Ves decided not to exchange a lot of MTA merits in order to replace his outdated shield generators with modern first-class transphasic shield generators.
The ones he utilized at the moment were not weak and could still protect him against the vast majority of attacks that might be thrown in his direction.
To be honest, he put a lot more stock in his Unending Regalia. He much preferred to place his trust on solid armor, which offered solid and reliable protection even if all of its electronic systems had been knocked offline for whatever reason.
Aside from that, as a mech designer Ves was also much more used to working with armor as opposed to energy shields. Even if his expertise on armor systems could not match the depth of Sara Voiken, he was not a complete novice either! freēwebnovel.com
Another reason for him to put more emphasis on his combat armor was because the Larkinson Clan still had enough stockpiles of first-class materials to apply a hasty upgrade to his Unending Regalia.
Even if he was short on a specific material that he would really like, he could still trade one first-class material for another one without incurring too much of a loss.
Though Ves eventually planned to transform his Unending Regalia into a true modern first-class suit of combat armor, he needed a lot more time, expertise and preparation because he could remold it into the indefatigable engine that he had conceived in his imagination.
"I guess I'll have to settle for a quick-and-dirty modification plan for the time being."
When Ves arrived at the Genesis Lab, he set his Unending Regalia on a workbench and scanned it thoroughly while he began to draw a list of components he could change on a small time frame.
Ves had designed the Unending Regalia with a high degree of modularity in mind. He had envisioned that he would end up in situations like these where he gained access to better tech and materials and wanted to upgrade his primary form of protection.
Therefore, it was easy for him to disassemble his combat armor and pull out a lot of modules from their slots.
There were limits, though. Ves ideally wanted to rebuild the entire inner structure from the ground up so that he could make it completely out of much more resilient first-class materials, but that was a project for another day.
"I need to stick to the essentials." Ves reminded himself.
There was also another complication that made it a lot more difficult for Ves to upgrade his armor.
As the scans slowly revealed, the Unending Regalia substantially deviated from its original design. It had been baptized with pure metal energy that had originated from Cassandra Breyer.
This transformed the combat armor in mysterious ways. The Unending alloy armor plating had especially been receptive towards metal energy and had become more capable of fending off spiritual attacks!
If Ves confronted a dark god or a spiritual sorcerer from the Five Scrolls Compact, he possessed ample confidence that his Unending Regalia would be able to preserve his life long enough to run away!
"The problem is that I'm not fighting against those freaks anymore!"
The Five Scrolls Compact hardly expanded their presence in the Red Ocean as far as he knew. Just getting past the stringent security checks in order to pass through the greater beyonder gate was a major impediment!
The most probable threats he fought against these days were conventional human forces, alien warships and alien bio monstrosities.
Each of them possessed their own combat characteristics, but what united all of them was their extensive use of phasewater applications!
Ves stared at his Unending Regalia. He intuitively tried to judge how well its spiritually charged Unending alloy exterior plating could withstand transphasic attacks.
The answer he got was not positive.
"It's a powerful tool, but it's the wrong tool for the situation."
It was as if he had obtained the strongest hammer in existence when he actually needed a welding tool instead!
"Even if the latter is inferior, it is much more useful to the circumstances at hand."
Ves decided to strip the Unending alloy armor plating entirely and replace it with the salvaged and repurposed armor plates taken from the hull fragments of the Fractured House of the Collapsing Star.
The Genesis Lab happened to have stocked up plenty of high-quality goods and materials, so it did not take long before a heavy-duty lifter bot arrived to deliver a large chunk of space debris.
Although the exterior of the hybrid alien battleship was largely made up of conventional human armor plating, the more important parts and systems had received varying degrees of transphasic reinforcement depending on their importance. The surrounding bulkheads had also been fortified with superior transphasic alloys.
It was extremely troublesome to develop and produce transphasic armor plating from scratch.
However, there was no need for him to go through all of that trouble when he could just cut away portions of existing transphasic alloys.
As Ves examined the debris he pulled out of storage, he became mildly dissatisfied.
"The phasewater concentration isn't much, but it's better than nothing I suppose."
The construction of a capital ship required huge amounts of materials. It was prohibitive to protect the most critical components with too much phasewater. The aliens had to spread out their limited resources and could only compensate for their sparing use of phasewater by relying on thicker and bulkier structural layers.
Ves obviously couldn't do that with his Unending Regalia as it was only an infantry suit. Its exterior layer had to be relatively thin in order to control its size and make it foldable.
"It's not like I have anything better at hand." He sighed.
He went to work. He utilized the advanced first-class workshop equipment and tools that he had brought over from Spirit of Bentheim to carefully carve out the armor plating.
He worked with unnatural precision as he precisely broke down the hardy piece of ship debris into an expanding collection of exquisitely shaped metal plates.
The entire set happened to correspond to the Unending alloy plating that he had previously removed!
Slotting in the new alien first-class transphasic armor plating should be a breeze as Ves had not made any changes in the shapes.
Although the mass, density and many other properties had undergone drastic changes, they did not fundamentally interfere with the functioning of his Unending Regalia.
At most, he needed to reconfigure its operating system and settings to adjust to the many changes.
Ves did not settle for replacing the armor plating, though. He also applied a few other targeted upgrades.
For example, he improved the ECM shielding, the sensor system, the communication systems and numerous life support systems to improve its overall survivability.
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