Chapter 7226: Final Doubts

The critical moment had come.

The Riot Mark III in his current state had reached a completed state, but that did not necessarily mean he had reached his final form.

At this moment, the mech largely matched the design. There was nothing wrong with stopping at this junction, though if Ves truly wanted to make the two converge, he and his wife would have to make subsequent modifications and corrections to reduce the sources of instability.

As it was, the Riot Mark III was far too wild and unrestrained to function as a normal high-tier expert mech.

All of the mech designers in the workshop compartment could feel it. From Ves whose spiritual sensitivity was the highest to the EdNet returnees who were overlooking the fabrication run on a catwalk installed on the opposite side, each of them felt as if they were in the presence of a predator that possessed undisguised hostile intentions.

This was not a mech.

This was a monster clothed in the resilient skin of a mech.

Ves never intended to make the Riot Mark III so ferocious at this stage. This was the first time he began to fear his own abilities.

Would subsequent mechs turned out as malevolent as this? He certainly hoped not. He still clung to the explanation that the main reason why the Riot Mark III turned out this way was because of unexpected synergies between multiple different techs and negative properties.

So long as Ves paid more attention to this detail and conducted more detailed tests in the future, he could avoid or even better control the manifestation of this phenomenon.

That did not help him much at this time. Venerable Rosa Orfan had been hyping herself up for multiple months now. Her patience had come to an end. Having witnessed other pilots such as Saint Tusa and Saint Dise earning glory on the frontlines of the Red War, Rosa Orfan wanted in on the action.

Staying as an expert pilot was no longer enough for her anymore. In the war against the native aliens, the only mech pilots that possessed the barest amount of agency in the field were saints.

Only ace pilots possessed the power to destroy enemy warships with impunity and present a proper challenge against enemy phase lords.

A full superdimensional ace mech was even more of a deadly killer. Such a machine could easily pierce through the ubiquitous spatial barriers that protected phase lords and directly target the weak points of the big and clumsy aliens.

Of course, superdimensional arms race was not one-sided. The Red Cabal kept pumping out more Saint Piercers and Saint Armors as if the alien phase whales finally decided that weaponizing the ’bones’ of the so-called Elder Gods was a righteous cause.

The alien-grade weapons and raiments turned enemy phase lords into killers of human champions.

Any ace mech that lacked superdimensional armor had to fight an uphill battle to say the least.

The Riot Mark III was therefore close to the ideal instrument of war to Venerable Orfan. Ves and Gloriana had already explained that he was pretty much a first-class ace mech that had been temporarily downgraded to a first-class expert mech.

This was because the pair had preserved the old resonating materials from the Mark II.

Venerable Orfan was intimately familiar with the use of BSN-17A and Pierrotis. She had mastered the corresponding resonating abilities and had squeezed out all of the potential that they could produce.

She was eager to move on to greater pastures. Ace mech-grade resonating materials possessed much more dramatic features that could transform the way she fought and give her a distinct edge in combat, especially against challenging opponents.

One of the most impressive manifestations of this among the works of Ves and Gloriana was the latest iteration of the Dark Zephyr.

The Banisher Edition gained a completely new ability that allowed the light skirmisher to briefly banish objects into another dimension.

Though it was initially hard for Saint Tusa to effectively utilize this resonating ability at his relatively low resonance strength, he became more and more comfortable in using it in battle.

His resonance strength grew, allowing him to expend less effort to banish larger objects or cut off chunks from more resilient enemies.

Saint Tusa developed creative ways to take advantage of this banishing ability.

For example, he could temporarily banish heavy ordnance such as a large plasma bomb, race towards an enemy battleship before bringing the payload back into realspace, where it would subsequently detonate and destroy a massive hull that would have taken a fair amount of time for an ace light skirmisher to destroy!

Another trick that Tusa figured out was to banish lots of boarding troops and deliver them directly inside the hull of an enemy warship!

This could not only be done a lot faster than through conventional boarding methods, but it was also safer as there was no way for the enemy to intercept the boarding vehicles in advance.

The surprise factor alone often played a decisive role in the quick capture of enemy vessels!

Of course, the main target of his resonating ability were enemy phase lords.

The Dark Zephyr Mark III was able to mess up small groups of lesser phase lords by banishing them at random times. Their sudden disappearances often unbalanced their peers and caused their flawed teamwork to deteriorate even further.

Greater phase lords were trickier. Their bodies were too large to banish entirely, but the Dark Zephyr Mark III could still banish their weapons and other equipment for a short time.

Even if their arms returned back to realspace a minute or so later, all of the maneuvering in space caused them to drift far away from their owners, causing the greater phase lords to remain weaponless for an even longer period of time!

Only greater phase lords equipped with superdimensional equipment had the ability to stump the Dark Zephyr Mark III.

Saint Piercer arms resisted banishment extremely well and presented a fatal threat against the expert light skirmisher.

Saint Armors that provided full coverage were virtually invincible. The tier 3 Destroyer spear was stronger than most weapons, but its penetration power was ultimately not good enough.

This was one of the reasons why Saint Tusa gladly sent back the tier 3 Destroyer spear. Swordmaster Ketis had already forged a pair of exquisite masterwork superdimensional knives that allowed the Dark Zephyr to return to his old fighting style.

While the pair of superdimensional knives possessed inferior reach, their penetration power was unmatched, and that mattered the most.

The Dark Zephyr Mark III was ultimately not designed to wield Destroyer weapons. The light skirmisher did not possess any notable support systems or synergies that could bring out the most of the Destroyer spear.

The case should be different for the Riot Mark III. Even if the tier 3 Destroyer spear had yet to receive a superdimensional upgrade, the new spearman mech should be able to stimulate the Destroyer particles of the dangerous weapon to a considerably greater degree than other machines!

Ves even came up with an unverified theory.

The meaner the expert mech, the deadlier the Destroyer weapon.

Though he had no solid proof that this was the case, it conformed to his theoretical framework.

This was one of the many reasons why he was looking forward to turning the Riot Mark III into a D-mech.

To be honest, he truly did not want to stop this ultimate step despite the many dangers associated with this crazy project.

His logic told him that he had long exceeded the safety threshold and that he should stop before his work could endanger his client.

His heart was completely fired up at this time! His emotions burned with curiosity. He could not bring himself to abide by the rules of safety and stop when he was on the cusp of creating an unprecedentedly powerful machine!

Gloriana looked at him and shook her head. She knew exactly what kind of mood had overtaken Ves. While she was not as enthused about pressing forward after encountering so many unexpected deviations, she knew her husband well enough that no amount of argumentation would sway him from creating a truly new work.

"Gloriana, give the order."

She looked at Ves for a few more seconds before she turned around and issued an expulsion order.

"EVERYONE OUT!"

There was no need for her to say anything further. She had already informed everyone of the rules beforehand.

All of the idle mech designers, assistants, bodyguards and so on promptly departed from the private workshop.

That left only 4 individuals.

"Meow."

Lucky had already been recalled a day ago. He was responsible for sniffing out and disabling every bug, sensor, listening device and etcetera.

Alexa Streon meanwhile had been tasked with completely disabling and depowering the production machines. Who knew what kind of data they might gather.

While Ves had no illusions that these measures would stop the Red Association from monitoring what was taking place inside a workshop compartment inside one of its own warships, it should at least create enough ambiguity.

That was enough as far as he was concerned.

Ves turned to Alexa.

"For safety’s sake, you should move further backwards." He told her. "What will happen next will happen quickly and without warning. I cannot guarantee how the Riot Mark III will turn out, but it will definitely become a lot stronger and possibly more dangerous than before. It may even gain enough autonomy to start lashing out at everything."

Alexa frowned when she heard this. "Is it safe to conduct your secret procedure in this workshop, then?"

"Don’t worry. The energy cells of the mech are nearly completely empty. The machine only has enough power to run basic systems. Even if the Riot is able to go wild for a time, he won’t be able to do so for long. This workshop already contains very powerful internal defense systems. We spent the extra time to produce additional superdimensional restraints. If it is necessary, I will bring out the Dark Apostle and have him subdue the machine. If that is still not enough, we can activate the emergency ejection command that will void the entire workshop into space. I specifically cleared this matter up with Admiral Tensen. This is an expensive measure, but it is the best way to prevent further damage to the warship."

Now that the Bluejay Fleet was in transit, there were few good locations to complete this final step in a hurry. Ves just decided to do it here and hope that they could keep everything under control.

He wanted to avoid bringing the Riot Mark III out in the open before he was ready for his debut.

What if the Demoncasting process caused the Riot Mark III to transform into a horribly mutated biomechanical monstrosity that looked nothing like a proper mech?!

If recordings of this abomination spread out, Ves would definitely incur a lot of criticism from the mech community!

Of course, all of these were merely backup measures. Ves already intended to keep the Riot Mark III in the System Space.

So long as the machine could remain contained within the System Space, Ves should have enough time to deal with a recalcitrant machine.

Ves had good reasons to expect trouble.

The Middle Demon that he prepared for the Riot was not taken from a random soul that had been mutated into a demon.

Instead, he broke open one of Lucky’s gems, took out the demon that was stored inside before subsequently strengthening it through successive means by feeding it with other demons, both Minor and Middle ones!

[Doom of Remis]

The negative energy of a failed prophet is gathered by this gem. Increases the failure rate of all surrounding enemies by 25 percent.

The demon contained within this ominous gem was the perfect choice for the Riot. Yet now that it had come to this, Ves began to doubt whether this remained the case.

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