Aside from needing to create a new design spirit, the Devious Project did not present any significant obstacles. Gloriana eagerly tackled all of the challenges as if they were personal. Ves also enjoyed the process of designing his first proper stealth mech.

There were two major shortcomings of the Devious that Ves didn't like

First, the Devious was limited by its relatively stingy design budget. This limited its effectiveness and increased the danger to the mech pilots.

Second, the Devious was a landbound mech. It was a lot easier to design a landbound stealth mech because of its flatter profile and its simpler internal architecture.

Stealth mechs with flight capabilities had to incorporate miniaturized flight systems or alternative means of traversal in order to prevent their energy signatures from lighting up like a torch in the dark!

These mechs also generated a lot more heat due to their increased energy consumption. Every process generated heat due to inherent inefficiencies, and making mechs fly tended to build up a lot of heat during flight!

What was even worse was that the stealth mech's energy reserves drained even faster during flight. Not only did it have to provide power to its energy-hungry flight systems, it also had to maintain all of its active stealth systems, which wasn't light in terms of power draw!

The challenges of minimizing energy consumption, increasing efficiency and preventing any heat from leaking out were already enough to drive Journeymen crazy!

Even Ves and Gloriana didn't have enough guts to design a spaceborn or aerial stealth mech at their current stage. Perhaps only proper Seniors were good enough to tackle these advanced projects.

"It's okay." Gloriana reassured Ves as he voiced his frustration to her. "We can design something suitable in the future when we really need such a mech. For now, I don't think the Black Cats are required to perform any sabotage."

"You're right." Ves loosened up as he idly petted Clixie's furry back. "I'm just being envious. Having a spaceborn stealth mech in our lineup would definitely be handy and give us more options, but we don't strictly need it in order to survive."

"Once we finish the Devious Project, we can make use of it ourselves. That will give us at least some solutions."

"You're right."

This was the best part about this project. The Glory Seekers and the Larkinson Clan could make use of this mech as well. Even if the Hexadric Hegemony refused to extend that right to them, the experience of designing a stealth mech was already valuable in itself.

With the immense amount of money at his disposal, he could definitely find some way to obtain the necessary permissions to make use of stealth systems and stealth components elsewhere.

He could also make a deal with a different state in the Yeina Star Cluster. As long as the Devious Project succeeded and the Hexers made good use of his stealth mech, other states would definitely want to get their hands on something similar.

In fact, the LMC already received inquiries from different states! They offered various interesting conditions such as money, territory and even noble titles in exchange for designing a mech with a glow that met their requirements!

Many of the people or institutions that approached the LMC with these offers were quite savvy. They recognized the advantage of LMC mechs and showed a lot of sincerity in order to gain the same advantages that Ves had bestowed to the Hexadric Hegemony.

It was a pity that Ves simply couldn't design so many mechs. He had way too many mech design projects on his to-do list to entertain these commissions.

There wasn't a big hurry either. As long as Ves designed more mechs that made an impact in the Komodo War, his value would definitely rise. Second-rate states were unimaginably wealthy and powerful. The people who worked for the government weren't stupid either. As long as they wanted something bad enough, they would definitely bring out something that was precious and relevant to the Larkinson Clan!

In fact, Ves was patiently biding his time. He wanted to generate more demand and drive up the value of his services in the hopes of obtaining another capital ship or receiving a batch of strategically-important resonating materials!

The fact that the LMC's commercial catalog was already on its way to generate a monthly income of 1 trillion hex credits was already a testament to his design prowess!

After he made this realization, Ves underwent a gradual shift in mentality. He raised his evaluation of his own value and considered his time to be much more precious than before.

It was a pity that he didn't have enough time! The biggest problem he faced once he reached a certain level of success was that his output was limited by the amount of time he was able to invest in his work.

Knowing that he could obtain an unimaginable amount of wealth and power but being unable to get more than a fraction of that due to his limitations was painful!

There was no way for him to increase the amount of time he was allotted per day. He had to tackle this problem from a different angle. The answer he came up with was delegating some of his workload to other mech designers.

"The Design Department is not sufficient anymore." He murmured. "I need to raise more Journeymen in order to lead more projects. I should hire a lot more assistants as well in order to set up more design teams. As long as I obtain more help, I can devote my precious time to the work that really matters to me. I can spend more time on developing my specialty as well, which should accelerate my progression."

He missed the days where he designed an entire mech by himself, but it was simply too inefficient. Of course, he had to be careful not to let his technical design abilities grow rusty. It was best to start some passion projects every now and then and work on it from the ground up in order to ensure he was still able to design a mech by himself. Master Willix had already advised him to do so in order to prevent himself from becoming dependent on others.

Aside from the Devious Project, Ves also devoted a significant time on the Bright Warrior Mark I Version B and the Ferocious Piranha Mark I Version B projects.

Both were powerful second-class mech projects that Ves wanted to add to his clan's common mech roster as soon as possible. The former was a versatile mech model that could fulfill most of the roles his mech forces needed to fulfill.

"I need the Bright Warrior IB to replace our cheap commercial second-class mechs as soon as possible!"

As for the latter, the Ferocious Piranha IB would definitely become a killer against most enemies. The Version C of this product line was already in the process of sparking a revolution in the regional mech market. Once the second-class version came out, the results would be so astounding that Ves was too afraid of selling it to the public!

"Our clan is too weak and the LMC doesn't have a solid foundation in the second-class markets of this star cluster. We can't rock the boat too much." He muttered.

There were massive interests involved in the second-class mech markets. Each market leader possessed enough wealth and power to ambush the Larkinson Clan in order to get rid of any market disruptors.

At most, Ves would only be able to get away with selling Ferocious Piranha Version B's through private sales. He did not even dare to put up his mech design for licensing, so he would probably be confined to producing the second-class Ferocious Piranhas in house.

Fortunately, the Spirit of Bentheim was more than up to the task. As long as his expeditionary fleet obtained enough Transcendent Punishers, Bright Warrior Version B's and so on, he could switch the factory ship's purpose from servicing the needs of the clan to producing high-quality mechs with high markups.

It didn't matter if the profit from private sales paled in comparison to the profit generated by the LMC's business operations in the Yeina Star Cluster. Ves wanted to diversify his income so that he and his clan would be able to survive the collapse of any revenue source.

Due to prioritizing the mech design projects that were of immediate use to him and his clan, Ves was not able to allocate as much time on his other design projects.

Fortunately, they weren't too complicated.

The Hexer supportive mech designed to debilitate enemy expert pilots by 'blinding' them with the Illustrious One's glow had to be as economical as possible.

As a mech designed to confront expert mechs without being able to threaten them in any serious way, it was destined to be utilized as cannon fodder. To the Hex Army, this meant that it should be piloted by boys. It didn't help that the design codenamed Blinding Mech was meant to be deployed in greater numbers.

After a lot of considerations, Ves set the Blinding Mech's design budget at just 145 million hex credits. This was 55 million hex credits less than the Blessed Squire, though the Blinding Mech did not incorporate sophisticated energy siphoning and energy transfer systems.

Instead, Ves stuffed it with third-class luminar crystals. Due to the fragility of these crystals, Ves incorporated them in the shield and frame of a defensive landbound knight mech.

"Mobility is not important for this mech. It doesn't have to be fast, nor does it require any flight capabilities."

Ves equated the role of the Blinding Mech to the Doom Guard. Both mechs were designed to counter specific enemies in very particular ways. Because they were geared towards defensive deployments, he could focus their designs to excel in their narrow roles.

In order to ensure adequate defensive capabilities while keeping costs down, Ves piled up the Blinding Mech's design with a lot of heavy bulk armor. The alloy formula of its armor system was made up entirely with low-grade exotics and other readily-available materials.

While this essentially slowed the Blinding Mech down, Ves considered it to be an acceptable tradeoff. The only annoying part was that he couldn't go too far with this. Unlike the Doom Guard, the Blinding Mech had to take part in at least some offensive operations.

These requirements essentially limited the defenses of the Blinding Mech. While it possessed plenty of armor to resist a decent number of ranged attacks, Ves did not expect it to last long against an expert mech.

A sardonic smile appeared on his face. "Well, it's not as if doubling its budget will help much either."

Expert mechs were unreasonably powerful. Their attacks were always capable of slicing or punching through most standard mechs. Ves just had to put enough armor onto his Blinding Mech design to prevent it from falling over after getting hit by a casual attack.

"An expert mech still has to expend a bit of effort to take one of these machines down."

That was the best that Ves could hope for. The Blinding Mech did not need anything else as it was only meant to create opportunities. It was designed to fight alongside other Hexer mechs that were much more suited to launch follow-up attacks.

As Ves tinkered with the relatively uncomplicated knight mech design, he became especially proud of the crystal array he sandwiched in the thick and bulky shield of the Blinding Mech.

Normally, the shield resembled a typical solid slab of metal. However, once the mech pilot issued a command, the surface layers retracted in order to expose the flat, gleaming crystals embedded in the middle!

While luminar crystals classically came in a diamond or oval shape, Ves knew it was possible to synthesize or cut them in other shapes as well.

In order to prevent the shield from becoming too bulky, Ves intended to embed flatter, block-shaped luminar crystals into its interior.

While this design choice significantly reduced the bulkiness of the shield, the efficiency of the crystals dropped as a consequence. For some unknown reason that Ves couldn't fathom, making the crystals flatter reduced their efficiency and output by up to 25 percent!

Though this was a rather painful tradeoff, Ves still considered it worthwhile. By covering the entire interior of a tower shield with blocky luminar crystals, the effect should still be very significant!

"I'm not sure how effective the Blinding Mech will be against expert pilots, but it will definitely have an effect on regular mech pilots as well!"