The decision on whether he should go all-out or hold himself back did not occupy him for long.

He wanted to win. Even though he would still be able to earn some rewards if he lost, he really wanted the extra MTA credits and the right to permanently own the Darkbreak module. This might be the only opportunity for him to get his hands on a superb communications module.

In addition, with his crazy hat, he didn't fear exposing his ability to empower any of his mech designs with an immediate boost by instilling them with one of his existing design spirits.

In fact, such an act played right in his hand! Ves would reveal to Master Willix and the MTA that he truly did have access to the so-called proto-gods!

No matter how hastily he designed his mechs, as long as their spiritual foundation was strong enough, he could immediately impart with a powerful glow!

Though this would reveal a lot about his current capabilities, Ves did not mind it very much. Not only did such an act reinforce his current facade, it also obscured his more sensitive secrets!

Now that he made this choice, Ves had to decide what kind design spirit and what kind of glow he wanted to instill in his mech.

"It would be nice to have something that embodies fire or heat."

Sadly, his current arsenal of design spirits lacked such an option. Ves had to adopt a more indirect approach, just like he did with the Doom Guard.

Even though the Doom Guard was a striker mech that depended heavily on its flamethrower, Ves nonetheless managed to add a different dimension to it by bestowing it with a terror glow.

He would have to do something similar this time!

"Alright. Time is up! The design phase starts now! You have 72 hours to design and complete your competition mech!" Master Willix announced.

Gloriana kissed him on the cheek and wished him good luck before she scurried away.

He already missed her warmth as he called up a design interface.

Ves began to sketch some outer contours of the mech in his imagination. Due to losing access to his implant, his precision and mental calculations grew worse, causing his sketch to look very crooked!

Nonetheless, the lines already provided him with an impression of the mech that he wanted to turn into reality.

Ves wanted to design a hefty mech. Though its mobility would probably be awful, that wasn't a big deal if the duel ended up as a battle of attrition.

Only the mech that lasted the longest would win the duel!

The heat resistance of a mech depended on many factors, but two of them stood out.

First, the more armor, the better the mech could cope with heat.

Thinner armor plating not only held less heat, but also transferred it faster to the vulnerable internal components of a mech.

However, the type of materials also played a role.

Some materials warmed up faster than other materials when injected with heat.

Therefore, the thickest mech did not always outperform the thinner mechs when it came to absorbing heat. The quality of their armor system played a major role!

However, due to the current budget constraints, Ves did not have much choice. He could only choose between a large selection of cheap armor systems that didn't boast a stellar heat capacity.

To put it simply, his striker mech was already destined to be fat and sluggish. He just had to choose how much he was willing to weigh down his design.

"Should I lean towards offense, defense or strive towards balance?" He wondered.

Most of the time, Ves disliked balance. He would rather add some pronounced strengths and weaknesses to his mechs in order to distinguish them. Therefore, he only considered the first two options.

"If I pick offense, my mech will have to end the battle quickly. My machine won't be able to hold long against enemy attacks. If I pick defense, then the duel will veer even further towards a battle of attrition."

Which one fit his strengths better? Which one fit Jovy's strengths better?

The main advantage that Ves enjoyed was that he was able to affect the moods of mech pilots.

However, Ves did not forget that MTA personnel exhibited a remarkable degree of resistance against the Doom Guard's glow. Some of them even acted as if they were completely immune!

Therefore, Ves did not think it was a good idea to focus on demoralizing the opponent. He would have focused on empowering Joshua.

"It's a good thing I specifically picked him out as my champion." He muttered.

Of all of his mech pilots, only Joshua understood his glows the best. He could adapt to any design spirit no matter how incompatible they sounded.

As the only non-Ylvainan to be able to pilot a Deliverer mech, Joshua fully deserved to be one of the few adopted Larkinsons without a compound name!

With such a fantastic mech pilot at his disposal, Ves did not have to worry about potential incompatibilities or lack of immersion.

He made his choice after exploring both options.

"I need to end the battle quickly." He concluded. "I'll take an offensive approach."

The main reason why he wanted to focus on offense rather than defense was that the latter would result in a longer match.

Against a mech that had been designed with 'probability manipulation' in mind, that effectively gave Jovy's specialty more opportunities to flip a coin!

Therefore, Ves vaguely guessed that time would be against his side. The longer the match dragged on, the greater the chance an unfortunate development would cripple his competition mech.

Now that he had settled on his approach, he went over his stable of design spirits to see which one fit this emphasis the best.

He first went over one of his oldest design spirits, the Black Phoenix.

"Too weak." He shook his head.

Even though it seemed a natural fit, it didn't possess any special powers and its spiritual strength wasn't all that impressive. It was mainly a product of his earlier years when he mainly focused on the X-Factor.

At best, Joshua would only receive a modest enhancement to his aggressive instincts.

That wasn't good enough as far as Ves was concerned.

He always intended to upgrade or reshape the Black Phoenix once he was ready to modernize the Blackbeak design. For now, the outdated design spirit fell out of his contention.

Other potential choices included Zeigra, the Golden Cat, the Superior Mother.

Imparting each or multiple of them in his mech would result in profound effects.

"Hmmm."

His choice had to match his vision and complement his design concept. Since Ves intended to design an offense-oriented mech, he ideally wanted to pair it with a design spirit that complimented this focus.

He had half a mind to pick Nyxie and design a mech that incorporated this terrible being. Unfortunately, he wasn't in a position to visit his vault and harvest a spiritual fragment from this uncooperative entity.

Besides, Ves strongly believed that such an act would breed disaster! Joshua turning crazy was the least of his worries!

Zeigra was not his strongest design spirit, and he was similarly uncooperative. However, Zeigra also possessed a killer instinct and a primal aggression that would fit perfectly with an offensive mech.

His Prideful Soldier mechs already showed what Zeigra could do with just a mote of his spirituality.

The Golden Cat did not possess a strong focus in combat. Ves designed her as an ancestral spirit first and a design spirit second.

That said, she was still able to empower mech pilots in a comprehensive way. She offered every mech pilot a range of boosts, though most of them weren't very relevant in this case.

"She doesn't mesh well with a striker mech." Ves shook his head.

One of the hidden features of the Golden Cat was her potential to bestow mech pilots with the wisdom and fighting instincts of better mech pilots. The more she became exposed to Larkinson mech pilots, the more potent this ability grew.

Though Goldie never exhibited this particular ability before, Ves was pretty sure she was capable of doing so, especially now that she had matured into her powers.

"Sadly, it doesn't matter too much in this case. Striker mechs have a low skill ceiling and Joshua is already very skilled."

That left the Superior Mother, his latest and most powerful spiritual product at birth. Though she was still dormant, her passive glow already impressed Ves a lot!

As the ultimate ancestral spirit of the Hexer people, the Superior Mother was multifaceted and adaptable. She could take on the role of a protective mother or a vengeful woman.

The more he thought about it, the more he felt he wanted to give it a try. This design duel was not only an opportunity to win some juicy prizes, but also allowed him to perform a quick experiment!

Even though Joshua was not a Hexer, Ves did not worry about whether his chosen champion was unable to synergize with the Superior Mother.

Joshua would not be Joshua if he was not capable of melding with his mother!

With the Superior Mother as the principal design spirit of his competition mech, Ves filled out his vision even further.

He turned his attention back to the design interface and altered and added some more lines. He began to design a mech that was highly offensive to Hexer sensibilities.

He wanted to design a male mech that could hold its own ground!

Certainly, male Hexer mech pilots weren't only restricted from piloting defensive mechs and support mechs. Yet even if they were allowed to pilot rifleman mechs, they always ended up in a fire support role.

His competition mech was different. Ves designed the mech to be able to defeat an opposing by itself by relying on its own strength!

"This is the mech piloted by a grown-up instead of a man!"

In essence, Ves wanted to put into reality a mech that represented the ideal end state of his attempted reforms.

With the Superior Mother acting as a Trojan Mare in Hexer society, Ves dreamed of changing its entire culture so that boys would finally have the opportunity to grow into men!

Certainly, individuals like Brutus already proved it was possible for women to upgrade the status of boys. The only problem was that male expert pilots were so rare that their existence hardly shook the foundation of the Hegemony.

If mechs like the one he intended to design became popular, then the stubborn female supremacists had to face reality.

The success of this competition mech might even serve as a precursor to some of the Hexer mech designs to come!

As Ves adjusted his draft design to be more in line of his intentions, he began to think how he should characterize the mech.

"Superiority."

This was the central focus he was looking for! He wanted to design a mech that emphasized superiority! He wanted his mech to overpower Jovy's mech with a sense of superiority. He wanted Joshua to fight as if victory was inevitable!

"Hmm. I should also take Jovy's specialty into account."

Probability manipulation suggested that Jovy specialty could increase the positive outcomes of his mech while decreasing the negative outcomes of his opponent's mech.

In order to fight back against these presumed effects, Ves needed to find a way to resist it or inflict more damage in return.

Resisting Jovy's design philosophy was the main reason why Ves decided to focus on superiority. No matter what kind of bad luck befell his mech, its innate superiority would shrug it all off!

Willpower triumphed over everything, including misfortune!

If Ves didn't like the outcome of a coin flip, he would be better off if he fed the coin to Lucky than accept the outcome!

As for finding a way to outdo Jovy's specialty, a very speculative idea suddenly popped into his mind.

The Doom Guard already showed that MTA personnel were very mentally-resilient. Yet not all of them were as resilient as others. Hardly anyone could match the sheer mental and spiritual prowess of Master Willix, after all. With a fairly young MTA mech pilot as Jovy's champion, the fellow should be at least a little susceptible to influencing!

"If it's a universally hostile glow like that of the Doom Guard, then it's easy to arouse his vigilance."

Yet with the Superior Mother, Ves began to think up a different way to hinder the performance of his opponent.

The MTA mech pilot happened to be a male, so what if Ves could leverage the Superiority focus into making him feel inferior?

No matter how much luck Jovy's mech bestowed upon the fellow, as long as he lost some heart, no amount of chance could deliver him victory!

Even if the man was very disciplined, at least some influence was sufficient to decrease his piloting acumen!

Now that Ves fully fleshed out his concept, he felt ready to turn his hasty draft into a complete design.

"This is going to be interesting!"