Chapter 6859 Superdimensional Trade Ves and Jovy did not linger on the topic of peak ace pilots and their newfound obsession for superdimensional matter. They soon diverted their attention to more pressing business such as the Riot Mark III Project and the Final Glory Project. The latter remained a priority to Ves, though he admittedly spent more time on finalizing the Minerva Mark II Project than the mech that the people of red humanity needed the most. Fortunately, now that Saint Commander Casella Ingvar received the machine of her dreams, Ves could finally direct more attention and resources to completing this suicidal machine. "Good work on developing a cheap fuel formula that is volatile enough to add a lot of extra punch to an explosion." "Thank you, Ves. It took a large amount of effort to find a formula that can be synthesized out of cheap and commonly available resources. The fuel mixture is one of many failed products. Not only is it volatile enough that it is prone to exploding, it has also proven to be corrosive to machinery that is made out of low-quality materials or lacking in protective coating. That said, it is also affordable and fairly powerful, which suits our purpose well." Ves nodded in agreement. He could see why this fuel mixture had been stuffed into an archive despite its advantages. The corrosive effect made it so that every device that utilized this fuel mixture had to be made out of higher quality materials or receive special protective coating that had to be replaced on a regular basis. Both of these measures added a significant amount of cost to the end users, which ultimately defeated the goal of developing a cheap and easy product. The fuel mixture was therefore highly unsuited for use by most machines. It wasn't a good choice for missiles and other expendable munitions due to its lack of stability and risk of eating through containment if left in storage for too long. It only made sense for the Final Glory Project. So long as the people that employed this mech waited until the last day before filling in the fuel tanks, the suicide mechs should be able to remain stable and intact long enough to fulfill their ultimate purpose. It did not even matter all that much if an accident occurred. A 0.1 percent accident rate might be enough for a mech designer to get into trouble, but now that human civilization in the Red Ocean was slowly crumbling apart, hardly anyone cared about these minor transgressions. So long as the Final Glory Project remained useful enough, the mechers wouldn't mind its imperfections. Besides, Ves put Jovy in charge of this. The Survivalist Faction had their own way of doing things. This was not the time for the mechers to act pedantic and stick to the rules. "Have you managed to complete the work done on the sacrificial components of the Final Glory Project?" "I think so." Ves responded. "It was really troublesome to devise a means to fuel the explosion of a self-destructing mech with the spirit of its pilot. I had to work out how to bridge the gap between imaginary and material. The conversion process also has to happen in an instant. The use of hyper materials is essential as most human souls are not that powerful unless they have made significant cultivation attainments. What they are good at is behaving like a catalyst to detonate much larger stores of energy. There is an inherently transformative aspect to real spirits. With the right ritual and mindset, anyone in contact with a large amount of hyper materials can produce an extraordinary explosion that can inflict a lot of damage. How much, I cannot say. I don't have enough data for obvious reasons." There was no way for him to test the Final Glory Project when piloting it was supposed to be a one-way trip. Perhaps he could spread the prototypes to a couple of planets that were under imminent attack from the native alien advance, but that did not sit well with Ves. For a mech as serious as this, Ves had an obligation to present his target audience with a complete iteration of the Final Glory Project. He did not want to take advantage of desperate people and turn them into his unwitting test subjects. Although Ves did not always place much value in rules, he still valued the fundamental principles of a mech designer. "Does it matter what hyper materials are being used?" Jovy asked. "Not completely. You can refer to other studies and applications of using hyper materials to enhance explosive munitions. The use of fire hypers will generate more heat. The use of earth hypers increased kinetic damage. You can combine different hyper materials to produce a combo effect that may be greater than the sum of its parts, but I don't think anyone has the time or inclination to figure out optimal combinations. I don't have any high expectations for this. So long as there are enough hyper materials, the suicide mech will mainly rely on the quantity of E energy to add extra power to the explosion." Jovy looked intrigued. "I can understand your stance on the matter. This is not a project where we have time to delve deeper into this subject. It may be useful to conduct a deeper study if you can think about utilizing this application in a larger mech design project. I think that kid Zanthar may be interested in your current theories and findings. His specialization happens to be relevant to the subject matter." "Hm, that is a good idea. I am not sure whether he will be able to make anything out of this. I will be glad if he can extract something useful out of my work." The two continued to go over other aspects of the Final Glory Project. Everything else looked in order more or less. The overall designs did not feature a lot of complexity or high performance. It instead possessed a lot of tolerance for deviations. This was necessary because Jovy needed to convert the set into mech templates. The more generous the tolerances, the easier it was for producers to slot in whatever materials they had in abundance and produce their own localized versions of the suicide mech. The Final Glory Project had not yet reached that stage. The design team still needed to refine and optimize the design a little further before Ves was willing to let Jovy loose. "The SF-02 will help a lot in this regard." Ves said. "The completion of the Minerva Mark II Project means that a lot of processing power has opened up. I will let Polly, Momo and Aria analyze the designs and figure out optimizations through trial and error. It is a rather stupid and wasteful approach, but you can't deny that it is effective up to a degree." There were not that many other projects in the works that urgently needed so much processing power. The Riot Mark III Project for example was still in a stage where ingenuity mattered a lot more than raw calculations. "I would have tried to apply for the use of additional processing power from the Association if I could." Jovy said. "However, it is impossible for us to justify this usage when we are working on a non-compliant mech design." Ves casually waved his hand. "It's okay. We are already allocating more resources to this relatively minor project than is strictly necessary. Most customers won't even be able to notice the small optimizations to their suicide mechs. It is not as if they will pilot it longer than a day. We should try to make their final rides as comfortable as possible, but even if there are a few flaws, they won't live long enough to issue any complaints." That sounded rather macabre, but Ves merely considered it a fact of reality. As long as the Final Glory Project fulfilled the most essential requirements, there was no need to obsess over non-essential factors. This was also why Ves did not want the project to last too long. After Ves and Jovy completed their discussion on the Final Glory Project, they had a bit of free time left to talk about other developments. "According to the Evolution Witch, it is almost time to conduct the exchange of goods through the Oblivion Gates." The RA Senior deliberately spoke to Ves. "We have already begun to conduct studies on whether it is possible to upgrade the Oblivion Gates with mid to high-grade superdimensional matter. We strongly believe that their functionality can be strengthened or expanded upon with the right application of superdimensional technology. The ultimate hope is to enable persistent trade or to allow humans to transit between galaxies once again. The issue is that we have only just begun to explore this new and exotic field. It may take years or decades to realize any major improvements." Ves looked at his friend. Jovy clearly sounded a bit hopeful when he talked about the Oblivion Gates. The continued lack of breakthroughs among peak ace pilots had made more and more people eager to find salvation in other ways. It seemed that certain people were beginning to pin more and more hopes into the Oblivion Gates. "I have no expertise on this matter." Ves said. "Over in the Milky Way, my mother and Master Moira Willix are in charge of this stuff. I think they have a high interest in superdimensional matter. They may be able to speed up any research related to superdimensional matter if they can transfer samples to the right parties. The Oblivion Gate Consortium has gathered many powerful interest groups that have a large number of researchers and facilities at their disposal." Jovy looked a little hesitant. "We know that, Ves, but we are reluctant to trade superdimensional matter to the Milky Way. Our first problem is that we have ample reason to believe that a small quantity of superdimensional matter will occupy a disproportionate amount of transportation capacity. Their special characteristics make it so that a small block of superdimensional matter is much larger if all of the additional matter shunted into other dimensions are counted." That… sounded like a huge impediment! "Are you sure that is the case?" "We can only confirm this theory by attempting to trade superdimensional matter during the next trade, but there are few who are willing to brave the risks. The reason why we believe this theory holds credence is that we are encountering similar limitations through other means of teleportation. For example, when teleporting your body, do you know that we must expend enough energy to teleport a small juggernaut? Most of our teleportation technologies behave similarly when interacting with superdimensional matter. The effect is even stronger with the case of these new materials." Superdimensional technology was the big brother of transphasic technology. Phasewater was much more accessible, but its superdimensional properties were rather weak and tame. It did not surprise Ves all that much that superdimensional matter was much harder to teleport. This was a considerable weakness that forced people to make difficult tradeoffs when it came to conducting trade through the Oblivion Gates. Ves definitely believed that the Oblivion Gates could be upgraded with superdimensional matter. The problem was forgoing other trades just to send enough superdimensional matter to the Milky Way to upgrade the Black Oblivion Gate. "Wait a minute." Ves suddenly realized that it was not necessary to conduct such an elaborate trade. If he wanted to, he could earn 200 Ascension Points and spend it on opening up a dimension breach into the Blue Dimension. So long as the region of the Blue Dimension that corresponded to the Milky Way was also occupied with floating islands of superdimensional matter, the Oblivion Empire and its allies could mine lots of superdimensional matter for themselves! This was a great way to power up the family that Ves cared about back in the old galaxy! However… doing so might reveal that the Heavensword was not the relic responsible for opening temporary gateways into the 365th dimension.