The Mech Touch (Web Novel)-Chapter 7160: The Return of the Prize Wheel

Ves pulled out the radiant lottery ticket from his System Space.

The ticket was quite precious and troublesome to acquire. He could only obtain it by fabricating a new masterwork mech of his own design.

There were other criteria. It had to be a serious project. His contribution had to be decisive enough.

He couldn’t just outsource most of the grunt work to the other members of the Design Department, only to swoop in at the last second and finish the project in person.

To claim that it was mainly his work was a form of professional dishonesty that he could not abide by. He was not that shameless enough.

This was why he hadn’t bothered to fabricate the first production models of the Bright Warrior Mark IV and so on. Their upgrades to the current mech generation were a bit too straightforward because that was all the subordinate mech designers could do. Without Ves spending enough time to reinvent the mechs in question, there was only so much they could innovate while still retaining the original character of the relevant product lines.

Ves also realized that the more high-ranking masterwork mechs became available, the less opportunities existed to earn radiant lottery tickets.

After all, mechs such as the Everchanger and the Phobos had already become masterworks. There was no way he could upgrade them to the next tier of craftsmanship anytime soon.

The best way to still earn radiant lottery tickets was to design new custom mechs for the next generation of expert pilots that were rising up from the expeditionary fleet.

Ves and his wife could also dedicate their valuable design time on servicing the needs of external high-ranking mech pilots such as the Glory Seekers.

However, the more they spent time on satisfying external clients, the less time they had left to meet the demands of their fellow Larkinsons.

It all came down to time. Ves and Gloriana had to juggle between many different needs. They could not simply drop everything and focus on maximizing the amount of radiant lottery tickets they could earn per year.

Wait.

Ves wondered how the System would react if both Ves and Gloriana contributed equally to a mech design project that ultimately yielded a new masterwork mech.

Would both of them be entitled to earn their own radiant lottery tickets, or would the System award it to the highest contributor?

It was an interesting question, and one that might very well get tested soon when they finally embarked on upgrading the Riot to her much more powerful incarnation soon.

Before all of that could happen, Ves first had to complete the present affair.

"Are you alright, Ves?" His wife softly asked as she approached his side. "You have been staring at that lottery ticket for an entire minute. Are you second-guessing your decision?"

Ves slowly shook his head. "No. I don’t have any doubts. It is just... this is my last radiant lottery ticket. This is my last shot at obtaining a miracle from the System. Until I earn another ticket, I can only rely on building up a reserve of Ascension Points."

"Let me guess. You have a persistent habit of draining your AP on anything that looks shiny."

He chuckled. "More or less."

"That is a discipline problem. You need to set limits on yourself. Now go make use of the Wishing Fountain. Nothing will change if you keep standing here like an indecisive child."

She was right. Ves knew that there was not much chance that he would change his mind on the matter.

Despite all of the gains from the recent enlightenment fruit and the prizes from the golden lottery tickets, none of them granted him the degree of certainty that was necessary for him to build up enough confidence to win the leadership challenge.

There may be a possibility that he was overestimating the combat strength of all of those Ascended Giants, but he did not think that was the case.

These were all professional soldiers who had spent decades if not a century on polishing their fighting skills.

Perhaps they may be new to fighting on the scale of a phase lord, and perhaps they did not have enough time to master their newfound spatial abilities, but their excellent martial prowess could not be denied.

Ves strongly believed that up to a certain extent, skill trumped brute force.

Saint Dise had proven this time and time again as she fought against one powerful monster or another.

Out of all of the high-ranking mech pilots of the Larkinson Clan, she embodied this principle the most. Her extraordinary swordsmanship allowed her to outfight opponents that possessed much larger bodies or had more hard power at their disposal.

The Ascended Giants might not be able to match the ace pilot’s exaggerated skill in swordsmanship, but they should all be highly skilled at wielding their chosen weapons.

Ves could not allow himself to be the monster to a fighter that was at least as competent as a Swordmaiden in terms of fighting skills!

Only by closing the gap would he be able to win not just one, but multiple duels on a consecutive basis.

If he did not remedy this obvious fault, then he may as well put on a show and do his best to lose gracefully four times in a row.

"I need this." He told himself. "I could have gotten away with remaining an amateur so long as I stick with being a mech designer, but now that there is an opportunity to effectively gain control over the Phase Lord Department, I cannot miss this opportunity. I need to give this a shot, and to do that I need to become more similar to the Ascended Giants that I hope to command in the future."

Even if the Dark Apostle would be doing most of it, Ves did not really mind too much as the alter ego was essentially another part of himself.

So long as they shared the same true body, their interests would remain aligned to a degree.

Of course, that did not stop them from scheming on how to kick the other one out if they could.

Both of them considered ’their’ body to belong solely to one of them. How could they possibly remain happy if they were forced to share to the point where they had to formulate a weekly schedule?

It was absurd!

Ves intended to look into this problem at a later date.

For now, he had no choice but to give the Dark Apostle a better shot at defeating the leaders of the Ascended Giants and impress his future subordinates with his superior combat prowess.

"Please give me an enlightenment fruit that teaches me how to wield a spear." He beseeched the Wishing Fountain. "It would be best if the fighting method also draws upon the power of the life, metal or darkness attributes."

He was not sure how extensively the Wishing Fountain narrowed down the selection, but it did not hurt to be precise.

Ves finally tossed the ticket into the fountain water. frёewebηovel.cѳm

Just like in previous cases, the water began to light up in rainbow colors.

A sense of grandeur and momentum began to radiate from the Wishing Fountain.

Both Ketis and Gloriana looked impressed at the lightshow. They grew more and more interested in what the Wishing Fountain would produce.

Soon enough, a very familiar wheel appeared in front of the three mech designers.

"...Is that a prize wheel?"

"Yup. That is what happens when you use up the higher grades of lottery tickets. It is not completely random. You can narrow down the category of prizes, and you can also exert at least a bit of control over what you want to obtain. That doesn’t mean it is easy to get what you want, but at least the Wishing Fountain is generous enough to give us agency over the prize draw."

Ves generally liked the prize wheel because it was simple and easier to predict than the other forms of prize draws.

He especially disliked the time where he had to navigate in a little boat across choppy and windswept waters.

Gloriana looked dubiously at the prize wheel. "How can you control what kind of prize you can draw? This wheel looks as if it has considerable heft. You will need to calculate how much force you need to exert for it to spin just enough for it to land at the desired prize, it is impossible to make a correct estimation if we do not know the mass of this wheel and how much friction is generated."

"You’re right." He said. "That is why I just do it by feel. This is not a problem that you need to solve by math. Trust me. From the moment you spin the wheel, you can already get an impression of how heavy it is. You will have to guess how much more force you need to exert to make it spin far enough."

"What if your guess is wrong?"

"Then I will still get something from the Wishing Fountain. It just won’t be the prize that I had my eye upon." Ves shrugged.

He had used up enough lottery tickets to make peace with this reality. Lotteries were not supposed to be reliable dispensers of goods in the first place.

They began to examine the wheel. Just like before, the outer edge of the wheel depicted many different symbols that alluded to the prizes they were associated with. It was up to Ves and the others to interpret what they meant.

"Well, I believe the Wishing Fountain has answered your pleas, because many of these symbols depict spears." Ketis mentioned. "Not all of them, though. At least a quarter of them depict other weapons such as swords, knives, halberds, hammers and even fists."

Ves frowned. "We will have to avoid them, then."

"That is easier said than done. These alternative weapon skills are not placed in their own quadrant, but they are instead dispersed across the wheel."

"Of course. Damn Wishing Fountain." He muttered.

Aside from depicting the weapons that the skills were likely related to, the symbols also depicted other clues on what the fighting styles emphasized.

For example, there was one hammer symbol that was accompanied by wavy symbols that alluded to tremors. This was likely a weapon skill that could produce area damage by shaking the surrounding environment, or inflict oscillating damage upon impact, similar to signature ability of the Oscillating Fist.

The fact that these symbols were open to interpretation made it difficult to know for certain. Who knows whether Ves or Ketis read them correctly.

"Look here, Ves. This might be what you are interested in." Gloriana pointed at a symbol of a spear that was surrounded by three dark and ominous ghost-like entities.

Ves frowned. He did not really have a good feeling about the possible prize associated with this symbol.

"Just because I have a preference for the darkness element doesn’t mean I want to fight alongside an army of evil ghosts or something. I need to pay attention to my image. If I come across as a demon, people will eventually treat me like one. I will take this if there is nothing better for me, but I would prefer to aim for a different prize."

He soon spotted a possible skill that appealed to him a little better.

It was a spear that punched straight through a metal plate.

"This is probably a skill that focuses on increasing the penetration power of the spear tip and nothing else." Ketis judged. "It is probably based on the metal element. It may be one-dimensional, but it is enough to dominate a fight. At best, you can turn any transphasic weapon into a superdimensional weapon in terms of piercing power. You can force all of those Ascended Giants to go on the defensive if you have mastered this capability."

That sounded nice, but Ves was not quite sure whether it worked that way.

"There is not enough information to tell us whether the enhanced penetration power is also effective against energy defenses." He said. "The biggest impediment to defeating phase lords is not their armor or their gigantic true bodies, but their spatial barriers. That is what I need to overcome first."

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