[1-200] THE MECH TOUCH

Chapter 64: Second Mech

By the time Ves exited the transit shuttle, he breathed in the fresh and moist air of his home planet. Bentheim might have been a melting pot of trade and business, but it did not fare well hosting so many people in such a small planet. He led Lucky and his floating luggage carrier onto a nearby aircar and headed back to his home.

His workshop already received its first deliveries of materials by the time he returned. The rest of the raw materials he needed to build a modified Marc Antony trickled in throughout the day. The new security system installed by SASS did their work and performed thorough scans of the arriving delivery shuttles and the containers they carried.

Ves already summoned up the design in his System's Designer program and optimized his first commercial design. He had advanced his skills a little bit since he first completed this design, so Ves took advantage of it to marginally increase his mech's speed and armor specifications.

"It's only been a few weeks but I've already advanced this much with my upgraded skills." The speed of his progress astounded him. Only true elites nurtured by more advanced states could improve this fast.

With 3000 DP on the line, Ves treated this fabrication task with utmost importance. He could not fail his second production. Not only would it screw up the mission, it could also leave a bad track record on his thin record. A fifty percent chance of failing a delivery was not a good way to build his reputation.

As his optimizations to the design was complete, Ves began the tedious task of starting his fabrication. First, he unpacked his raw materials and sorted them out. He checked each lot for their integrity and completeness.

Fortunately, despite having bought these materials as surplus from the open market, they had all been delivered as promised. The MTA took a dim view on such manipulations, so they guaranteed all the trades happening under their watch. With such a formidable backing to rely on, Ves had high expectations for the deliveries he paid good money for. He spent up to 18 million credits to get them to his workshop.

"Everything is prepared. Now all I need is to get in the right mood."

His modified variant was still expected to fulfill the same role. However, its changed appearance demanded a slightly different set of priorities. Ves had to add the goal of looking good to his list of things to focus on when building the mech.

"I know the design looks great. All I have to do now is to convert that virtual projection into a very real entity."

While he set a firm deadline of 7 days, Ves did not rush his fabrication. He tediously drew out the most important task, which was fabricating all of the Marc Antony's parts without any errors. His familiarity with the process along with the consolidation of his fabrication skills allowed him to produce most parts without any issue.

The HRF armor plating took the most time to come into being, though once he knew all the knacks Ves encountered no risks in its formation. It had been designed with crude mass production in mind as the armor was supposed to be a cheap and highly processed armor variant.

To Ves, this was both an advantage and a disadvantage. The best part was that now that he knew how to form the trickier shapes, even braindead Ves could manage to produce a decent batch. However, Marlin Solutions who originally developed this formula had steered it towards making it as foolproof as possible, meaning that a lot of tedious steps in between had to be followed before the armor came into being.

In essence, its production still took a whopping two days out of his schedule. The mace and shield were relatively simple designs, yet their large mass and volume meant that it took a pretty long time for his aged 3D printer to produce all of their bulk.