When Gavin finally finished his daily report, he departed the stateroom, leaving Ves alone with Lucky and his bodyguard.

His cat was currently dozing off on his desk. The mechanical cat had been growing lazy lately.

Ves grew a little irritated. He tapped his cat on his head.

"Meow?"

"Aren't you forgetting something, buddy?"

"Meow meow." Lucky innocently blinked.

"When was the last time you paid your rent?"

"Meow?"

"Don't act stupid in front of me." Ves grumbled at his cat. "Your diet is a lot better than before. Do you know why? It's because of all of the mechs I've designed! Do you think that all of the time and effort I've invested in my work is all for the sake of keeping you fat and happy?"

"Meow meow meow!"

"Don't give me that! It's been many months since you did anything useful. Ever since you passed the so-called Antithesis Essence gems to me, your rear end has gone remarkably silent. That seems rather strange to me since the quality and quantity of your daily meals has tripled. There's a reason for that, you know! I'm not feeding you all of those yummy medium-grade exotics for free. I'm expecting a return on my investment!"

Sadly, his cat remained unsympathetic towards his expectations. Lucky flippantly swished his tail and phased through the desktop.

"Hey, don't get away from me! Explain yourself!"

The gem cat had run away. Ves scowled. The cost of keeping Lucky sated this past month amounted to over a billion hex credits. He paid for the exotics because he expected to obtain some good gems.

He would have been a lot more reluctant to do so while he still remained inside the Nyxian Gap. The strange environment somehow caused Lucky to produce a lot of weird gems such as the Minor Chaos Remnant and the Unstable Chaos Essence gems.

Their exact uses were unclear to Ves. While he had utilized them to create spiritual explosions and to empower his wedding bands, he did not believe that was the extent of their use. What would happen if he embedded them into a mech?

"I'll have to try that out once I get the opportunity." He muttered.

It was too wasteful to employ his gems onto ordinary mechs. Sadly, his recent attempts to make a masterwork mech had all ended in failure. He wasn't developing any expert mechs either so that ruled out another good opportunity to utilize his gems.

Of course, just because he couldn't use up his existing gems didn't mean he was content with what he had. He possessed an excess of weird chaos gems but retained very few gems with normal effects.

He briefly retrieved his pouch and inspected his current stash.

"Only three, huh? That's way too few."

[Maiden's Affection]

The desire of an ancient maiden is locked within this gem. Increases the attraction of a mech by 40 percent to females.

[Bastet's Whisper]

The echoing whisper of a feline patron can be found within this gem. Enhances the acceleration of a tiger mech by 30 percent.

[Whipping Boy]

The fear of a boy towards women is encapsulated within this cursed gem. Increases the dread of a mech by 50 percent to males.

His face distorted when he observed the third gem. The Whipping Boy disgusted him. He wanted nothing more than to throw it away, but that was far too wasteful. He could not bring himself to miss out on a potential payoff.

"Ugh, forget about it. I'll just reserve this gem on a mech I don't care about." He muttered and put back all of his gems.

He returned his attention to the report he received. He reread the document and analyzed the data in greater detail.

"Why does this data differ from what I've observed of my own expert pilots?"

It wasn't hard for him to figure out some answers.

For one, not all of them piloted LMC mechs. Sure, Ves customized a number of Bright Warrior mechs for them. However, the mech model's spiritual character was fairly vague compared to his other mechs. With Goldie as its design spirit, the Bright Warrior's glow was not as focused as the glows of his other mechs.

To be honest, Ves mainly intended Goldie to serve as the guardian spirit of the Larkinson Clan. He did not want her character to be too centered around specific traits such as aggression or protectiveness. Her main role was to foster greater loyalty and affection towards the clan.

While these traits made Goldie compatible with pretty much every clansman, they did not steer anyone towards a specific outlook or fighting style.

It made sense to pair her with a versatile mech like the Bright Warrior. Yet her lack of defining strengths also meant that any expert candidates or expert pilots that emerged while piloting Bright Warriors tended to develop in scattered directions.

Ves examined his expert pilots one by one.

"Venerable Jannzi, Venerable Orfan and Venerable Dise are special cases."

Each of them developed special bonds with Qilanxo, causing them to slant towards protection.

However, the influence of defense-oriented design spirit was not able to override their inclinations.

From what he could tell, Venerable Jannzi best embodied what Qilanxo stood for. A very strong factor in her development was the mech that had accompanied her throughout her rise.

The Shield of Samar started off as the first production copy of the Aurora Titan. However, through constant spiritual and physical upgrades, it grew into something more.

Nonetheless, the Shield of Samar still stayed true to its origin. The Aurora Titan design defined this custom mech and also shaped Jannzi's development as an expert pilot.

A weird expression suddenly appeared on his face.

"Compared to my other products, the Aurora Titan is singularly focused on defense."

He envisioned a space knight focused on extreme defense when he initially designed the Aurora Titan. He did not hesitate to compromise every other trait in order to squeeze more defensive power out of this mech.

This was very rare!

Most mechs had to possess at least some rounded capabilities. Without mobility, how would it be able to move? Without offensive power, how would it be able to threaten opponents?

It was just that Ves paid less attention to this demand when he designed the Aurora Titan. His extreme approach caused the mech to develop an extreme spiritual character.

It didn't help that Ves had designed it shortly after he went through a Mastery experience where he rode along Eloise Pelican's desperate attempt to reunite with her son. Her strong maternal feelings and her amazing feats served as strong sources of inspiration.

In fact, Ves derived the name of his mech design from the energy projection generated by Venerable Pelican's perfect resonance!

As Ves reflected on the history and evolution of the Shield of Samar, he began to comprehend why Venerable Jannzi developed such an extreme character.

"It's my fault."

He overlooked how much of a role her mech had played in her development. From the moment she adopted the Shield of Samar as her lifelong partner, she had already begun to assimilate the properties of her machine.

In fact, it wasn't just Jannzi learning from her mech. The Shield of Samar also grew in alignment with its mech pilot.

The latter wasn't important at this time. What mattered more to Ves was how to shape the development of his expert pilots.

An engineer abhorred uncertainty. If there was a way to specify how mech pilots progressed, then Ves would not let go of this opportunity!

"Venerable Jannzi's development represents one end of the spectrum." He muttered. "Venerable Joshua and Venerable Tusa should be closer to the other end of the spectrum."

Venerable Joshua mainly piloted the Quint. Venerable Tusa piloted other light mechs for a long time.

In both cases, their mechs did not push them into a specific direction. Like any other Bright Warrior, the Quint gave Joshua plenty of room to find his own way.

Ves was pretty thankful for that, because Joshua encountered no hindrances when he chose to go with his heart. Due to all of the LMC mechs he piloted, Joshua eventually developed a force of will based around life.

As for Venerable Tusa, Ves was not as knowledgeable about his development. Nonetheless, the mechs he piloted before did not constrain him very much, causing him to orient his force of will around a principle of his own choosing.

The situation was more complicated for Venerable Orfan and Venerable Dise. As far as Ves was aware of, their force of wills were offensive in nature. This caused them to develop some contradictions towards Qilanxo's influence.

The pair of seasoned leaders eventually managed to reconcile these contradictions while still remaining true to their original mindsets. They both focused on offense, but fought with the explicit intent to protect their own people.

As Ves considered these outcomes, he didn't know what to think.

"It's kind of like being a neglectful parent." He muttered. "I basically let my expert candidates do what they wanted. I didn't exert any control at all on how they progressed. The end result is a bunch of mixed results."

If he did not force the expert pilots to develop along specific paths, then he wouldn't have been able to get a grand prize like Venerable Joshua.

On the other hand, if he had treated them more deliberately, then Venerable Jannzi wouldn't have turned into his political opponent.

It was too late to do anything about it. The transition from expert candidate to expert pilot solidified their convictions. As far as Ves knew, expert pilots were no longer capable of changing their minds on a whim.

"It's too late for my expert pilots, but not my expert candidates!"

Ves suddenly realized that he had been a bit neglectful towards the development of the Larkinson Clan's expert candidates. He spent much more thought on his mature expert pilots.

After all, compared to expert candidates who were barely stronger than before, expert pilots were beyond human. Even without an expert mech to resonate with, their incredible skill and fighting capabilities were not something that anyone could ignore!

While Ves recognized that he should never neglect his expert pilots, he needed to be more hands-on with the development of his expert candidates.

While they had all formed a nascent force of will, it was still malleable. As long as Ves increased his influencing efforts on them, he might be able to determine how they ended up as expert pilots!

"This should be possible!"

Ves wanted to meet with his expert candidates. He needed to know them on an individual basis in order to tailor an individual development plan for each of them. In order to prevent the emergence of another obstinate expert pilot such as Venerable Jannzi, he had to make sure they were not exposed to any detrimental influences!

He composed a quick message to Gavin to invite all of the current expert candidates to the Scarlet Rose.

Once he did that, he leaned back on his chair and thought again.

He had to develop a systematic approach as soon as possible while the expert candidates were still susceptible to outside influence.

There was nothing wrong with allowing his expert candidates to develop their wills organically. Life was unpredictable, so a part of Ves preferred to take a hands-off approach towards this issue.

However, another part of him called for exerting much more control over the evolution of his expert candidates. If he engaged in targeted development, then he might be able to 'design' his future expert pilots!

This was very valuable!

Different force of wills produced different effects. Some of these effects were more useful to Ves than others.

For example, Ves might be able to obtain more expert pilots like Venerable Joshua if he designed a targeted training program!

The only challenge was that it was very difficult to obtain a specific result. Right now, Ves didn't really have a good idea on how to steer any of his expert candidates into embracing life.