The Mech Touch novel Chapter 1779

Ves went through several negotiations throughout his career. He learned how to give and how to take. He learned how to understand the needs of his counterparts and match them against his own to seek out a harmonious agreement.

The most ideal outcome for both parties involved would be to reach a win-win arrangement.

When both sides obtained the concessions they wanted while giving up something they didn’t value as much, both of them would do their best to uphold the deal.

Yet how easy was it to reach an amicable deal like that? The very need to hold a negotiation implied that a straightforward agreement was out of reach.

This meant that in order to reach a deal, both sides had to give up some advantages they would rather retain. The more a side conceded, the more they felt pained about the deal.

Compromises were never clean. Both sides had to give up so many significant concessions that the end of a negotiation always left a sour taste in their mouths.

When he heard the demands from the conservative faction that led the old family, Ves forcibly paused and forced himself to think.

He saw beneath the surface of the old family’s outrageous demands.

The faction that counted Venerable Ghanso Larkinson among its supporters certainly asked for much.

First, the old family wanted the new family to lose the right to call themselves Larkinsons.

This was nothing else than robbing Ves and the other Larkinsons who followed him of their heritage!

Second, the old family wanted to claim most of the shares the formerly-united family held in the LMC!

For the old family to covet 20 percent ownership in the LMC while leaving the new family with the remaining 5 percent was nothing more than pure greed!

Ves couldn’t help but chuckle. "Aren’t the traditionalists being hypocritical? On one hand, Ghanso and his ilk detest the so-called ’corrupting’ influence of money. Yet now they are shameless asking for twenty percent ownership of an unimaginably wealthy mech company!"

"There isn’t a contradiction as long as the wealth is put to good use." Benjamin answered in the stead of the conservative faction. "The purpose of claiming ownership is not to enrich individual Larkinsons. It’s to secure the prosperity and continuation of the old family. The dividends would flow into the family’s coffers, which will mainly be used to fund our mech academies, upgrade the training of our mech pilots and ensure a generous pension for our retirees and any families our deceased family members have left behind."

All of that sounded noble, but that was hardly different from what Ves already intended! He was just a bit more direct about how he could benefit the Larkinsons!

"What a dumb excuse." Ves did not hesitate to tear down the veil in front of his grandfather. "The conservative faction is being hypocritical, and you know it. Why are you even speaking on their behalf? I thought you didn’t pick a side."

"Someone has to speak on their behalf in front of you." He said. "Being neutral doesn’t mean we lack sympathy for the conservative faction. Even though I dislike Ghanso as much as any decent Larkinson, the values he is standing for are still worth fighting for. While I’m your grandfather, I’m also a Larkinson. Since you are more than capable of standing up for yourself, it falls on me to represent the Larkinsons who have decided to stay in the Bright Republic."

Though Ves resented these circumstances, he knew that his grandfather was doing the right thing. As one of the oldest and most respected Larkinsons in the family, Benjamin took his responsibilities seriously. That was just the kind of man he was. Ves did not expect his grandfather to be anything less!

Though facing a family member who was dear to his heart made Ves inclined to soften his stand, this was too important for him to give any ground!

The Larkinson Family owned a fourth of the LMC! One of his goals in usurping the leadership of his family had always been to reclaim this ownership stake!

Of course, if Ves really wanted to, he could turn his back to the first company he founded and start anew with an entirely new venture.

While it would hurt him a lot to give up the tangible and intangible assets of the LMC, as a Journeyman he could still rely on his personal reputation to accelerate his second attempt!

The only issue was that Ves really didn’t want to part with the constant revenue earned from the continued sale of the Soldier product line. He also didn’t want to lose the rights of all of his designs, which had all been put under the umbrella of the LMC for administrative reasons.

Ves always contemplated refreshing the Blackbeak, Crystal Lord and other legacy designs. Losing the right to continue to work on pivotal designs like the Aurora Titan would be an exceptionally painful loss!

More than losing all of the assets as well as the formidable reputation of the LMC, Ves would also break some of his principles by abandoning the venture he started.

In the mech industry, it was considered to be dishonorable for a mech designer to abandon a company over something as banal as disputes over stock.

Mech designers always needed cash in their earlier years. When they were at their weakest, money was often difficult to come by. For investors to take a leap of faith and invest in the company of a mech designer was a very essential step in the rise of many successful mech designers.

For these mech designers to profit from the risks their investors had taken, only for the now-successful entrepreneurs to stop developing mechs for the company in order to start another company was very dishonorable behavior.

Of course, what use was honor in the face of concrete benefits?

With the power and personal wealth of a mech designer of their station, Journeymen no longer had to beg for scraps from wealthy industrialists and greedy investors. They could own a company completely, or as much as the state where they incorporated their new business allowed!

Yet as Ves already discovered, honor, fame and reputation played a very outsized role in the interactions that took place in the upper echelons of power.

When trust was hard to come by and laws too weak to be enforced, only trust and mutual benefit ensured that an agreement would continue to be upheld.

Ves knew he would have to pay an invisible but very severe price if he abandoned the LMC when it still held much promise.