If it became known that part of his knowledge base had reached the level of a Senior, then there was a possibility that he could still be connected to his Annihilator design.
Yet that was still unlikely.
Ves would worry a bit if the MTA got their hands on the Annihilator's design schematics, but only for a little bit. As for the mech designers that worked for Finlay's faction? Hah! They couldn't even get a single Journeyman to agree to incorporate taboo weapons in the Spyre Helix design!
Anyone less than a Senior or a perceptive Journeyman shouldn't be able to read his work as well as him. If an Apprentice appraised his design, they'd only pick up some surface aspects that were mired with falsehoods.
Only one thing bothered Ves a lot. As he put the finishing touches on his Annihilator design, he silently lamented his inability to express his distinctive design philosophy.
In some ways, it felt incredibly wrong for him to make no attempts at instilling life into the Spyre Helix Annihilator design.
Pretty much every other mech he designed or worked on benefited from his specialty. It felt extremely unnatural for him to work on a mech while trying his best to keep it as dead as possible.
Instead of concentrating his mind in order to concentrate on a distinct vision for his Annihilator design, he instead relaxed it as much as possible so that his mind was filled with chaos.
Though it impacted his productivity to a certain extent, Ves was far too good of a mech designer to let that hinder him. Even if he only spent a portion of his attention on designing his variant, he still did a good job.
Ves still experienced some discomfort, though. If not for his spiritual mask, his mentality would have rebelled much more!
The only part about him that seriously took issue was his design seed.
It turned out his design seed really didn't like it if he tried to muffle his design philosophy!
During many instances, Ves had the illusion that he was tearing himself in two. He tried so hard to pretend to be a different mech designer than 'Ves Larkinson, specialist in Spiritual Man-Machine Symbiosis' that he suspected that he could do some serious damage if he pushed it any further!
Fortunately, four days was short enough that his design seed only became somewhat disgruntled. While it constantly radiated disapproval, it didn't shift or alter in any significant fashion.
Ves mentally wiped his brow as he observed the state of his design seed. He hadn't really considered the damage he could do to his design seed. It seemed like designing a mech without leaving behind his fingerprints was far harder than he thought!
"What do you think?" Ves asked Nitaa.
His bodyguard had remained by his side all this time. She had been keeping an eye on Finlay's men stationed at the mech workshop.
"I am not a mech designer." She spoke. "All I see is a six-legged machine with lots of armor and weapons. Compared to the original design, this one is bigger on the weapon department and smaller on the armor department."
Ves shrugged. He couldn't expect anything more from a laywoman like Nitaa.
Her description wasn't wrong, though. Doom Crawlers were distinct heavy mechs that relied on heavy armor and heavy ranged firepower to lay waste against any opposition in their way.
Ves made a conscious choice to reduce the armor and increase the mobility of his Spyre Helix Annihilator.
The reduction in mass was a necessity since Ves had to make a lot of room to accommodate the larger and more potent weapon systems.
However, reducing the armor and some other stuff from the base model meant that his variant's mech performance index took a substantial dip.
In order to compensate for the loss in armor, Ves had no choice but to raise the mobility of his mech.
With the help of his deep understanding of mechanics, he managed to make his doom crawler variant a little bit faster than before. While the Spyre Helix Annihilator wasn't about to race across the surface of a planet anytime soon, the increase in mobility was still a welcome addition that brought up its performance index back to normal.
"In fact, the difference is a lot more drastic in low-gravity environments."
At 0.53 g, the Spyre Helix Annihilator weighed almost twice as less. How much nimbler did a heavy mech become when they suddenly fought against much less gravity than before?
Perhaps achieving a thirty percent speed boost was very much possible, even on rough terrain.
While this sounded like a huge increase, Ves did not forget that doom crawlers already moved as slow as a snail. Amplifying the speed of a snail by thirty percent just turned it into a faster snail. It was still nowhere near to matching the sprinting speed of a hare.
In any case, Ves no longer believed he needed to do anything to finish the commission.
"It's done!"
Now, he needed to see if the representative of the dark mercenaries accepted the modifications he made to the Spyre Helix design.