The Mech Touch

The moment the lights shone down on the Aurora Titans, the crowd all eagerly studied the impressive-looking machines.

They were big! Almost every person had seen numerous mechs before, and they developed a pretty good eye for how large they should be. The Aurora Titans were considerably larger and bulker than even the most encumbered medium mechs!

The Aurora Titan was a mech that defied the conventional weight classes!

After the attendees got over the huge bulk of the mechs, they began to take in their appearance. From their marblish white coating to the partially unfolded flight systems starting to glow, the mechs immediately looked remarkable!

Ves even had the mechs run their Rescue Particle Generators in order to enhance their visual flair from behind. The light glowing clouds of golden particles made it appear that the mechs were gods in the form of machines!

Yet perhaps the most remarkable aesthetic feature of the mechs would have to be their lizard-like heads mounted on top of their titanic humanoid frames! The sight of these heads amplified the sensation that the crowd wasnʼt looking at a bunch of mechs, but rather a pack of living, breathing exobeasts!

A very faint thrum ran through the floor of the Grand Skywardʼs main hall. Ves ordered the technicians to run a heartbeat-like sensation through everyoneʼs bodies at the moment the light shone down on the mechs.

At the time, nobody understood why Ves ordered such a thing. Such vibrations might irritate the crowd and make them feel that Ves tried too hard to make his mechs look more impressive.

Yet the reality of the situation was that the Aurora Titans already impressed the audience even without the use of tricks. The low thrum the audience felt right now happened to resonate with the aura released by the mechs. The Shield of Samar piloted by Jannzi Larkinson felt especially more lifelike in combination with the deep vibrations!

In fact, Ves modeled the thrum to emulate Qilanxoʼs deep heartbeats. Back when he was involved in the beast rider project, he interacted closely with the Sacred God that the Vandals and the Swordmaidens took captive.

Aside from her bulk and her primordial appearance, Qilanxoʼs deep heartbeats always managed to impress upon Ves of her might!

This small trick of showmanship was enough to amplify the first impressions of the audience towards the Aurora Titans. All five mechs appeared so vivid that most of the crowd immediately felt that their design was anything but regular!

Even if they couldnʼt articulate what they felt, hardly anyone would be able to state that the Aurora Titan design was boring! Just its artistically-sculpted facade alone was enough wow the audience!

Each Aurora Titan appeared on stage with their broadswords and their imposing tower shields in their hands.

Jannzi moved her mech first. The Shield of Samar took one step forward, shaking the floor enough to make everyone feel that step in their bones, and held its sword with its tip pointed aloft at the high ceiling!

It looked like a triumphant lizard-headed warrior basking in the adulation of the crowd!

A roar of excitement erupted from the audience! Helped along with plants from the LMC and NORA Consolidated, the rest of the people witnessing the spectacle spontaneously joined in the jubilant roars as they showed their admiration for the new mechs!

Ves continued to smile as he calmly pet his cat like some sort of evil mastermind. Just as the Aurora Titans basked in the glory of the moment, so did their maker.

A mech designer never designed a mech for themselves. They always aimed their products to be used by others. Therefore, they worked tirelessly to design mechs that would sell well in the market!

Even though the most difficult portion was yet to come, Ves already became inordinately pleased by the effects of his showmanship.

He calmly waited for the excitement to die down. As the crowd fell silent in anticipation for what Ves had to say next, they nonetheless continued to stare up at the mechs instead of Ves. How could a human ever be as interesting to see than those fantastic-looking machines?

”The Aurora Titan is a super-medium space knight design. Yes, youʼve heard that right. It is not a regular medium mech. Instead, it is heavier than even the most defense-oriented medium mechs on the market. It is roughly around twenty percent larger and heavier than regular mechs.”

Ves began to introduce the basic specs of his design. He described the Pisaro armor system, and put a positive spin on its practical and simple material composition. He also described the polarizing module and the alien crystals in detail and emphasized their strengths against directed energy weapons.

”The polarizing module is the defining feature of the Aurora Titan. From the start of the joint design project, I wanted to design a mech that made use of active defenses. There are several great advantages to the use of a polarizing module. In the best-case scenarios, it is able to completely negate any incoming fire through expending energy instead of armor plating. Think of the cost savings that you could achieve by employing the Aurora Titan through this fashion! One of the biggest expenses of every active outfit is the cost of repairs. In many cases, mercenary corps always succumb due to the ludicrous repair bills they rack up after a disastrous battle!”

The Shield of Samar showcased its polarizing module right this instant. A thin field of glowing white shone on the front of its tower shield. The mech activated its polarizing module live in front of the audience and the recorders with ease!

After a few seconds of holding a polarizing field on the tower shield, Jannzi quickly deactivated it and started to light up other sections of her mech with polarizing fields.

Its chest armor, its legs, its arms, its head, its back all lit up in white in quick succession. The skillful and precise manner in which Jannzi set the parameters of the polarizing fields earned a nod of appreciation from Ves. It took a lot of skill to control the polarizing module with such speed and precision. It looked especially impressive when Jannzi maintained three or four different polarizing fields at the same time!

”In this day and age, laser weapons are already dominant in most battles between spaceborn mechs. Their ubiquity will inevitably be boosted once the next mech generation commences. In such a time, normal medium space knights might not suit your needs. A single Aurora Titan possesses such a great defensive ability to resist laser weapons that fielding one of them is the same as fielding two or even three space knights! To outfits that field carriers with limited space, every mech they carry matters. While there is something to be praised about the allround application of regular medium space knights, in some instances they can achieve better results with a more specialized solution!”

Outside of its intrinsic X-Factor and the benefits it brought, the main selling point of the Aurora Titan was that it was the right tool for the right job! The Aurora Titan specialized in offering a solution to a problem that would only grow more prominent in the next ten to thirty years!

Now came the most difficult part of the presentation. Ves could not avoid the elephant in the room forever. One of the most important parts to any product announcement was to reveal their pricing.

After Ves finished his overview of the Aurora Titanʼs various qualities, he finally addressed the prices.

In order to illustrate his next points, projections of two simplified-looking Aurora Titans appeared next to the five real mechs.

Different from the physical show models, the projected mechs looked a lot more practical and less artistic.

”The Aurora Titan is principally a product of the Living Mech Corporation, so our companyʼs three-tiered model structure applies. NORA Consolidated will soon start taking orders for the bronze label and silver label editions of the Aurora Titan. The bronze label Aurora Titans will go on sale for 100 million credits while the silver label Aurora Titans are priced at 120 million credits.”

Another gasp struck the crowd, but not a welcome one this time.

100 million credits!

120 million credits!

Was Ves addled with stimulants or something?! How could he charge so much for what amounted to souped-up premium space knights?

Even so, the shocked reactions of the crowd was more muted than many experts anticipated upon hearing such ludicrous sums. Most people were still preoccupied in admiring the Shield of Samar and its sibling mechs to care about their prices!

Most people in the crowd were laymen who didnʼt possess the aptitude to pilot mechs. Neither did they have the funds or means at hand to buy a mech and pair them up with a mech pilot. They were just attending the product reveal for fun, so insanely high prices hardly affected them on a personal level.

The most abrupt reactions instead came from the handful of mech pilots, mech designers mech commanders and other people involved in the large and diverse mech community. They knew best what it meant to charge 100 million credits for the cheapest edition of the Aurora Titan!

Ordinary outfits could forget about fielding this luxury product! Despite the compelling auras and the imposing looks of the show models, various outfit officers and commanders bled their hearts as they thought of their modest accounts and their straining finances.

Why did Ves tease them with such a fantastic mech, only to drop a bombshell in their laps with his price announcements?!

Even so, the good impression they had already gained of the Aurora Titan simply increased the value of the design in their minds by another notch!

Humans loved expensive, high-quality products!

Just because the overwhelming number of people in the crowd could never afford an Aurora Titan didnʼt make their admiration for the mech lessen any bit!

Just like any luxury product, a very strong psychological effect was at play that made people admire expensive mechs like women loved expensive fashionable clothes or handbags!

Ves worked hard to present the Aurora Titan in the best light possible so that when it came time to announce their pricing, the crowd would think that every single credit was worth it to obtain such a fantastic machine!

”However, the pinnacle version of the Aurora Titan design comes in the form of our exclusive, limited edition gold label mechs that you see before you. Each gold label mech is personally handcrafted by yours truly. As the lead designer of the Aurora Titan, I can confidently state that any copies I fabricate by hand is superior to any other copy in the market, hence their exclusive status! The LMC will be responsible for taking a limited amount of orders for the gold label edition of the Aurora Titan design. They will go on sale for 150 million credits.”

150 million credits!

After the shock of the previous price announcements, the drastic price difference of 50 million credits between the cheapest and most expensive edition hardly fazed the crowd. All of them subconsciously believed that the gold label Aurora Titans fully deserved to be charged so much. They were as much of a work of art as they were functional mechs!

At this time, the party pooper finally stood up. While Ves could easily order the technicians to muffle Professor Pendletonʼs voice and even drop a dark cloud on his body to obscure his entire body, what would be the point?

Not only would such an act be extremely disrespectful towards a Senior, Ves did not even want to avoid the confrontation in the first place!

Ves had always been aware that his mech design would arouse a lot of controversy. Rather than fighting the battle over scattered marketing campaigns and interviews, he would rather hold the debate right here and now when he had already prepped the crowded over to his side!

Perhaps Professor Pendleton was aware that Ves had worked hard to settle the battlefield in his favor. It did not matter. A Senior did not have to pay attention to such trifles when he addressed a mere Apprentice!

”Mr. Larkinson.” He began. His voice was being amplified so that the entire hall could hear his words. ”I can no longer maintain my silence as you are attempting to peddle your unorthodox mech design. Not even first-year mech design students have come up with a worse mech concept than your Aurora Titan!”

The crowd instantly smelled a drama was about to take place! Some of the people even drew their attention away from admiring the show models to look up at the projection of Professor Pendleton being broadcasted to the audience!