The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3300

Chapter 3300: Round of Refits

Once the expert pilots all enjoyed a few days to rest and process their battle experiences, they gathered together in a meeting room located in the upper decks of the Spirit of Bentheim.

Every expert pilot that arrived in the compartment silently acknowledged each other but did not take the initiative to chat.

None of them were in the mood to joke around. The Battle of Fordilla Zentra still weighed heavily on their minds, and some of them needed more time than others to return to their old selves.

After several minutes of silence, Ves, who was still wearing his Unending Regalia, finally entered the room with a handful of his honor guard.

Even though the presence of the latter was completely redundant in this gathering, Nitaa and her colleagues still considered it to be their duty to guard the patriarch at all times.

Besides, if nothing else, the bodyguards made for convenient cargo holders. Nitaa's current armor was weighed down by the Larkinson Mandate, the Hammer of Brilliance and a few other useful goods such as a spare P-stone.

"Ladies. Gentlemen. I'm glad to see you're all healthy and alive." Ves began as he sat down at the head of the table. "The previous battle has taken a toll on all of you. Before we address the items on the agenda, let me apologize to you first. Each of you had to fight in unfavorable circumstances due to the numerous mistakes and misjudgements that I have made. This battle could have been avoided. Even if we did end up fighting the dwarves anyway, I should have at least made sure that Joshua and Jannzi already received their expert mechs."

"It's not your fault, Ves." Tusa said as he crossed his arms. "Well, it kind of is, but it's not as if you went out to punch the dwarves in the face. The most you're guilty of is negligence."

Jannzi sneered but she didn't speak up, which was a very welcome decision to Ves and the others. Everyone already knew her stance and she didn't need to repeat them in front of this small and closed audience.

"I'm not interested in going through this apology theater." Venerable Orfan said. "What I want to know is how soon you'll be able to fix my Riot. It's broken! If the dwarves ambush us again, I sure as hell don't want to deploy in space with only one intact limb on my expert mech!"

The others were curious as well. Of the four expert mechs, only the Amaranto was still in decent condition. The others were incapable of exhibiting the same peak performance as before!

Ves smiled at the expert pilots. He expected that to be the first topic that would come up today.

"Fixing your expert mechs isn't as easy as assigning a couple of maintenance crews to glue the broken parts back together. Your machines are tougher, more mechanically complex and more demanding in material quality than ordinary mechs. Out of everyone in the Larkinson Clan, only my wife and myself possess the requisite skills and knowledge to fully restore your expert mechs. Given the complexity of their designs and how time consuming it can be to work with Unending alloy, it will take weeks before they're as good as news."

That did not sound like good news to the expert pilots.

"That's not a short amount of time. What if the dwarves ambush us in the next few days?"

"What are you saying, exactly?" Venerable Orfan scratched her head.

"Ves is saying that he and his wife can only do one thing at once." Jannzi said with a grim look. "If the two of them spend the following weeks repairing your damaged expert mechs, they won't be able to spend any time on their current design projects."

Understanding dawned upon Venerable Joshua. "It will take longer for Jannzi and I to receive our expert mechs?"

Ves looked quite impressed at Jannzi. He didn't think she was smart enough to catch the implications of his message.

"She's correct." He said as he gave both Joshua and Jannzi a measured stare. "Look, I understand that you don't want to wait any longer to receive your promised machines, but we all have to make sacrifices. Our clan's immediate priority is to restore as much battle strength as possible in the fastest possible timespan. It will take at least a month to complete another expert mech design and it will take more than a week to fabricate the actual machine. We can fix up all of our damaged expert mechs in at least half of our time and bring back three fully-functional expert mechs back to our mech roster. If the safety of our clan comes first, then this is the logical choice to make."

His logic was irrefutable. The Dark Zephyr, the Riot and the First Sword had already proven their amazing effectiveness before. Fixing them up provided the clan with an immediate and certain boost in strength.

Of course, Venerable Joshua and Venerable Jannzi had to accept the fact that they needed to wait longer until they received their presents from the Larkinson Clan.

"Work on your two expert mech designs isn't being suspended while we work on restoring our existing expert mechs." Ves told the two. "The Design Department still has plenty of design teams that are constantly working on solving low-level problems and optimizing our existing solutions. When we get back to full speed on the design projects, we will be able to finish them a little sooner."

This hardly provided any consolation to the two, and what Ves was about to say would make their moods drop even more.

"To be honest, the work on our damaged expert mechs might take longer than a couple of weeks. Gloriana and I… are thinking about doing more than return them to their original conditions. The Battle of Fordilla Zentra has clearly proven the excellence of those machines, but it has also exposed clear vulnerabilities that we can conveniently address now that we are performing extensive work on them anyway."

This came as a surprise to all of the expert pilots.

"Are you planning to refit our expert mechs?" Venerable Dise asked.

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