Throughout his stay in the Terran Confederation, Ves experienced some of the breadth and depth of Terran mech design.
It was as if scarcity didn't exist here. Mech designers faced much fewer limits with regards to cost, resource scarcity and manpower constraints.
This meant that mech designers could easily dump a lot of expensive parts into their mechs, jacking up their prices to insane levels and elevating the difficulty of piloting to inhuman levels.
Yet such insanely overperforming mechs still sold in droves!
Mech buyers in the Terran Confederation were some of the most affluent people and organizations in the galaxy. The mech pilots they hired exhibited capabilities that far exceeded their lesser peers in the galactic heartland and the galactic center!
It wasn't an exaggeration to say that mech designers in the Terran Confederation engaged in the very forefront of mech design!
The innovations they developed in the pursuit of greater performance slowly trickled down to the less-advanced regions of human space. Ves already foresaw that many trends in the Terran Confederation would spread to the galactic rim in time.
The current mech duel between Axelar Streon and Waltz Nexbern was a case in point! In this battle between an old-style hero mech and an ultramodern multipurpose mech, the latter showcased exactly why they became the dominant mech type in the most advanced states!
The War General piloted by the Haspel mech athlete shed its exterior armor plating and parts like taking off a coat! A much slimmer light mech emerged from underneath which flourished its Destroyer Halberd in an energetic manner.
A multipurpose mech possessed endless depth!
It took a lot of effort to exhaust their entire bag of tricks!
When the War General turned from a heavy mech to a light mech, Ves felt like puking. Terran mech designers were very creative with their mechs!
The technical challenges to design a mech within a mech were exceedingly difficult to resolve. To make both forms perform optimally in combat without negatively impacting each other required a lot of creative solutions!
"Whoever designed the War General is a great mech designer!"
Observing the War General in battle was like seeing a masterpiece of mech design up close. Ves wasn't sure whether the War General was designed by a Senior or a Master.
With the population base of the Terran Confederation, the latter possibility could not be ruled out!
Yet despite knowing that Ves faced a mech designed by a Master, he did not believe that defeat was inevitable!
Despite being designed with the aid of an auto designer, the Ouroboros consisted of very high-end parts and exotics. Axelar's status as a Streon clansman was not for show! The mechs he routinely designed and materialized may be crappy, but their sheer performance still elevated them into the upper ranks of mechs!
Therefore, from a material and technological standpoint, the Ouroboros and the War General stood roughly equal. Neither side used more superior materials and technology. The War General may have started off bigger and employed more sophisticated modules, but none of them gave the mech a decisive edge against its current opponent.
Only two factors really mattered in deciding the outcome of this mech duel.
First, the mech pilots.
Having fought so long, Ves gained a good measure of Axelar Streon and Waltz Nexbern's piloting skills.
Each of them stood head and shoulders above any non-expert pilot from the galactic rim. The genetic and biological augmentations they received accelerated their minds and strengthened their bodies firmly into transhuman territory, allowing them to mentally and physically keep up with extremely high-performing mechs!
Due to his high birth, Axelar attended the best mech academies in the Terran Confederation.
Although he hated every second of it, the mech instructors made sure that Axelar squeezed the most out of his A-grade genetic aptitude. He possessed very solid fundamentals and his operation of his mech was clean and efficient!
Waltz Nexbern did not possess the raw talent or privileged upbringing of someone like Axelar. Instead, he grew up from humble roots and managed to make a decent start in the mech games.
After decades of fighting and dueling, he grew up to become a considerably wily and tricky mech athlete! Age, experience and constant training allowed Waltz to hold a considerable edge over Axelar!
Although the mech athlete's piloting style incorporated a small amount of unnecessary flashy moves, Waltz was still superior to Axelar in every aspect aside from reaction speed!
If Axelar wanted to achieve victory, he needed to put his faith in the design concept of his mech!
Although the Terrans considered hero mechs to be overly simplistic, Axelar already witnessed first-hand that the Ouroboros took full advantage of this aspect!
The Ouroboros not only managed to withstand the overwhelming attacks of the War General, but also retain much of its battle effectiveness in the process!
Certainly, the War General's close-ranged plasma discharge inflicted serious damage to Axelar's mech. Most of the detailed reliefs of creation and destruction lost definition due to being subjected to a destructive shower of plasma.
In fact, the entire front of the mech lost its original two-toned color scheme and took on a scorched and bedraggled appearance!
"It's mostly surface damage, though. The internals of the Ouroboros is still in good condition!" Ves avidly noted.
The thick and resilient armor plating of the mech might look awful, but it did its job in protecting the more vulnerable parts of the mech from damage!
From resisting neutron beams to bouncing off gauss rifle projectiles, the considerable investment that Ves had put into the armor system of the Ouroboros paid off in spades! A regular multipurpose mech of its weight class would never be able to remain standing after suffering through so much hell!
While the Ouroboros didn't appear very fancy anymore, the audience nonetheless stopped regarding it with contempt. As Terrans, they weren't stupid, and they could recognize the inherent advantages of the mech type.
"Believe in yourself and believe in the Ouroboros your other self designed." Ves mentally spoke to Axelar. "You aren't piloting a mech, you are embodying a god of creation and destruction! One hand creates, the other hand destroys! No other power is required to defeat your opponent!"
Ves kept encouraging the mech pilot in order to keep his spirits high. If not for his constant pep talks, his host would have defaulted back to his cowardly ways!
He could tell that it was working. Axelar continually shed his apprehension and no longer doubted or second-guessed himself. His connection with his mech continued to deepen, and his operation of his mech became smoother and more fluent.
Unlike with Eloise Pelican, nothing exceptional happened. The conditions to elevate Axelar and his mech into something even greater simply weren't present.
Still, Ves sensed that the man-machine connection between Axelar and the Ouroboros grew increasingly more intimate. And due to his presence in Axelar's mind, Ves was also starting to feel a faint connection to the mech he designed!
The Ouroboros contained a piece of Axelar! It also contained a piece of Ves! It was like a child who just reunited with its parents after a long period of separation!
A three-way spiritual connection took place that united the mech, mech pilot and mech designer into a single formless identity!
Axelar acted as the main controller while the Ouroboros was the executor of his decisions. Ves played a very small role as he did his best to hide his true nature from Axelar. Only a faint connection tied him to Axelar and the Ouroboros, but it was enough for him to pass on some of the deep technical insights he gained on the strengths and weaknesses of the Ouroboros and the War General!
Right now, the slimmer version of the War General utilized its high mobility to its fullest potential! The mech flitted and darted around the slower and damaged Ouroboros and delivered fast and powerful strikes with its halberd that Axelar struggled to block with the sword of his mech!
A Destroyer Weapon was incredibly destructive, and with the damaged state of the Ouroboros, it could not withstand too many direct hits!
If that wasn't bad enough, the recently-emerged light mech also employed integrated weapon hardpoints built into the shoulders and torso of the mech! They fired a constant stream of projectiles at the Ouroboros which slowly degraded its damaged armor even further!
Even as Axelar did his best to withstand the onslaught, Ves kept analyzing the latest form of the War General.
"Don't be fooled by its high exertion and its overwhelming offensive power. This light mech is peaking its performance. As long as you can withstand its attacks for at least twenty minutes, it will run out of steam! The War General's endurance is substantially less than our Ouroboros!"