The Mech Touch novel Chapter 7371

Chapter 7371: Terran Pride

Ves sighed in relief.

It turned out that there was still a potential way out. Several ways, in fact.

So far, the Terrans tried their best to keep the Woodsap Mech Design Project as in-house as possible.

Aside from collaborating with Ves, they avoided any third-party entanglements, believing that they already possessed the capabilities to bring the project to completion.

They were partially correct in that assumption.

While the other aspects of the collaborative mech design project progressed decently, Ves did not feel satisfied with the consequences to the mech pilots.

Even if there were plenty of Terrans that willingly traded away their humanity for a chance to pilot one of the most powerful standard mechs to appear on the battlefield, Ves considered this tradeoff to be a symptom of failure!

A proper mech should never force its pilot into a devil’s bargain.

It was one thing for Ves to offer a risky bargain tailored to specific individuals such as Venerable Joshua and Saint Rosa Orfan.

They had tried the normal approach and lost patience with the persistent lack of results.

However, for all of those Terran citizens to give up their human form and willingly transform into tree-like monstrosities went too far in his opinion!

It was too indiscriminate and maybe ultimately self-defeating.

How could these Carmine mech pilots sincerely fight for red humanity when they had given up their own identity as humans?

Ves had personal experience how form defined one’s identity. The Ascended Giants had become so enamoured with their giant forms that they had embraced as their default states.

This was the reason why they needed a dedicated troop carrier vessel like the Armitage. The compartments and hallways of regular human starships could not accommodate their true bodies!

Ves on the other hand was different. While he admittedly kept his body to human proportions in order to avoid losing control over it, he had insisted on retaining his human form even before the emergence of his other self.

He and the Dark Apostle may be two sides of the same coin, but their preferences fundamentally defined them as different individuals.

Ves abhorred the inhumanity of his phase lord form while the Dark Apostle thought that his original human form exemplified weakness.

It could have been worse.

At least the pair retained the same human face and proportions.

The same could not be said for the Terran test subjects. Even if the biotech researchers managed to tweak and optimize the process so that the next batches looked a little less horrendous, Master Laila Devos clearly warned him not to expect any breakthroughs.

Ves strongly argued in favor of seeking outside assistance.

The Master Mech Designer shut down this notion pretty quickly.

"What you say has merit, Ves." The old woman spoke over the communication channel. "Yet the Terran Alliance cannot bring itself to accept your proposal. The Arboreal Project and all of its related subprojects must remain a Terran initiative from beginning to end. You may have grown accustomed to collaborating with third parties, but we are not as eager to share and leak our confidential trade secrets with our rivals. Woodsap mechs must remain exclusively Terran. We will not accept any risk that slightly increases the possibility for others to imitate the Carmine mechs that are exclusively ours."

Ves frowned in response.

The Terrans were far too stubborn about this. The issue at hand was not even directly related to the core technologies that made the Woodsap mechs so much better than regular Carmine mechs.

He just wanted them to seek outside assistance to reduce the side effects of the necessary augmentations.

He continued to argue in favor of borrowing the expertise of others, but Master Laila Rebecca Devos remained unflinching.

Even if she harbored another opinion, she did not represent herself, but channeled the will of the Terran Alliance.

Unless Ves was able to persuade a majority of the leaders of the Terran ancient clans, it was impossible for him to succeed in this effort.

After the older Terran woman made it abundantly clear how the Terrans were willing to settle with worse products in order to defend their exclusivity, Ves had little choice but to accept this reality.

"If you truly insist on this course of action, then we need to work harder to sort out this problem." He said as he did not give up on addressing this obvious flaw. "I will come up with possible solutions, and I hope that you guys do so as well. We cannot allow our greed to override our responsibilities. Mech designers exist to serve mech pilots, not the other way around. I do not want our Woodsap mechs to end up doing more harm than good for their users. I think it is important that we do not lose sight of the fact that it is our job to design mechs that adapt to their pilots."

As a vaunted Master Mech Designer, Laila Devos could not possibly be ignorant of this principle.

VERIFYCAPTCHA_LABELVerify