The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7289

Chapter 7289: Artificial Champions

Ves' mind was racing.

The implications of the Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs were massive.

When Jovy told him that the alchemists deliberately created a formula that allowed them to mass produce the Standard Version Elixirs, Ves knew that these products were solely meant to be sold to third-class mech pilots.

The extreme price restrictions massively limited the quality and efficacy of the Standard Version Elixirs. It was impossible to expect these cheap vials to produce good results on a consistent basis.

Although Jovy did not share any specifics to Ves, it was not that difficult to imagine the Standard Version Elixirs to be vials filled with pure poison.

The only reason why mech pilots wanted to ingest them anyway was that they occasionally produced 'accidental' breakthroughs.

As the space peasant equivalent of the mech community, third-class mech pilots could not afford anything better. Their contribution to the war effort also did not entitle them to receiving more expensive elixirs.

Everything had to be fair. If third-class mech pilots could redeem superior elixirs at discounted prices, then where did that leave first-class mech pilots and second-class mech pilots?

War was an extremely expensive business. Ves had heard enough about the Alchemy Department to know that it had turned into a money burning division of the Red Collective.

The upfront costs of establishing R&D institutions, reagent cultivation farms and production facilities were extremely high.

Although the Red Collective had already gotten over the most difficult hurdles, the Alchemy Department would still run at a massive deficit for a number of years.

The development of the Pilot Breakthrough Elixir would help with increasing the department's revenue, but it was not enough to balance its books entirely.

The alchemists needed to develop a lot more product lines in order to make up for the huge investments! Ves actually expected for the Alchemy Department to take a few more years to come up with a product as strategically important as the Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs.

It appeared that the reports and rumors passed on by his chief of staff and the secret keepers were not quite accurate on this front. He would have remained fooled if he had not managed to promote to a tier 2 galactic citizen so soon.

As Ves continued to think about the implications of what he learned, Jovy continued to expand upon the details of this new product line.

"According to our ongoing clinical trials, the T19-AEW26 Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs yield imperfect results regardless of the outcome. Even when successful, the resulting mech pilots appear to be weaker and less in control of their newfound powers. According to many different testing methods, their willpower remains flawed and exhibits more loopholes than the willpower of mech pilots who experienced conventional breakthroughs. This is an expected outcome. Even if the differences in qualifications are small, the very fact that the latter group relied on Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs is regarded as a source of weakness."

This was not that difficult to understand. Natural breakthroughs were still considered the most honest and authentic way for champions to emerge among the masses. Pilots who relied on external means undeniably cheated the process.

Even if they felt as if they deserved their breakthroughs, they could not lie to themselves. They had to confront the truth the hard way. If they failed to resolve this vulnerability, then they could forget about making further progress in their careers.

"Does this mean that mech pilots who have used an elixir once will experience slower progression?"

"It is worse than that, Ves. If the mentality of these mech pilots are not properly managed, then they can fall into a form of depression where they lose confidence in their own capabilities. Even if they can reach the peak of their current ranks, their bottlenecks become so strong that they are nearly unbreakable if they continue to rely on their flawed mindsets. The difficulty of resolving these flaws is much higher as these pilots will inherently lack the confidence of their more traditional peers. We anticipate that the use of a Pilot Breakthrough Elixir may be the only way for them to trigger another apotheosis. However, the success rates will be much lower due to the greater flaws."

In other words, mech pilots who made use of a Pilot Breakthrough Elixir even once would have a miserable time.

These artificial champions would always suffer from an inferiority complex due to the existence of natural champions.

Expert pilots and ace pilots who earned their strength by relying on pure grit and conviction most definitely possessed better willpower than the new generation of champions who relied on elixirs to skip the game of chance.

Yet it was precisely because breakthroughs were so rare and subjected to random chance that natural champions received greater tempering on average. They were much more prepared to endure the unfairness of the battlefield.

Ves could foresee a future where the mech community always looked down on artificial champions.

This new class of high-ranking mech pilots would have to work multiple times harder in order to overcome the stigma of their unnatural breakthroughs!

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