The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4075

Chapter 4075 The Rise of Hopecrest

It was surprising how a single charitable act completely changed Hopecrest Mech Academy and Centire Hill.

Ever since the Unicum Group lost a colony ship to an attack, its colonists suffered continual setbacks.

From trying to build a settlement with severe shortages in everything to going deeper into debt, the settlement of Centire Hill suffered under a cloud of depression.

Its citizens had to work harder than ever and often had to go on double shifts in order to get more work done with less.

Fresh food became scarce as the rushed and imperfect terraforming of Maylard II caused its climate to dump snow onto the region at random times.

A lot of crops couldn't survive the cold, so the settlers of Centire Hill were forced to build incubator rooms that put an even greater strain on the Unicum Group's limited amount of funding and construction supplies.

Fortunately, the colonists stocked up on an excess amount of nutrient packs since they were so cheap to acquire.

Still, eating them day in and day out became so monotonous that the meals no longer provided them with pleasure and satisfaction.

Amidst all of the shortages and sacrifices, the citizens of Centire Hill suffered even more depression when constant comparisons were made between their settlement and that of the others.

Though the L9 Alliance was nominally united, there was also an element of competition between its nine groups.

Though the other groups had been willing to donate their cast-offs to the Unicum Group in order to keep their ailing brother alive, they had not offered any further help.

Colony building was expensive! Not only were the other groups already mired in debt themselves, they also refused to sacrifice their own development in order to benefit another party!

Every group in the L9 Alliance secretly wanted to get ahead of the others and become the principal leader of Maylard II. There were too many advantages to becoming the largest, strongest and wealthiest party in an alliance.

Ever since the L9 Alliance settled down on Maylard II, a race had begun where the different groups competed to become primus inter pares!

In the ranking of the different groups, the Unicum Group unquestionably ranked at the bottom in pretty much every aspect!

This fact constantly weighed down the shoulders of the citizens of Centire Hill, compounding their depression and reducing their productivity even further.

However, much of that changed once the Larkinson Veteran Foundation made its generous donation.

No one knew why these rich and powerful Larkinsons chose to favor their colony settlement, but they did not look a gift horse in the mouth.

The mech cadets who attended Hopecrest were the first to break from their depression.

The brand-new War Squires were not only better than their awful second-hand training mechs, the amount they received from their benefactors were more than enough to give every mech cadet sufficient practice time!

No longer did the mech cadets have to wait their turn until they got an opportunity to pilot a rust bucket that was already in the process of falling apart.

The new and gleaming War Squires were not only at the beginning of their lengthy life cycles, but were also tough, resilient and easy to maintain.

The mech technicians in charge of servicing and repairing the War Squires found that it was not as costly and time-consuming to make sure they kept running.

The exterior armor plating that was usually the first to get dinged over the course of more intensive training sessions turned out to be easy to pull out and hammer back into shape.

The academy could even make its own replacement armor out of spare metals and attach it in place.

Of course, the LMC did not condone this behavior and would not provide any guarantees or assurances to any products that went off-spec.

All of this ultimately meant that the mech cadets could pilot their assigned War Squires on a regular basis!

Mickey Lankos and his other fellow cadets became completely reinvigorated as they poured their all into their studies.

This was because the mech instructors quickly noticed how much they desired to pilot the War Squires.

"Don't slack off and fall behind!" A teacher warned his class. "Physics is the foundation of reality. Learning how mass interacts with gravity at standstill and on the move may be difficult and boring to you mech jockeys, but understanding the formulas and numbers will save your life one day!"

The mech cadets sitting behind their desks still looked distracted.

"If you fail your next exam, your practice sessions with the War Squire will be cut in half."

What?!

"On the other hand, if you score high enough to rank in the top 3, then you will receive an extra hour of practice a week. Now pay attention!"

The mech instructors at Hopecrest learned how to leverage the War Squires to their advantage. By setting up numerous incentives and punishment around the use of their new training mechs, they comprehensively motivated the mech cadets into concentrating much harder on their studies!

The average performance of the mech cadets shot up by as much as twenty percent after a single semester!

The cloud of depression that hung over the entire mech academy disappeared as almost every mech cadet studied and practiced as hard as possible to maintain their access to the precious War Squires.

As the mech cadets began to enjoy their lives again, the rest of Centire Hill also became a little brighter.

Life was still hard for most of the colonists, but the joy and positivity spread by the mech cadets made everyone else's lives a little brighter.

There was hope for the future.

Mickey Lankos was one of the many mech cadets who studied earnestly in order to enjoy more time with War Squire #47.

Unfortunately, he was not that particularly intellectually gifted. He struggled to keep up during his math, physics and other theoretical classes.

There were usually ways to remedy this shortcoming, but as a member of a poor family of first-generation colonists, there was no chance that Mickey could solve his shortcomings through augmentation.

Verify captcha to read the contentVerify