The Undying Mecha Emperor

For the foreign reader, let me explain a little bit about the Mecha Industry in the Chinese Federation.

Let us begin with the core of the Mecha Industry.

The Mecha Blueprints.

Mecha blueprints, like all other machinery blueprints, are divided into civilian and military categories.

Most civilian mechas are like normal cars on the road. They are commercialized and mass produced with beauty, speed, efficiency, quality and profit in mind.

Some civilian mechas look really cool and have excellent performance statistics. Others are workhorses, and yet others are antiques and collector items.

Like cars, all types of civilian mechas exist.

And like cars, there are best selling mechas within the industry.

These blueprints are guarded like the money making treasures they are by civilian mecha companies. It would be impossible to gain access to these sorts of blueprints.

However, to encourage the growth of mecha companies, the Chinese Federation had made several basic mecha blueprints public, and encouraged mecha designers to work on these public blueprints and upgrade them.

These mecha designers are then able to work on these basic designs and put their personal touch into upgrading them.

Then they can put their upgraded blueprints for sale to the National Mecha Design Agency, who will buy them at a generous price if their work meets a certain standard.

Their blueprints will then end up as public property as well, allowing the next aspiring mecha designer to take it and work on it further.

Using this method, the Chinese Federation had created lines of highly advanced mecha with thousands of creative variations.

Additionally, to regulate the Mecha Designer community, the Chinese Federation had also created a grading scale.

Mecha Designers are divided into seven distinct grades.

Newbie Mecha Designer.

Novice Mecha Designer.

Intermediate Mecha Designer.

Advanced Mecha Designer.

Master Mecha Designer.

Grand Master Mecha Designer.

Mecha Architect.

Each grade had access to a more complex and powerful mecha blueprint than that below it within the public repository.

Such a policy had led to an explosion in the number of mecha designers within the Chinese Federation.

Thousands of blueprints were being worked on at any given day, and hundreds were being submitted to the National Mecha Design Agency for review and sale.

With so many blueprints being worked on, the next aspect of the Mecha Industry was, of course, the main beneficiary.

The Mecha Manufacturers.

Mecha Manufacturers did not need to spend huge amounts of money on cutting edge research, all they needed to do was to maintain a small but skilled team of Mecha Designers to modify and enhance the best mecha blueprint publicly available and then pay the National Mecha Design Agency a license fee to produce and sell them.

Most Mecha Manufacturers took this route and found great success.

Apart from them, there were also Boutique Mecha Manufacturers who chose to design their own mechas from ground up that cater to a niche market.

The producer of my Barbarian Class Mecha, the Soaring Dragon Mecha Company, was one such manufacturer.

With such a vibrant Mecha offering from the Manufacturers, the market for Mechas was also similarly full of life, and mechas soon became highly specific in their functions to meet all the unique needs of society.

All sorts of mechas with different specifications were produced, and they needed very specific materials to build.

Companies specializing in sourcing and supplying these needs started to sprout as well.

These companies themselves needed to employ the use of extremely powerful mechas to source the unique materials from deep within the earth, underwater and even far away in space.

All in all, the civilian mecha industry was booming.

However, if the civilian mecha industry was booming, then the military mecha industry was completely in supernova mode.

Every single military in the world was modernizing.

They were either transitioning into mechas, or were upgrading their old mechas into newer ones.

Being the unofficial third superpower in the world, the Chinese Federation sold tens, maybe even hundreds of thousands of mechas to other countries!

Ocean exploration and space exploration were exploding off the charts, and it was a time unlike any other time in the economy of the world.

At a time like this, having a blueprint is nothing out of the ordinary. But having a good blueprint is pretty rare indeed.

As such, you can imagine my excitement as I browsed the blueprints Instructor Blackwood had in his personal collection.

"Instructor Blackwood must be a pretty good Mecha Designer." I thought excitedly as my mind devoured the first few designs. "These mecha designs are pretty good! He must be at least an Intermediate Mecha Designer!"

My enhanced brain, my photographic memory and my deep understanding of white mechas allowed me to quickly identify the crucial aspects of the mecha blueprints and secure the information in my mind for future study.

The National Mecha Design Agency can afford to be picky and buy only the designs that had great potential and contained sparks of creativity in them.

As such, the designs I purviewed that day all gave me wave after wave of inspirations and ideas.

My mind was whirring at top speed as I thought of many different alternatives to create stronger, faster, more efficient mecha manifestations, all the while studying the blueprints in deep fascination.

The first few mecha blueprints were light mechas, but very ingeniously designed to maximize speed and firepower, bringing up their specs to near medium mecha levels at the expense of armor.

"Awesome! These mecha designs are so inspired and so high quality!" I thought to myself approvingly. "I can utilize the principles of aerodynamics and thruster positioning applied here into my own mecha manifestion. It wouldn't be an overhaul on my power, but raising it by five or six percent should not be a problem. On the grand scheme of things, it's great!"

I went on to the next few mechas which were medium mechas. Once again, the mecha designs were ingenious. As a jack of all trades, the medium mecha could do many things well, and as such, needed high specs across the board.

The medium mecha blueprints which Instructor Blackwood collected were similar in output, and were in general fifteen to twenty percent higher than normal medium mechas.

However, the awesome thing was, they all reached that same output level using very different methods!

Each was a clear exhibition of mastery at various aspects of mecha design.

One focused on achieving its high output by way of highly advanced mechanical design, while another did it by ingenious energy compression and manipulation.

Yet another one did it by sheer genius in energy conversion efficiency.

Each mecha blueprint was an eye opener for me!

I was chugging along steadily, finishing my greedy devouring of the seventh mecha blueprint when I finally started to flip to the eighth mecha.

For the past few seconds prior to that, I noticed in my extremely sharp periphery vision that Instructor Blackwood had started to keep one eye on me.

At first I thought it was to make sure I did not try to tamper with his TeachLink. Which was strange because there was definitely no way I could do that. The TeachLink was an extremely secure device which could only be operated by recognized users.

Instructor Blackwood had to specifically grant permission for me to even flip the pages of the mecha blueprint design folder.

However, when I opened the eighth mecha design, I finally realized what he was doing.

He wanted to see my reaction to the eighth mecha design!

And judging by the triumphant look that flashed across his eyes, he got what he wanted.

My jaw dropped as I couldn't help but shout.

"What the hell?"

The mecha blueprint that appeared before me was truly a wonder among wonders!

It was the blueprint of an Ultra Heavy Mecha.

But it was not just any Ultra Heavy Mecha, it was in the shape of a massive T-Rex.

It was obviously…

"Godzilla??" I whistled lightly in admiration. "I can see its appeal in terms of awesomeness and aggressive looks, but functionality wise…"

"This Mecha Godzira is not made to be the best in terms of performance, but to deliver nostalgic awesomeness to a generation who grew up watching its movies." Instructor Blackwood said rather proudly.

I nodded my head in understanding.

The Mecha Godzira was one of the "pretty boys", a mecha made with looks as its top priority.

Click. Click. Click.

My photographic memory instantly memorized its key features and internalized its design in my mind.

"Damn I can't wait to trample on my enemies using this epic design!" I remember thinking extremely excitedly and wishing that a mecha uprising that somehow required my intervention would suddenly take place near me!

"Hehehehe. Awesome, right? I am impressed you actually know about the Mecha Godzira. Work hard in my class, boy, and one day, this awesome and godly mecha design might just be yours!" Instructor Blackwood encouraged me.

I grinned widely at him and nodded vigorously.

"En. En. I will work hard to make sure I get this mecha blueprint. But I am sure you have more awesome ones! I will continue looking!" I said eagerly as I prepared to flip through to the ninth mecha.

But before I could do that…