Now that he gained his spiritual component, Ves threw himself back into his design work with gusto. The formation of the Solemn Guardian gave him a much more solid direction on where to take his mech design.

Ves quickly whipped up the primary armament of the Desolate Soldier within days. In fact, it only took less than a day to design the basic framework of his ballistic rifle!

Just as with the mech frame, Ves aimed for simplicity in designing the weapon. Leaning heavily on his newly-acquired Ballistic Weapon Optimization IV Sub-Skill, he aimed to bring out the most of each subcomponent while keeping down the cost and complexity of the weapon.

His new depth of knowledge in ballistic weapons already allowed him to develop a rifle that matched comparable ballistic rifle models in the market!

Though his work did not necessarily surpass the quality of weapon models designed by dedicated weapon developers, the difference was that his rifle design completely aligned with the Desolate Soldier's mech frame!

The mass, dimensions, balance, targeting mechanisms and other aspects of the rifle conformed extremely well with the rest of his design. This improved and optimized the handling of the weapon to an amazing degree, beyond what he could achieve with an off-the-shelf rifle design!

"Of course, the biggest benefit to designing my own rifle is that I don't have to pay any licensing fees."

This not only saved him several hundred million credits in upfront licensing cost, but also reduced the production cost of his Desolate Soldier as he didn't have to pay any per-unit licensing fees per mech!

With the estimated product margin of his Desolate Soldier model already so low, a minor saving like this could make a huge difference if his product took off in the market!

Cutting cost, minimizing waste and making the most efficient use out of a limited amount of materials dominated his current design project. Ves truly felt a lot of pain when he thought about all the compromises he made.

He had to give up a lot of flashy options in favor of cheaper and more sober solutions. Ves wasn't used to designing such a limited mech at first. He was used to incorporating expensive toys and premium materials in his mech designs, confident that his ample budget could accommodate his profligate design choices!

The Aurora Titan which sold for at least 100 million bright credits for the cheapest edition was an especially egregious example of his feature-based design approach!

Now that he suddenly switched to a cost-based design approach, Ves navigated his design project from a completely different direction. While he encountered plenty of minor bumps along the way, now that he reached this point, he fully became used to prioritizing cost over features!

"The Desolate Soldier will not be the last cheap mech I'll design. In fact, it is a preview of what is to come!"

Once he completed the rifle design, the Desolate Soldier design became feature complete.

Ves did not rest on his laurels yet, though. He still had to subject his design through many simulated tests in order to refine it further.

His new Simulations IV Sub-Skill became very handy at this instance. Ves exchanged it from the System with the hopes of increasing his productivity during the refinement phase of his design project.

The results surpassed his expectations!

Though Ves hadn't learned any specialized mathematical models, his ability to comprehend their strengths and limitations had improved. He knew how to tweak them to get more useful data out of his simulations and he also became more proficient in combining them to perform more realistic tests.

Ves gained more out of a single simulation run than ten separate tests in the past!

In addition, if his mech incorporated the design philosophies of other mech designers, then he became a lot more capable in compensating for their abstruse effects. He gained a lot of confidence in the reliability of his virtual tests. His reliance on testing physical prototypes had lessened!

At the very least, Ves didn't expect to gain too much out of putting a prototype of the Desolate Soldier. The lack of complexity that underpinned its design meant that there were much less variables in play.

Nonetheless, any mech designer who believed his mech design was bad because it didn't resort to fancy materials or components was wrong!

During his design project, Ves fully immersed himself in the art of doing less with more.

The solutions he developed or derived from his knowledge base combined into a sublime mech design. The results of the simulations he performed all conformed to his expectations.

Even so, Ves did not believe that he was ready to publish his design.

"I haven't tested a single prototype yet!"

Ves did not wish to act with too much haste and prematurely publish a design without being completely sure it performed just as well in reality. No matter how much his simulation abilities had improved, not a single model was perfect! Discrepancies were bound to emerge!

This put Ves into a somewhat difficult situation. He was still a distance away from the Bright Republic. He couldn't supervise the fabrication and the testing of the prototype in person.

"I can only rely on my subordinates to perform their duty in my absence!"

Ves realized that this was a test for the LMC! As long as they could conduct the testing and production of his Desolate Soldier without issue, his company was robust enough to survive without requiring his direct physical presence.

He decided to call Calsie directly. As soon as the call came through, his comm projected her face.

"Ves." She nodded calmly. She looked a bit more mature now that she held her leadership position for a time. "I did not expect you to contact me directly. Usually you are content with letting Gavin speak on your behalf."

"This is an exception. You're aware of my current design project, right?"

She nodded. As the caretaker of the LMC, she already heard about his Desolate Soldier project. "Of course. How much progress have you made?"

"I've completed the first iteration of its design."

That shocked her. "This fast?!"

"I told you I prioritized speed this time. Don't worry about its quality. It's a simple design so I managed to devote a lot of attention to each and every aspect. I'm very confident that my Desolate Soldier can compete fairly in the mech market at its current state."

"Have you tested it yet with a prototype?"

"No. That's why I'm calling you. I'd like to delegate the testing process to you and Ketis. I'll transfer an encrypted data package that contains the design schematics and all of the necessary documents to fabricate the prototype. Can I trust in you and Ketis to perform the testing on my behalf?"

She nodded seriously. "I'll make sure that the details of your design won't leak. People will only know that we are in the process of testing a new mech. By the way, this is a good opportunity to put our new space-based testing ground to use."

After Ves designed the Aurora Titan, the LMC needed to form a testing ground in space in order to test the mechs in-house. The new testing ground was situated in the middle of an asteroid belt in the outer portion of the Cloudy Curtain System.

"Make sure that everything is secure. Don't hesitate to draw deeply upon the Avatars of Mechs to secure the testing areas. I don't want a single snapshot of my mech to circulate on the galactic net."

If his competitors gained a good idea on what he was working on, they might attempt to steal his thunder!

Once he made all of the arrangements with Calsie, he ended the call. He then packaged all of his design schematics and other relevant files before passing them onto Crindon.

"Make sure to encrypt and transmit it securely to the LMC." He commanded.

After packing Crindon off, Ves finally enjoyed some free time to himself. While he could always spend his time on further testing and optimization work, he wanted to wait until the test results of the prototype came back.

"Well, Lucky." He turned to his cat, who looked up at him in curiosity. "Don't you think you owe me something?"

"Meow?"

Ves stretched out his hand. "Don't think I forgot about the P-stone I gifted to you!"

"Meow meow!"

"I don't care if you can gain more benefits if you digest the P-stone more fully! I'm not feeding you for free!"

"Meow!!!"

"What kind of a gem cat are you if you don't produce any gems?!"

After Ves kept pressing his cat to cough up the goods, Lucky finally couldn't take it any longer and floated into the bathroom.

Half an hour later, the cat grumpily phased through the hatch with a shiny object resting in his paws.

"Meow."

A reflective white gem landed on his desk. Ves smiled and reached out to scratch Lucky's head. "It's about time."

"Meow!"

Lucky fussily darted out of reach and dove onto his bed before burying himself under the covers.

Ves paid no mind to the antics of his cat and studied his long-awaited new gem with his System vision.

[Accumulation of Spirit]

Allows a mech to bear a small quantity of spiritual energy.

He frowned at the description. Not only was it disgustingly vague and imprecise, its actual utility was unknown!

"What difference can this gem even make?"

The gem appeared distinctly underwhelming compared to the other gems that Lucky produced lately. While the Ardent Wish and the Sin of Altruism directly improved the aspects of a mech by twenty and forty percent respectively, all the Accumulation of Spirit did was to make the mech be capable of bearing a 'small quantity' of spiritual energy!

"LUCKY!"

"Meow!"

Lucky instantly turned intangible and phased through the bed and deck. His eagerness to flee proved that his cat had definitely taken liberties with the P-stone!

"Goddammit!"

Ves sighed. It was his fault for getting too caught up in his design work. He should have paid more attention to Lucky and forced him to produce a proper high-quality gem!

He reached into his pocket and retrieved a pouch. The Accumulation of Spirit joined the other valuable gems he held.

Even if the Accumulation of Spirit appeared weak, Ves still believed it was significant enough to help him form another masterwork mech.

"Every gem represents another potential masterwork mech!"

Ves wasn't sure how much he'd be able to improve his mech affinity if he crafted a second masterwork mech, but any boost was welcome. He already reaped a lot of benefits from his first masterwork mech.

He did not have much hopes of replicating his feat immediately. While he invested a lot of effort into the Desolate Soldier, he hadn't been able to replicate the same degree of fervor when he worked on the Devil Tiger design.

He did not lack for passion when he worked on his current design project. However, his mentality was different.

The Devil Tiger was one of the purest expressions of his creativity, unbound by existing rules or taboos.

The Desolate Soldier on the other hand was a product made for the market. Ves had to work around so many limitations in order to conform to market demand.

"There's a huge difference between passion projects and business projects."

The former satisfied his creative desires while the latter advanced his business interests. His actual tastes diverged from the current iteration of the Desolate Soldier.

If he followed his whims more closely, then the mech design would have probably looked substantially different!

He sighed. "I can't expect to ignore the demands of the market and sell lots of mechs. For mass market mechs, conforming to the tastes of my customers is even more essential!"

This was his first time he tried to compete for market share in a high-volume product category, and he did not wish to impose too many weird ideas in his upcoming product.

"Even if my work isn't completely satisfying to me, selling lots of mechs brings its own form of satisfaction!"

As long as he sold a lot of mechs and earned a lot of money, he gained the capital to fund other passion projects!