The Mech Touch novel Chapter 3439

Chapter 3439: 20 MTA Credits

The Chance Bay Masterwork Gallery charged a lot of money to its visitors.

Ves hadn't been happy about paying 20 MTA credits just to obtain entry for him and his wife. Though the both of them genuinely appreciated the masterwork mechs on display, he would have preferred to not to pay the equivalent of more than seven Bright Warrior mechs just to get inside!

Sure, he became happy again when he explored all of the interesting masterwork mechs and the stories behind them, but he always felt that the company behind the gallery was ripping off its customers.

In his opinion, the gallery could have easily accommodated more visitors if it set more reasonable rates. The increase in volume would have more than made up for the drop in revenue per customer. There was so much free space in this enormous gallery that Ves could easily imagine it filled with lots paying guests!

"It's probably a prestige thing or something." He grumbled.

As a mech designer who mainly focused on the upper end of the mech market, he was no stranger to this marketing approach. Perhaps Masterwork Galleries might indeed be on to something here. It could be that selling tickets wasn't actually the point. Since these exclusive venues mainly attracted mech designers and to a lesser degree mech pilots, the true objective might be to form connections with its powerful clientele.

Whatever the case, none of these considerations had anything to do with Ves. What mattered was that he was a victim of the gallery's marketing strategy. He had a feeling that he and his wife weren't supposed to be here at all, and that the ticket prices were set so high just to deter cheapskates from polluting the air of this floating masterwork palace structure.

The sporadic Masters and Seniors floating through the halls completely ignored the two young guests. While there was nothing about their behavior that looked egregious, they showed considerably more respect and acknowledgement towards each other.

This social pattern only increased Ves' notion that Journeymen like himself shouldn't have come to this place.

To be fair, this was not an unusual stance. Normal Journeymen ordinarily didn't come in touch with masterwork mechs during this phase of their career. Their lack of understanding and experience translated into a shallow feel for mechs. It was much more fruitful for them to build up their knowledge base and develop their toolbox of solutions to serve their immediate needs.

Chasing after masterworks at this early stage was a distraction at best and a detour that led to a dead end at worst.

If Journeymen managed to get involved in the creation of a masterwork mech anyway, then it was usually due to the heavy lifting of a Master Mech Designer.

In these kinds of situations, the contribution of a Master was so deep and profound that assistants simply didn't play a meaningful role in elevating the quality of the machine. The benefits they could gain from participating in such a project was therefore limited.

Perhaps the other pompous museum visitors put Ves or his wife in this category. None of them would know that the young couple did in fact make masterwork mechs by relying on their own efforts. Others could only know that by diving deep in their profiles, and people generally didn't bother with calling up details of random people.

Ves felt conflicted at the moment.

On one hand, he did not think the gallery and its elite visitors did anything wrong. The upscale venue mainly catered to a different audience and the people here had no reason to go out of their way to accommodate a pair of young Journeymen that looked out of place.

On the other hand, he felt slighted by the gallery. The expensive ticket prices, the incredibly clean and well-lit interior and the lack of respect from other museum visitors all grated on him, causing him to build up an irrational degree of resentment.

Ves was also annoyed by another matter. Ever since he began to view the first masterwork mech, he constantly felt that these masterwork mechs were all out of place.

Their designers and makers worked earnestly to create them and even went as far as to place a piece of themselves inside these machines for good reasons.

In every case, these fine mechs were built to be used on the battlefield. They were excellent war machines that were never meant to be treated as works of art.

Sure, mech designers such as Ves could draw a fair amount of inspiration from becoming exposed to these fine machines, but a part of him felt guilty for taking advantage of them in this manner.

When Ves glanced at the other mech designers studying the silent and dormant mechs with rapt attention, he had the feeling that this gallery was actually a zoo.

People who didn't know any better paid money in order to stare at the animals behind their cages.

Who asked the zoo animals whether they liked to sit in small, cramped enclosures just so they could bare their entire lives to strangers?

No one bothered to ask for their consent or their willingness to be treated in such a manner because they didn't have the same rights as humans.

The same went for these mechs. Each of them were alive in a sense, and even if their life orders were low, Ves still felt that they deserved more respect than what they received.

Sure, the normal trajectories of these masterwork mechs might not be so great if they were left in the wild.

Barring obvious illegal machines like the Husk Maker, many of the other machines such as the Otossun or the Yellow Harvest still had a lot of use on the battlefield.

Of course, all of their outdated systems needed to be updated to modern standards, but if he could do it, so could many other mech designers.

"These mechs are all alive, but they're being treated as if they had already turned into exobeast fossils."

Providing inspiration to other mech designers might be their most beneficial use to many people, but was this really what these mechs wanted to do? Ves seriously doubted it. These mechs looked pristine on the outside but were atrophying from the inside.

They yearned to be used. Ves could feel it. They didn't necessarily have to experience combat, but they at least wished to be paired with mech pilots who appreciated their capabilities. They were incomplete when left without the human element.

Though Ves badly wanted to take them all away so that they could be updated and put to their rightful use, he couldn't.

"Don't mention that here, Lucky." Ves quickly told his cat. _{ƒreeωebnovel.ƈom}

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