The combined fleet almost reached the border of the civilized space. In the past week, the engineers and other spacers focused entirely on making their ships FTL-worthy.

The surviving Larkinson ships that all sustained damage over the course of the campaign should still be sound enough to travel faster-than-light.

It was the pirate ships that generated a lot of concern. The FTL drives that the pirates smuggled out of civilized space should all be sound, but there was no telling what kind of traps or safeguards they contained.

From the start, a dedicated team of chief engineers had disassembled these large but delicate devices to inspect each and every single subcomponent.

The team detected a handful of traps, proving that the Allidus Alliance indeed buried some nasty surprises in their own FTL drives.

If the Wodin Warriors hadn't dispatched a massive quantity of superior engineers to assist in the process, the Larkinson engineers would have gone crazy by now. The complexity of FTL drives, especially larger ones, outright exceeded what they could understand.

Only engineers who spent decades serving aboard capital or very large subcapital ships were qualified to work with the heavy-duty FTL drives. Those military engineers usually served for life in the military or large trading companies. Due to their vital expertise, the Larkinson Clan failed to attract them during the previous recruitment round.

Fortunately, it was different now. The Larkinson Clan earned an immense amount of prestige, and the LMC became more famous by the day. The most desirable professionals no longer turned up their noses at what they previously thought to be a flash in the pan. A growing number of high-skilled job seekers converged at Cinach in order to be part of the rising stars.

Ves already received word that the MTA dispatched a small investigation fleet to perform extensive studies on the Gravad Knarlax and the surviving escort warships.

To be honest, the warships weren't all that interesting once their novelty had passed. Their power solely came from the fact that they were able to scale their crude weapon systems to immense degrees. When one of the Gravada Knarlax's main cannons exceeded the mass and volume of multiple mechs, they did not need to be sophisticated in order to demolish other ships!

There must be other reasons why the MTA was so eager to examine them. Perhaps the mechers wanted to gather some clues about the Nyxian Gap's production capabilities. Maybe they wanted to ascertain the capabilities of Nyxian shipwrights.

Whatever the case, if not for the preliminary agreement between Ves and Master Willix, the MTA would have nabbed the prize ships the instant they returned to civilized space!

Ves knew that his next talk with Master Willix was crucial. Its outcome not only affected his future, but also the future of the Larkinson Clan.

He grew more apprehensive about his chances. Master Willix had to go out of her way to accommodate his demands. He had to offer some very compelling arguments to make it worth her time.

"If I fail, the consequences are unimaginable…"

Despite his concerns, he still made sure to make the best use of the time he had left. He not only wanted to wrap up the remaining two design projects, but also create the wedding bands of his dreams.

When Ves called up an overview of the Cat's Paw and Ferocious Piranha designs, he was quite pleased at what he saw. In the last few weeks, both projects had made large strides. The latter one was already complete barring its spiritual components.

"Well, I might as well take care of that immediately."

He delved into the schematics of the Ferocious Piranha in order to familiarize himself with the final iteration of the third-class design.

Originally, the Ferocious Piranha was supposed to be a light skirmisher derivative of the Doom Guard.

Fast, light and premium, the Ferocious Piranha basically utilized the Doom Guard's glow in an offensive capacity. Putting this powerful glow on a very mobile package opened up many more opportunities to debilitate opponents.

The only complication that stalled the project was that the Doom Guard's glow had changed.

It shifted from striking terror into people's hearts to generating a rapidly-fluctuating field of contrasting emotions.

Suffice to say, such a drastic change significantly changed the usage of the Ferocious Piranha.

The greatest advantage of the old glow was that its ability to induce fear was great at clearing crowds. Even when enemies close to an active Doom Guard managed to flee its range, their fighting spirit had already collapsed, causing them to keep running!

This was not the case with the new glow. Once Lufa replaced the position vacated by Nyxie, the glow produced by the Doom Guard mentally disabled those who failed to maintain their focus.

The mechs piloted by people affected by this condition either drifted away or convulsed. This turned them into sitting ducks which could be shot at will. However, once the mechs exited the range of the new glow, their pilots usually regained control pretty quickly.

Overall, Ves believed that most customers preferred the old glow over the new one, but that did not mean the latter was impractical.

"In the right circumstances, a single Ferocious Piranha should be able to annihilate an entire mech company by itself!"

This was unlikely to happen. Spaceborn mechs rarely fought in tight formations, so there should always be a lot of enemies that were able to remain outside of the range of a Ferocious Piranha's glow.

In addition, tests of the Doom Guard also showed that as long as the mech pilots by its glow were not total garbage, they eventually wrestled back some control as they became accustomed to the cycling emotions.

"What if there are multiple Ferocious Piranha's, then?"

Ves tried to imagine how a squad of his new mech model fared against a typical mech company. The odds should be substantially better, but their overlapping glows barely grew stronger.

"Wait a minute."

He suddenly recalled that he developed a little trick that increased the effectiveness of overlapping glows. While the improvement was rather modest, he already received early indications that it worked!

Ves easily tweaked the Ferocious Piranha design so that the glow of each individual mech varied just a little bit. By inducing these minor differences, stacking multiple of them together should produce a noticeably stronger effect.

"In fact, I should apply this trick to all of my mechs."

He called up a special document in his implant and added it as a standard rule.

This was something he had recently been working upon. He wanted each mech design to conform to a standard template. This leveled the playing field between his products as much as possible.

Right now, the template already contained a lot of requirements. A proper LMC mech should be alive, possess the potential to grow, carry his signature look, reach a high standard of reliability, be capable of conjuring up a phantom projection, be able to enhance itself up to a hard cap of 25 Ves, limit the effectiveness of its glow and more.

These were the standard requirements that every LMC mech designed by Ves and Gloriana had to meet. He might apply another template if he collaborated with other mech designers such as Ketis or Master Willix, but he would still try his best to implement his standard.

Once Ves applied every requirement dictated by his standard LMC mech template, the Ferocious Piranha design became significantly more useful in his eyes.

The addition of the retraction dial provided the mech design with a lot more flexibility in utilizing its disorienting glow.

The phantom projection the mech was able to project consisted of a large and rapidly-moving school of piranhas.

This cosmetic addition was the successor to the particle generators that he had previously used. He became inspired by the giant silhouettes that appeared whenever his forces engaged their battle formations.

In order to camouflage the future usage of battle formations by his mech forces, Ves simply decided to add the ability to project giant 'totems' to all of his mechs!

By themselves, the phantom projections were just illusions. Enemy mechs could easily see through them or filter them out. However, when used in conjunction with other properties such as glows, the phantom projections might be useful.

In the case of the Ferocious Piranha, projecting a rapidly-moving school of piranhas in the presence of enemies that were already affected by a debilitating glow might tip them over!

"Phantom projections not only look great in footage, but also compliments our psychological warfare doctrine."

That it was able to provide cover for the effects of authentic battle formations was still the most important reason why he implemented this requirement. The power of the network derived from Master Huron's work was so potent that Ves wanted to turn it into one of the Larkinson Clan's exclusive strengths!

As Ves turned his attention back to the Ferocious Piranha design, he thought about what kind of triggered ability he should add to it. The Doom Guard already came with a pulse ability, though it wasn't very strong.

"Hmm. I'm actually a bit afraid of adding any extra functionality."

The Ferocious Piranha was already strong. While it lacked the Valkyrie Redeemer's ability to affect enemies at a distance, up close its Doom Guard-like glow was very fatal to weaker opponents!

Of course, the biggest advantage to the Ferocious Piranha was that its glow did not harm the mech pilot and any friendlies!

By adding a part of Qilanxo, her influence successfully prevented Zeigra and Lufa from harming the people who were supposed to fight alongside the Ferocious Piranha.

This made the spaceborn light skirmisher a lot more practical to use! Together with the retraction dial, its suppressive glow shouldn't be able to harm anyone unless its current owners willed it. It became a lot easier for the Ferocious Piranha to fight as part of a larger unit or formation!

These compelling advantages put the Ferocious Piranha far ahead of its competition in the same price class. While the premium light skirmishers designed by other mech designers might perform better in some aspects, hardly any of them came with the ability to directly cause nearby enemy mech pilots to lose their minds in battle!

That said, the performance of the mech was still fairly good. Much of that was due to its generous budget, which was extravagant even by the standards of other expensive light skirmishers.

Costing 1.5 times more than a Doom Guard, the LMC made it abundantly clear that the potent advantages of the Ferocious Piranha came at a price.

It took a lot of courage to design an expensive light mech. No matter how much Ves invested in its armor system, the fact that it was limited to thin layers meant that it could never resist as much damage as a medium mech.

If the enemy managed to land a heavy blow onto the mech, then 3 million hex credits would pretty much go down the drain!

This was one of the main reasons why customers were very reluctant to spend money on expensive light mechs. No matter how much they excelled at evasion, just one lucky hit or a blanket of fire was all it took to ruin them! Most customers would rather purchase cheaper mechs and throw some unimportant mech pilots in their cockpits.

"Light mechs are often synonymous to expendable mechs." Ves grimaced.

Since he knew that, he wanted to make sure that the buyers of the Ferocious Piranha did not treat the mech model the same way. Inflating its price was a good way to make sure that his customers truly cared for them. After all, no one wanted to waste an expensive investment!

"Well, that's all I can do for you, Ferocious Piranha. The rest is up to you. I hope you will revolutionize the mech market even further."

The commercial potential of the Ferocious Piranha exceeded that of the Crystal Lord Mark II!