The Mech Touch

Normally speaking, the Friday Colonies and the Hex Federation should have gone to war already. The Fridaymen and Hexers already had centuries of bad blood between them and the previous war had turned their animosity into utter hatred.

Yet despite their obvious hostilities, neither side declared war on each other.

The two sides had very different reasons to refrain from taking action. The Friday Coalition had become more divided than before, and also invested much of its manpower and resources into digesting its enormous gains in the Komodo Star Sector.

The Hexers who lost the Komodo War had largely been successful in their efforts to evacuate their core strength to the Hex Federation. However, this also meant that their people had run out of escape routes.

The matriarchs who still remained in power may be arrogant, but they weren\'t stupid. They extensively studied the reasons why they lost the previous Komodo War and largely chalked it up to operating on mistaken assumptions.

The ugly truth of the matter was that the Hexers overestimated their own military capabilities while doing the opposite to the Fridaymen.

Despite their notorious internal division, the Fridaymen nonetheless managed to pull together and utilize all of their advantages to turn the tide in the Komodo War.

The Hexers could not repeat their mistakes and allow their archenemies to pull off the same success formula yet again.

This was why the Hexers who had all been forced to start new lives in the Red Ocean restrained their aggression and continued to accumulate their power.

The council of matriarchs that had always effectively ruled over the Hexer people had not been shy about pushing drastic reforms to Hexer society.

It would have been much harder to push through so many disruptive changes in the old Hexadric Hegemony, but now that the Hexers not only suffered a traumatic setback, but also moved to an entirely new state and environment, the matriarchs recognized that they had a single chance to make everything right!

Many reforms that were previously unthinkable in the old galaxy eventually took effect without too much resistance in the Hex Federation.

For example, the difference in status between boys and women became a lot less pronounced.

Hexers should no longer seek to press boys down.

Hexers should instead put more effort into lifting them up.

Instead of treating grown boys as threats to society that could explode at any moment, the women of the Hex Federation must put more effort into teaching them so that their inherent violent tendencies could be channeled in more productive pursuits.

The Superior Mother served as the great guide to the new ideologies that had been promulgated by the council of matriarchs and the Temple of Hexism.

Now that it became known that the famous son of the Supreme herself had advanced to the rank of Senior Mech Designer at a prodigious age, many Hexers reacted with great enthusiasm!

"What a good boy!"

"As expected of the Superior Mother! Only the best mother could have raised such an impressive boy!"

"The Supreme Son is the model of a good boy. I have tried so hard to become as good as him, but I am much too far behind."

"With his advancement, the next editions of the Valkyrie Redeemer and the Maiden of Adversity are bound to become stronger!"

"Boys such as us can never lead the Hex Federation like women, but we can still do our part by excelling in auxiliary duties such as handling administration or servicing the mechs piloted by the superior gender. Learn from the example of the Supreme Son!"

"Mech design is one of the few activities where boys are fully allowed to express themselves, and Ves Larkinson has given us a lesson on how it should be done. Study him carefully! Examine his relationship with the women around him! His mother and his wife are the secret to his success! If you want to have any hope of matching his accomplishments, then I suggest to worship the Superior Mother as your second mother and beg a woman as magnificent as Madame Gloriana Wodin to take you as her spouse!"

Foreigners who weren\'t too familiar with the Hexer people reacted with complete surprise. They never imagined that billions of billions of proud and insular Hexers would pay so much attention to the emergence of a Senior Mech Designer that wasn\'t even a citizen of the Hex Federation!

Only the Fridaymen understood their old archenemies the best. They expressed no surprise at how big of a deal it was for Ves Larkinson to take another step towards becoming a Master Mech Designer.

The New Scimitar System proclaimed a holiday. Many Hexers who lived in the core territory of the rising Wodin Dynasty spontaneously burst out in celebration in honor of their greatest benefactor!

The success of Ves Larkinson directly affected the fortunes of the Wodin Dynasty.

The Wodins had long assumed the role of unofficially representing the Supreme Son\'s interests in the Hex Federation.

It didn\'t matter if Ves never really thought about the Hex Federation these days. His wife regularly passed on \'instructions\' and \'proclamations\' which the Wodin Dynasty spread through official channels in order to affect the policies of the colonial state.

Due to the Wodin Dynasty\'s undeniable family relationship with the Superior Mother and the Supreme Son, it had risen to become the fastest growing power in the Hex Federation!

To be honest, the Wodins already met many of the qualifications to become a leading matriarchal dynasty of the Hexer people.

The only reasons why their forward had been blocked was because they lacked enough assets and because it was unacceptable for a seventh matriarchal dynasty to arise.

It was therefore extremely unlikely for the Wodin Dynasty to become one of the top rulers of the Hex Federation. The only way it could go much further was to grow its economic might and wait until one of the six existing matriarchal dynasties fell.

Still, even if the Wodin Dynasty fell far short of the matriarchal dynasties in terms of territory, assets and military power, it compensated for it by having an outsized cultural influence on the Hexer people!

Any public statements made by the Wodins weighed as heavily as the announcements made by the council of matriarchs as far as most Hexers were concerned!

This granted the Wodin Dynasty a lot of leverage in the halls of power of the Hex Federation.

Right now, the mother-in-law of Ves Larkinson tried to take advantage of this in order to secure a crucial concession.

"Matriarch Alisia Vraken, let us put aside the pleasantries and speak plainly." Prime Minister Constance Wodin spoke to the projection in her office in the Crescent Palace. "Our Glory Seekers is the only concrete connection that ties the Hex Federation to the Larkinson Clan. My son-in-law may be the greatest good boy that our state has ever seen, but he has set his sights far beyond our trivial affairs. He is a mech designer who is destined to become a part of the top community of mech designers of our entire civilization."

The projection of the old but wizened female leader of the powerful Vraken Matriarchal Dynasty began to look impatient.

"What are you trying to convey, Prime Minister Constance? From what I understand, you and your fellow Wodins are being left behind by your precious \'Supreme Son\'."

Constance did not deny this truth. "The boy has a short attention span. Combined with his wild ambitions, his attachment to our people and state grows weaker over time. While our dynasty has put much effort into strengthening the Glory Seekers within his alliance, the material assistance that you and the other matriarchal dynasties have provided is not enough."

"We have already explained to you that we cannot recklessly transfer too many of our mechs and ships to your Glory Seekers." Matriarch Alisia Vraken responded. "The Friday Colonies are watching us like a hawk. The more defenders we divert from our colonial state, the more we become vulnerable to Fridayman aggression."

"We cannot limit our thinking to this level, matriarch." Constance retorted. "My son-in-law has become a Senior Mech Designer now. My daughter has informed me that he can design much stronger mechs for us if he is willing to do so. As Ves Larkinson has proven himself to be a boy who treats his friends fairly, we must make a grand gesture in order to make him feel indebted to our Hex Federation."

"I do not like the sound of this. Grand gestures are costly. Tell me what you have in mind."

Constance Wodin slightly paused before she chose to bite the bullet.

"I want you to plead to the rest of your council to reassign a Hexer ace pilot to the Glory Seekers."

"Absolutely not! This is completely out of the question, Wodin! Each of our Saints are tasked with protecting our most vital star systems from Fridaymen aggression! No matriarchal dynasty will agree to donate one of their own ace pilots in order to please a single boy, even if he has obtained the title of the Supreme Son. Our Vraken Matriarch Dynasty will never approve of this, and so will the other ones."

Constance sighed. She already expected this response.

"Please think carefully, Matriarch Alisia. Sending an ace pilot is a gesture that my son-in-law cannot possibly ignore. This is the only effective method that we can employ to restore the relevance of the Glory Seekers and prevent them from sliding into irrelevance. By reinforcing the Golden Skull Alliance to this degree, we can persuade my son-in-law to repay our generosity with another Hexer mech design or three. Think about how much his work can strengthen our Hex Army even further. The temporary sacrifice of a single ace pilot can strengthen the combat effectiveness of millions of mech pilots. This is a beneficial trade."

The matriarch of the Vrakens looked pensive. She agreed with Constance Wodin\'s logic, but that did not mean she was willing to pay the price!

Seeing that Alisia Vraken no longer rejected the proposal as strongly as before, Constance decided to pull out a trump card.

"Matriarch Alisia, I strongly suggest you take advantage of this opportunity for the good of the Vraken Matriarchal Dynasty. My daughter has shared many interesting stories about my son-in-law\'s work. What you know about him and his mechs is only the tip of the iceberg. His close relationship with not one, but two MTA factions is not a coincidence, and neither is his elevation to a tier 6 galactic citizen."

"His potential is known to all of us, but that does not necessarily translate into immediate results."

"Respectfully, you are wrong, matriarch. His ingenuity along with the Superior Mother\'s blessing has allowed him to master not just one but several methods to grow and empower both mechs and mech pilots. His methods are also effective for ace pilots and ace mechs. If you do not believe me, then let me show you a collection of footage of a number of expert mechs that he has agreed to modify in exchange for certain concessions."

Once Matriarch Alisia Vraken received the footage, she began to examine it carefully.

The recordings displayed the battle performance of numerous different ace mechs before and after Operation Lighthouse. From the amazing firepower of the Thunderer Mark II to the extraordinary lethality of the ace mechs of the Gemini Saints, it was clear that these top machines massively outperformed other machines of this category!

The Vraken Matriarch finally became sharper. Someone as old as her possessed an extensive understanding of ace mechs. The information conveyed by the footage along with the accompanying documents made it abundantly clear that the only reason why these powerful machines became much more powerful was because Ves had upgraded them in person!

What was even more shocking was that Ves had a lot more secret methods at his disposal!

Matriarch Alisia Vraken\'s opinion on the value of the Supreme Son shifted dramatically.

"Let us see what we can do. Your Glory Seekers cannot be allowed to fall behind." One of the six powerful rulers of the Hex Federation readily declared. "It may be challenging to persuade the other five matriarchal dynasties to weaken their defenses, but the Vrakens are more than willing to take responsibility."

Constance Wodin smirked.