Ves felt as if he was becoming more and more adept at misdirection.

Each time he had to explain himself to Master Willix, he resorted to increasingly more foolproof methods of distorting the truth.

Before, he might have resorted a lot more to outright lying. However, doing so always exposed some loopholes. Perhaps the known facts might contradict his statements. Perhaps other people claimed the opposite. Whatever the case, Ves gradually realized that lying about the truth was actually the worst form of misdirection.

Ves was fairly confident that he could cheat most forms of lie detection by donning a mask. However, he always felt that Master Willix never quite bought his bold-faced lies. No matter how much he controlled his intonation, passion and micro-expressions, he couldn't close all of the loopholes by adjusting his own behavior.

Lying through omission was the next level of misdirection. By simply avoiding mention of what he didn't want to say, he conveniently escaped the need to say anything sensitive that he would rather keep under wraps.

Of course, the challenge with this more effective method was that he had to distract his audience.

In this, Ves discovered that emulating James was the best way to confound the likes of Master Willix!

There was an art to saying the truth but avoiding anything relevant. Ves gradually realized that the key to pulling it off was by presenting certain statements that inevitably led to a dead end!

No matter how much his audience wanted to follow through, the topic that Ves had steered towards ended straight into a wall!

Ves shamelessly copied the Living Prophet's verbal methods. He hoped that Master Willix experienced the same kind of frustration and lack of clarity that he often felt when he talked to the clone!

It worked.

He laughed himself stupid inside his mind as he confounded the incredibly intelligent and experienced Master Mech Designer.

The best part of it all was that Ves truly spoke from his heart! Though he deliberately exaggerated his views, he really did believe in the power of love!

As a passionate mech designer, Ves deeply valued emotion. Philosophically, he believed that sentient life distinguished itself from non-sentient life by feeling emotions.

Could AIs feel love? Everyone agreed that they did not, because no authority figure in this field believed that AIs could 'feel' anything.

Sure, they were able to simulate the behavior of someone who felt emotions. Yet no matter how closely these AIs passed themselves off as the genuine products, in the end they lacked the most essential quality that turned falsehood into reality.

This was what made his design philosophy so perplexing and infuriating to rational mech designers such as Master Willix.

Ves very much explicitly designed his mechs with the premise that they were alive. Not only that, they were also sentient.

As a result, they could feel emotions.

A few months ago, he actually possessed slightly different views on this topic. He emphasized his design spirits so much in his latter mech designs that he unconsciously began to equate them as the 'life' of his mech designs!

This was the wrong interpretation. What happened during the Battle of Ulimo Citadel opened his eyes to the factors he had gradually neglected.

When the artificial anomaly dampened the presence of Qilanxo, Jannzi and the Shield of Samar were able to break through on their own. The former expert candidate did not rely on any external help other than her mech to undergo apotheosis!

Her breakthrough revealed to him that the most important life in mechs was not their design spirit, but their intrinsic individuality!

This was a quality that could not be taken from mechs unless they died. Though it wasn't as strong and flashy as a design spirit, the intrinsic life of mechs bonded to their mech pilots to a much more personal degree.

Aside from a few noticeable exceptions, most of his design spirits were connected to many mech pilots. How could the Solemn Guardian ever develop an intimate personal relationship with any mech pilot when there were millions of Desolate Soldiers in use? Any design spirit that ended up in such a situation would inevitably adopt a more uniform approach.

This was what made his design spirit-empowered mechs so potent. Their strong and identical auras were perfect for aligning the thoughts of many mech pilots. The glows effectively forced other mech pilots in their influence to become more aligned.

Such an effect was of great value in large conflicts.

In the Sand War, his Desolate Soldier encouraged many mech pilots and starfighter pilots to do their duty.

He never put that much emphasis on developing the customers of his Soldier product line. Who cared about maximizing the potential of individual mech pilots when the sandmen were slaughtering trillions of innocent people?

In those dark and desperate days, many states already experienced a lot of trouble in keeping as many of their mech pilots involved as possible. Though his Soldier product line robbed many mech pilots of their own thoughts, they at least persisted longer in battle!

As for the Komodo War, the Blessed Squire already showed amazing potential at energizing the Hex Army.

One of the traits that most mech militaries emphasized was esprit de corps. The Hex Army heavily emphasized uniformity in the mechs and gear its soldiers utilized. That same focus also extended to its martial culture.

Therefore, the introduction of a mech that effectively strengthened the esprit de corps fell exactly in line with what the Hexers wanted! The greater their unity, the higher their morale in battle!

Arguably, uniformity was also a boon to the Larkinson Clan. The existence of the Golden Cat played a central role in uniting tens of thousands of adopted Larkinsons to a common cause. Brighters, Ylvainans, Reinaldans, Sentinel commoners and many more people all united under the influence of the Larkinson Network and the Bright Warriors.

This was why he did not believe he had made a mistake in venturing too much in this direction. The innovations he realized and the applications he developed would remain relevant and useful throughout the remainder of his career.

He just thought that the essence of his design philosophy lay in a different direction.

It was never his intention to design a mech that forced everyone to think and feel the same way. That was a distortion of life, not a celebration of life. It did not entirely fall in line with his dreams and ambitions.

Even though the Bright Warrior was superior to the Shield of Samar in almost any way, Ves viewed the latter as a greater success.

The Shield of Samar caused him to move closer to accomplishing his goals.

Recognizing this essential truth was the key to breaking his obsession with design spirits. No matter how much he tried to develop them, they did not actually bring more life to his mechs. This must also be the reason why the System never gave him any higher marks on the X-Factor of his mechs.

In any case, Ves felt more and more impatient to return to his ongoing mech projects. He wanted to correct his mistake and reorient his ongoing mech designs as much as possible!

He became increasingly more impatient to end his discussion with Master Willix. While many other mech designers in his shoes would have scolded him for disrespecting a great authority in mech design, Ves was a firm believer in himself.

"Let's move to the reward that you are entitled to receive from us." Master Willix eventually spoke, immediately causing Ves to snap to full attention. "During this time, we have extensively analyzed and processed all of the evidence you have supplied about the prohibited weapons you have encountered at Ulimo Citadel. We have confirmed that all of it is authentic, though lacking in detail in many cases. You need to invest in better sensors, Mr. Larkinsons."

"It's on the list."

Willix eyed him with a stern expression. "Regardless, we have already calculated the bounties for destroying these reprehensible weapons and applied a multiplier to the final figure as promised. Your final reward amounts to 9,431,564 MTA merits."

9,431,564 MTA merits.

Not credits. Merits.

Ves let out a deep breath.

A huge amount of elation burst from his body!

"Thank you, ma'am! It is a pleasure to be of service to the great Mech Trade Association! Though we have made a painful sacrifice to remove a blight from existence, our mech pilots have not died in vain!"

His excitement only dropped a bit when he realized he still needed to subtract 2,250,000 MTA merits from his gains. He paid 2 million MTA merits to receive a temporary dispensation to make use of taboo weapons and he also gave up 250,000 MTA merits to provide amnesty to the Xona Stalkers.

In ordinary times, giving away so much merits was unthinkable! If Ves wasn't so confident that he would be able to gain a lot more merits after paying this hefty price, he wouldn't have resorted to such extremes!

Ves was very much aware that this was just a one-time deal. The latest developments in the Nyxian Gap truly infuriated the MTA, and Ves just happened to be in a position to enact the Association's will.

There was no way that Ves would be able to gain permission to use superweapons in subsequent battles! Let alone 2 million MTA merits, not even 100 million MTA merits was worth it for the Association to look the other way! This was because making such weapons in ordinary conflicts would definitely impact the stability of human space!

In any case, now that the MTA finally lived up to its promise and awarded him a spectacular amount of merits, Ves let down all of his worries.

"Is there anything else, ma'am?" He impatiently asked.

"Before you go, I would like to address one more topic with you. Now that your Larkinson Clan has welcomed its first expert pilot, you will have to obtain an expert mech. This is a machine that neither you nor Miss Wodin can deliver by yourselves. Have you considered how to solve this problem?"

"My partner should be in the process of soliciting others to collaborate on an expert mech design project." Ves perfunctory answered.

"I am aware of her efforts. It is not so easy to gain the cooperation of a Master, especially with the conditions that she has raised."

Ves narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Are you…"

"Don't think about it. I am not at your beck and call." She immediately replied. "That said, it may be possible to invite other Masters to help the two of you design a proper expert mech. Your new gains can play a major role in attracting their attention."

"This.. I'm not sure. The merits we've earned are very precious."

"Different Masters demand different remuneration." She said. "Their time and expertise are very precious. It is up to you and your partner to determine how much or how little assistance you require. I advise you not to cling too tightly to your merits. Their worth is great and hardly any Master Mech Designer will say no to an opportunity to earn them in exchange for being open for consultation. The best benefit is that you don't have to restrict yourself to Hexers. Masters throughout the entire galaxy are willing to assist or mentor you as long as you pay the right price."

Ves widened his eyes. She was right! He had forgotten the fact that while many lesser mech designers were limited to operating in a limited galactic region, Masters did not suffer from this limitation.

There was no real reason from stopping them getting involved in design projects on the other side of the galaxy or in a different one entirely!

While the number of Masters in the Komodo Star Sector was rather respectable, how many of them were compatible with the Shield of Samar?

If he expanded his search to every Master Mech Designer in the galaxy, he would surely be able to find someone with a fantastic complimentary design philosophy that was willing to contribute to the next evolution of the Shield of Samar!