The Mech Touch

He read a few guides, skimmed through a few industry applications and formed a list of a hundred or so candidates.

Humanity had already entered the Red Ocean for a number of years, and the amount of people who passed through the greater beyonder gate surpassed a trillion individuals.

Capital ships that were entirely geared towards transporting passengers were akin to layered cities that could bring half a planet's worth of population across thousands of light-years!

Many of such ships had been built, and more were on the way. The Red Ocean had an incredible demand for population and the old galaxy seemingly had an endless supply of adventurous individuals.

With population came the demand for educational services.

Higher education was especially in demand as pioneers had an enormous demand for many essential professions such as shipwrights, mech technicians, fabricators, mining engineers and agricultural specialists.

Mech design also came under demand as a huge amount of mech companies needed more skilled assistants to speed up the development of Red Ocean-style mech designs.

The emergence of novel alien technologies, newly discovered exotics and the endless applications of phasewater threw the entire mech industry in a frenzy!

Every class and layer of the mech industry became enthralled by all of the new options presented by the Red Ocean.

Ves had already witnessed this trend in Davute, and he figured that the situation was not that much different in the upper zones.

Although the threshold of studying at a first-class university was so high that not even ordinary first-raters had much hope of getting admitted, they still pumped out a lot of reasonably competent mech designers that could assist in the design of highly complicated mechs.

Ves primarily set his sights on the more modest institutions that had lower recruitment thresholds.

They weren't diploma mills, exactly, but they couldn't be called centers for excellence either.

Funding, backing and heritage were all needed to found a good mech design university that could stand its ground in a highly competitive market.

The lower-tiered institutions lacked star professors that required a huge amount of incentives or even equity in order to teach in their halls. Without enough renowned and prestigious professors, the schools would not be able to attract excellent students and professors.

They also lacked enough support from a powerful state, a pioneering organization or an old galaxy power. Rival universities with better backing could easily gain more favors and bend the regulations in their favor.

The founders and investors of these schools might not have much ties with existing heritage brands in the old galaxy. This made it a lot harder to inspire trust as the lack of ties to a famous institution meant that the quality of education was still in question!

It would be nice if Ves managed to get hired by a mech design university that scored well in funding, backing and heritage, but that was as unrealistic as breaking through to Star Designer on the spot!

As a second-class mech designer and only a Senior at that, Ves ranked so low on the list of desirable professors that he only had a shot of obtaining a position at the shabbiest and most dubious universities.

"That effectively means that I should only apply to struggling or failing institutions."

There were important differences between struggling and failing schools.

The former might not do so well, but they established enough of a footing in the educational market that they could keep its gates open for at least a decade.

The latter deteriorated so much that it was doubtful that it could keep its classrooms occupied in the next two or three years.

The problem was that it was difficult for Ves to distinguish between the two. These shabby universities did everything in their power to obscure the truth and present overinflated impressions to the public.

The galactic net was filled with so much junk information about them that it was impossible to distinguish truth from falsehood.

The most reliable way to obtain the truth was to command the Black Cats to send field agents to lurk around the campuses, but that was a needless extravagance to the Larkinson Clan.

Ves tried to resort to an alternate means of investigation. He pulled out a totem of Ylvaine and requested answers.

"Can you check over the mech design universities on this list and predict which ones will still remain operational five years later?"

The replies he got in return were murky. Ylvaine lacked the strength to make so many predictions. This was especially the case when the Great Prophet had to look into the futures of large educational institutions that employed at least a dozen Master Mech Designers!

The high concentration of spiritually powerful individuals made it surprisingly difficult for a relatively weak design spirit such as Ylvaine to make any solid judgments about the future!

Seeing that the cost of obtaining answers was way too high, Ves dismissed the design spirit and gave up on this method of inquiry.

"I need to complete my first mech design commission for Davute as soon as possible." Ves muttered and frowned. "I also need to tie him to an expert pilot in order to increase his ability to penetrate the secrets of more powerful targets."

Though Ves had neglected Ylvaine's needs for so long because of his bias against religion, he could not do so any longer now that he recognized the design spirit's strategic value.

The capacity to track down specific targets was too useful for him to abandon!

It became a lot more important to cultivate Ylvaine and allow his predictive abilities to glimpse the futures of more powerful individuals.

"Soon." Ves curled his lips into a smile.

In any case, now that Ylvaine was unable to provide any meaningful assistance for the time being, Ves was left to use his own judgment.

He first whittled down the list by applying additional criteria. Schools that were too large or were located in more restrictive states were a bit too troublesome.

He then relied on his whims and intuition to pick out half-a-dozen different names. If his initial attempt went nowhere, then he could always revisit the list and select a handful of other universities.

The ones that he intended to apply for first all had issues that made them less attractive.

For example, one of them was located close to an ongoing conflict between two rival first-class powers.

Although it was unlikely for outright war to break out, the frequent skirmishers disrupted trade and scared away a lot of potential students.

If the two sides managed to make peace in the future, then the university would probably recover as calm descended on the region.

If the squabbling powers were unable to make up their mind, then many different companies would suffer, not just the university that was struggling to retain its students and professors!

"It takes guts to attend this school."

A lot of students had already left, causing its finances to dip deep into the red.

However, Ves saw it in a different light. Not only was the school lacking in professors who could teach and manage the courses related to core and foundational subjects, the students that remained despite all of the bad news were definitely more to his liking!

There was also another school that had already gone bankrupt before being picked up by a financial group looking for opportunities.

Though the new owners stabilized the school and retained most of the professors by offering higher salaries, a lot of students had already fled to greener pastures!

With intense competition squeezing the mech design university from every direction, the new administrators could only lower the admission standards and take in less qualified students.

The problem with filling up the classroom benches with inferior students was that this made the professors more disgruntled!

Each of these Masters and Seniors wanted to pass on their knowledge to more promising future prospects. It was pretty much a waste of time for them to teach mech design students who could only become Apprentices or maybe Journeymen at best!

Unlike most snobby first-class mech designers, Ves did not look down on these so-called 'inferior' students.

"Heh. Ketis and I started out as third-raters, and look where we are today. Everyone has potential. It just takes more effort to draw it out. Maybe I can employ special means in order to give my classes an extra boost."

Ves did not have many means to employ his unique arsenal of tricks to augment his teaching by remote, but he should still be able to whip up a few solutions with a bit of planning and preparation.

He continued to apply to a few other schools in comparable dire straits. Whether they could dig themselves out of their holes was still in question, but it was exactly because of these adverse circumstances that Ves believed he had a chance!

"That should do it." Ves smiled in satisfaction after he sent out his last job application. "I might not have to wait too long to obtain a reply considering that these institutions desperately need to put out their fires."

Desperation bred expediency. All of those proper first-class mech design universities could easily take their time because they had already adopted a winning posture.

It was the schools that were doing their best to fight for another tomorrow that put down their arrogant postures and no longer put up so many obstacles as before!

Now that he had taken care of this chore, Ves set aside his thoughts on finding a teaching job and turned his attention back to his other needs.

Now that all of the excitement and novelty around his promotion to Senior had passed, it was time for him to handle the priorities that he had previously pushed aside.

"I need to complete the Ghost Project."

Superpublishing the Dullahan Project caused Ves and his collaborators to harvest a lot of new and useful insights.

While Ves had been spending his time on other affairs, Gloriana and Master Benedict had been reworking a lot of different design aspects of the Ghost Project.

They applied many of the design improvements of the Dullahan Project to the Ghost Project!

Now that Ves no longer had any distractions, he spent a few days on performing his own tweaks.

He immediately experienced many of the differences between working as a Journeyman and working as a Senior.

His Spirituality skyrocketed. His intuition became a lot stronger. He could recall existing knowledge more easily. He could solve difficult equations a lot faster. He could spot errors and inconsistencies with greater efficiency. He was able to nurture a stronger and livelier spiritual foundation for his upcoming living mech.

In short, everything became better, and this was just the start!

Ves even had the time to figure out whether these improvements came from his latest evolution or whether they originated from his upgraded connection to the Kingdom of Mechs.

He still couldn't sense this connection directly, but now that he became aware of its existence, his intuition vaguely spotted a few hints.

There were certain times during his design sessions that he suspected that he was getting a little push from the Kingdom of Mechs.

"It's strange."

He did not quite know what to make of this external help.

On the one hand, his work became smoother and he wasted a lot less time on getting stuck.

On the other hand, he occasionally felt that he wasn't doing all of the work. If he kept relying on the Kingdom of Mechs to cheat his way out of a difficult situation, he would never properly train his problem-solving skills.

Was the Kingdom of Mechs really beneficial to mech designers?

Ves seriously questioned this assumption.