"Don't worry, Rosa. The Riot Mark III Project has progressed at a brisk pace. My wife and I are confident that we can complete the project and deliver your new machine to you within a month. If the timing works out, we may be able to upgrade your damaged and dormant machine before I depart from the Premier Fleet." Ves and Venerable Rosa Orfan both stood in front of the central projection inside his private design lab. Although recent events took up a bit of his time, Ves tried his best not to neglect his work obligations. He made sure to devote enough hours to progres the Arboreal Project and the Riot Mark III Project. He also made sure to leverage the full power of the smart AIs to accelerate his problem solving. Relying so much on the smart AIs may not be a healthy practice to a mech designer in the long run, but the urgency of the situation was too great. Ves could still make up for it in other ways. Right now he just wanted to complete these projects as quickly as possible. Unfortunately, the Arboreal Project would probably take a bit more time due to the complexities involving biomechs. Ves and the Terrans held a lot of expectations towards the very first Woodsap mech model in existence. The human body surrogate control system that the Terrans intended to merge in the Carmine biomech design was a potential game changer in many ways. If successful, it could redefine mechs and solve the problem of Carmine mech pilots requiring a certain level of piloting training in order to become combat effective! It was certainly a much more elegant solution than taking the lazy approach by letting the living mech do the heavy lifting. Ves felt increasingly more disgusted by the users of the Auto Heretics in the Milky Way who practically formed their own subcommunity filled with fake and insincere mech 'pilots'. They were giving genuine mech pilots a bad name! A part of him actually began to feel regret that he had published such a distorted Carmine mech design to the people of the Milky Way. He could have disrupted original humanity by publishing a Carmine mech design that did not do anything fancy in terms of giving living mechs a lot more freedom to control their own mech frames. In any case, Ves made sure to add additional precautions in the design of the Arboreal Project to avoid the same mistakes. If the Terran mech pilots of the Arboreal Project mechs wanted to fight, then they needed to be the ones in charge! Ves absolutely did not want his first Woodsap mech design to violate the sanctity of mechs! As one of the five elemental Carmine mech designs that would form the basis of his promotion to the rank of Master Mech Designer, each of them had to reflect the values and principles that characterized his unique brand of mechs. He could tolerate the presence of flaws. After all, unlike what Gloriana might believe, nothing was perfect. A product could be defined by both its merits and its flaws. The latter did not always have to be horrible. If managed well enough, they could give the mech design more character. In any case, the Riot Mark III was a mech design that possessed a lot of 'flaws' depending on the perspective of the observer. As Ves stared at the design that should be a close match to the final version of the design, the Riot Mark III possessed a very loud and maybe even obnoxious design and color scheme. The striped orange expert spearman mech looked so glaring but not in a shiny way. As long as the living mech got scuffed by dirt, he could easily acquire a grungy appearance, one that was very atypical to high-ranking mechs. Not only was the Riot Mark III an obviously male living mech despite being paired with a female pilot, the machine also happened to be almost completely superdimensional aside from one glaring exception. The spear that should be held in his hands comprised of the tier 3 Destroyer spear that Ves had long reserved for the Riot Mark III. While the Dark Zephyr was currently making good use of this weapon, Saint Tusa was due to receive a pair of weapon-grade superdimensional daggers. Although switching from the spear to the pair of daggers massively decreased the Dark Zephyr's reach, their insane penetration capabilities more than made up for this shortcoming. With this weapon switch, the ace skirmisher mech gained many more options to deal with troublesome phase lords. It was also better for this mech archetype to wield a pair of light weapons as opposed to a larger and much more unwieldy polearm. If Tusa had truly fallen in love with the spear, then he could always request the Larkinson Clan to produce a superdimensional spear for him, though he would have to wait in the back of the line in order to see his request fulfilled. As Ves and Venerable Rosa Orfan continued to explore the design of the Riot Mark III, the latter became satisfied with the overall package. There was just one point of uncertainty. "Have the Terrans made any progress in developing superdimensional versions of Destroyer weapons?" Ves let out a sigh. "No. I have been requesting status updates from the Terrans, but as far as I know, they have encountered setbacks in their research. It will take about 2 years at best and 3 years at most for the Terrans to develop the initial working versions of superdimensional Destroyer weapons. Even if they have figured out a method, that is not the end of the story. We still need to source a massive quantity of Destroyer particles to stuff into your superdimensional Destroyer spear. The only known supply of that is the Greater Terran United Confederation of the old galaxy, which means we need to arrange a very expensive and troublesome exchange through the Oblivion Gates." That caused Rosa to frown. "Does that mean it will cost more than it is worth it to upgrade my Destroyer spear into a superdimensional version?" "Don't worry about it." He quickly tried to reassure her. "The investment is more than worth it. Regular superdimensional weapons are already deadly. A superdimensional Destroyer spear will become even more ridiculously powerful. It also has the added benefit of being impossible to wield by the native aliens. Phase lords have attempted to steal and use high-tier Destroyer weapons in the past, but their massive bodies always suffered severe injuries as their weak willpower is not capable of suppressing the violent activity of high concentrations of Destroyer particles." Theft was a major concern. Red humanity had already defeated a number of phase lords armed with Saint Piercer arms. It was difficult but not impossible to repurpose the alien-grade superdimensional alloy weapons, especially after splitting them up into multiple pieces and reforging them into mech-sized armaments. This steadily decreased the disparity between red humanity and the native aliens in the superdimensional arms race. This was a very critical competition and one that could have a major influence on the progression of the Red War. At the end of the meeting, Venerable Rosa Orfan was at least somewhat satisfied with the machine that she would get to use after a month or so of waiting. "I am not happy with all of the waiting." The expert pilot said. "Seeing Dise become an ace pilot ahead of me and butchering a greater phase lord like he was an ordinary beast is frustrating to me. I am not afraid to admit that I am jealous of her. Why did she get to go first while I am still stuck in front of my bottleneck? What if I can't break through despite getting my own superdimensional mech? Wouldn't all of that matter go to waste?" Ves raised his hand and placed it on her uniformed shoulder. "Relax. It is fine. You still hold my confidence, or else I wouldn't have invested so much effort into your machine. Don't underestimate the feedback of what a powerful machine can do for you. The Mark II is not a masterwork, but the Mark III will definitely become one, my wife and I can guarantee you that. Then there is the secret sauce. The transformation I have in mind is dangerous, but if you can control it, then you will be the first to pilot a dangerous but potent kind of mech. If you can tame your new Riot, I have no doubt that becoming an ace pilot is a breeze." "I hope you are right, Ves." After the meeting came to an end, Ves continued to work on the expert mech design. 𝗳𝚛𝗲𝕖𝚠𝚎𝚋𝗻𝗼𝕧𝗲𝐥.𝚌𝚘𝐦 It would have been great if Rosa Orfan was already an ace pilot. Everything would be much easier. He did not have to hold himself back too much. Ves possessed a pretty good understanding of what an expert pilot was able to do, and it was not much compared to an ace pilot. He could also work on a mech frame that incorporated much more powerful ace mech-grade resonating exotics as opposed to the old pair of expert mech-grade resonating exotics. Unfortunately, he had to work with his current reality, and not the one that only existed in his dreams. The additional difficulties related to Venerable Rosa Orfan's shortcomings was annoying, but also presented Ves with interesting design challenges. In order to make the Riot Mark III Project powerful enough without breaking Venerable Orfan outright, Ves frequently had to thread the needle and come up with creative solutions in order to establish an acceptable balance. If he was designing an ace mech such as the Lionheart Mark II, then it would be too easy for Ves to resort to the most straightforward if not necessarily the most elegant and efficient solution. Just as Ves was about to wrap up his design session, he suddenly received an urgent notification from Gavin. "Ves! You need to look at the news right away! The Cybernetic Empire has finally made a move!" This had to be important. Ves immediately commanded the central projector of his design lab to switch to a popular galactic news channel. It immediately showed a partial view of the interior of the Bridgehead One System. Many different planets, starships and shuttles flew back and forth. Yet a large amount of traffic avoided a large area of space that was dominated by a single familiar-looking superstructure. "It's… the beyonder gate!" It had clearly undergone a massive overhaul since the last time Ves saw it. The Polymath had clearly done a lot of work to it. She had ripped out entire sections and added in her own work. The degree of transformation was much more extensive than what she was able to accomplish in a couple of years. The Polymath most definitely made the most out of the lengthy Time of Isolation. She had 53 years to study the greater beyonder gate and redesign it to accomplish a very different purpose! Now, for the first time since the return of Bridgehead One, the Cybernetic Empress finally decided to show off the results of her extensive work. The gate slowly became active. Lights started to run while energies began to circulate around the massive ring. Huge amounts of transphasic materials became active. Enormous engines based on principles that few people in the Red Ocean could understand began to burn an unknown but undoubtedly significant amount of phasewater. Space contorted. It happened so quickly that Ves almost couldn't believe it. In just a single instance, two different spaces had become connected to each other! The two-way portal did not show any sign of instability. It was both strong and large. The gate was most definitely consuming enormous amounts of energy and maybe phasewater to keep it active, so the Cybers did not let this portal go to waste. A warfleet began to pass through the active gate. Over a hundred warships, carriers and support vessels set off from Bridgehead One and arrived in the middle of the Rubarthan Pact in a matter of minutes! "The gate… works!"