Patriarch Reginald Cross looked more and more displeased. It was difficult for him to refute the suggestion that his clan was in decline.

Although he was an expert pilot, he was also a leader. He had been in power long enough to know that he needed to gain as much leverage as possible to secure a favorable deal with someone.

He initially thought that Ves was too young and inexperienced, but the more they talked, the more leverage he was giving up. If this continued on for a couple of weeks, the Cross Clan might have no choice but to sign a deeply lop-sided agreement if it wanted to cooperate with the Larkinson Clan!

Near the end of the triumph, Patriarch Reginald finally made a major concession.

He revealed another bargaining chip. He leaned in to whisper in Ves' ear.

"Our clan may have lost many assets, but don't underestimate how many treasures we've gathered at our height. We defeated several powerful clans and tribes back in the Garlen Empire. Just as you've plundered pirates, we have been plundering much greater opponents."

"You lost most of those gains, right?" Ves replied.

"We do not deny that, but we have still managed to empty our most valuable vaults in the confusion. Among our gains are strategic reserves of incredibly rare exotics. These materials are only produced in our star sector at exceedingly limited quantities due to their scarcity. Some of the exotics can be classified as first-class materials. While our clan is reserving most of it for my eventual ace mech, we may be open to trading the excess to you in exchange for your services."

There was no way Ves could remain unmoved after hearing this. Even though he plundered large quantities of Unending alloy from the Nyxian Gap, the applicability of this material was very limited. Aside from expanding a mech's spiritual capacity, the main way to utilize this hard material was to incorporate it into the armor and structure of a machine.

In effect, this meant that any expert mech that Ves was able to design with Unending alloy would fall into a similar situation as the Bright Warrior. The armor and protection of the expert mech might reach first-class standards, but the power reactor, mech engine, flight system, inertial dampeners and so on lagged too far behind.

Granted, such a resilient mech would definitely be more powerful than regular second-class expert mechs, but Ves yearned for more.

If he followed his original plan and designed an expert mech with his current means, then Venerable Joshua and his other expert pilots would receive adequate machines.

However, there was a decent chance that his expert pilots could no longer go any further because their expert mechs failed to keep up. Once the expert pilots reached the limits of their machines, Ves would have to upgrade them at great cost and effort.

In fact, this was how state militaries such as the Sundered Phalanx and the Hex Army handled their expert mechs. While providing fresh expert pilots with high-tier expert mechs accelerated their development, the chance that they would fall was too great.

The Fridaymen and Hexers couldn't afford to waste so many strategic materials at once. Therefore, they kept their high-grade exotics and other valuable materials in reserve and developed more modest expert mechs to their expert pilots.

As long as the demigods proved their worth and grew in strength, then their expert mechs would definitely be upgraded or replaced with better ones sooner or later.

Although Ves could adopt this gradual growth model as well for his expert pilots, it was too slow and timid for his liking.

The Hex Army and so on had to meet the needs of many different expert pilots. The Hexers might have stockpiled a lot of strategic materials, but they had to ration them in order to keep their options open in the later stages of the Komodo War.

The Larkinson Clan was in a different situation. It wasn't locked in costly wars. While it possessed relatively many expert pilots and expert candidates for its size, they didn't suffer any attrition due to being forced to fight in destructive wars.

At most, his Larkinsons would have to fight sporadically against enemies they met over the course of his expedition. Having the strongest possible mechs at hand would go a long way in securing victory and preserving the lives of his precious expert pilots.

In short, the advantages of securing high-tier expert mechs early were too great for Ves to ignore!

The reason why strategic materials were called this way was because they rarely circulated on the open market.

Even if someone was stupid enough to get rid of them, they would only offer them up to buyers through exclusive auctions.

From mining to processing these high-value exotics, the states maintained a tight grip on the entire supply chain.

One of the downsides of turning his Larkinson Clan nomadic was that it was incredibly hard for Ves to obtain these strategic materials.

Currently, his most viable option was to exchange them from the MTA or Rim Guards with MTA merits. Suffice to say, Ves would have to give up at least several million MTA merits to obtain a relatively modest quantity of materials. The pricing was so ludicrously high that Ves might as well call it an outright scam!

That said, Ves wasn't sure whether working together with the Cross Clan was a viable alternative.

"Your description is too vague." Ves told the Cross Patriarch. "I need more data. Give me a list. I need to judge the value of the materials you are willing to put before deciding anything else."

Patriarch Reginald instantly sent a file to Ves through his implant.

The document did not contain a lot of information, but it was more than sufficient for Ves to make a preliminary judgement.

The materials he encountered were quite obscure. Ves had to look them up on the galactic net in order to identify their properties.

His eyes widened a bit. While Reginald Cross did not put up any armor materials on the list, he listed various high-grade exotics that would add considerable power to the components of a mech.

Two exotics stood out to Ves. They held very special meaning to him. Ves instantly thought back of the Groening Mission and how much of a disaster it turned out to be. It was his first brush with the Five Scrolls Compact!

"Is Vicious Mountain a producer of monoexurite?" He asked.

"To be honest, we don't know where it came from." Reginald replied. "We just raided a stockpile from one of our defeated enemies."

It likely came from the frontier. If a planet in the frontier such as Groening IV held monoexurite deposits, then it was plausible for other nearby star systems to contain some as well!

In fact, perhaps the monoexurite in the Cross Clan's hands originated from that very same planet where Ves gained his Jutland organ!

No matter the origin, monoexurite was critically important to Ves, but not because of its use in mechs. Monoexurite had the remarkable ability to increase the range and traversal speed of FTL drives.

His ships would be able to travel across space a lot faster!

The only downside was that the Cross Clan only put up enough monoexurite to enhance a handful of FTL drives. If Ves managed to get his hands on the material, he intended to use it to improve the FTL drives of his factory ship!

Aside from monoexurite, the Cross Clan offered another interesting material.

"How did you get your hands on a Worclaw Crystal? I thought those only showed up closer to the center of the galaxy."

"It is likely a souvenir that someone carried all the way to the galactic rim." Patriarch Reginald casually guessed. "We only have one of them. The only reason why we're putting it up for exchange is because we have no use for this exotic."

Though Ves hadn't paid much attention to his abnormal physique in recent years, he never forgot about its similarities to the once-powerful Alshyr race.

One of the key reasons why the avian aliens grew so formidable was because they derived their strength from the Worclaw Crystals that were naturally found on their home planet!

While Ves had no idea what Worclaw Crystals would do to his abnormal physique and weird internal energy cycle, he would at least be able advance his understanding of Dr. Jutland's work!

Ves continued to ask about the details of some of the other exotics. Unlike monoexurite and Worclaw Crystals, the remaining materials on the list were mainly relevant to mechs.

"I'm not satisfied with the quantities you are willing to provide to us. They're barely enough to strengthen a single expert mech."

The Cross Patriarch held the upper hand this time. "We have to reserve most of our stockpile for our own needs. Back when we were in charge of the Becker Tribe, we took possession of much greater stockpiles of strategic materials. My father wanted to keep fighting in order to preserve momentum. If he chose to halt and allowed his men to upgrade his expert mech, then he might have been able to survive the ambush that robbed us of our warlord."

This sounded like a sore point to Reginald Cross. However, Ves was not about to let a sob story hold him back from clawing more concessions from the Cross Clan!

"Be that as it may, your expert mech can probably make due with less. Pumping too much value into it will only lead to a lot of wasted strength."

The two sparred a bit about this matter, but Reginald remained obstinate about this point. In fact, the Cross Patriarch originally didn't intend to hand over any exotics at all! He was only driven to the point because his clan didn't have anything else to give that would interest the Larkinsons.

As the military parade finished, Ves had to move onto the next phase. He quickly bid goodbye Patriarch Reginald.

"We'll discuss this further after the wedding. Think about putting more strategic materials on the table. The more you give to us, the more effort I will put into strengthening the expert mech that might help you become an ace pilot. The benefits I provide are worth much more than the marginal performance gains you'll get when you keep the valuable exotics to yourself. Perhaps you'll be able to increase your performance by 5 to 10 percent or so, but if you secure your breakthrough to ace pilot with my help, your effective performance will probably increase by 1000 percent!"

The difference in strength between an ace pilot and an expert pilot was very substantial! The former could beat the latter with ease.

The only reason why ace pilots hadn't been able to terrorize the galaxy was because they were too few in number. States never employed them casually onto the battlefield because the loss of just one of them significantly damaged their national strength!

Now that the Cross Clan lost its foundation as a controller of a state, it no longer possessed the infrastructure to nurture ace pilots. This was why Ves still held a lot of leverage in the negotiations. As long as Patriarch Reginald believed that working together with Ves was the only way for him to become an ace pilot without becoming subordinate to another state, the Cross Clan would definitely be willing to make a lot of concessions.

No matter how much wealth and assets the Cross Clan traded away, Patriarch Reginald would be able to earn ten times more if he succeeded in breaking through to ace pilot!

As Ves distanced himself from Reginald Cross, he temporarily shoved this matter aside. The most important moment of the wedding was approaching.

More and more guests began to enter the central space of the giant hexagonal platform. Both Hexers and foreigners arrived and took their seats at the opposite halves.

Many looked forward to witnessing the much-awaited moment where Ves would exchange vows with Gloriana. After going through so many rituals and ceremonies, the guests were all impatient to see the lucky couple pledge their eternal love with each other!