An hour later, Ves and his group exited the giant tree complex. They walked back to their shuttle parked in the periphery of the service center grounds.

"Miaow!"

"Meow!"

Both Lucky and Clixie enjoyed the opportunity to stretch their limbs again. The time they spent on the balcony near the top of the artificial tree was too boring for the energetic cats.

Their owners were amused by the antics of their pets. While their pets had plenty of space aboard the Spirit of Bentheim, they were much more comfortable with frolicking on open soil.

It turned out that Ves was still unaccustomed to living in space. Even though he made a decision in his mind that making his fleet his new home was for the best, he couldn't get rid of his yearning for endless lands, open skies and natural light shining down on his head.

Despite the high population density of Veoline, the lack of pollution and extensive organic air filtration solutions meant that the air was completely fresh and natural.

It smelled completely unlike the filtered air that passed through the ventilation system of the Spirit of Bentheim. There was always a sense of falseness in the air that the Larkinsons aboard the various vessels of the fleet breathed in every day. Only those who were born and raised in ships like these would take the unnatural smell for granted.

"Why did you propose to alter the mech duel?" Gloriana broke the silence.

He already sensed her puzzlement. He smiled at her and gestured his head at the shuttle.

She understood what he tried to convey and kept her curiosity in check. It only took a few more minutes before they arrived at their armored shuttle. Its strange rhino bust looked as odd and out of place as ever.

Now that he understood the perspective of biotechnology adherents a bit more, he knew that the head was purely decorative in function. The rhiny-like head did not possess any functioning brain structure, so the shuttle wasn't truly alive like his mechs.

It was only after they stepped into their vehicle that Ves explained his actions.

"To be honest, I'm eager to finish our remaining mech design projects. I know you feel the same way."

Gloriana nodded as she sat down next to him and leaned against his arm. "A normal design duel doesn't take much time to resolve, but it is still a distraction considering our busy schedule. I really don't want to spend too much time on this planet when our five remaining projects are way behind schedule."

The good news was that they didn't require much time to get their projects across the finish line. They just needed to spend a few more days to put the finishing touches on the remaining mech designs before they were fit for use. The Hex Army had waited too long to receive the next batch of Hexer mechs designed by the Miracle Couple.

Ves wasn't sure whether the three designs that they were about to hand over would succeed in reversing the losing trend. The Friday Coalition's mech militaries had already regained all of their former territories.

It was the Hexadric Hegemony's turn to take a beating this time! The Hexer border systems were already in the process of resisting the Fridayman counterattacks. Though they held for now, the momentum was still in the favor of the enemy due to the increasingly more impactful difference the foreign expert pilots made.

The Fridaymen may have failed to win the Battle of Reckoning, but that was due to other reasons. The superiority in number of expert mechs had taken a huge toll on the forces of the Golden Skull Alliance.

Most battles at this stage of the Komodo War did not result in an upset. The sides were too even in many aspects. This made the difference in the quantity of expert pilots a lot more influential. It only took a single push to tip the balance!

Both Ves and Gloriana were aware of the overall score, so they were both quite eager to provide relief.

There was a bit of a problem, though.

"Many of the second-class mechs we've designed so far are either exclusive to the Larkinson Clan or the Hexer people." Gloriana pointed out. "Your refusal to design a second-class mech for the commercial mech market means we don't have many options to impress the group of impartial mech pilots in a month."

Ves was still at ease. He patted Gloriana's hand in reassurance.

"The rules of the design duel don't prohibit customization and alteration of our existing designs. In fact, it is expected of us to do so in order to present our work at its best in the coming show. While some of our mechs such as the Transcendent Punisher, the Bright Warrior Mark II and our nearly-completed Giant Killer are solely designed to work with Larkinsons, I can still modify them so that they become more inclusive. Their glows and foundations aren't fixed."

"Are you sure? Previously, you treated them as something sacred. You always refrained from changing the divine aspects of your mechs."

"That's because our products should remain constant to our customers and users. Altering how they work will only result in disruptions and make our lives a lot more complicated. This is not the case this time. I already know for sure that Dr. Navarro will be taking his best mechs and modify them so that they become even better. We should do the same."

"Are you sure you can win?" Gloriana asked another question.

This was not a straightforward matter.

"You can never be sure about duels." Ves carefully stated. "The fact that my mechs are very good at winning over mech pilots is an obvious point in my favor. Dr. Navarro knows that, so he wouldn't have accepted my proposal if I left it at that. I had to win him over by allowing our mechs to be utilized by domestic mech pilots."

"That's a considerable handicap, Ves. The Lifer mech pilots have all been trained to pilot biomechs. Their national pride also compels them to favor biological machines over classical machines. You can't expect fairness from them. Even if they have some experience with piloting inorganic mechs, they will likely feel out of place."

Ves shrugged. "That is a valid concern, but Dr. Navarro is a decent fellow. He represents the LRA's biomech industry in this design duel. Since the entire spectacle will be broadcasted to the public, the duel has to appear fair to the both of us. If one side holds a considerable advance, then the validity of the outcome will always be in doubt."

This was why he didn't fear the consequences of his proposal at all. Even though Ves and Dr. Navarro still agreed to make use of local mech pilots, they would both make sure the individuals in question issued their judgement on an impartial basis.

The design duel eventually boiled down to a set of challenges.

Would Ves, the foreigner who exclusively designed classical mechs, be able to win over the local mech pilots with his unique interpretation of life?

Dr. Navarro had to overcome his own challenge. Would his biomechs be able to retain the allegiance of Lifer mech pilots when they had a taste of mechs that were rapidly trending in popularity?

Both of them had to overcome different problems, but that made the duel even more interesting. Ves felt very competitive at the moment. He wondered if he would truly be able to open up the LRA's mech market if he managed to win this design duel!

Of course, Ves had to be willing to release one of his second-class mech models to the market for that to be relevant. If not, then all Ves would gain were bragging rights along with other insubstantial rewards.

At least Ves was supposed to gain greater access to goods and services in the LRA if he won this duel. That was his primary motivation to participate in this spectacle.

What particularly attracted him was the right to approach and hire excellent biotech experts!

These highly-prized surgeons, doctors, exobiologists, geneticists and so on studied at the foremost learning institutions of the LRA. Their knowledge and foundation were qualitatively superior to any other biotech expert in the star cluster.

These people were one of the LRA's most attractive expert products!

While the LRA educated an excess of biotech researchers, the state still had to impose restrictions in order to avoid a brain drain. Only a select number of people and organizations were allowed to recruit these prized personnel.

"What is your strategy, Ves?"

"The duel consists of ten matches where each mech pilot is able to experience both of our products. Who wins or loses is not a determining factor. What truly matters is that the mech pilot enjoys my products more. I need to do my best to win over at least six out of ten mech pilots."

In order to avoid dragging on the design duel, every mech pilot only had a single opportunity to pilot a biomech and another opportunity to pilot an LMC mech.

This was far from enough to conduct a valid academic study on which products the local mech pilots preferred more, but that was not necessary.

Ves considered his selection of mech designs. While he and Navarro had not set any restrictions regarding the mech types they could choose, they did set a bunch of other limits.

For example, the mechs that were dueling each other had to be within the same price category. They also had to be standard mechs, which meant that Ves wouldn't be able to employ any of his prime mechs or expert mechs if he had any. The mechs did not have to be identical to their existing models, but they had to be recognizable enough to represent the work of their designers.

An additional rule was that mechs designed in collaboration with others were also allowed. In fact, this rule was necessary because pretty much all of his recent mech were designed in partnership with Gloriana and lately Juliet as well.

Dr. Navarro designed a fair share of mechs with other colleagues, so he wasn't unduly disadvantaged by this additional rule.

"I'm thinking about adapting a Transcendent Punisher, a Bright Warrior Mark I Version B, a Ferocious Piranha Mark I Version B, a Valkyrie Redeemer and a Giant Killer."

Gloriana frowned. "All of them barring the Ferocious Piranha are exclusive mechs. It feels wrong to open them up to outsiders. The Valkyrie Redeemer is especially problematic. We can't allow a 'public' version of this mech to fall into the hands of others. If the Friday Coalition is able to field a variant of the Valkyrie Redeemer that doesn't explicitly reject them, then we'll be in big trouble!"

"You don't need to be worried about that." Ves chuckled. "I will employ plenty of precautions to make sure that the mechs that I will modify will not break the exclusivity of the designs in question. The glows of all of my mechs come from their respective design spirits. I can ask these spirits to make the mechs friendlier, which means I can also ask them to do the opposite."

He did not worry about this issue at all. He instead concerned himself on how to make the piloting experience as pleasant as possible when his mechs were piloted by people outside of his initial target audience.

Non-Larkinsons were never meant to pilot his clan-exclusive mechs such as the Bright Warrior. The Transcendent Punisher was even trickier as Ylvaine was quite a picky design spirit.

For all of his tolerance, Ylvaine had always tried to push away mech pilots who did not respect the tenets of his faith.

Ves would have to negotiate with each and every design spirit to convince them to put down their hostile attitudes.

Not only that, he also had to modify the spiritual foundations of the exclusive mechs so that they did not instinctively reject outsiders either. This was going to take a lot of spiritual engineering to pull off successfully.

"I have a lot of work in store." He muttered.