Chapter 5997 Restrained Upgrades


    The Dark Zephyr Mark III gradually began to take shape.


    Ves and Gloriana worked with utmost concentration, as much as they could under the circumstances.


    Ves clearly coped a lot better with the abnormal environment than his wife. The mutated Living Workshop ability rendered the entire hall into a space where he feltpletely at home.


    They already obtained a lot of relief by oveing a major hurdle. They sessfully transformed arge batch of expensive and high-quality resources.


    Ves did not hesitate to add another massive expense to the Larkinson n by investing over 500 million MTA credits in rare hyper materials, high-performance light-weight exotic alloys and exclusiveposite materials.


    Many of these materials could only be found in first-ss expert mechs!


    While the materials far exceeded the parameters of second-ss mechs and quasi-first-ss mechs, they were considered serviceable but not exceptional whenpared to genuine first-ss expert mechs.


    Although Ves tried his best to future proof the Dark Zephyr by anticipating the living mech''s needs once Tusa grew stronger and transferred to the Premier Branch, there was a limit to how much he could elevate the machine''s structural performance.


    The radical conversion into an archemech and the already massive anticipated boost in performance would definitely induce a huge amount of strain onto the expert mech.


    It was impossible for a human to transform into a True God in a single leap!


    Under normal circumstances, breakthroughs needed to happen step by step. If the Dark Zephyr was a product designed by other mech designers, then there was no need to pay attention to this matter.


    Let alone upgrade the Dark Zephyr with exceedingly high-quality materials worth as much as several billion MTA credits, Ves could have invested all of that money into designing and fabricating a brand-new machine!


    The reason why he did not do so was because the Dark Zephyr was a unique living machine. The expert light skirmisher had painstakingly umted 14 Ascension Runes, each of which strengthened and specialized his spiritual capabilities along two distinct directions.


    As far as Ves was concerned, the value of those 14 Ascension Runes far exceeded a nk expert mech worth billions of MTA credits!


    Aside from that, the personality of the Dark Zephyr also held a lot of value in itself. The living mech grew up alongside Tusa from the beginning. As both of them became more powerful, their cooperation and coordination also became a lot more effective.


    The difference this made was huge!


    If Tusa and the Dark Zephyr dueled against a high-tier expert pilot paired with a non-living version of a high-tier expert light skirmisher, the formerbination would win 8 out of 10 times without a doubt.


    This was the value of the excellent synergy of an expert pilot and a third order living expert mech! This was the most direct expression of Ves'' design philosophy!


    In any case, Ves and Gloriana both understood that they were pushing the limit of what the Dark Zephyr could tolerate.


    The material form of a living mech had a veryrge impact on the spiritual foundation of the same machine.


    Elevating the former usually brought up thetter, but if the transition was too big and abrupt, the probability that the spiritual foundation might tear or break increased dramatically!


    Ves never encountered this doom scenario before, but that was because he never took the initiative to get close enough for this possibility toe to pass.


    This was the first time he disregarded the safety rules concerning this possible oue.


    Even though he wanted to y it safe, the situation did not allow for it. The current order in human space was beginning to deteriorate. Ves had read enough reports and observed enough clues to deduce that things would go worse from this point.


    Instead of settling down and pursuing stable development, Ves chose to speed up his pace and rue greater strength at a more reckless pace.


    This was why he hoped that the Dark Zephyr Mark III would start off at a considerably stronger footing than normal.


    Ves and Gloriana made good use of the expensive materials and designed aplicated archemech frame thatrgely confirmed to high-quality first-ss standards.


    Of course, the implementation of these first-ss materials was rtively basic and simplistic. While Ves and Gloriana most definitely tried to make the most out of all of the hypers and exotics, they mostly focused on upgrading the structuralponents and armor ting.


    They deliberately kept the power reactor and a number of other keyponents at the quasi-first-ss level in order to allow the Dark Zephyr Mark III to fight alongside other second-ss mechs.


    In order to pave the way for the quasi-first-ss expert mech''s future ascension into a first-ss ace mech, Ves and Gloriana designed the Dark Zephyr Mark III with enough semi-modrity that they could easily swap out the quasi-first-ssponents with genuine first-ssponents.


    They also made sure to increase the essibility to the Dark Zephyr''s original resonating materials.


    Once it was time to install the defining features of a genuine ace mech, it shouldn''t take too long for apetent mech designer to swap out the remaining pieces of Perfidious Steel and Bissonat, and rece them with much more powerful ace mech-grade resonating exotics.


    There was a huge gap in performance between expert mech and ace mech-grade resonating exotics.


    In fact, Ves did not fully understand the differences as he never worked with thetter. Only Master Mech Designers and higher possessed the qualifications to work with them. That meant that the Larkinson n needed to gain the cooperation of an external mech designer in order to upgrade the Dark Zephyr Mark III into an ace mech.


    The necessity of resorting to outside help to further strengthen the most strategic assets of the Larkinson n was a huge headache for Ves. He did not look forward to dealing with this problem.


    The best solution was to wait until he managed to advance to Master Mech Designer and design an ace mech upgrade himself.


    However, Ves did not think he would be able to breakthrough anytime soon, especially when he needed to spend much of his time on mastering the art of designing first-ss mechs.


    Ves vaguely predicted that if he decided to stick with designing second-ss mechs, he should be able to advance to the rank of Master Mech Designer within a decade.


    His many insights, his innovative design applications and his rapid progress so far all gave him the capital to challenge the Polymath''s record!


    However, rank was not everything.


    The Red Association already forced him to be a first-ss mech designer. Since that was the case, he might as well go all-in, trying to master enough principles of high technologies to be able to design the most powerful first-ss multipurpose mechs.


    Even though he might dy his breakthrough by one or two decades, his foundation became much broader and stronger.


    All of this sounded nice, but it did not leave Ves in the best position in the short term. This was why he had already epted the need to give up a lot of confidentiality and let another Master transform the Dark Zephyr Mark III into an ace mech.


    He already formted a few ns with regards to this future need.


    "Pay attention, Ves. The ipatibility between archetech and conventional technology is creating more issues than expected."


    "Ah, sorry. I am on it, Gloriana."


    The pair had already fabricated all of the necessary archetechponents.


    The two mech designers usually treated the assembly phase as a cakewalk. So long as the mech design did not contain too many finickyponents, it was rtively easy to fit all of the parts together.


    Upgrade runs were different due to the need to keep an existing living mech alive throughout the entire process.


    However, the difficulty of the assembly phase for the Dark Zephyr Mark III exceeded that of any other project!


    The archetech used to develop all of the new parts worked on apletely foreign tech base.


    Gloriana employedpletely different technical standards, ranging from the standard voltage settings to the use of apletely different set of programmingnguages.


    Therefore, trying to upgrade a conventional mech by taking out oldponents and filling up the gap with newponents was far more troublesome this time!


    Gloriana may have anticipated this problem in advance and constructed all kinds of bridges, stopgapponents and converters to force temporary mergers between two different tech bases, handling them during the assembly phase was anything but simple.


    As the difficult work proceeded at a fairly slow but still risky pace, Ves felt as if he was trying to transform an ordinary human into an orven while keeping the individual''s personality as intact as possible!


    Such a conversion process should have been impossible to pull off. Even if the conversion process was viable from a biological perspective, the mentality of the subject would have copsed instantly due to thepleteck of familiarity!


    This was why Gloriana could notplete the transformation of the Dark Zephyr alone. She may be a lot more skilled and proficient in conducting theplicated physical conversion, but she did not possess the expertise to help the spiritual foundation adapt to the insertion of apletely foreign part.


    "It''s okay, Dark Zephyr. We expressly designed these archemetal parts for your use. Feel them out. They will feel as natural as your old parts as long as you spend a bit more time limating with them. Be patient. Once most of your mech frame consists of archemetalponents, the sense of ipatibility will fade."


    Ves and Gloriana stretched and abused the Ship of Theseus concept much more extensively than before!


    It was a considerable gamble on their part. So long as the Dark Zephyr still managed to retain his core identity after such a radical upgrade, Gloriana would have no qualms about converting the other Larkinson expert mechs into archemechs!


    As time continued to pass, the Miracle Couple gradually gained more confidence in their work.


    The Dark Zephyr Mark III was starting to take shape without any obvious signs of copse or other undesirableplications.


    Although a few incidents happened here and there, Ves already anticipated them in advance and activated the appropriate contingency ns to prevent the irregrities from cascading into more serious problems.


    A lot more shadow energy and other E energies began to umte into the increasingly moreplete archemech.


    Exchanging Unending alloy for more specialized hyper materials made the Dark Zephyr a lot purer and more efficient in his interactions with E energy.


    His total capacity also grew by a moderate extent after Ves carefully installed the Dark Wind Module.


    Ves had been worried whether the partially disassembled frame of the Dark Zephyr would produce a lot of disturbances when he installed the powerful Ultimate Module, but the actual oue was quite mild.


    Aside from saturating the Dark Zephyr with even more shadow energy, the expert mech remained stable for the most part.


    This was a testament to Gloriana''s excellent design work. The design of the Dark Zephyr was fairly solid and robust for a light mech. This was also one of the advantages of working with archetech.


    As the reconstructed expert mech nearedpletion, the pace slowed down even further as Ves and Gloriana were beginning to apply the finishing touches.


    Their main concerns no longer centered around the Dark Zephyr.


    They became more and more concerned about whether Venerable Tusa would be ready to pilot his new and improved expert mech when the time hade.


    "Is he…?"


    "Give him more time, Gloriana. I can tell that his mental state is in an unusually active state at the moment. Let''s see whether he can tame the phasewater rampaging inside his body by relying on his own strength. In any case, it is already admirable that he managed tost so long." n/?/vel/b//jn dot c//om


    The time hade for Tusa to prove himself.


    Did he need medical assistance in order to extract the phasewater from his body, or would he be able to solve this problem by exerting his willpower?