Chapter 839. Near Completion (1/2)

With the breakdown effect breathing down their necks and an expert pilot of uncertain loyalties in their midst, Ves foresaw looming disasters over the horizon.

The biggest problem with the latter was that few believed that Venerable Xie would stab them in the back. After a long time of acclimating to the Vandals, the expert pilot became their new permanent fixture. With no outward signs of doubt and alienation, everyone thought the foreign expert pilot from the Dark Plasma Star Sector had fully integrated into this latest chapter in his life.

While Talkative Jimmy and some of his acquaintances may have become aware of some of the dangers due to Ves, how could they know the depth of the problem?

The biggest reason why Ves couldn't tell Jimmy or Captain Byrd of the magnitude of the problem was because he broke a serious taboo. Any attempt at brainwashing an expert pilot received serious condemnation no matter how benign the reason may be!

With Major Verle stuck directing the fleet in orbit, Ves had no other confidants to confide in this matter.

Even if he wanted to do something, now might not be the time. This was because the Vesians that managed to reach the Aeon Corona System already showed off at least one expert pilot.

Many expert pilots didn't put much distinction between landbound and spaceborn combat so long as they possessed an expert mech tailored for each environment. The only reason why most regular mech pilots only specialized in one environment these days was because it took too much training to train them to be good in both.

It was a matter of specialization.

A decent mech pilot already took fifteen years to train. If they spent all fifteen years training to excel in landbound combat, such a mech pilot could easily be twice as skilled than a mech pilot that split his attention between landbound and spaceborn combat.

Expert pilots didn't suffer from the same constraints. Their overall skill level and learning ability surpassed the human norm. Even experts who previously dedicated in landbound, aerial or spaceborn combat for all their lives quickly became proficient in operating in other environments soon after they advanced to their current ranks.

When the Vesian fleet initially repelled the ambush from the worshippers of Haatumak, they showed off at least one expert pilot. Though the battle took place in space, who knew if the Vesians deployed that same expert with their ground forces?

Furthermore, what if they brought more than one expert?

This was a very realistic possibility. Therefore, even if Ves wanted to go behind everyone's backs and do something to Venerable Xie, he could only hold in his impulses until they finally completed their confrontation with the Vesians.

Ves didn't believe the Vesians would be stumped by the breakdown effect. They would surely be able to make it to the Starlight Megalodon. There, the Vandals would finally be able to contribute to the war effort again by ruining the plans of their hated foes.

”The Vesians hate us so much that they won't even care about Venerable Xie's old allegiances. He's as much at risk of annihilation as the rest of us. He also needs to get a ride out of this star system.”

While the possibility that Venerable Xie would band together with their enemies still existed, Ves didn't think such an outcome was in the cards. There was no point in grooming mech pilots into his loyalists if that was the case.

Still, the man might be doing that in order to fool people like Ves and Jimmy.

What was Venerable Xie's endgame?

”Whatever the case, I'm nowhere near a solution than before. Not without turning every Vandal in my enemy and stripping our ground forces of an indispensable champion.”

Ves already developed some drastic plans, but he didn't think about enacting any of them before the Flagrant Swordmaidens encountered the Vesians.

For now, he returned to other matters. Now that a significant time went by since they gathered all of the experimental data, the beast rider project that Ves presided over finally came within reach of completing its goals.

After a day of collating data and incorporating the latest insights in his latest work, Ves borrowed a 3D printer and fabricated five different neural interfaces.

All of them shared the same starting point, but differed from each other in crucial areas. Ves wanted to fabricate even more variants, but figured that the risk of testing so many newly-developed neural interfaces posed too much of a risk.

Ves was not an expert in neural interfaces!

He reminded himself of this fact over and over again because the neural interfaces he designed might pose a significant threat to anyone who utilized them! Ves simply couldn't predict the danger because he lacked too much expertise in this difficult field!

Each neural interface consisted of a big metal box and a customized set of helmets. The beast rider only needed to wear the helmets, as this would be the medium that connected their minds to the hardware inside the box.

The box contained a lot of hardware that processed incoming and outgoing data from the mech pilot's helmet and the organic neural interface buried inside Qilanxo's skull. It also contained a lot of customized programming including the essential translation filter that Ves went through an enormous amount of effort to make.

Almost half of the data that Ves came in touch with contributed to the development of the translation filter.

Each neural interface variant also carried different versions of the translation filter.

When Ves placed the five sets of components on a long table, he admired the finished products for a bit. ”These are the fruits of our labor. So much time has passed, and it is only through gathering an extensive amount of data from performing a battery of tests on some captive wild gods that we completed it at all.”