The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4556

"These are very expensive toys, Marvaine. While they are built to be as safe and childproof as possible, you need to handle all of the parts with utmost respect. Treat them like how a real mech designer treats his own mechs. Do you understand, my son?"

"I understand, papa." Marvaine cutely said. He looked so adorable when he pretended to be serious.

It didn't take long before he turned back into an overeager kid. He was rubbing the side of the boxes as if he couldn't wait to unlock them and piece together his first toy mechs!

Ves could understand the kid's enthusiasm. Which mech-obsessed boy wouldn't want to play with Mekano? Even those that wanted to become mech pilots rather than mech designers when they grew up played with them if possible.

While not every child was interested in the intricacies of mech design at their ages, they all loved to put together a finished Mekano that they could play with themselves!

This was a lot better than buying a finished action figure in a toy store. As awesome as they were, they rarely provided any room for deep customization.

In fact, entire informal communities had sprung up where children who became good at playing with Mekano offered their 'design' services to other kids!

These circles became so elaborate that they practically resembled the actual mech industry and mech market!

They even came up with their own jargon and terminology to pretend as if it was more serious than a game.

The kids who became good at designing these toy mechs became known as Mekano designers.

The children who did not want their toys to fight by themselves with the help of semi-programmable AIs and operated them by remote control started to be known as Mekano pilots.

It was truly a childish reflection of the actual mech community!

Perhaps that was the point. Anyone who got caught up in the Mekano scene got to experience the mech community in advance.

Ves didn't intend for Marvaine to join these game communities, but he wouldn't mind it if he did become a budding Mekano designer.

It was good practice and allowed him to learn a bunch of harsh truths that he could only learn from experience rather than reading about them in textbooks.

"What is in the other boxes?!" Marvaine asked as he raced over to the next Mekano Set.

"That's the Basic Ranged Mech Set. It contains a decent variety of ranged toy mech parts, enough for you to design all kinds of Mekanos that can fight at range."

"And this one?"

"The Basic Melee Mech Set is the same as the last one, but is oriented towards melee combat instead. There are plenty of swords, spear, daggers, axes and hammers, though it is lacking in more exotic weaponry such as halberds and flails."

"What about this one? I don't understand what it contains."

"I'm not surprised that you can't figure it out. This is the Basic Internals Set. It contains a large collection of internal mech parts and components that you can use to customize the performance of a Mekano further. You can swap a weaker power reactor for a stronger model at the cost of taking up more space and weighing down your little machine."

"And this one?"

"That is one of the themed Mekano Sets that the regional branch of the Machine Emporium has released. The Krakatoa Set contains all of the essential parts derived from a decent selection of commonly sold mech models in the Krakatoa Middle Zone. I am sure you can recognize at least a few of the mechs on the packaging."

Marvaine circled around the last Mekano Set in order to observe all of the artwork.

"Your mechs aren't here, papa."

Ves sheepishly smiled. "That's because the First Edition of this set was released before our Living Mech Corporation gained a foothold of the market. It's at least half a decade out of date, but it is fine. I am sure that the Machine Emporium will get around to adding LMC mechs in the Third Edition or Fourth Edition of the Krakatoa Set."

His cute little son became upset. "I don't wanna wait that long! Can you make your own Mekano Set?"

"It's not that simple, Marvaine." Ves shook his head. "Mekano is a protected brand and strictly rejects parts that are not officially authorized and produced by the Machine Emporium. While I can go to a production machine and fabricate imitation parts that resemble the authentic Mekano components, they won't fit together. The real Mekano parts will somehow be able to detect that the false ones are not authentic and will actively shut down or produce glitches. This is one of the many measures the Machine Emporium employs to protect its brand."

He could fabricate entire sets that corresponded to the authentic versions, but there was little point to doing so. It would take a lot of time to do much of the work that the Polymath and the excellent designers employed by the Machine Emporium had invested into the toy mech building system.

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