Chapter 3924 The Secret to Affecting Hearts
"We can talk about rewards and concessions later." Master Dervidian said. "You have already earned enough MTA merits today. Do you truly need more?"
"Well… there is always a use for more MTA merits. What if I want to give a friend or relative the opportunity to undergo life-prolonging treatment? There are lots of people who are of such great value that I would like them to be of service a while longer."
Ves could think of plenty of people. His children, for example.
While he hoped that each of them would be brilliant enough to be able to earn the MTA merits required to secure their own life-prolonging treatments, he was willing to step in if any of them failed to live up to his expectations.
Venerable Joshua was also a good candidate. There were numerous ways for expert pilots to earn a lot of MTA merits or even a direct opportunity to undergo a round of life-prolonging treatment, but none of them were easy to obtain.
It was far more difficult to extend the life of a mech pilot and specifically an expert pilot due to their abnormal brains and other factors. This subsequently made it a lot more expensive for expert pilots to afford this exclusive treatment.
Unless Venerable Joshua did something that could amaze the MTA, Ves anticipated that he would likely have to make a costly investment in order to make his compatible mech pilot stuck around for a few additional centuries!
Sure, the expert pilot hadn't even reached forty years old as of yet, but it was never too early to start saving!
Aside from Joshua, there were many other people who might also need his help in order to extend their natural lifespans.
People such as Venerable Tusa and Calabast may provide a lot of benefits if Ves continued to keep them around. As long as the return on investment was great enough, he would definitely spend his MTA merits if he had any left to spare!
However, Master Dervidian did not look eager to pass on even more MTA merits.
"Please wait until I am done. You will find that what I am willing to offer to you will be more relevant and valuable than mere MTA merits."
Ves had no choice but to take Dervidian at his word.
He wasn't afraid that Dervidian would scam him at this point. The man had shown great sincerity and obviously wished to build a good relationship. It would be illogical to ask much of Ves only to give little in return.
He let out a deep breath as he leaned back on his chair. He briefly glanced around this large but spartan chamber.
The compartment looked nice enough, but it was devoid of furniture and absent of life. Ves supposed that made it easier for the mechers to sweep the place of bugs and make sure that none of the discussions leaked.
Ves decided to be more forthcoming about his own theories even though he lacked empirical backing for many of them. The Battle of Purgatory was the first truly successful use of the transcendence glow, after all. His previous lab experiments were all failures in his eyes.
"I don't know what the research groups you have talked about have done exactly. I don't have
access to their research files and research logs either. I have no clue what kind of theories that they have based their experiments upon. I can only make inferences based on what little information you have provided to me. If these elaborate and sophisticated experiments are close to what I imagine, then I think that they are all flawed in one important manner."
"In what aspect are they lacking, Mr. Larkinson?"
"Authenticity."
Dervidian raised his eyebrow. This was a short answer that nonetheless conveyed a lot of meaning. The MTA Master most certainly possessed his own understanding of this word.
What Ves had just given was a massive hint. A mech designer as intelligent as one of the key developers of minidrives must certainly be capable enough to develop his own theories after hearing this single prompt!
The gray-haired man looked incredibly thoughtful as he evaluated Ves' answer.
"Authenticity." The man said. "We know that pitting mech pilots in non-lethal combat rarely engenders breakthroughs. For whatever reason, there is a high correlation between putting them in actual battle and the occurrences of breakthrough. This is known to us. However, much of the research that I have referred to have indeed subjected the test subjects to actual combat situations, but their results are barely better than that of the control group. There are even instances where the test subjects perform worse than those that did not undergo any special treatment."
"That's because these attempts aren't authentic enough." Ves confidently stated. "All of these attempts to manipulate people's thoughts and emotions do not make much sense to me because anything the researchers program into them simply won't be authentic enough anymore. Using measures such as brainwashing or pills won't change mech pilots for the better. They simply turn the test subjects into people who aren't originally like this. This is what I mean by inauthentic."
The explanation did not make complete sense to Master Dervidian.
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