Extolling

Ves was aware that a lot of people were talking behind his back.

It came with the territory. He had chosen to become a high-profile mech designer. It should not be surprising for lots of people to question his design skills or whether he was cheating.

The power of fame was a double-edged sword. It magnified all of his successes and enabled him to use it as leverage to make other parties agree to requests that they would normally not fulfill.

However, the other side of fame was notoriety, which he also happened to possess in spades. An increasing number of people thought he was an upstart, a disruptor or even a mass murderer!

Ves knew that he could ignore the negative responses as long as he possessed enough strength and backing. He had enough successes along with support from the MTA to ignore low-level concerns that would have bothered him a lot in the past.