I had a slight celebration last night after getting home, really just a few drinks and a cheerier mood than usual. Even then when I woke up my head still hurt slightly, and my sheets were disgusting. Turns out all the alcohol in the Royal grounds contains a decent amount of Qi, as I got a notification about that, among others.

[Cultivation Mortal Realm: Low Grade obtained]

[Path of the Peerless Royal Mech Creator rank 11]

[Path of the Peerless Royal Mech Creator rank 12]

While thinking about why I finally ranked up, when I had not for several days, I came to realize what had happened. When I first came here, I had showcased by skills I had learned, and until recently I hadn’t done anything beyond what I already knew. But the past couple days I was able to showcase a creation of mine and gain the approval of a high-level Royal member, with an implied go ahead for more prototypes. I effectively made a decent leap forward on the actual function of my Path. If I had to guess why I didn’t gain more ranks, it is probably because it was only a provisional go ahead, and the actual design was not some amazing mech design, just good for what it is supposed to be.

Using this idea as a plausible basis for my future strategies, I get ready for another day at work. I meet up with Yi-Jun, coffee in hand, to reverse the effects of the mild hangover I woke up with. We talked about the other two designs I hadn’t shown him yet. He began his usual set of questions about my designs, “why do they both shift forms, much less to a four-legged version?”.

I spend about five minutes bringing up the lack of practicality of a pure four-legged design, as it would be way too slow, along with somewhat disconcerting compared to a usual bipedal mech design. However, a pure bipedal design fails when we talk about the ordinance and general firepower associated with these mechs. There is a reason mortars rest of tripods, why snipers have a tripod on them and why the shooters themselves lay prone. Along with the fact that both of these soldier types are traditionally not the super main focus of forward strikes. When you combine the best of both, allowing for some level of actual mobility, you gain a sturdy target than can soften targets up close, as long as they have reinforcements, and deadly defense breakers from a distance. This seemed to have alleviated that design concept, and he even began to see how the specialization and mixed forces concept started to really shine. I am pretty sure I am saw him write down “rolling thunder strategy” as a note to use when pitching the different Mech designs. I almost considered telling him about the blitzkrieg, as it was also s similar idea, as they used tanks to smash through with their infantry not far behind, but decided it was better to go this way. Who wants to keep saying to “blitz” the enemy, when we could just say we “rolled” over them.

When we finally arrived at the workshop, we noticed a couple more mechanics than usual. With a bit of investigation and asking some of the mechanics who had been with us already, we found out the First Prince was able to clear out some mechanics from other jobs and had them reassigned to Yi-Jun and I to help speed up the process. While the increased number of mechanics would certainly help, it took far longer than I would have liked to bring everyone up to speed on the two new mech designs. After a couple hours of doing the equivalent of a presentation on the key features of these two designs, and how they would share a rough base design. With that done, I had them start assembling to two bases for the designs. The sniper mech frame was easier to get done, as it was not a super resource heavy frame, but it did require more gyroscopes and stabilizing elements built into the frame, particularly the arms and legs. Before we really started to get focused on weaponry I reiterated the importance of either design, when in quadruped form, to be able to take a significant level of imbalance, without actually messing up their shots, or otherwise facing huge recoil. I went through the settings they set for these different instruments a few times, making the values stricter, recommending stronger piston pins for the feet, and so on.

We went through a half dozen different design iterations on just the legs alone until we found something that an actual performance check aside, should function for the quadruped form. Next thing I needed to help them with was the “transformer” style reconfiguring that the mech would need to undergo while still keeping the human in the mech safe. If you thought the earlier amount of design iterations was insane, this was even worse. We had to pause part of the way through for lunch, and still continued on for a few more hours. We went through couple dozen different iterations, going late into the afternoon just to get the generic function into a workable state. We were so pooped after this, we basically called it an early day. The only real thing we ended up doing after that was just to get spare parts and other odds and ends resupplied, as we had to go through quite a lot just trying to get mockups and everything done. After another hour or so of getting all the paperwork filled out to get us back to a decent level of materials and parts for the next day, I headed over to a food court to get what equated to fast food. I spent a long while there, just resting and trying to refresh my brain. It was a little frustrating having to work with those not in my family.

I had forgotten our instinctive it was for those in my family to be able to modify designs, create whole new designs based off half baked concepts, and just in general, innovate. I was holding my head low at the idea that this may be long road to achieve the goals and prestige I was wanting to have. But at the end of the day, I knew if I wanted the accolades, I would need to deal with the less adept. When I got home close to 8pm, I spent another hour just further defining and clarifying numbers, strength thresholds, and so on, hoping the extra details would make things a bit easier for tomorrow. With that done, I went to bed, falling asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow.

The beginning of the following day followed in a similar fashion, if a bit more streamlined. A walk to the workshop with Yi-Jun, knowing this may be the last peace and tranquil time of the day. A few hours spent on design iterations, extraneous parts littering the workshop floor. The good thing about all this was that we further refined the two main mechanics from yesterday, even getting the rest of frames constructed for the two designs. As we got close to lunch, we decided to take an early lunch, so it didn’t disrupt the flow like it did yesterday. I managed to find that one Korean barbeque place again, knowing that this place really has the meats, despite some places from my home world saying otherwise. I spent a solid half hour slowly savoring the food before Yi-Jun found me, giving me a slight chuckle.

“If all you eat is barbeque, you’ll eventually have trouble fitting into your clothes” he says as he walks away from me in a slight food coma. Deciding it has been long enough, I clean up my table, and put everything away before walking a bit fast to catch up to him.

“I will have you know, I have only had it a few times, and since coming here, I have not been able to find good food like that from my home. So, I can’t help it if a bit of homesickness leeches out and helps me gain that much needed focus and calmness to function at my peak”. I go on a small tirade, the reality of the situation numbing the joy of the lunch, but I don’t let it completely bring the mood down. We arrive back at the workshop a little after noon, waiting for a few minutes for everyone to come back before we begin some weapon building and testing.

This goes fairly smoothly, as weapon wise nothing is revolutionary. We build a handful of different grenade models, as different types of ammunition could be well served, but still understanding only a couple of them should be standard issue. The basic design is a sphere made of dozens of hexagons, almost like a golf ball, with a decent explosive ordinance. The second main type of ammunition is a semi “sticky” grenade, as the grenade pushes out several sharp spikes from the shell, allowing it to pierce into the first thing it hits. This makes it easier to aim for a specific location, with a sort of directed explosive effect happened as a result. The last type we decided may be used enough for a larger scale distribution, but would still be a niche used ammunition, was a grenade shell with several holes drilled into it. As the grenade sphere would roll, smaller balls would fall out. Each of these would provide micro sized explosions, making it a decent area of attack grenade to be used against weaker targets.

The different beam cannons were fairly easy as well, as they were largely set to specific energy values that would be charged up but did allow for some slight overcharging via the pilots personal Qi. The formation flags had already been ordered and delivered to us, since I knew nothing about them, and would not betting involved with formations now. The rest of the weapons just being adaptations of the infantry mech to allow for quicker, but weaker fire, or pretty much just slightly customized versions of already widely available weapons. The rest of the day was polishing up the designs, getting more formalized blueprints created for everything, as well as ensuring all the parts did not have a “thrown together” or “random weapons piecemealed” feeling to them.

With everything pretty much done for these two mech designs, we set up time for these to be test practiced tomorrow with mech pilots, the obligatory resupply, and workshop cleanup. Once that was all done, I began to head home. I stopped by a place quickly for a handful of steamed pork buns before getting to my place, eating in the rarely used kitchen area. After a satisfying meal, I put dishes away, and idly looked through a magazine of the newer designs by the Ten Great Clans, interested in meeting the challenge these will have for me one day. Once it gets too dark to easily read through the magazine, I place it off on the nightstand and get ready for sleep. I fall asleep shortly after, dreaming of some cool amalgamations of mechs I grew up seeing on the television as a kid.