"Meow meow!"
"I don't care if you can gain more benefits if you digest the P-stone more fully! I'm not feeding you for free!"
"Meow!!!"
"What kind of a gem cat are you if you don't produce any gems?!"
After Ves kept pressing his cat to cough up the goods, Lucky finally couldn't take it any longer and floated into the bathroom.
Half an hour later, the cat grumpily phased through the hatch with a shiny object resting in his paws.
"Meow."
A reflective white gem landed on his desk. Ves smiled and reached out to scratch Lucky's head. "It's about time."
"Meow!"
Lucky fussily darted out of reach and dove onto his bed before burying himself under the covers.
Ves paid no mind to the antics of his cat and studied his long-awaited new gem with his System vision.
[Accumulation of Spirit]
Allows a mech to bear a small quantity of spiritual energy.
He frowned at the description. Not only was it disgustingly vague and imprecise, its actual utility was unknown!
"What difference can this gem even make?"
The gem appeared distinctly underwhelming compared to the other gems that Lucky produced lately. While the Ardent Wish and the Sin of Altruism directly improved the aspects of a mech by twenty and forty percent respectively, all the Accumulation of Spirit did was to make the mech be capable of bearing a 'small quantity' of spiritual energy!
"LUCKY!"
"Meow!"
Lucky instantly turned intangible and phased through the bed and deck. His eagerness to flee proved that his cat had definitely taken liberties with the P-stone!
"Goddammit!"
Ves sighed. It was his fault for getting too caught up in his design work. He should have paid more attention to Lucky and forced him to produce a proper high-quality gem!
He reached into his pocket and retrieved a pouch. The Accumulation of Spirit joined the other valuable gems he held.
Even if the Accumulation of Spirit appeared weak, Ves still believed it was significant enough to help him form another masterwork mech.
"Every gem represents another potential masterwork mech!"
Ves wasn't sure how much he'd be able to improve his mech affinity if he crafted a second masterwork mech, but any boost was welcome. He already reaped a lot of benefits from his first masterwork mech.
He did not have much hopes of replicating his feat immediately. While he invested a lot of effort into the Desolate Soldier, he hadn't been able to replicate the same degree of fervor when he worked on the Devil Tiger design.
He did not lack for passion when he worked on his current design project. However, his mentality was different.
The Devil Tiger was one of the purest expressions of his creativity, unbound by existing rules or taboos.
The Desolate Soldier on the other hand was a product made for the market. Ves had to work around so many limitations in order to conform to market demand.
"There's a huge difference between passion projects and business projects."
The former satisfied his creative desires while the latter advanced his business interests. His actual tastes diverged from the current iteration of the Desolate Soldier.
If he followed his whims more closely, then the mech design would have probably looked substantially different!
He sighed. "I can't expect to ignore the demands of the market and sell lots of mechs. For mass market mechs, conforming to the tastes of my customers is even more essential!"
This was his first time he tried to compete for market share in a high-volume product category, and he did not wish to impose too many weird ideas in his upcoming product.
"Even if my work isn't completely satisfying to me, selling lots of mechs brings its own form of satisfaction!"
As long as he sold a lot of mechs and earned a lot of money, he gained the capital to fund other passion projects!