The following couple days passed by in a blur for me. Prior to the construction mechs, our little crew of mechanics could put Goethe’s a mech every two days. Admittedly, that’s because they were first time builds, and especially the last two designs, had learning curves that took a while to overcome. But the combination of the construction mech, the hologram, and the [Original Mech Mechanic] made it so we could put five a day. We ended up with a complement of eight infantry mechs, four artillery mechs, and the single sniper mech. The reason why me and Yi-Jun decided to focus on this instead of building up more mech designs largely came down to the fact that we needed to showcase the general premise behind the specific specialization path I had been going with for the units, rather than a gradient of designs for the various regions of the kingdom. It probably also helped that I wanted to showcase the construction mech as well, and having an example of the extreme difference it can make certainly would help its case. While I didn’t think the numbers would be the best representative of how the military may employ these mechs in an actual battle, I still felt the number inequality of the different mech types would be an important factor to establish early on.

Yi-Jun and his business oriented personality reared his head again, as he finally laid down the ultimatum of the century. He made me choose the color schemes for each mech, that evil man. Sure I was creative, sure I watched a lot of anime growing up, sure I knew my favorite anime waifu had some greatly designed mechs, but that didn’t mean when I did them for real I would really care about the color palette. At least some of these was relatively easy, the sniper mech obviously would be an urban camo color scheme, and I can use the four colors of the kingdom’s flag as the basis for the others. These colors being white, black, red, and blue, so I had some pretty easy color switches to use. I’ll use white as the base for the infantry mech, gives it a bit of a “heroic” or “friendly” vibe, while black as the base for the for artillery would help to add to the danger and scare tactics it would exude when in action. Combined with black lines throughout the infantry mech, and white throughout the artillery mech, to break up the monotony, as well as alternating red and blue highlights throughout the mechs, it should help to make them recognizable without being too flashy. We started the painting late the second day, and finished up on the third day, just in time for the showcase on the third day to the First Prince and a few military commanders.

In the hour prior to the mech showcase Yi-Jun and I decided a good lunch and final sit down talk would help to be on the same page for things. In preparation for this, Yi-Jun flexed his Royal status just a bit to get a complement of current military mechs equal to our number, along with 26 military mech warriors to pilot both sides. A simple weapon firing and movement showcase would work for this, so we decided a good mock battle would do wonders. Secondly, he decided to actually ask about my full plans for the mech designs for the military, which was a good thing. Turns out four is a really bad number in this kingdom, which is weird sense they already had four as they main mech types. The more I thought about it though, when you considered the spectrum of designs, the prevalence of higher caliber “hero” level mech users, and probably significant variants for leadership, that number no longer really was valid. So now I needed to think of a a solid fifth design, since I couldn’t leave out flying mechs from this world. Finally I landed on a naval mech idea that I’d look over in my head for the next week or so while I focused on the flying mech and other things first.

After a delicious meal, and a series of pep talk to Yi-Jun, since he was getting a bit nervous due to the higher stakes, we finally headed back to workshop to wait. On the way back, he finally managed to regain his calmness and collect himself, and I promised not to mention anything in front of the others. He really thought this was the true first step on the way to success for us, so I wouldn’t mess things up for him. Now all that was left was for the rest of the party to arrive.

The mech pilots arrived shortly before the Royal-military group arrived, giving us enough time to tell them their roles, have them learn the controls and such, and get into position. I sort of expected the military commanders to be a handful of older, semi-fat men, holding a hat in their armpit so it wouldn’t cover up their bald heads, but I was wrong. One of them was a woman, surprising, right? But no, it was mainly that they looked super young. I’m pretty sure I even saw one of them of the arena gladiator fights, which those people are nearly all young guys. Even after seeing things be different than my expectations, I was surprised when the young man, and the girl were the serious ones, while the one old guy was acting like he was seeing shiny new toys. The young man finally got annoyed at the events, and did one of those “shut up” karate chops to the forehead, the ones that don’t really hurt, but surprising and sort of embarrassing. After the old man spent a minute grumbling and rubbing his forehead, along with the woman looking down on the whole situation and huffing, as if she was disgusted, things finally began to come back to a more serious tone.

The first Prince nods to me and Yi-Jun before speaking up “So gentlemen, Yi-Jun told me you had a few new designs you wanted to showcase, as well as a more polished version of the one I had asked to see beforehand, but I notice I only see two new designs out there” he says, waving out to my three different mechs I had lined up for just this purpose. I reply, talking about how one of them is not strictly speaking a military mech, but both the Royal Family and the military would still want to see it being showcased. As I say this, I have the rest of the mechs we had built over the past couple days walk out from their cover and stand at attention. When the delegates saw the number, they were slightly surprised, a small amount of surprise showing on their faces. I began to explain what my fourth mech design was, and while I definitely highlighted it’s functional utility, I tried to limit myself on how much I talked about it.

“Well you see, it initially took about a day, to two days per mech to build, and while that was due to being unfamiliar with the designs, and some learning being done by my mechanics, much of the growth is attributed to what I am calling a construction mech. You see Techniques can make you stronger and all, even help with some other functions in construction, but it won’t ignore the awkwardness there is for larger parts of a mech, or for when you’re adding onto a mostly complete mech” I say in a mini-speech. I then say a few quicks things about how a mech mechanic could play a huge role in mass mech building for the military, easily doubling, if not tripling mech construction speed. I see a few nods from the First Prince and the young man who I believe is one of the famed mech gladiators. After seeing that there might be some interest, but not as high up on there priorities, especially without seeing the actual mech and it in action, I proceed on with the mech skirmish.

Yi-Jun nods of to some of the mech pilots, who then proceed to issue commands to their own sides, before they all move in to position on their respective side of the skirmish area. While they are moving, I move up to the young gladiator, while Yi-Jun is in full salesman mode to his cousin and the other

military members he brought along. We all get comfortable while servants bring some snacks and drinks for us, nothing too fancy mind you, but still a little something to enjoy while we watch the show. The skirmish starts off with our infantry doing some call of duty sliding maneuvers using their hooks as a way to propel themselves forward quickly. This seems to work out well, since the opposing side had more snipers than my side, having three sniper mechs, but having one less infantry and artillery mech. Almost as soon as the infantry moved, the snipers would try to snipe some of the infantry, but kept missing as they were too mobile. Before too long the infantry had gotte too close for a good shot, and were now fully engaged with the enemy infantry.

The enemy snipers weren’t out of the woods yet, while they kept missing the infantry, half the artillery had moved up with the infantry, still a little behind them, but well within weapons range. The artillery mechs shot off a few grenades into the area the snipers had been firing from. While the snipers managed to escape the area, one had been in the middle of the grenade area, getting disabled by the grenades, while the other two got away with mild injuries.while this didn’t completely write off the enemy sniper mechs, it partially eliminated the force as well as making it obvious if the snipers would try anything with

Next, the closer artillery mechs provided covering fire, preventing them from getting surrounded, or from the enemy artillery mechs focus firing. Right when it was looking like enemy may be breaking out from the stalemate of the main attack, a sniper bullet shot across the battlefield, shooting off one of the enemy my artillery mechs arms, taking out their main weapon in the process. Soon after, another huge energy beam shot out from our third artillery mech, completely cutting it in half, as it had not powered up its shields fully. With the force count changing to our favor, our thirteen mechs to their eleven, but practically eight mechs, as the injured artillery mech and the remaining enemy snipers were more or less out of the battle, more of their mechs began being taken out. They lost several infantry mechs to coordinates grenade launches, crippling their offensive. If it wasn’t for some lucky attacks from the enemy, and some spiteful infantry, none of our mechs would’ve been noticeably damaged. As it was, several of their remaining infantry focus fired an infantry, bringing the shields down before a couple lucky shots managed to blow off one of the infantry arms as well as cripple an artillery mech’s leg.

At the end we had a clear and overwhelming victory, which greatly impressed everyone.with the battle over, the First Prince and his soldiers were going to put in an order for mechs, but still wanted to see the remaining mech designs before formalized funding and such would be officially tied to their construction. However, there were a handful of orders sent in immediately for the construction mechs, and even I was receiving calls from the big ten clans on the possibility of getting their own mechs.everything was going swimmingly, so I decided it was time to head back to my room and have some more celebratory drinks, partially in the hope I increase my cultivation again.