The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3189

Chapter 3189: White Mouse

The Larkinson fleet made some big movements. Not only were clansmen taking exceedingly great care to move Gloriana's precious production equipment from the Spirit of Bentheim to the Vivacious Wal, the Swordmaidens and Heavensworders were also making arrangements.

It was impossible and highly irresponsible for the Swordmaidens and Heavensworders to leave their posts at the same time. They had to set up at least a partial rotation to make sure the ships were taken care of and that they had sufficient mechs on hand to guard against unexpected incidents.

The planning of the ritual also took a bit of time. Ves only came up with it a short time ago, so Ketis and her circle had to scramble to come up with a ceremony that was elaborate, impressive and authentic enough to achieve the desired effect.

Fortunately, the Heavensworders came to the rescue. Relying on many millenia's worth of heritage and traditions, they were easily able to come up with thousands of large-scale rituals that served to bless the making of a heroic sword or the ascension of a swordmaster.

To Ves, it didn't matter what kind of weirdness the Heavensworders had in mind. As long as they believed in their own nonsense, the mood in the mech arena should be sufficient enough to give Ketis and perhaps the other mech designers enough stimulation to make the Decapitator Project a little more exceptional.

During all of this whirlwind of activity, Ves received a surprising request from the Cross Clan to travel over to their flagship.

"What do the Crossers want?" He asked his assistant as he was petting Lucky.

"The Cross Patriarch wants to talk with you. He hasn't told us why, but if I had to make a guess, he probably wants to begin discussions on the design of his next expert mech."

"Ah. Well, if he expects something from me, then he'll have to wait for a while. After we complete the Decapitator Project and Vanguard Project, we still have to finish the Bulwark Project and the Chimera Project. That will take at least three more months or maybe four due to the greater complexity of the latter projects. After that, there are a lot of other projects that need to be taken care of as Brutus' expert mech and so on. I hope they'll understand."

"Uhm, you should tell that to the Crossers yourself, boss. Anyway, you can head over to the Hemmington Cross whenever it is convenient."

"I'll travel in a couple of hours."

Ves took care of some other routine matters first. He checked up on the preparations aboard the Vivacious Wal. He quizzed his students to see whether they kept up on their studies.

One of the more interesting talks he conducted was with Dr. Ranya. With the growth of the Larkinson Biotech Institute and its importance in ensuring his future daughter grew up healthy and without any flaws, he took the time to shuttle over to the Dragon's Den.

By now, the bioresearch vessel's utilization was much higher than before. Her biomes already hosted hundreds of different designer beasts and exobeasts. Many of them were purchased from market, but a couple of the organic products were actually homegrown.

Dr. Ranya personally brought him to a viewing area where they could watch the first of many designer beasts that the Lifer beast designers had cooked up in recent times.

"What am I looking at?" He asked as he strode to the windows of the high tower.

The windows did not just provide a clear view of the forested terrain below, but also projected enhanced and alternate viewpoints that were currently tracking a sample of the interesting creatures that prowled this biome.

Lucky flew over to the windows as well, but quickly grew bored with the sight. Cats were much more interesting than other animals in his opinion.

"Meow."

The gem cat flew over to Dr. Ranya and landed on her shoulder.

"When you gave our teams the task to develop useful designer beasts that can produce powerful mutations, they began with their original research projects first. We have a host of beast designers aboard this ship that have already worked on numerous existing designer beasts. We have been digging them up and used them as the base of what you want to obtain. So far, the designer beasts we have made range from flying fish, poisonous primates, long-living dogs and gigantic armored snakes. The latter should currently be in your sights."

Though Ves wasn't able to see any snakes from his high vantage point, the projectors already tracked numbers of members of this artificial species. The snakes were just as big as she described. One of them was as thick as the leg of a humanoid mech and was impressively long. It probably took a lot of tons of food to fill up the stomach of such a massive creature.

When Ves swept the forest below with his spiritual vision, he failed to encounter any strong presences. His enthusiasm level immediately dropped.

"I take it that your teams didn't have much luck in producing any mutated beasts."

"Our researchers tried their best to induce more mutations." She said. "This big snake that you're observing now is considerably larger than it ought to be because of that. Sadly, that is the most that we have been able to achieve. All of the mutations that we have encountered so far are either inconsequential or purely physical in nature. We haven't created any designer beasts that can exhibit strange abilities like Arnold."

Ves began to look skeptical. "Maybe your approach is faulty. Physical mutations aren't useful at all. What I'm looking at are mutations in the mind. I'm not sure how you can encourage that, but I feel that randomly messing with the genes of these beasts will not increase our chances of gaining a new Arnold."

"I know that." Dr. Ranya sighed. "We know too little about… Non-physical mutations. The few specimens we have are too few for us to observe any solid patterns. We can either continue to play with genes as we have done before, or…"

She did not say anything more as she grabbed Lucky from her shoulder and started to inspect him from every angle. She looked as if she had become a vet who was performing a biannual checkup on the gem cat.

"Meow?"

"What did you want to say, Ranya? What idea do you have in mind that you're not sure whether you want to share?"

Ranya sighed as she let go of Lucky. The cat floated back to her shoulder and used it as a perch again.

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