A loss!

The design duel between Ves and Jovy ended up in the latter's favor.

The arena had become awash with flames. Burning propellant consisting of different components had been spread around the floor. A mixture of blue and red flames emanated from them as they constantly heated up the surroundings.

It seemed as if most of the arena had turned into a very special sort of hell.

In the center of this slice of hell stood two distinct striker mechs.

The Fortunate Devil seemed at home in this fiery environment. Despite sustaining serious damage to its legs, the resilient armor plating that Jovy Armalon had clad them with had done their job. The sheer amount of heat they withstood or transferred elsewhere had allowed them to resist several times more heat damage than they could have in isolation.

Ves had no choice but to give a lot of respect to Jovy. In his vast collection of knowledge, the MTA mech designer possessed an even greater understanding of heat-resistant materials! He utilized this strength to good effect in designing a mech that quite frankly managed heat a lot better than his opponent.

As for the loser, the Purgatory Envoy appeared intact but nonetheless inert. Its armor, though substantially thinner than that of the Fortunate Devil, bore a lot of scorch marks and melted traces. Though Ves designed its two arm flamethrowers with additional protection in mind, both of their exterior casings almost looked done for already.

Yet Ves and everyone else in the arena who understood mechs knew that the lighter and more mobile striker mech still had some fight left. If not for the unfortunate stroke of misfortune that just so happened to disable the power reactor, the mech could have still fought on for a time!

Due to the relatively low budget for the mech design, Ves had neglected to take this possible attack into account. When he initially allocated the budget, he spent most of it on the flamethrowers, the mech engine and the armor system.

The quality of the power reactor was very mediocre because he didn't have enough money left to invest in a better model.

A striker mech did not demand that much power anyway. Unless it had a flight system, all the power reactor did was run various electrical systems such as sensors and more importantly power the mech engine and every other locomotion system.

While that already demanded a lot of power, the power reactor could still keep up with existing demand. It would have been another story if Ves mounted energy weapons such as laser rifles onto his mech!

Ves never expected the relatively well-protected power reactor to become the main reason for his loss today. Through some unknown means, the Fortunate Devil deactivated at least three of four critical components and subsystems that were designed to prevent the power reactor from failing!

The odds of all of those elements failing in succession when the Purgatory Envoy was 1 in a million, and that was a rather generous assessment considering the overall damage the mech had accumulated.

Yet the Fortunate Devil managed to win the lottery, as improbable as the odds appeared. Despite the Superior Mother's protection and the fairly robust design of the Purgatory Envoy, Joshua had failed to resist the outbreak of bad luck.

"It is a pity." Ves sighed and shook his head. "I was so close to winning. Joshua was so close to winning."

Whether Joshua deserved to win this match did not matter. A design duel was supposed to test the mech designer, not the mech pilot.

The mech designer developed the mech and chose the mech pilot. Good judgement was one of the critical elements to be tested so the mech pilot was usually regarded as an extension of the mech designer for the purposes of a design duel.

Even so, Joshua must be feeling crushed to have his victory snatched away from him. If he knew that the Fortunate Devil possessed such an inexplicable attack method, perhaps he would have intensified his attacks and overloaded the Purgatory Envoy's flamethrowers to breaking point!

All of that was moot, though. The match had ended as soon as one of the two competition mechs lost the ability to fight.

"This is a fine mech duel." Master Willix remarked with a hint of satisfaction. "Mr. Larkinson, Mr. Armalon, congratulations to you both for designing two different but very capable mechs. I have thoroughly enjoyed the sight of seeing your mechs demonstrate their unique prowess."

"Thank you, Master."

She turned to Jovy. "Your Fortunate Devil managed to win the duel for you, but only barely. Compared to your previous duels, your victories were much more crushing. Do you understand the reason for this difference?"

"The Purgatory Envoy resisted my specialty." He said with a serious expression. "My Fortunate Devil had difficulty affecting the probabilities of its opponent. I can see that Mr. Larkinson's glow has a lot to do with that. It's not often that I see a Class IX design philosophy being able to resist my work. Usually, it's the Class III design philosophies that frustrate my probability manipulation."

So there was a way to resist Jovy's strange specialty after all! Class III design philosophies focused on defense, and Ves could see how they could spiritually defend a mech against intangible attacks.

Ves began to suspect that he had made a judgement error! He had become too charmed by his latest design spirit to make a better choice.

He should have chosen Qilanxo instead of the Superior Mother! While Ves wasn't sure whether the sacred god was capable of resisting Jovy's specialty, she probably had a much better chance of doing so than a more all-round spiritual entity.

Master Willix turned to Ves. "Do not take your loss to heart. Your mech has fought hard and showcased much of your potential. Jovy's specialty seems powerful, but it is still subject to chance. If this duel had been fought at any other time or location, your Purgatory Envoy's power reactor might not have failed so suddenly."

"I am happy with the lessons that I have learned from this design duel." Ves graciously replied. "Mr. Armalon has stimulated me a lot with his challenge, causing me to reach further than I have gone before. Compared to my latest gains, losing this duel is immaterial."

His sober answer gratified both Jovy and Master Willix. Both of them had witnessed moments where a mech designer refused to acknowledge a loss.

No matter how the opponent achieved his win, once one mech had been downed, the mech that remained standing was declared the victor!

Jovy especially went through many moments where his opponent refused to acknowledge the loss.

It was one thing to lose a design duel because the other mech and mech pilot performed better.

It was another thing to lose a design duel because a mech the mech designer poured his heart and soul into had suffered an extremely low-probability malfunction!

The sheer frustration that Jovy's unusual method of winning generated had actually been enough to bestow him with a notorious nickname!

"Mr. Armalon is known as the Reality Trickster within the local branches of the MTA." Master Willix told Ves. "Unless you can design a mech that can quickly crush his work or resist his probability manipulation, more often than not the outbreak of bad luck will slowly deliver him victory."

The Reality Trickster!

Any mech designer who acquired a nickname was exceptional in some way.

Ves felt a little jealous that Jovy gained a nickname that reflected his professional ability.

Whereas Ves got stuck with a nickname that painted him as a deceptive manipulator of people, Jovy got to parade around with a nickname that made him sound like a god who tricked reality on a daily basis!

Society was so unfair!

He coughed and briefly shook his head. He calmly approached Jovy and stretched his arm.

Both Journeymen cordially shook each other's hands.

"Congratulations on your victory."

"It was a hard battle. You didn't make it easy for me, Mr. Larkinson."

Smiles began to appear on their faces. Neither of them were dissatisfied with the outcome.

Jovy managed to score a victory against the youngest masterwork mech designer of the star cluster. This was a considerable boost to his prestige. Even though his opponent was just an indigenous mech designer, Ves had already accumulated a considerable amount of fame and reputation!

As for Ves, he rediscovered the vigor of duels and competitions. After a long time of eschewing design duels in order to focus on his business ventures, he realized that he had been missing out a bit. It turned out that a duel with high stakes applied enough pressure for him to squeeze more potential out of his design philosophy.

If he didn't desperately want to keep the Darkbreak module, he might have never been able to make his latest breakthrough so soon!

As Ves, Jovy, Gloriana and Master Willix discussed the design of the two mechs and the progression of the duel, down in the arena, the flames slowly started to die down.

Inside the cockpit of the mech designed by Ves, Joshua had entered his own form of purgatory.

He had lost.

The mere thought of it left a foul taste in his mouth.

Certainly, he engaged in many virtual mech duels. Usually, the expert candidates such as Jannzi and Tusa often trounced him flat, but that was normal as their piloting skills and battle instincts had already exceeded mortal limits.

Yet against any regular mech pilot, more often than not Joshua handidly achieved a victory. His win rate when piloting any LMC mech was particularly stellar, as no one was able to understand the patriarch's work as much as he did. Years spent on obsessing over LMC mechs had given him an insurmountable amount of confidence when piloting these blessed machines.

That made this loss all the more painful.

Unlike his practice sessions, there was a lot at stake for this duel.

Aside from the rewards that Ves had mentioned, Joshua also fought for pride and glory. His own reputation notwithstanding, he knew that the patriarch himself had a lot riding on this duel.

It was not every day that a local mech designer received a challenge from a great MTA mech designer!

Any mecher was regarded as an elite in human civilization. They ranked above regular galactic citizens and represented the best of humanity.

If Joshua's benefactor managed to win this design duel, then this would make Ves, the Larkinson Clan and the LMC even more prominent! The gains of such an explosive victory would have boosted every clansman's fortunes further as a consequence.

Therefore, this design duel was far more than a private match between two Journeymen. Joshua could have benefited the patriarch and the rest of the clan immensely if he vanquished over his opponent, let alone boosting his own glory to new heights for being one of the few locals to defeat an MTA-trained mech pilot in a fair duel!

Yet.. he lost. Decisively so.

Though the main systems of the Purgatory Envoy had lost power, enough of the cockpit and auxiliary systems remained online to tell him that there was no way to continue the match.

The power reactor failed. It did not suffer from a temporary glitch where all it took was rebooting it or banging it a few times to get it back to work. A critical component had failed and multiple redundancies failed to kick in.

The Purgatory Envoy was for all intents and purposes dead.

A very sour and indignant feeling swelled up in his mind. His mech had succumbed before Joshua did. It failed to no fault of its own. Neither Ves nor Joshua had shown any neglect that could have led to such an unanticipated shutdown.

Despite doing their best, the two ultimately failed to gain an advantage in this duel!

"I lost.." Joshua almost sobbed as he looked down his hands.

"I lost.." He repeated.

"I lost.." The cockpit fell silent.