Chapter 7288: Game-Changing Elixir

Ves knew that the policy changes regarding the safety limitations of neural interfaces could raise the frequency of breakthroughs. At the risk of suffering serious harm, mech pilots would find it much easier to stimulate themselves into exceeding their prior peak performance levels! He also knew that the Star Designers had secretly decided to change the Red Kingdom to loosen the breakthrough parameters. No longer were mech pilots restricted from triggering an apotheosis because their morality was too dark or because their minds weren't healthy enough. When Ves took into account that the changes to a neural interface could work together with the changes made to the Red Kingdom, then the combined boosts should result in a significantly higher breakthrough rate!

It was difficult for Ves to pin a solid number on it, but he wouldn't be surprised if pilot breakthroughs became 2 or 3 times more prevalent! Of course, the negative consequences of all of these changes were also considerable. Botched and tainted breakthroughs would definitely become more prevalent due to the Red Kingdom's higher tolerances. The average quality of expert pilots and ace pilots in the following years would also experience a noticeable drop. The mechers no longer cared if the champions of the next generation turned out to be angels or demons. Both were fine as long as they contributed to the war effort!

Ves thought about the implications of these actions. The mechers should know how dramatic these changes affected society. Desperate mech pilots would have a greater chance of attaining power, but they might not necessarily be the most stable of their kind. A lot of power would fall into the hands of future champions who would make the Evolution Witch look like an angel. Human infighting would exacerbate. Ves did not see any way for all of these messy and egotistical champions to remain friendly with each other. While the ongoing wars would keep most of them honest for the time being, it only took a handful of bad apples to provoke conflicts that severely violated public order.

The Red Association should have been able to predict these consequences, yet they persisted regardless of these concerns. This told Ves that even if many of the Association's leaders still wanted to maintain a certain degree of stability, they were willing to compromise their stance in order to make the mech community stronger. The weak and inadequate would perish in greater numbers, but their sacrifices would not be in vain because they could spawn many new expert pilots and ace pilots in the coming years. How much more of them would show up remained to be seen. Ves already intended to track the relevant statistics carefully.

Just as Ves thought that this was the extent of the Red Association's scheme to crank up the emergence of high-ranking mech pilots, Jovy suddenly made another shocking revelation. "Permitting the use of high tolerance neural interfaces is one half of our new measures to increase the rate of breakthroughs. The other half consists of releasing a new line of products that can be a game changer for many mech pilots hindered by their own bottlenecks." The Survivalist activated a projection that showed a vial filled with some sort of glowing liquid. Ves did not possess a lot of expertise in elixirs, but he could instinctively feel that the contents of the vial had to be stuffed with energy!

"What... is this?" He puzzlingly asked. Jovy began to grin with pride. "This is an experimental elixir that the Red Association has developed in collaboration with the Alchemy Department of the Red Collective. We developed the new line of products under great secrecy. It still remains confidential to much of the public as we are not quite yet ready to debut the new elixirs. For now, we are still conducting trials with the latest set of formulas. We are already confident that we have optimized the new elixirs to the best possible extent given the relatively young and low-quality reagents available to us. If everything proceeds as planned, we will be making the new elixirs available for redemption on the War Exchange half a year later."

The tone adopted by Jovy made it clear that the importance of this elixir line should be as great as the General Pilot Cultivation Elixirs that Ves was familiar with. The new products should have a different effect as their feel was a lot more potent. "What do they do?" Ves straightforwardly asked. Jovy did not delay any longer. "The T19-AEW26 series are classified as Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs. They work by forcing mech pilots who ingest them into a forced breakthrough process. I cannot explain how this happens. I am not briefed on the mechanics and I doubt that you are authorized to know this information. You can just assume that as long as you ingest the correct variant of elixir, a mech pilot will experience an 'artificial apotheosis' that may or may not end with an increase of piloting rank."

That was a rather lawyer-like description. Ves narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "It sounds like these elixirs are far from perfect. What happens if the attempted breakthrough process fails?" Jovy sighed. "The Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs can forcibly induce a state that produces a breakthrough, but it does not change the inherent qualifications of the pilot in question. If you feed this elixir to a veteran mech pilot with 40 to 60 years of solid experience under his belt, then he has a much greater chance of successfully becoming an expert candidate or demigod than a fresh-faced mech academy graduate. Skills, conviction, willpower and other qualifications must all be well beyond the average in order for a pilot to successfully advance." A Pilot Breakthrough Elixir sounded extremely impressive. Unfortunately, Ves had overestimated its effects. The fact that it could not make up for the gaps in qualifications was a serious letdown. Maybe the only value of this new elixir was the fact that it could give mech pilots control over the timing of their apotheosis. No longer did they have to struggle for months or years just to encounter serendipity and trigger their breakthroughs. Still, that was already worth a huge amount of value. Ves knew many mech pilots that had lingered at the edge of breakthroughs for many years. Their progress had stagnated for so long that they lost heart that they could ever trigger their apotheosis within their lifetimes.

Once these Pilot Breakthrough Elixirs became available, all of that would change. A huge amount of mech pilots would be eager to redeem them with the belief that as long as they could artificially induce a breakthrough process, they would succeed and become a lot stronger in the end! Ves frowned in concern. He had a feeling that a lot of mech pilots might not be able to get what they wanted. Their tendency to overestimate themselves was too strong.What if they fell short of the standard necessary to becoming a demigod? What if they ultimately failed to cross the divide? "What happens if they fail?"

Jovy couldn't help but wince this time. "The consequences are not good. In the best case scenarios, the mech pilots will end up with serious damage to their souls, their willpower, their physical fitness and their lifespan. More serious consequences can amount to comas and outright death. Each pilot that ingests a Pilot Breakthrough Elixir must literally gamble with his life. There is no way for a mech pilot to emerge healthy and undamaged after using it. This is also the reason why we are still restraining ourselves from making them available right away."

The consequences of failure sounded harsh! In the past, pilot breakthroughs were extremely uncommon, but as long as a mech pilot managed to be lucky enough to undergo an apotheosis, the success rate was at least 99 percent. The probability of failure was so low that most people weren't even aware that this could happen. That would change drastically once these elixirs became available. They had the potential to massively increase the rate of breakthroughs, but the failure rate would be so high that the human cost would be great. Yet even then, the Red Association apparently thought that all of this suffering was worth the tradeoff.

Jovy proceeded to share more details about the new line of elixirs. "What you should know is that the elixirs come in 6 different permutations. The first important variable is concentration level. The elixirs can come in a Low Concentration or High Concentration version. The former is suitable to be ingested by standard mech pilots and expert candidates. The scientists have carefully calibrated the elixirs so that they are effective enough at the lowest possible concentration. Raising it will significantly increase the side effects, but will not necessarily yield better results." That made sense.

"I take it that the High Concentration Elixirs are for existing expert pilots?" "That is correct. The High Concentration Elixirs are made because the Low Concentration Elixirs are too weak to have any noticeable effect. Peak expert pilots need a significantly stronger dose in order to induce a second apotheosis. Mind you that the difference in concentration levels are vast. The High Concentration Elixirs are much more expensive and are available in much lower quantities for these reasons. Their redemption prices are very high." "I see. How else are you differentiating your products?"

"The second way we distinguish between different elixirs is by producing elixirs that can be distinguished by the quality of reagents. The Standard Version is the cheapest possible variant. That affordability comes with a steep price. The failure rate is the highest and the side effects are the strongest. The Premium Version is a much more superior version. At the cost of utilizing higher-quality reagents as well as additional rare ingredients, we have developed a mixture that is significantly more stable. The success rate is higher while the side effects are more... controlled." "That is interesting to hear." Ves became intrigued. "Is the Standard Version affordable to third-class mech pilots or second-class mech pilots?" "The former." The Survivalist Responded. "We wanted to make them available to third-class mech pilots in order to give them hope. The usage of the Standard Version will doubtlessly lead to numerous failures, but third-class mech pilots happen to be the most abundant. The mech community is not short on this group." How cold. Ves inwardly shook his head. He could already figure out the ruthless calculus of the Red Association. Third-class mechs were extremely weak. They consistently suffered disproportionate losses in the Red War, and they were not that useful against the mutated voribugs either. They could only barely hold their ground against the weakest and most marginal minor races of the Red Ocean. Perhaps the only value of third-class mech pilots was that they served as a large talent pool. Even if they lacked powerful augmentations, natural talents still emerged from their group. It was common for second- rate states to invite third-class expert candidates and expert pilots to join their militaries. An expert pilot could do a lot more good if he piloted a second-class mech as opposed to anything weaker. The same dynamic took place with second-class ace pilots. Although they were normally very loyal to their states or organizations, there were occasions where they agreed to be 'sold' to a first-rate state.

There were also cases where they grew so dissatisfied with their original lieges that they defected to the Red Association or a first-rate state on their own accord. However, that was still too far away for third- class mech pilots. The meaning of the Standard Version Elixirs was very clear. The Red Association probably intended to give them away in such large quantities in order to dramatically produce more expert pilots from the lowest grade of mech pilots! So long as they were subsequently uplifted to second- class expert pilots, they could make a huge difference in the Middle Zones. That would subsequently ease the pressure on the Upper Zones, thereby allowing red humanity to catch a break! (More chapters in Buyers club for TMT)

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