The Mech Touch novel Chapter 4559

Ves felt as if he was treating Marvaine as an employee rather than his son.

Setting up such a formal and rule-bound incentive structure smacked of manipulative behavior.

It was the kind of approach that a heartless results-driven boss imposed on their underlings to ensure that they remained productive and helpful to the company.

Though Ves possessed enough awareness to recognize that he was acting a bit too much like Gloriana than he was comfortable with, he couldn't help it. Marvaine had so much talent that he couldn't bear the thought that his son would grow up as less than the sum of his parts!

He distinctly recalled one of his distant Mastery experiences where he had landed in the mind of a certain drug-addled, good-for-nothing scion of the Streon Clan of the Greater Terran United Confederation.

That bastard of a hedonist had access to so much wealth, privilege and chances to make himself great, but practically wasted all of it in favor of drugging himself stupid all day!

Though the former wastrel had finally managed to clean up his act and become a bigshot among the Terrans, that was only because Ves essentially forced the idiot to change his entire life trajectory by force.

If even first-raters could turn into useless good-for-nothing leeches, then there was always a possibility that his own children could end up the same way!

This was why he did not completely object to Gloriana's demanding child rearing methods. The Hexers may be deplorable people who maintained a lot of awful customs and beliefs, but if there was one thing they were good at, it was raising children into proper, obedient and effective adults!

Right now, Ves played along with his wife because he really didn't want his son to come anywhere close to the original Axelar. If that meant he had to cross a line or two, then so be it. He vastly preferred to raise Marvaine into a clone of Gloriana than a mediocre adolescent who wasn't good enough to stand out in any particular field.

Once Ves and Gloriana explained the new Mekano incentive structure to Marvaine, the little boy became eager to prove himself and unlock access to the greater possibilities of Mekano!

"I want to unlock all of the sets!" Marvaine exclaimed.

Ves patted his son on the head. "Don't be in a hurry. The starter set may be a little boring, but a professional mech designer such as myself can easily design thousands of distinctive Mekanos with the available collection of parts. You don't have to make that many Mekanos, but you must show me that you are able to fully utilize the available parts."

"Awww..."

Hours later, the kids already ate their meals and were ready to go to bed. Ves and Gloriana visited each of their children's bedrooms and tucked them all to sleep with all of the love and care they could summon.

Once their son and daughters fell into slumber, the two parents sat on the couch in the living room.

Gloriana had already done her homework beforehand while Ves had put his enhanced cognition to good use by rapidly absorbing all of the information he needed to get up to speed.

He possessed a much better understanding of the educational options available to talented children.

First-class schools were much more complicated to enter, especially when it came to foreigners and second-raters.

On the one hand, many first-class schools didn't even want to bother with 'lesser humans'. The discrimination against those who had risen up from the ranks of space peasants was too great.

Even if these schools made an exception and opened their doors to a particularly talented second-rater, the students and even the teachers would all exhibit horrible discriminatory behavior towards a person who did not fit into their group.

Ves had read enough horror stories about these cases on the galactic net that he decided to never subject his children to such difficult ordeals.

"That is why we need to limit our consideration to the more accessible, broader and more open-minded schools." Gloriana explained. "They also have to be multicultural and deliberately targeted towards foreigners. This way, Marvaine will have the same status as much of his future classmates."

"You're right, but... I've read the entry requirements for those open schools. They are much more demanding than usual. Not only will Marvaine have to produce consistently high results in order to avoid getting kicked from attendance, we will also have to pay a lot more tuition fees. The problem only exacerbates when we want to put him into a virtual school!"

His wife sighed. "It can't be helped. Physical schools have a lower number of applicants because of geographic restrictions. Virtual schools are not subject to these limitations, so anyone with a connection to the galactic net can apply, which means the demand is enormous. Furthermore, the difficulty of teaching students in virtual reality is much greater as the students cannot access highly sophisticated school facilities, so the quality of the lessons will inevitably be inferior."

Parents who wanted to enroll their kids to a virtual school had to make many tradeoffs in order to take advantage of this single convenience.

There were downsides to the virtual school as well. There was always a sense of physical detachment. The pupils never set foot onto the physical grounds of the education institution in person. They never even met any of their classmates in real life. This meant that once they graduated, they often went their separate ways. The friendships and alumni networks of these virtual schools were simply inadequate compared to their equivalents at physical institutions.

The fact of the matter was that Ves and Gloriana could give Marvaine much better career opportunities if they enrolled him into a reputable first-class school in the Zelmar Upper Zone.

They had even looked up a few that were both open to foreigners and happy to enroll a young genius like Marvaine!

They never seriously considered this matter, though.

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