The addition of the Flagrant Vandals to the Larkinson Clan proceeded smoothly, all things considered. Their military pedigree and their Brighter heritage meant that they were already very compatible with the ideals of the Larkinson Clan.

Though they were a little rough around the edges, they were hardly the worst in this aspect.

With Major Verle-Larkinson and Fleet Coordinator Ophelia Kronon-Larkinson banding together to form the nucleus of the Military Bureau, a lot of changes were in store.

Hopefully, the various combat units of the Larkinson Clan would soon be able to function alongside each other as parts of a greater whole.

In a way, what Major Verle started was much like designing a mech. The Larkinson Clan already possessed different parts which could fulfill their functions by themselves. Yet in order to transform their strength to a level where they could meet any crisis with confidence, it was essential to combine them together into a single design that brought out the most of the specialized components!

The undercurrent of the Larkinson Clan surged even further. Though not every Larkinson accepted Major Verle's sudden elevation in leadership, the former Brighter proved to be a quick worker.

Much of his work entailed convincing other people to accept his suggestions. This was something that Major Verle was particularly good at. After meeting Commander Melkor, Commander Magdalena and Commander Cinnabar on a regular basis, he soon managed to come to an accord with each of them. Every commander became willing to accept his suggestions!

While all of these movements took place, Ves could finally devote himself fully to his mech design projects.

Though they had already been chugging along in his absence, his personal attention was still essential.

He not only conducted marathon design sessions with Gloriana in order to speed up the progress of their Hexer mech design project, but also supervised his design teams as they fumbled with the testing of the prototypes of the striker mech.

As a project that was much closer to completion, Ves paid an increasing amount of attention to the final stretch of development of the striker mech.

During the second round of prototype testing, he even took Maikel and Zanthar on a little excursion into space.

At one of the Cinach System's asteroid belts, a fair number of spaceborn testing grounds had been set up. Cinach VI was the home to a large number of mech companies, each of which constantly developed new products that needed to be tested.

Right now, the LMC booked one of these testing grounds in order to comprehensively examine the performance of the current iteration of the striker mech under real conditions.

The sight was very spectacular. Thick, armored mechs flew steadily across an obstacle course while firing their large and slightly-oversized flamethrowers at various groups of targets along the way!

The test pilots skillfully increased the spread of the Enison Spreaders to engulf entire squads of projected mechs in flames.

Against a single, more distant target, the pilots narrowed the cone of their flamethrowers in order to increase their range and concentration of energy.

The striker mechs expended a huge amount of propellant and oxidizers. Both of these substances were stored in the storage tanks attached to the Enison Spreaders and integrated in the frame of the machines.

While Ves had contemplated attaching the storage tanks to the exterior of the mech, they were far too vulnerable if left exposed!

A traditional striker mech had to be able to withstand a lot of hits. The carefully-planned tests exquisitely pushed the limits of the prototypes by subjecting them to precisely-calculated attacks.

It hurt Ves a bit to see one of the prototypes being blasted by laser drones from every direction. Yet despite the barrage, the armor system of the striker mech held up exactly as its specifications allowed!

To the two boys, ahem, adolescent men, seeing the mechs in action with their very own eyes was an unforgettable experience!

Even though they were Larkinsons, their only opportunities to see mechs in action was when they attended the mech games in their old lives. Aside from that, they never got the opportunity to see an actual mech in action outside of footage and drama programs!

They even missed out the opportunity to watch the Battle of Kesseling VIII unfold because they had been among the first clansmen to be evacuated!

"Wow." Maikel sighed as he practically pressed his entire face against the transparent screen of the space station. His eyes continued to follow the maneuvers of the nearest prototype as it spread its unnatural hellfire red flames in precise bursts. "I've seen the projections of the simulated tests, but they're not even close to the real thing!"

Ves smiled. "We aren't playing a video game, Maikel. We are mech designers. Just because we sit behind terminals in order to manipulate projections all day doesn't mean that our work has real consequences. The machines we design are just like this prototype, capable of unleashing an unimaginable amount of destruction in the right circumstances!"

Though Ves had already lectured them about this topic before, theory was different from practice. Now that they finally witnessed the outcome of the effort that Ves and the rest of the design teams put into their striker mech design, the Larkinson seeds gained a clearer idea on what their profession entailed!

Mech designers mainly created war machines that killed!

The flames unleashed by the huge machines that could tower over many buildings could burn an entire town if left unchecked!

The scalding hot flames possessed a rather sticky quality that allowed them to continue to burn in space for a number of seconds. If the flames ever landed on a mech, then it would continue to burn it down!

The main reason for this was the special propellant used. Not only did it burn longer, the Enison Spreader also released in a higher density.

The purpose of doing so was to enhance its area denial role by allowing it to continue to block off portions of space with longer-lasting flames.

The downside to this was the faster depletion of the propellant tanks. In most cases, the striker mech lasted from ten to thirty minutes before needing to return to resupply.

To Ves, this was barely adequate and far from ideal. He had never been able to solve the fundamental capacity problem of his striker mech design. The consequence was that he had to accept the fact that his upcoming product would be shipping with average endurance at best compared to the industry standard!

Of course, none of that affected the cool factor of his product. Both Maikel and Zanthar hadn't progressed enough to look beneath the surface of a mech. All they saw was big machines burning everything in their way in an awesome fashion! They were still kids at heart!

Not that this was anything bad. Every mech designer started off with a shallow fascination of mechs in their youth. People like Ves simply retained their admiration for these machines into their adulthood and centered their entire lives around designing better models!

"How hot do these flames burn?" Zanthar asked. "Why are the flames so red? Aren't hotter flames supposed to be blue?"

Ves gently shook his head. "The color of the flames isn't necessarily correlated by the energy being released. While it's true that a more energetic thermal reaction can result in the release of higher frequencies of electromagnetic radiation or light, in practice it's always a mix. The propellant formula contains a lot of different substances that each emit a varying amount of energy in the form of heat and energy."

"So why are the flames released by your striker mech so red?"

"It's a cosmetic design choice." Ves admitted. "It fits the overall theme of my design. The mech already comes with a red-brown coating by default. Giving it the illusion of spitting hellfire will likely evoke all sorts of frightening associations to approaching enemies."

"I don't know, teacher. I think blue flames are scarier." Zanthar commented.

"I watched a drama once where a squad of striker mechs burned an entire street with purple flames!" Maikel shouted.

Ves chuckled in a good-natured manner. "As long as you work hard and study well, you can design a striker mech that releases flames in any color you like. Until then, you better learn honestly and keep up with my demands."

Their motivation was still as high as ever, especially after viewing the impressive striker mechs in action with their own two eyes!

While Ves enjoyed witnessing his prototype in action, he wasn't looking at them in the perspective of a child.

While there weren't any control panels in front of him, his implant was receiving a lot of data. His implant quickly processed them and analyzed the patterns.

The test results largely met his expectations.

He felt a little disappointed at that. Though his striker mech was a functionally-sound product, it didn't perform notably better than the other offerings on the market.

Ves could only rely on the glow he planned to impart on his striker mech design to make the crucial difference!

Sometimes, a boy was a boy, a Hexer was a Hexer and a striker mech was a striker mech.

Ves tried his best to square the circle and surpass the limitations inherent to this mech type, to no avail. Reality could be bent, but not to this extent!

Aside from opening his wallet and breaking his budget, there was no way to develop a striker mech that was completely to his liking.

It was worse now that Ves had a taste of second-class mech design.

Before he designed the Bright Warrior and embarked on the Hexer mech design project, Ves was fully grounded in third-class mechs. He almost never had the opportunity to design something better, which meant that his horizons had never been widened.

It was a lot easier to design third-class mechs back then. Ignorance was bliss and Ves had closed his eyes to the greater possibilities that second-class mech designers like Gloriana regularly took for granted!

That was not possible anymore. Once he was promoted to a second-class mech designer, Ves would never be able to stop his mind from imagining the endless possibilities if he just stuffed an expensive component or material in his third-class mech designs!

"Urgh! It's torture sometimes!"

Despite these complaints, Ves still believed in his end product. A mech was more than the numbers on a spec sheet. Throughout his entire career, he had become increasingly more dependent on his glows to augment his mechs.

The material performance of his products didn't matter as much as the combination of the tangible and intangible properties of the mechs!

Unfortunately, Ves didn't get to see the full potential of his striker mech design yet. Only when he was finally ready to formulate the glow of the mech would he truly be able realize his vision. The weak spiritual foundation that the prototypes currently conveyed was just a pale shadow of what was to come.

"Let's go, students." He said. "The testing will proceed for at least three more days. That's far too much time to be wasted on seeing mechs burn empty space. There's a lot more homework in store for you once we return to Cinach VI!"

"Awww!"

While his striker mech already performed well enough to be competitive on the market, Ves had already made the decision to subject it to iterate on it for at least another round.

While he wanted to finish this project as fast as possible, he couldn't rush the project too much. Ves noticed plenty of details that required further optimization in order to receive good reviews from industry outlets.

This was not the time where he was in the middle in a crisis and in a hurry to publish a new mech design! The circumstances surrounding the development of the Desolate Soldier was completely different from his current project!

"I won't tolerate as much sloppiness this time!"