be able to amplify her true resonance by 30 percent or even more! This was huge! Though this resonating alloy could serve Casella well during her early and middle progression as a junior ace pilot, it would eventually turn redundant once she became a peak ace pilot. This was because ST-688 Archon was unable to multiply an ace pilot’s resonance strength above the hard limit of 1545 laveres!