After Ves exited from the System Space, he shared a deep look with his wife.
"I need to go back to my workshop right away!" She said as her eyes already became filled with inspiration. "I need to contact your uncle and share my latest idea for the Lionheart Mark II Project. He will definitely be receptive towards my suggestions!"
She disappeared before Ves could issue a response.
Gloriana had become completely invigorated by the possibilities opened up by the System!
Of course, nothing came for free. Aside from earning a paltry amount of AP per completed mech design, the only way she could quickly accumulate a lot of points was to work hard and complete a lot of Missions!
Her addition to the super-secret System club came as a blessing in this regard. Ves and Ketis alone lacked the time and mental fortitude to complete all of the Missions made available per period. They would definitely drive themselves crazy if they forced themselves to complete marathon after marathon with too little rest in between.
Having an additional user around enabled the two to share the burden and make everything more manageable.
So far, Gloriana had just entered the honeymoon period. She became full of enthusiasm as she not only regarded the System as a tool to accelerate her progress, but also unlocked brand-new possibilities for her mech designs.
The open god vessel and semi-closed god vessel concepts represented a huge advancement on her unique interpretation of living mechs.
Ketis completely opposed these ideas due to their dangerous dependence on external sources of power.
Gloriana's willingness to harness contamination as a weapon and a source of energy likely put a lot of future mech pilots in danger of getting brainwashed by the will of the masses.
If she tried to push this idea during the prior years, the Red Association would definitely crack down on her work and stop her from releasing her dangerous products!
However, with the native aliens continuing to press forward, the mechers had greater problems to deal with. The mech industry had already noticed that the RA's tolerance towards extreme solutions had quietly relaxed.
This gave Gloriana the perfect opportunity to realize her crazy but brilliant idea!
The Lionheart Mark II Project was the perfect starting point for her experiment.
Compared to other mech pilots, the Saint General possessed an inherently high resistance towards contamination.
As an ace commander, his willpower was not only much stronger than that of any mortal being, but he also possessed a strong affinity for the light attribute.
If darkness stood for degeneration, then light represented the opposite.
The light attribute possessed strong purification properties.
Light cleansed corruption. Perhaps Ark may not be completely immune to contamination, but his tolerance towards it was higher than that of any other pilot aside from much more powerful saints and god pilots.
If Gloriana somehow botched her implementation of the open god vessel, then Ark was unlikely to suffer any permanent harm.
In the event that he did… well, Ves did not particularly care.
Of course, if Gloriana wanted to use the Saint General as a test subject, then she first needed to obtain his consent.
This should not be a problem. Ark was greedy for power. His past actions and decisions already revealed a penchant for taking risks. He shared at least that much in mid-grade with Ves.
No matter whether Gloriana succeeded or failed in her first implementation, her willingness to realize such a bold and ambitious design concept exemplified her growth as a mech designer.
So long as her experiment produced a successful result, she gained the possibility of turning more mechs into open god vessels.
Despite their hidden dangers, the additional power promised by these post-living mechs was exactly what red humanity needed the most at this stage.
Even if mech pilots who relied too heavily on these machines ended up derailing their progression, it was worth it so long as they managed to defeat more phase leaders and slow down the enemy offensive.
After Ves reflected on how much progress his wife stood to make now that she gained access to the Mech Designer System, he felt more and more pressure to push his own design philosophy forward.
He decided to set a lot of different matters aside and direct most of his attention on his ongoing mech design projects.
Time passed by. In the ensuing days, the Premier Fleet followed by the Bluejay Fleet finally set off on its latest campaign.
Ves briefly halted his work in order to dress himself up and fulfill the duties of the patriarch one more time.
Everyone in the Premier Fleet as well as many other Larkinsons situated elsewhere tuned into the live broadcast and listened to his words.
"The alien advance has been relentless. The border regions are history. Already, multiple Middle and Lower Zones have fallen in the hands of the invaders, to the detriment of any red humans left behind. The death toll on our side is climbing at an astronomic rate. Despite the valiant efforts of the god pilots to clean up the alien invaders, it is too difficult for them to overcome the massive disparity in numbers between our civilization groups. It is not an exaggeration to observe that our side is losing the Red War."
The air grew heavier among the Larkinson Clan as Ves pointed out this plain and obvious truth.
Many military organizations became increasingly brazen in their attempts to appropriate more starships.
Each day, the aliens conquered at least dozens of star systems previously occupied by humans.
Even if most of them did not host any large or well-developed colonies, they still housed at least hundreds of thousands if not millions of human settlers.
If they were lucky enough, the founders of the colonies arranged evacuations for all of the civilians.
Yet the increasing scarcity of starships had made it increasingly costlier and more difficult to arrange adequate transportation.
Many military organizations became increasingly brazen in their attempts to appropriate more starships.
Logistics had become a matter of life and death as far as they were concerned. They needed more and more shipping capacity to transport mechs, soldiers, supplies and spare materials to the active war theaters.
The Red Cabal understood the importance of logistics as well. The native aliens increasingly split up their weaker fleets and spread them out across numerous different star systems.
This placed the alien warships and starfighters in a better position to intercept human shipments.
The increased emphasis on commerce raiding and convoy interception made it even harder to keep the human defenders at the frontlines in good shape!
This caused the shortage of starships to exacerbate. There was little humans could do aside from forming larger and more defensible convoys, but this slowed down the shipment of goods and personnel by such a considerable extent that they routinely arrived too late to make a difference.
The increasing shortage of hulls caused more states and pioneers to make the unconscionable decision to leave the vulnerable populations to their own devices.
At least the Final Glory line was finally beginning to catch on in the mech market.
When the abandoned residents had no recourse left, they generally made two different choices.
The first one was to hide as best as possible. They either attempted to hide in the woods or drill deep underground.