Chapter 7371: Terran Pride Ves sighed in relief. It turned out that there was still a potential way out. Several ways, in fact. So far, the Terrans tried their best to keep the Woodsap Mech Design Project as in-house as possible. Aside from collaborating with Ves, they avoided any third-party entanglements, believing that they already possessed the capabilities to bring the project to completion. They were partially correct in that assumption. While the other aspects of the collaborative mech design project progressed decently, Ves did not feel satisfied with the consequences to the mech pilots. Even if there were plenty of Terrans that willingly traded away their humanity for a chance to pilot one of the most powerful standard mechs to appear on the battlefield, Ves considered this tradeoff to be a symptom of failure! A proper mech should never force its pilot into a devil’s bargain. It was one thing for Ves to offer a risky bargain tailored to specific individuals such as Venerable Joshua and Saint Rosa Orfan. They had tried the normal approach and lost patience with the persistent lack of results. However, for all of those Terran citizens to give up their human form and willingly transform into tree-like monstrosities went too far in his opinion! It was too indiscriminate and maybe ultimately self-defeating. How could these Carmine mech pilots sincerely fight for red humanity when they had given up their own identity as humans? Ves had personal experience how form defined one’s identity. The Ascended Giants had become so enamoured with their giant forms that they had embraced as their default states. This was the reason why they needed a dedicated troop carrier vessel like the Armitage. The compartments and hallways of regular human starships could not accommodate their true bodies! Ves on the other hand was different. While he admittedly kept his body to human proportions in order to avoid losing control over it, he had insisted on retaining his human form even before the emergence of his other self. He and the Dark Apostle may be two sides of the same coin, but their preferences fundamentally defined them as different individuals. Ves abhorred the inhumanity of his phase lord form while the Dark Apostle thought that his original human form exemplified weakness. It could have been worse. At least the pair retained the same human face and proportions. The same could not be said for the Terran test subjects. Even if the biotech researchers managed to tweak and optimize the process so that the next batches looked a little less horrendous, Master Laila Devos clearly warned him not to expect any breakthroughs. Ves strongly argued in favor of seeking outside assistance. The Master Mech Designer shut down this notion pretty quickly. "What you say has merit, Ves." The old woman spoke over the communication channel. "Yet the Terran Alliance cannot bring itself to accept your proposal. The Arboreal Project and all of its related subprojects must remain a Terran initiative from beginning to end. You may have grown accustomed to collaborating with third parties, but we are not as eager to share and leak our confidential trade secrets with our rivals. Woodsap mechs must remain exclusively Terran. We will not accept any risk that slightly increases the possibility for others to imitate the Carmine mechs that are exclusively ours." Ves frowned in response. The Terrans were far too stubborn about this. The issue at hand was not even directly related to the core technologies that made the Woodsap mechs so much better than regular Carmine mechs. He just wanted them to seek outside assistance to reduce the side effects of the necessary augmentations. He continued to argue in favor of borrowing the expertise of others, but Master Laila Rebecca Devos remained unflinching. Even if she harbored another opinion, she did not represent herself, but channeled the will of the Terran Alliance. Unless Ves was able to persuade a majority of the leaders of the Terran ancient clans, it was impossible for him to succeed in this effort. After the older Terran woman made it abundantly clear how the Terrans were willing to settle with worse products in order to defend their exclusivity, Ves had little choice but to accept this reality. "If you truly insist on this course of action, then we need to work harder to sort out this problem." He said as he did not give up on addressing this obvious flaw. "I will come up with possible solutions, and I hope that you guys do so as well. We cannot allow our greed to override our responsibilities. Mech designers exist to serve mech pilots, not the other way around. I do not want our Woodsap mechs to end up doing more harm than good for their users. I think it is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that it is our job to design mechs that adapt to their pilots." As a vaunted Master Mech Designer, Laila Devos could not possibly be ignorant of this principle. Her expression softened to an extent. "The conditions of the test subjects are far from ideal, but the Terran Alliance is under significant pressure. We need the power of Woodsap mechs to replenish our depleted mech armies and reignite hope among those that have begun to lose confidence in our ability to defend our space. Each delay will lead to the fall of another handful of border systems. The sooner we release our Woodsap mechs, the sooner we can shift the Red War in a more favorable direction." The Terran Alliance had to weigh many different priorities. Time was an ever-present source of pressure. While Ves himself did not mind if he had to delay the development of Woodsap mechs for a couple of months, the Terrans had to pay a much bigger price for the same action. He sighed. "I understand. Let us take the time to figure out a better way to augment your prospective Woodsap mech pilots. It will take a couple of weeks before my Bluejay Fleet has completed its current mission and crosses into Terran space. I want to examine the test subjects in person. Perhaps I can devise a new solution after I have understood the condition of those warped individuals in person." "You are welcome to pay a visit to one of our confidential research sites, Ves. I will take care of the necessary permissions. Be aware that only you will be permitted entry. We want to maintain the confidentiality of our project as much as possible. That also includes information related to the test subjects. Please keep our demands in mind. Do not share what you have learned beyond the authorized list of personnel. What I have told you earlier still stands. We will complete this project without resorting to the expertise of the Red Association, the Red Collective or the Cybernetic Empire." This would severely limit what Ves could get away with, but there was no other choice. He could only respect the wishes of his client no matter how foolish they sounded in his ears. Oh well. At least he had a chance to develop his own solution. He did not have a solid idea on how to tackle this problem, but he still had plenty of time to figure out a viable way forward. Even if he could not borrow directly from outside expertise, he could still acquire textbooks and other teaching materials to develop a foundation in different fields. Ves suddenly desired to spend more time with Dr. Zeron Khabeel and the other ritualists. He knew that these mysterious figures possessed the ability to harness E energy at a larger scale, all without expending a disproportionate amount of energy and matter! He had a slight hunch that he would be able to find a potential solution to this problem if he resorted to ritualism. Yet this field was way too broad. Ves only became exposed to the basics of ritualism. His practical ability fell far behind, and he did not master any of the essential techniques. Even if he chose to mess around and construct a random ritual without any systematic design, the results would likely be highly inconsistent! Perhaps his self-made ritual might actually work and produce Woodsap mech pilots that only had a few patches of bark on their skins. Yet because the stability of this shabby ritual was too poor, other Woodsap mech pilots might transform into a tree that was indistinguishable from the real thing! The hint of human transforming into a literal tree that could no longer move or do anything remotely human would ignite a lot of outrage from the public! This was what the Terrans most certainly did not want to see. They had already marked the Woodsap mechs as the most definite prestige project of this decade. The Woodsap mechs had not yet completed their development, but the Terrans already treated them as their pride and joy in advance! Ves found that attitude to be a bit perplexing. To him, the Terrans were already counting their chickens before they hatched. With all of the new technologies and phenomena tied to the Arboreal Project, it would be prudent to expect other setbacks to occur in the coming weeks. Still, the Terrans were not weak by any means. Even if they had exposed their limitations in a single field, they were still very competent in many technological fields. They should be capable enough to squash 99 percent of design issues before they grew serious enough to point out to Ves. He and Master Laila Devos continued to discuss a number of other subjects related to the Arboreal Project. Only after they had run out of relevant subjects did they begin to talk about other developments. "You are returning to the Terran Alliance at a good time." Master Laila Devos said with a mild smile. "The Arboreal Project is not the only major project that we have invested a great amount of manpower and resources into. We have completed a number of confidential and not-so-confidential projects that will prove helpful in strengthening our forces. I think you will be pleasantly surprised when we introduce some of them to you. It is possible that one of them may offer substantial assistance to the development of our Woodsap mechs." "Can’t you be more clear than that, Master?" "I apologize, but you will have to wait until you arrive here in person. We are taking confidentiality and espionage more seriously now that we have formally seceded from the Red Two’s unjust regime. Much of the reason why the mechers and fleeters have been able to keep our people under their thumbs so effectively is their highly effective monitoring and spying capabilities. If we want to stand our ground as a sovereign colonial empire, then we cannot allow third parties to keep treating our secret research institutions as their communal dining halls. While we cannot do much to improve security on your end, we can at least clean up our own domains." She sounded a bit cynical about that. She had good reasons to. It was undeniable that Ves was currently housed within a heavy cruiser of the Red Association. Even if Ves and the Larkinsons stationed on the Tarrasque made an effort to utilize their own equipment, they could not avoid the use of ship systems entirely. From processors to security measures, the Design Department still worked under the auspices of the mechers. Ves felt increasingly less comfortable about this situation. He became a little more eager to reunite with the Premier Fleet. This was especially the case when Ves might not be able to maintain a tight relationship with the mechers, or at least some of them. His relationship with the Transhumanists remained tight, but his bond with the Survivalists was clearly becoming more lukewarm. This trend might not persist, but Ves had to take the worst-case scenario into account. In the end, it was much safer and more comfortable for him and his fellow Larkinsons to stay on their own ships.