The Larkinson Clan wrapped up its business at Ulimo Citadel. After pacifying it, executing their pirate captives, repairing some of their damaged mechs and searching the entire place for loot, the Larkinsons no longer needed to linger.

A week after the Battle of Ulimo Citadel, Ves commanded his task force to travel to the edge of the Nyxian Gap.

They were finally ready to end this excursion.

A lot of cheers rang throughout the fleet as Ves made this announcement. Though everyone already expected this result, they fully put down most of their fears now that the clan patriarch made it official.

No one wanted to fight pirates anymore! The smaller pirate gangs were so weak that the Larkinsons hardly gained any meaningful lessons from crushing them. The larger pirate groups on the other hand always employed forbidden or unusual means of retaliation which dealt a disproportionate amount of damage.

The Larkinsons were tired of fighting against those that played dirty!

The old war veterans within the clan already longed to return to civilized space. At least the enemies there fought with normal mechs armed with normal weapons.

Joining the large fleet as it slowly left was the addition of ten captured pirate sh.i.p.s. Each of them were still being swept by various crews, but that did not stop the Larkinsons from employing them as makeshift transport sh.i.p.s to bring home all of the loot from Ulimo.

In addition to that, a lot of carriers boasted a lot of free space after the conclusion of the battle. Some of their spaces were occupied with broken mechs that could still be restored. Other spaces held broken parts or packed containers.

During this quiet journey, Ves brought his students and assistant mech designers to the Redfeather. The crowd of mech designers attracted a lot of attention as they approached the Shield of Samar.

The heavily-customized Aurora Titan mech conveyed a powerful impression on everybody. Its gold-coated Breyer alloy exterior conveyed a sense of mass and density. The sheer thickness of its armor plating and tower shield made any human standing next to it feel small!

"Wow!" Maikel gasped. "Even though we're surrounded by the glows of different Bright Warriors, this one still manages to retain its own presence!"

The Shield of Samar's glow was stronger and more enduring than any other Aurora Titan. Ves sensed considerably more life from the mech. He eagerly studied its feel and carefully observed its spiritual foundation.

Visiting Jannzi's personal mech was the right choice. Now that he was looking for it, he observed several developments that already caused the mech to stand out from other LMC mechs!

While Ves studied the mech in his own way, his assistants admired the mech from their own perspectives. Even if they knew little about the spiritual aspects of mech design, they still sensed something unique from the Shield of Samar.

"Just look at this mech." Rina Orion uttered with an uncharacteristically gentle tone of voice. "This is more than a machine. There is a beating heart that is in tune with its mech pilot."

"What are you talking about?" Someone else scratched her head. "I admit the mech is fantastic, but it is a stretch to say it has a beating heart."

"You wouldn't understand."

If Ves heard Rina's words, he would have paid a lot more attention to her. If the former citizen of the Coman Federation managed to sense more from one of his works, then that meant she might be more compatible with his design philosophy than others!

She already chose her own path, though. She was still committed to specializing in targeting systems.

"This mech should have been heavier." Catherine Evenson thoughtfully remarked. "Its mobility is almost as bad as a heavy mech while its defensive properties could have been significantly stronger. The super-medium weight class is hardly ever used for good reason."

Dukan French nodded in agreement. "It's slow and unwieldy. It's a de-facto heavy mech. It just lacks the mass and some distinctive elements. It's a bit of a pity that its attack capabilities are limited. There is still a lot of extra room for a rifle or a cannon module."

The Shield of Samar may be the famed mech of an honorable expert pilot, but the people who approached the mech were mech designers. It was in their nature to study different mechs and decipher their distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Hardly any mechs were sacred in their eyes!

Overall, the Braves did not have much good to say about the mech. Certainly, its defensive capabilities were formidable, especially after its latest overhaul replaced its older armor plating with Breyer alloy.

However, this upgrade pretty much negated the utility of its weak polarizing module. The defense it offers was very paltry compared to the sheer resilience offered by its armor plating!

The Aurora Titan design was one of Ves' more radical mech designs. It pursued extreme defense and sacrificed almost everything to achieve this goal.

That didn't make it a popular seller. If not for the discovery that its glow was somewhat effective in shielding against other glows, it would have been relegated to the LMC's archives.

The Aurora Titan's utility hardly increased even with this discovery. While more and more battlefields featured LMC mechs, they were still far from ubiquitous. The smaller outfits were especially leery of buying an oversized space knight with hardly any mobility or flexibility.

"Hm." Ves rubbed his smooth-shaven chin. "The Aurora Titan design sorely needs an update."

He wasn't in a hurry to do so, though. He already had a lot of projects on his plate. Right now, he didn't believe he could design a substantially better iteration of the Aurora Titan with the same budget and other constraints.

The Shield of Samar was different. As a custom mech, its budget vastly exceeded that of its regular counterparts. Now that Jannzi advanced to expert pilot, Ves had to raise the limits of the mech even further.

The budget of an expert mech was huge! A typical second-class expert mech could cost between several billion hex credits to a hundred billion hex credits!

Since Ves wasn't short on money or resources these days, he wanted to aim a bit higher for the first expert mech iteration of the Shield of Samar. Even if he decided not to use Unending alloy to strengthen its structure, he was still willing to spend up to 50 billion hex credits to supplement or replace its Breyer alloy exterior!

"Breyer alloy is good, but it's far from the most resilient second-class material out there. The best Fridayman and Hexer mechs actually enjoy considerably better protection."

It was a bit premature for him now to consider these design choices. Gloriana and him hadn't even decided who they wanted to pull in to assist their expert mech design project!

He focused on his primary goal for this visit, which was to figure out a means to instill more individuality in his future works.

As Ves spent more time on observing the Shield of Samar with his spiritual senses, he finally realized how it expressed its individuality.

His eyes widened as he realized that the Shield of Samar's spiritual foundation wasn't as bland as he was used to! It had actually changed as a whole!

"This.."

It was as if Jannzi's extensive use of the Shield of Samar slowly altered its spiritual foundation.

Compared to regular Aurora Titans, the Shield of Samar not only possessed a stronger spiritual foundation, but also showed greater signs of identity!

What Ves previously likened to an empty plot of land on which he could build a house was actually more animated than he thought.

It was the soul of a mech!

While every properly-fabricated mech derived its spiritual foundation from the design, once it took shape, it was able to develop further into a unique direction.

This growth and development mainly affected the spiritual foundation. Therefore, the key to increasing the individual expression of a mech lay in facilitating this natural process!

"Why is the Shield of Samar so much further along this transformation than my other mechs?" He frowned.

There were many LMC mechs in his clan. Just this hangar alone was filled with Bright Warriors!

Due to one of his policies, the Avatars of Myth tried to reassign as little mech pilots as possible. Ves hoped that every mech pilot developed a close and personal bond with their mech just like Jannzi had accomplished with her Shield of Samar.

Yet despite piloting their mechs for many months, Ves hardly observed any meaningful changes yet to the Bright Warriors around him. Their individual character remained largely uniform, which showcased how difficult it was for a mech pilot to truly grow their mechs.

"It will probably take years of dedicated use for anyone to notice a substantial difference!"

That was too long! Not every mech pilot was like Venerable Jannzi or General Axelar Streon. Both of them possessed the willingness and means to stick to a single mech for the rest of their lives.

That did not mean that his other customers were able to adopt this model. Developing a strong dependence on a single mech was good as long as the mech existed. Yet a lot could change over the years.

It could end up destroyed in battle.

It could turn into an obsolete mech design as its original designer no longer published any revisions.

Another possible problem was that most mech pilots did not own the mechs they piloted. They could be reassigned or kicked out of their outfits at any time.

Finally, it was very costly to customize and upgrade a mech. No ordinary outfit would waste money on such an expensive and inefficient endeavor.

All of these reasons meant that Ves shouldn't view Venerable Jannzi's development trajectory as an example. What he truly needed to do was to come up with a different development trajectory that was much more suitable for the mass market.

He felt like he was missing something. He turned his attention back to the Shield of Samar.

"What makes you different?"

Out of all of his mechs, the Shield of Samar was the only mech that had experienced two consecutive breakthroughs of its pilot. This was probably the reason why it had advanced so much.

Ves knew that every breakthrough released a lot of spirituality in the form of force of will. The mech pilot in question burst through a bottleneck, causing their force of will to temporarily reach a very high level of strength.

It couldn't last, though. Over time, the mech pilot in question lost control of the excess energy.

What happened to this excess energy?

Most of it should have dissipated and drifted off into the imaginary realm.

But.. what if some of that stuck around? What if the mech, which possessed an intimate and active bond with the mech pilot through the man-machine connection, absorbed some of these byproducts?

"Does the Shield of Samar.. possess Jannzi's essence?"

A radical theory popped up in his mind. What if the Shield of Samar 'advanced' to a higher state by absorbing Jannzi's spiritual emissions?

Though it was just a guess, it made a lot of sense! Force of will was alive. If the Shield of Samar absorbed some of it, then not only would it become more in tune with the source, but also gain the vigor to develop a more unique character!

This was the key he sought to increase the individuality of his mechs!

On its own, his mechs weren't able to grow on their own. They needed to be used for a long time by their mech pilots to diverge from their original molds.

The main downside to this gradual process was that the change didn't happen fast enough. Mechs weren't humans, after all. The life they possessed was too deficient.

"If the mech is lacking something, why not take it from the mech pilot?"

As long as he was able to incorporate this process in his mech designs, then they would be able to acquire an individual character a lot faster than before!

"Still, such a process can be extremely dangerous!"

In order to increase the life of a mech, the mech pilot had to make a sacrifice.

"Nothing comes for free!"