The Mech Touch (Web Novel)

5669 Sticker Shock

If the release of the Fey Fianna put the Living Mech Corporation back on the map, the shocking introduction of the Ultimatum completely detonated human space!

The reasons for this were myriad. The Ultimatum's Guided Aim Technology, or rather E-technology was enough to put this second-class hyper heavy artillery mech model head and shoulders above all of the other products of its kind.

Yet the original designer of the Ultimatum did not leave it at that. For whatever reason, he actually managed to convince a god pilot to 'sponsor' his mech model!

It turned out that the rumors of a good relationship between Professor Larkinson and the Destroyer of Worlds had an actual basis in reality!

No one could have expected that such an eminent god pilot would ever condescend to cooperating with a second-class Senior Mech Designer, even if he was the most special one of his rank.

Regardless, it was up to the spooks and the historians to investigate the origin of their friendship and the reason for their unprecedented cooperation.

The mech industry mainly became preoccupied with verifying the amazing claims and determining how much the power of a god pilot could actually assist the Ultimatums throughout the Red Ocean.

The early tests conducted by a large number of Rubarthans and other experts all produced remarkably quick results.

They confirmed that the most remarkable E-technologies employed in the Ultimatum design originated from external sources.

One of them was tied to a 'dead' prophet called Ylvaine, but the other one was confirmed to be related to the Destroyer of Worlds, or at least an aspect of her great power!

Though people found it rather odd that Divine Irene Mox chose to express her undeniable relation to the Ultimatum in the form of her famous Emma avatar, most people chalked it up to a common love and obsession with cats.

All that mattered was that the wild and outlandish claims were true!

"From the moment I pray to the Destroyer of Worlds to annihilate my target, she will answer my prayers and bless the gauss round that launches out of the Onyx Cannon!"

"The Destroyer of Worlds loves explosions the most! The heavy artillery cannons that most of you have been neglecting all day are able to attract her blessing as well! The only limitation is that she only bestows them with her power one at a time. You will have to fire the cannons sequentially in order to make the best use of her might."

The influence of the Destroyer of Worlds among the Rubarthans as well as many other people was massive.

Each god pilot of humanity generated their own fanbase.

Back in the Milky Way, there were around a hundred known god pilots that people could choose to admire and interact with other like-minded fans.

Even then, the Destroyer of Worlds attracted more than the usual amount of devotees due to her relative informality as well as her overwhelming firepower.

Nothing emphasized the dominance of a god pilot more than to blow up entire planets all at once!

The greater the visible displays of power, the more the Destroyer of Worlds induced lots of people to regard her as their ultimate idol.

Now that red humanity had become cut off from the old galaxy, the population had much less god pilots to choose from. All of the other ones that remained stuck in the old galaxy had pretty much become irrelevant.

No matter how powerful they might be, they had no way of helping red humanity survive this difficult period when they were 50 million light-years away!

The citizens of the Rubarthan Pact pretty much only had two god pilots to choose from. Those from the Red Ocean Union were generally more open-minded and could pick any of the eight god pilots as their objects of worship.

Each of the eight had their merits, but the Destroyer of Worlds remained among the more popular candidates for the same reasons as before.

Within Rubarthan society, the upper layers generally favored the Spacelock, as he used to be one of them back when he was still a mortal.

The Destroyer of Worlds on the other hand became a lot more popular among the middle and lower layers of Rubarthan society. She not only rose up as an average commoner, but also used to be second-rater to boot!

She was the ultimate product of Rubarthan meritocracy and embodied the hope of so many people who sought to learn from her example!

Though the divisions between the two camps had become increasingly more fractious, the surprise release of the Ultimatum completely changed the landscape.

No matter which god pilot a person favored the most, there was no deep conflict between the two god pilots.

They both pledged their allegiance to the Star Emperor and promised to defend the Rubarthan Pact.

The upper-class Rubarthans had no qualms about placing large orders of a second-class mech that sold at a disgustingly cheap price.

From the perspective of second-class customers, the official list price of 30 MTA credits was extortionate!

This was way more than the 5 or 6 MTA credits that other heavy artillery mechs with comparable technical specs could attain!

Everyone and their grandmother could easily figure out that the Ultimatum did not actually cost close to 30 MTA credits to produce.

Otherwise, Isthmus Manufacturing wouldn't have discreetly retooled so many of its production lines and produced a huge amount of Ultimatums in advance so that they could be sold in an instant upon release!

The large mech manufacturer only adopted this strategy when it knew that it could get away with charging such a stupendously high price premium!

The high price tag tempered a lot of customer demand. As much as mech pilots all wanted to have a taste of the blessing of an actual god pilot, they were not necessarily willing to purchase a heavy artillery mech when they could purchase more than 7 nearly identical units that were just as serviceable in combat!

Of course, many people might be able to argue that purchasing the Ultimatums was worth it because their fantastic E-technologies adequately made up for the drastic increase in price, but this was a very contentious topic to say the least!

"Don't you realize that Isthmus Manufacturing is being kind to us all? If I was in charge of setting the price, I would have sold it at 100 MTA credits per copy! This machine is a guaranteed cash cow! Selling it at a relatively 'low' price of 30 MTA credits is the mech company's way of contributing to the defense of the middle zones."

"Isthmus Manufacturing is giving other mech companies enough space to keep their own heavy artillery mech models viable. The reason why the company has set the price so high is not just because it can get away with it, but also because it is important to keep the market ecosystem for this mech type alive. If the Ultimatum becomes so cheap that it is an instant purchase to any customer that needs such a machine, too many mech designers will abandon this mech archetype and ultimately stifle further innovation in this direction. We should thank Professor Larkinson and the board of directors of Isthmus Manufacturing for taking the health of the mech industry into consideration."

Though many potential customers suffered sticker shock, there were still a lot of first-raters who were more eager to purchase multiple copies of a second-class mech.

This actually led to a strange phenomenon where tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of first-class mech pilots actually played around with a mech that should have been horribly underpowered from their perspective!

Even though the Ultimatum was largely unable to keep up with first-class combat, the mech pilots still did not regret this diversion as the sensation of coming into contact with Emma, if only marginally, fulfilled one of their greatest dreams!

"Hahaha! So this is what it is like to wield ultimate power! Is this the willpower of the Destroyer of Worlds? I feel like I can crush everything!"

Even though the overly curious first-raters snapped up so many copies of this incredible mech model that they practically choked out more legitimate second-class customers, Isthmus Manufacturing already anticipated this scenario.

The overly curious first-raters did not actually buy the Ultimatums with the intention of utilizing them in battle. They at least needed to overhaul the entire design and bring it up to first-class standards before they could even consider this notion.

However, just as many mech designers had discovered in the past, it was not so easy to bend a living mech design according to their desires.

The greater the deviation from the original design, the more the associated E-technologies became disconnected from the resulting variants.

This was an old problem, but the first-raters who came in touch with living mechs for the first time became unpleasantly surprised that their hopes of channeling the blessing of Emma in proper first-class battle became dashed!

Once the immediate excitement and hysteria among the first-raters had subsided, the market for the Ultimatum gradually became more stable and sustainable.

Most successful second-class mech forces could still scrounge up the additional MTA credits to purchase at least a small batch of Ultimatums.

No matter how large their initial orders may be, none of the customers regretted the act of paying a huge premium to get their hands on this much-hyped mech model.

It was everything they wished for and more.

Even if the use of the E-technology abilities was not unconditional, most people did not have any problem with the demand to show their respect towards Ylvaine and the Destroyer of Worlds.

Aside from the Terrans and the other people from the Terran Alliance, everyone else pretty much had universal goodwill towards the strange prophet and an actual god pilot.

The market for other heavy artillery mech models temporarily plunged.

A glut of surplus machines had entered the second-hand market. This had already started to occur due to the transition to the Hyper Generation, but the release of a super bestseller had exacerbated this circumstance!

A lot of mech companies could only helplessly slash prices even further in order to make their products somewhat viable again.

Fortunately, there was always a market for cheap and discounted heavy artillery mechs.

The more premier mech forces that confidently took the fight to the native aliens usually had the means to procure plenty of Ultimatums.

It was the reserve forces, the garrison forces, the Planetary Guard units and the volunteer defense militias that usually had to work with tight budgets.

They were more than happy to snap up all of the outdated heavy artillery mechs and mainly repurposed them to defend a lot of planetary settlements and other fixed locations.

The buyers even assigned less qualified mech pilots with lower genetic aptitudes to these powerful machines.

So long as the heavy artillery mechs did not move on and engage in too much multitasking, it was still possible for low aptitude pilots to control the functions that mattered.

This was ultimately a win-win arrangement for most people involved. The ripple effects became increasingly greater as more settlements enjoyed a greater amount of artillery coverage.

Meanwhile, a lot of linefighters suddenly started to show up in battle with Ultimatums locked in their bunkers all of a sudden.

Many more alien fleets began to endure vastly greater damage from a distance as the Ultimatums not only missed a lot less frequently, but also inflicted so much damage that transphasic energy shields already started to collapse way sooner than they should!

The amount of losses suffered by the alien invasion forces in the middle zones spiked so much that even their commanders became shocked!

How could the introduction of just a single mech model change the strategic outlook of an entire war theater in such a short time?

While the Ultimatums sadly could not guarantee victory in every battle, their influence had become so significant that their effect on troop morale had become another significant benefits to the mech forces that invested in this expensive product!