Having spent two furious days on realizing his vision, Ves felt as if his competition design lacked something.
He felt the same itch whenever he felt as if his mech ideas lacked some sort of gimmick.
For example, the Deliverer wouldn't be so remarkable without Ylvaine lending his prediction ability to the mech pilot.
The Doom Guard would never have shot up from the ranks of striker mechs and form its own category if not for its terror glow.
Right now, Ves felt that while his competition mech managed to meet most of his expectations, he felt he set his sights too low.
"I can add more to mech design." He whispered.
The problem was the lack of capacity.
Choosing to center the duel around striker mechs was one of his ways of constraining Jovy.
Letting this MTA mech designer design a swordsman mech or any other mech that offered a lot of skill expression was just a disaster in the making!
With all of the tricks that Jovy had at his disposal, there were way too many opportunities for him to empower his mech beyond the level of an indigenous mech designer!
While Ves did not regret this choice, it harmed Ves just as much!
Even if competition mechs weren't required to last as long, even if Ves could tune up the performance of the individual parts to their breaking point, he still ran out of space!
This was the point where he resorted to his specialty and imbued his mech design or its intended design spirit with some special feature.
However, Ves did not need to turn his head to see Master Willix floating high above the floor.
Ever since the design phase of the duel commenced, the Master had been keeping a constant eye on both contestants. Like a goddess watching over her subjects, hardly any of their actions escaped her vision!
So far, Ves did not bother too much with her blatant observation. He couldn't do anything about it, and he hadn't done anything remarkable aside from concentrating his mind and imbuing a gradual amount of spirituality into his mech design.
So far, the mech already acquired a rudimentary spiritual foundation. Though it wasn't nearly as deep and strong as the spiritual foundations of his serious mech designs, it was already sufficient to host a design spirit like the Superior Mother!
Yet was this everything he was capable of doing? For a time, Ves slowed down his work as he began to ask himself whether he should feel resigned to this bland outcome.
His sense of deprivation grew stronger. As time went by, he increasingly felt as if he was missing something essential. Without adding this extra factor into his mech design, he could forget about winning the upcoming design duel!
He paused and halted his design work entirely. He stared dully at his current design, trying to do his best to pin down what it lacked!
Meanwhile, above the air, Gloriana had floated next to Master Willix and joined her in observing both contestants.
While Ves inexplicably paused and let precious minutes pass by, on the other side of the workshop, Jovy continued to build his design at a steady and confident pace.
No matter what kind of odd conditions he faced, this was hardly the MTA mech designer's first challenge!
It wasn't easy for him to become a mech designer and advance to Journeyman in the halls of the MTA. The workload was incredible, the amount of knowledge he needed to master was tremendous and he constantly had to compete over resources!
Winning design duels was one of Jovy's favorite methods to get ahead of his peers. Not even the thought of facing a certified masterwork mech designer swayed his confidence in his strength and ability!
"Mr. Armalon is an avid design duelist." Master Willix noted and she approved of what she saw in him. "He has dueled over sixty times, and won at least forty of them, and hardly anyone of them is weak!"
Gloriana widened her eyes. "How can Jovy be so strong?"
"Aside from working hard, his design philosophy is very formidable. What he can do for now is just the tip of the iceberg, but even so, he can already confound many rivals. Even in the galactic center, his specialty has to be taken seriously!"
"It's that formidable?! How come I haven't heard about it more?"
The Master Mech Designer sighed. "Probability manipulation touches upon some very high-level abstract concepts. There are many ways to classify design philosophies, and sorting them by subject is merely one of them. In the MTA, it is not just the subject that matters, but also the grade."
This was something that Gloriana never heard of! Even when she lived at Centerpoint, she never sorted design philosophies by grades!
"How do you determine the grades?"
"By difficulty, scope, ambition and other factors." Master Willix patiently explained. "Ordinarily, I wouldn't bring up this topic to a mech designer as young as you. Knowing the grade of your design philosophy is often detrimental to your development. However, since you have become a masterwork mech designer, you have already proven that you are firm in your research direction. It won't hurt to know where you stand and where other mech designers stand."
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