The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3009

Chapter 3009: Conversion Ratio

"So what did you talk about with Master Willix earlier?" Gloriana asked as Ves returned to the design lab after departing from the Scarlet Rose.

"Woof."

"I beg your pardon?!" His wife sent a glare in his direction.

"Miaow!" Clixie hissed as she sat up from Gloriana's lap.

"Erm, calm down! I was just distracted for a moment!" Ves raised his hands in innocence. "We had a lengthy talk about my new assignment. She wants me to do something for her. In return, she'll gift us a number of valuable materials as well as a lot of MTA merits depending on my performance."

Gloriana instantly forgot about getting barked at earlier. She rose up from her chair and ran over to Ves until her hands clung onto her uniform.

"Tell me more!"

Her lavender perfume already wafted into his nose, causing him to forget about the more unpleasant aspects of his conversation with Master Willix. He agreed to his wife's request and sat down in order to give her a very brief summary, leaving out many details but conveying enough to get her up to speed. _{freewebnovel.cσ๓}

In the meantime, Lucky and Clixie cuddled together and began to lick each other's faces.

"Meow~"

"Miaow~"

"I see. Her request is not light by any means." Gloriana became a bit more serious. "She must have her reasons for approaching you. How confident are you in your ability to turn these random MTA mech pilots into expert pilots?"

Ves hesitated. "It… depends. Certain individuals have a 'talent' in this aspect. If the mech pilots that Master Willix has selected all possess this critical quality, then I am fully confident that I can push half of them to expert candidate and maybe expert pilot within five years. The issue is that the talent to become an expert candidate is actually quite rare."

He was quite afraid that Willix would send twenty hopeless cases to him. If none of the MTA mech pilots possessed spiritual potential, then Ves would have to put a lot more effort into his experiments in order to achieve a breakthrough on this front!

"So you can't determine your chances until you actually meet the mech pilots, is that right?"

He nodded. "I don't think I'll get lucky, though. I think that mech pilots with the necessary talent are already participating in better training programs. They're stronger and more skilled on average and they learn faster. Anyone who is unlucky enough to be sent outside the MTA in order to train with us will likely be those who have already tried and failed to an extent."

He was quite confident about this conclusion. The MTA was not a slouch when it came to training its own mech pilots. Master Willix would have never turned to him if her own organization could already solve this problem in house.

Gloriana was already thinking about the implications of this mission.

"Have you realized that this might be a repeat deal for you?" She pointed out.

"Huh?"

"Think about it, Ves. Let's just assume that you have succeeded, not just once, but several times. It is already a success if just one or two out of twenty manage to break through. The result won't look very remarkable, though. You may have beaten the statistical odds, but it could always be chalked up to a coincidence. Yet what if a fourth of the MTA mech pilots manage to undergo apotheosis? If we are able to turn 5 out of 20 into expert pilots, then our conversion ratio is insane! This is no longer a coincidence. This is proof that we have an effective formula!"

Ves placed his hand on her shoulder. "Hey, calm down. Don't get too excited. Have you ever thought about what a huge target we'll be painting on our backs once the MTA and the rest of the galaxy finds out that we can transform 25 percent of all mech pilots into expert pilots? Even if the mech pilots trained by the MTA are a cut above the rest, the Association's own conversion ratio shouldn't be higher than one in several thousand!"

If he assumed that the MTA had no way to induce spiritual potential in its own people, then it was impossible for the mechers to form too many expert pilots. They were limited by the same constraints as everyone else.

In fact, even Ves couldn't do anything about it unless he resumed his radical and fatal experiments with the Aspect of Transcendence.

While he had the guts to run these experiments on random human criminals, now that he returned to the fleet, it was very hard for him to obtain a large batch of adequate human test subjects!

Gloriana looked disappointed. "Master Willix needs us to succeed. We shouldn't hold back too much. So what if we succeed 5 out of 20 times? We can just chalk it up to our extreme training program! Maybe you can make it so that the 15 failures have all died in the process. As long as we pretend that there is a very high likelihood of death attached to our method, I bet people will become a lot less interested in our methods!"

"You underestimate the greed that people harbor for a method that can reliably produce expert pilots." Ves shook his head. "Manpower is one of the cheapest and most abundant resources in the galaxy. It is well worth the price to exchange the lives of 75 percent of all of the mech pilots in a batch in order to turn the remaining 25 percent into expert pilots. The individual combat prowess of the latter is at least a hundred times greater than the former!"

This effectively resulted in a humongous increase in total combat strength! Of course, the higher-ups responsible for the new expert pilots also had to invest a lot of money, effort and resources into supplying them all with expert mechs, but that was not a big problem for huge organizations like the MTA or the first-rate superstates.

None of the people at the top cared about the plight of the many failed mech pilots who died over the course of the grueling training program.

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