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The Survivalist Faction possessed an open mindset and mastered a high degree of eclectic alien and unconventional technologies.

The Transhumanist Faction conducted the deepest studies in the field of human transcendence.

The Mech Supremacist Faction sought to make mechs as ubiquitous as possible by increasing their value proposition with the help of more effective technological advancements.

Much of these factions actually overlapped with each other. None of them were extreme enough to exclude technology that was more aligned with the other factions of the Meeh Trade Association.

This was because every faction was formed by large coalitions of like-minded high-ranking mech pilots and mech designers.

Each of them may have gathered together in order to advance their common causes, but they were individually quite diverse and comprehensive.

For example, the Polymath might align herself with the Survivalists for ideological reasons, but her extensive works were also highly desirable to the Transhumanists and the Mech Supremacists.

While it was indeed the case that every faction was comprehensive enough to possess basic competencies in most fields, they still retained a strong advantage in their main priorities.

For example, out of all of the factions of the Mech Trade Association, the Mech Supremacists possessed the greatest understanding of masterwork mechs!

Professor Gina Cavendish did not actually specialize in this field, yet she studied it extensively enough to provide Ves and Gloriana with a lot of useful tips and insights!

"Many mech designers have a great obsession towards masterwork mechs." She explained to the two as her team continued to examine the Phobos from top to bottom. "Their preoccupation is understandable. Masterwork mechs allow us to qualitatively increase the effectiveness of our products relative to warships. The Common Fleet Alliance has never invested nearly as much resources into them because it cannot possibly exploit masterworks to the same extent."

Warships were too big and complex to be made by a single individual in a short amount of time. They also had to be produced over longer stretches of time, which made it a lot harder to rely on serendipity or an inspired mood to elevate the quality of an entire vessel.

"So one of the reasons why your Association puts so much emphasis on masterwork mechs is because you want to beat the CFA?" Ves questioned.

"Exactly. Our rivalry with the fleeters may resemble a childish squabble to you, but the stakes are enormous. If we cannot make our mechs more effective through quantitative means, we can only excel through qualitative means. The difficulty of doing so is ten times, a hundred times or even a thousand times more difficult, but that means that mech designers such as ourselves will also have to be much better than the researchers and the engineers employed by the Common Fleet Alliance."

Ves had never heard that the Common Fleet Alliance employed any transcendent creators comparable to Master Mech Designers and Star Designers.

It appeared that the fleeters truly stuck to the conventions of the past by relying on purely mortal scientists to advance their technologies!

They might not be as brilliant and inspired as high-ranking mech designers, but they could easily be trained and educated en masse. The CFA could raise so many of them that it was easy to form a huge number of research groups that collectively invented a lot of useful new tech over time.

Ves understood only recently that the fleeters did not possess anything comparable to the Kingdom of Mechs.

This meant that the warship lovers did not develop a dependency on external conditions!

Their tech worked under every circumstance!

Their warships could easily be mass produced by any well-equipped and well-supplied shipyard!

Any scientist could follow-up on the research completed by others!

The Common Fleet Alliance truly embodied a focus on quantity over quality in all of its aspects.

That was not to say that the CFA neglected quality, but it only did so selectively whenever it could afford to care about such matters.

"Since you understand so much about masterworks, can you explain where they come from?" Ves boldly decided to ask a more fundamental question. "I mean, it is not really natural that creations like my Phobos suddenly transform in ways that I cannot explain just because it has passed a certain set of criteria. Who has set them? Why do they exist? What is the reason that high-quality products undergo such a transformation in the first place?" Professor Cavenish crossed her arms and adopted a serious question. "These are deep and profound questions that you are not yet qualified to ask. However, on account of you and your wife's contributions to our Association, I am willing to share a small part of my own understanding of this subject. Perhaps you may have already touched these subjects due to your own extensive track record of producing masterwork mechs."

She turned around and gazed up at the Phobos.

"Our universe is old. Our astrophysicists and other scientists are constantly debating about the true age range of the environment we live in, but the point is that an enormous amount of time has passed since the creation of everything and the present day. We are far from the first race to conquer the stars and harness the power of nature. There are many races and population groups that have preceded our rise. Many of them only managed to build a brief interstellar civilization before they inevitably became lost and forgotten with the passage of time. The only traces they have left behind are rotting ruins and faded monuments that remind the few of us that they once existed."

Ves thought about two distinct groups when Professor Cavendish spoke these philosophical words.

The luminar race had once mastered a lot of impressive crystal and energy-based tech. They also had individuals that managed to reach transcendence.

Primordial humans were the second group that he had in mind. Their impact on the Milky Way and the surrounding dwarf galaxies was much greater. hiving traces of this ancestor race in the form of the Five Scrolls Compact still persisted even if most primordial humans had already perished.

"It is difficult for an extinct race to leave a legacy of their existence behind." Ves emotionally spoke. "The stronger and more successful ones should have been able to make their presence felt more easily due to their greater works." Professor Cavendish looked pleasantly surprised by this answer. "That is a good description. The common consensus within our faction is that somewhere in the cosmos, a powerful alien civilization or individual had once grown so powerful that it became possible to change the fabric of our universe, and not to a small extent."

"What you are describing is a god!" Gloriana gasped.

"Exactly This is not a god that is comparable to that of a Star Designer or a god pilot. The latter two may be regarded as deities in the flesh, but they are still subject to many limitations. The 'higher gods' that are central to our theory have grown far beyond that. For whatever reason, these powerful entities completed a grand process that has enabled them to permanently add their own rules to laws of reality. You can understand it as rewriting the source code of our universe."

How powerful must one be in order to change the universe in its entirety?

Since Master Mech Designers were only able to affect reality by relying on the power of the Kingdom of Mechs, Ves theorized that Star Designers may have become powerful enough to accomplish this feat by themselves.

Yet even then, Star Designers should only be able to induce small-scale changes, or else all science known to humanity would have changed beyond recognition by this time!

Still, as much as Ves was willing to buy the theory that an incredibly powerful 'higher god' waved his hand and remade reality to accommodate the existence of masterworks, grand works and so on. It sounded like an incredibly lazy answer that sounded no different from the unfalsifiable claims of many religions.

As a highly secularist organization, the Mech Trade Association shouldn't be so prone to embracing these kinds of arguments!

Unless...

"Does your faction have any proof that supports this theory?" Ves critically asked.

Professor Cavendish gave him an apologetic smile. "The answers that I can give you exceed the scope of your authority and rank. I can only say that many clever and successful mechers are convinced by this theory, including Star Designers who are the closest to approaching the power of these higher existences."

Few if any of those people were stupid! If this was the case, then perhaps the theory was much more likely to approach the truth!

Ves personally guessed that the higher gods in question were extremely powerful primordial humans, but they may as well be aliens.

Craftsmanship was universal to every intelligence race. Ves could not blindly assume that the once-powerful primordial humans were responsible for bringing forth every wonder.

"So what does this all mean?" Ves asked. "An ancient precursor race put all of this effort into rewriting reality to grant additional properties to well-made products. Is it just because these supposed 'gods' have a high appreciation of craftsmanship, or is it because they want to establish an additional means to empower their own creations?"

"Any of those reasons can be true." The MTA Senior replied. "We can only be certain about the information that we know. In general terms, masterworks are a reflection of an altered reality where their existence is made possible. One of the reasons why they are so prized is that they can more easily come into contact with the greater forces that I have mentioned earlier. The better and more exquisite a work, the more extensively the fabric of reality unravels around them. The walls that separate the higher dimensions grow weaker, making it easier to channel other energies and manifestations."

Both Ves and Gloriana widened their eyes in shock!

This was a critical insight that allowed both of them to connect a lot of guesses and theories together!

The pair looked at each other to confirm that they made the same realizations.

No wonder mech pilots broke through with greater ease when piloting masterwork mechs!

If the barriers between the higher dimensions became thinner, it became easier for the pilots to get into contact with extraordinary phenomena.

It was similar to how the distance between the material realm and the imaginary realm was a lot thinner in the Nyxian Gap, but in this case it was localized around a single well-made machine.

Cavendish's answer also explained why masterwork mechs were also a lot more effective at channeling spiritual energy and true resonance!

If this was the case, then the current iteration of the Phobos was bound to become an even greater terror than Ves originally envisioned!

The spiritual fiends that made up the Geist System could inflict much more physical damage because they needed to exert less effort to bridge the divide between the two realms!

Ves came up with an interesting theory.

"If masterwork mechs are able to distort the fabric of reality to a greater extent, then one of the requirements to making them is to be able to do this as well, am I correct?"

Professor Cavendish looked surprised at him. "That is an excellent deduction, Mr. Earkinson. It is hardly the only variable that can contribute to the creation of a masterwork mech, but we believe that this is indeed the case. This is also why only Senior Mech Designers and higher are able to fabricate masterwork mechs. Only they have reached a level of psionic power that can create an environment that is conducive to their formation. However, the substantial amount of masterwork certificates under your name has placed this theory in doubt. Our assumptions are either mistaken or incomplete. Would you like to provide a comment?"

Ves nervously smiled. "You can just treat me as an outlier. I have... special reasons why I was able to make so many masterwork mechs at the Journeyman stage."