The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

Once Ves concluded his meeting with Master Willix, he also received the MTA merits that he had long been waiting for. The Larkinson Clan risked much to defeat the Allidus Alliance. If the MTA wanted to encourage others to fight the Nyxian pirates, it had to be generous in its rewards.

As Ves settled back on his ship, he eagerly studied the detailed breakdown of merits he managed to earn. There were a lot of individual items.

Ves was already aware of the outstanding bounties on the Pirate Lord and the flagship of the Allidus Alliance. While the process of defeating them was a little murky, his clan managed to bring back both the warship and the remains of Lord Hivex's corpse. The nitpicking MTA inspectors couldn't argue against that, so they had no choice but to award the full amount!

Lord Hivex's bounty amounted to 1,500,000 MTA merits while the Gravada Knarlax was worth 4,500,000 MTA merits.

"That's 6,000,000 MTA merits in the bag."

The only sour point for Ves was that the latter bounty included everything associated with the heavy cruiser. This meant that Ves was not allowed to claim the individual bounties of the Gravada Knarlax's captain, senior officers and illegal superweapons. Not even the Hallowed Abyss Temple presence aboard the ship warranted any special treatment.

Fortunately, Ves was able to derive additional merits from other sources.

The pirate armada consisted of much more ships than just the flagship. The Larkinson Clan successfully blew up the Mortis Greyson, though Ves didn't exactly explain the exact process. How was he supposed to explain that he launched a torpedo at the pirate destroyer that unleashed a very angry dark god from within?

While the Larkinsons couldn't preserve the Mortis Greyson, they did manage to bring back the Ailing Frey, Cartin Motiva, Livid Seven, Artis Fly and the Sundown.

The bounties on each warship was quite disappointing to Ves. The stingy MTA only awarded him with 750,000 MTA merits for destroying or capturing an armed destroyer and just 250,000 MTA merits for doing the same to an armed frigate.

These bounties were all-inclusive as well so it didn't matter how many nuclear missiles, warship-grade armaments and other violations the warships carried.

"Well, at least the pirates brought more destroyers than frigates to the fight." Ves resentfully muttered.

He didn't agree that a pirate destroyer was worth only 750,000 MTA merits. Sure, they weren't comparable to a behemoth like the Gravada Knarlax, but they were still strong enough to chew apart his mechs and ships!

Since the Larkinson Clan defeated 4 destroyers and 2 frigates, the total amount of merits he obtained from defeating the escort warships amounted to 3,500,000 MTA merits.

That wasn't as much as he hoped, but the MTA's judgement was final.

Aside from these large bounties, the Larkinsons also earned a host of smaller bounties. The MTA worked hard to analyze the footage and logs provided by the Larkinson Clan. Even if they stopped making sense in the second half of the battle, there was still a wealth of data on the other pirate assets for them to examine.

It helped that the Larkinsons also provided them with an abundant amount of proof. In addition to providing detailed footage of the aftermath of the battle, the Larkinsons also captured numerous pirate carriers in order to serve as their temporary cargo transports.

Even though the pirate armada was largely made up of these vessels, the pirate carriers weren't worth any bounties by themselves. The MTA only awarded him merits for the various violations of the rules such as mounting cannons onto the ship or carrying nuclear missiles.

What especially disappointed Ves was that he obtained no rewards for defeating 8000 pirate mechs!

He only gained a handful of individual bounties by defeating some notorious war criminals and fugitives, but this was also commensurate to the effort it took to defeat such a massive force.

The miscellaneous pirate gangs the Allidus Alliance recruited were generally too small and inconsequential to draw any higher bounties. It didn't matter to the MTA that they all grouped up and formed a huge deathball of mechs. Since these mechs were technically legal, the MTA didn't pay a single merit for destroying thousands of machines that the pirates could have used to terrorize innocent people!

In fact, Ves shouldn't complain so much. A lot of pirate mechs and ships easily fell into the hands of his forces after defeating the dark gods.

The presence of so many extraordinary entities was too much for mortals to bear. Pretty much every pirate and Larkinson lost consciousness once the powerful spiritual entities arrived onto the battlefield. The Larkinsons only managed to obtain a cheap victory because Ves woke them up first.

"Luckily, the pirates brought a lot of ships, many of which contain at least some trump card." He muttered.

The Allidus Alliance were some of the best shipbuilders of the Nyxian Gap. Their pirate carriers incorporated some of the same secondary armaments that made their dedicated warships so deadly.

As for the smaller pirate outfits that tagged along with the big boys, their strengths were weak but their numbers were large. Each little violation added up to a considerable sum.

In total, the MTA awarded him with 3,243,652 MTA merits. Despite defeating more than double the amount of mechs, this was about a third of what he obtained from conquering Ulimo Citadel.

Ves hoped that Master Willix would put in a good word for him and secure additional merits on his behalf.

After all, defeating the pirate armada directly precipitated the end of the Allidus Alliance. The Larknson Clan ought to receive a reward for that as well, right?

"It's too bad the MTA doesn't agree."

The MTA did not award merits for nebulous contributions. Perhaps sick of all of the merits that Ves already obtained, it did not listen to any further arguments and put an end to any further considerations.

This meant that Ves earned a total of 12,743,652 MTA Merits for the Battle against the Abyss!

"And this is not the end of the story!"

The MTA promised to double the merits it awarded for any actions taken against the pirates of the Nyxian Gap.

Since this promise still applied when the Battle against the Abyss took place, the MTA had no choice but to honor it despite the enormous cost!

Ves lowered his gaze until his eyes fell on the final sum.

25,487,304 MTA merits.

"Twenty-five million merits." Ves whispered.

His spine tingled and his entire body shivered. He became increasingly more excited as he took in the astronomical amount of merits he gained after making so many sacrifices.

"TWENTY-FIVE MILLION MERITS!"

He was rich!

Combined with his previous earnings, his account currently held 36,910,402 MTA Merits!

That was already more than a third of what he needed to redeem a second-class beyonder ticket!

His excitement quickly died down a bit. Though he earned an astronomical sum, he also lost a lot to secure his hard-fought victories.

Aside from losing hundreds of valuable mech pilots and thousands of support personnel, he also lost Nyxie, the high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum and the Grand Dynamo.

The value of these three assets was immense. If Ves was able to exploit these resources in full, he would have been able to obtain much more rewards than 25 million MTA merits.

Yet the circumstances didn't let him. Perhaps the only reason he didn't blow up about their loss was that he gained much more than a lot of merits from winning the Battle against the Abyss.

Defeating a great enemy from the Ruined Temple, obtaining enough Unending Alloy to build three to five expert mechs, empowering his mother, adding a lot of expert pilots and expert candidates to his clan, accomplishing several new innovations and so on couldn't be expressed in simple numbers.

"Overall, I've made a handsome profit." He smiled.

He could live on after losing Nyxie, the high-grade serum and the Grand Dynamo.

Truthfully, losing the last one hurt the most. In the long run, the vast quantities of spiritual energy it generated could have provided him with an immense amount of value. Losing this renewable source of energy when he only enjoyed it for a couple of years was really frustrating!

"Maybe I can regain what I lost."

He already formed some plans to recreate the Grand Dynamo. While he still needed to puzzle out the mechanics behind deriving usable energy from a spinning galaxy, he had hope that he might be able to crack some of the puzzles.

"It doesn't have to be as good as the original one. Even if it's just 1 percent as productive, that's already a win in my book."

The downside of making use of the Grand Dynamo was that it was a finished product that didn't offer any room for improvement.

In contrast, once Ves successfully developed a homegrown version, he would be able to iterate on it whenever his spiritual engineering ability improved. By building up and improving his shabby dynamo from the ground up, he might be able to create something that surpassed the original some day!

"What is even better is that it won't be scarce anymore!"

Depending on the difficulty of obtaining the necessary ingredients, Ves might be able to build a second dynamo or a third one.

"Maybe stuffing my mind with a hundred dynamos is a bit overboard, but there shouldn't be a problem if I carry a couple of them, right?"

An even greater advantage of being able to build his own dynamos was that he could also supply them to other people!

Once Ves inserted some of his dynamos into Gloriana, he no longer needed to wait for months for her to recover whenever they created a new design spirit.

Perhaps he might gift Ketis some of his dynamos as well since her 'superpower' was very overbearing.

"It's not just the mech designers who benefit. What if I hand them out to expert pilots?"

While his expert pilots primarily cultivated their will, spiritual energy played an indispensable role in empowering them. Ves was just a bit unsure how increasing the regeneration of the latter affected them in battle.

Still, achieving all of this remained a fantasy so long he couldn't solve the two main mechanisms of a spiritual dynamo.

How was it able to derive energy from the galaxy? How did the dynamo convert this energy into usable spiritual energy?

These two steps continued to frustrate him. He scratched his head and frowned as he tried to wrap his mind around it. Since spiritual energy normally didn't interact with the material realm, he didn't see how the dynamo was able to interact with the spinning galaxy on a physical level.

"Perhaps it does so on a spiritual level instead."

Yet whenever he cast his awareness into the spiritual realm, he encountered nothing but emptiness and a lot of corrosive winds.

Unlike back when he was travelling through the Nyxian Gap, the imaginary realm in ordinary space wasn't dominated by a vortex.

Ves failed to observe anything massive.

"Maybe I need to look deeper, or maybe it just doesn't exist."

He became so wrapped up by the question on how he was supposed to derive energy from the galaxy that he suddenly jerked when he made a very basic realization.

"Who says I need to use the galaxy as my power source? I can make use of a more accessible source of energy instead!"

Ves palmed his face. He should have thought about it earlier! Why go to the moon right away when he couldn't even climb a shallow hill? He needed to start with the basics before aiming higher!

He commenced his first true spiritual engineering project at that point. Numerous ideas flowed into his mind as he contemplated his initial energy source for his homemade dynamo. It had to be both accessible and easy to convert in order to work.