Chapter 5984 The Strength of Mech vs Mech Pilot


    The time of upgrading the Dark Zephyr drew closer.


    Ves and Gloriana did not begin their work right away. They conscientiously retired for the evening and enjoyed a good night''s sleep.


    Once they woke up, they both regained their peak condition.


    Anticipation surged in their bones as they looked forward to creating apletely different mech than they had ever worked with in the past.


    Breakfast became a happy affair as Tusa took a seat next to Ves and his immediate family.


    It had been a long time since the childrenst saw and spoke with their uncle in person, so they immediately began to chat with the expert pilot.


    "Meow." Lucky rubbed his body against Tusa''s arm before flying away to eat a few chunks of hypers and exotics.


    "How are Doria and Giovanni doing?" Aurelia politely asked.


    "My children are doing okay." Tusa smiled when he recalled their faces. "It has been hard for them to grow up without their mother in their lives, but there are so many other nicedies over at the expeditionary fleet that they do notck for aunties."


    "Can their mother contact them while still remaining connected to the EdNet?"


    "She can, but the mechers do not rmend it." The expert pilot said. "The difference in the passage of time within the EdNet and outside of it is so great that she will perceive everything we say and do in slow motion. We can use technology topensate for that, but it will lead to long and awkward dys in conversations. There are also other psychological issues rted to breaking the rtive istion between different realities. This is why we limit these contacts to a handful of times a year. The more frequently Ranya tries to connect with her children, the more she bes disassociated with the EdNet. This will increase the load to her brain to an uneptable level."


    It was difficult for many of the Larkinsons that started their own families to endure the years-long separation with their young children.


    Parents such as Ranya were making an especially difficult sacrifice by subjectively spending up to 20 years in a reality where they could not hug their children!


    However, this opportunity was too precious for them to miss. They would regret it if they missed out on a free opportunity to advance to first-ss professionals.


    This was an especially crucial transition period for the Larkinson n. If they did not be first-raters by the time the n was ready to participate in the first deep strike operations, they would lose their leadership positions as they were unable to keep up with the demands of their current positions.


    It was not fair for Doria and Giovanni to grow up under these circumstances, but the Larkinsons fostered such a strongmunal family atmosphere that the damage shouldn''t be too great.


    Ultimately, Ranya should be able to provide a lot more for her children once she returned and resumed her responsibilities as the director of the Larkinson Biotech Institute.


    "You look different." Andraste said as she stared at Tusa''s more worn and rugged face. "You used to look so young, but now you are beginning to look closer to grand-uncle Ark."


    Tusa chuckled in a good-natured manner. "I am not a young man anymore. Everyone ages. I am no exception to this rule."


    "I thought that expert pilots age slower than other people."


    "That is partially true, Andraste. A stronger will and a greater obsession in one''s appearance can indeed make expert pilots look younger and more pleasing, but only to an extent. I have never cared too much about my appearance. I am fine with looking older and more appropriate to my current age. I am a father, after all, though he is doing a much better job at clinging onto his youth."


    "My body is much more radically altered and enhanced than yours." Ves mentioned. "I never really paid any attention to this, but now that I am looking at you, I can tell that your body is barely augmented. That is quite rare in the Larkinson n these days. Your wife runs an institute that is performing a lot of augmentation procedures and is bing better at this job with each passing year." N?v(el)B\\jnn


    "I became an expert pilot fairly early on. As a third-rater, I never depended on imnts and gic modification to improve my performance. Once I settled in as an expert pilot, I found plenty of ways to improve mybat skills. Diligent practice along with frequent enoughbat has allowed me to be better to the point where I never felt the need to augment myself. At most, I only installed a fairly basic cranial imnt so that I can improve my ability to handle tech."


    The children all looked impressed at Tusa. Each of them were well aware that they were very far removed from baseline humans. They did not think it would be that difficult for them to rise to greatness, but it was different for Tusa!


    "Augmentations matter less for expert pilots." Gloriana exined to her children. "One of the definitions of apotheosis is the transformation from human to a god. The mechmunity has adopted this word to emphasize how much expert pilots have transcended the limitations of ordinary humans. As their resonance strengths grow, they will continue to improve in many different aspects, some of which ovep with the benefits of artificial imnts and gene mod temtes. As long as Tusa fights well enough without relying on the advantages bestowed by augmentations, he can be just as sessful as second-ss and first-ss mech pilots who are always augmented with very few exceptions."


    "So is it possible to be a god pilot without ever making use of augmentations?" Andraste eagerly asked.


    "Not always." Ves shook his head. "The less you rely on augmentations, the more you have topensate in other areas. Talent, hard work, luck and other factors must fill up the gap. You will also have to ept the fact that there are many strong and useful benefits brought by pilot-oriented augmentations that cannot easily be replicated through other means."


    Tusa seriously nodded. "He''s right. I am not as precise, and my reaction speed is not actually the highest. My body cannot withstand as many shocks and cannot go without sleep for too many days. There are many useful improvements that I am missing out on. It is not all that bad, though. I amfortable in my own skin. I don''t suffer from anypatibility problems. I don''t need to change my habits or diet."


    "Shouldn''t light mech pilots supposed to possess higher reaction speeds than others?" Andraste looked confused. "Why don''t you augment your ability to react to rapid changes on the battlefield? Won''t it make it easier for you to evade attacks?"


    "You are not wrong, little girl, but reaction speed alone does not make for a good light mech pilot. Do I hate getting hit? Yes. Who wouldn''t want to avoid harm? I pilot one of the most fragile expert mechs in the Larkinson Army. I have to pay constant attention to my movements and the actions of the enemy in order to prevent my expert mech from getting struck. Since I cannot rely on super-duper reaction speed and other superior physical traits, I have taken to relying on another strength to make sure that my Dark Zephyr remains untouched. Can you guess the answer?"


    Andraste furrowed her brows for a few seconds. "Is it intuition?"


    "Correct!" Tusa grinned. "Thebat intuition of an expert pilot is celebrated for good reasons. It is one of our most powerful advantages as far as I am concerned. However, what not everyone knows is that intuition can be trained like a muscle. By repeatedly subjecting my Dark Zephyr to enemy fire, it is up to me to help my expert mech thread through all of the dangerous attacks. My intuition is constantly being tested to its limits each time I face enemies. When this happens often enough, my intuition has be so practiced at this that I can evade all of the attacksunched by a couple of hundred ranged mechs without putting in too much effort."


    "That… that is awesome!" Marvaine eximed! "Intuition is so strong!"


    "So out of all of the Larkinson expert pilots, you are by far the best at evading attacks?"


    "Yes. I am the champion in this as far as I am concerned. I will challenge anyone else that thinks he or she can do better. My closest rival is Venerable Pedro Rodrigo. His newer and much more powerful Bloodripper is truly a fast and agile expert mech. I do not think that it is all good, though. It is exactly because the Bloodripper''s mobility is so high at the start that Venerable Rodrigo isn''t able to exercise his intuition as much as myself. He will never be as good as me in evasion. He is much more ustomed to letting his expert mech''s tech save his hide."


    "Are you suggesting that we shouldn''t make our expert mechs so powerful for recent breakthroughs?" Gloriana asked with obvious concern in her voice.


    "I wouldn''t say that, madame. The enemies we are fighting against are much more powerful than the Fridaymen and other rabble that we faced in the past. A single direct hit from the primary cannon of an alien battleship can easily tear up a weaker expert mech. It takes years of constant training and repeated exposure to dangerousbat scenarios for me to refine my intuition to where it is today. Venerable Rodrigo doesn''t have that luxury. Intuition is not the only factor that makes expert pilots strong. He can make it up in other ways."


    Ves nodded in agreement at Tusa''s exnation. "I agree. A stronger mech pilot canpensate for a weaker mech. A weaker mech pilot can still be saved by a stronger mech. You should never evaluate the two elements separately. Mechs and mech pilots make up for a singlepositebat unit. It is not necessarily wrong to rely more on the superiority of technology than human capabilities. You just need to be careful not to take it too far. A good mech ultimately facilitates the growth of a mech pilot. It is never meant to inhibit a person''s growth."


    Personally, Ves valued Tusa''s intuition a lot more than the alternatives. This was a trait that could never be bought or acquired by spending lots of money. The only way to improve intuition was by training and actual usage inbat.


    If Tusa had learned how to anticipate and evade lots of enemy attacks while piloting a rtively weak expert light skirmisher, his ability to avoid getting hit would definitely skyrocket once he gained ess to the Dark Zephyr Mark III!


    Risks were proportional to the rewards. This rule applied to high-ranking mech pilots as well.


    The harder they needed to work to ovee the limitations of their machines, the stronger they became in theter halves of their careers!


    Of course, all of this was dependent on whether the expert pilots in question were able to survive while subjected to all of their handicaps.


    Ves was d that Venerable Tusa managed to stay alive while fighting under challenging conditions, but it could have been different.


    "The uing version of the Dark Zephyr is ridiculously more mobile than the current version. What used to be an act that required you to dance at the edge of the knife will suddenly be as easy as walking down a t bridge." Gloriana stated to Tusa. "I hope that once you obtain your new and improved machine, you will not let your highly trained intuition atrophy. It would be a shame for you to forget what brought you so far and be a ve to advanced technology."


    The expert pilot did not take this warning lightly. "I will not let myself go like that. I won''t be able to be an ace pilot with that mentality. Rest assured that I will still do my best to challenge my limits. Every light mech pilot is a daredevil in some fashion. If my mech has be a lot better at avoiding danger, then I will seek it out with much greater effort than before. From what I have learned about the new ''Dark Wind Module'', I will notck opportunities to dance at the edge of a knife once again."


    That was not an understatement. Tusa and the Dark Zephyr could easily kill themselves if they failed to utilize the Dark Wind Module correctly. This risk was present even if they only fought against a single opponent!