Chapter 2338: Lethal Threshold It took longer for Ves to figure out why the experiment failed than to clean the interior of the cockpit. As Ves became more accustomed to the explosive results of some of his failures, his cleaning bots evolved as well. They had cleaned up so many bodies and sticky bodily remains that their AIs developed even better and better methods to get rid of all of the messes he made. "Quite handy." Ves nodded as he witnessed the army of bots exiting the cockpit. The interior had been thoroughly cleaned and sterilized until not a single speck of blood or dust was left. In fact, Ves could lick his tongue all over the piloting chair and consoles without any worry! Not that he would do it. He loved mechs, but not in that way. He coughed. "Enough thinking about irrelevant stuff. Let's get back to business." Why did his test subject's head explode? From his experience, spiritual energy was wondrous and potent. Ves and many other people could literally warp reality by utilizing it in specific ways. While Ves followed the path of a creator and chose to specialize in channeling this energy into empowering his mechs, others accomplished more direct outcomes. Expert pilots such as Venerable Jannzi and ancient 'dark gods' like the Unending One directly channeled their powers to affect their enemies and allies! That was something Ves couldn't do with his limited applications. He was largely limited to setting up his forces for success. In any case, only a small number of people were capable of harnessing and manipulating spiritual energy. Those without spiritual potential possessed the least sensitivity towards it. This protected them somewhat against spiritual attacks, but obviously this wasn't foolproof. The artificial anomaly the Grey Watcher had summoned warped the fabric of reality around people. People with spiritual potential were a bit more special. They possessed greater sensitivity towards spiritual energy but also possessed a bit more strength to resist its negative influence. The problem was that unless they tapped their potential, it was largely undeveloped. Potential did not necessarily equal strength. It merely paved the way for the future. The individual in question still had to make something out of this gift. When Ves ran through his spiritual observations, he roughly guessed why the experiment went wrong. "The mech has become too strong." Ves overlooked something. Even though the empowered Desolate Soldier mech hadn't developed an individual personality, it still retained the character inherent in its design! Desolate Soldiers stood for duty. They also represented both honor and sacrifice. The entire mech's purpose revolved around serving a greater cause because it was the right thing to do. Any mech pilot that was reasonably good in character easily gained the mech's acceptance. It was the opposite towards ruffians. During the Sand War, Ves developed a variant that was more acceptable to underground organizations. This was necessary because the base model was seen as too upright and proper by the more selfish, ferocious and immoral mech pilots. Once the LMC released the Prideful Soldier, irregular mech pilots such as Raella Larkinson were finally able to pilot a Soldier mech without fighting against their own machines! What Ves just noticed from this experiment was that the Desolate Soldier in front of him exhibited the same rejection reaction towards his test subject. The Desolate Soldier abhorred the depravity and selfishness of typical pirates. Sticking one of them in its cockpit was a recipe for disaster! "The difference here is that the disaster is at least an order of magnitude greater than usual!" The answer was that simple. The intense rejection exhibited by the mech would have taken place even if Ves hadn't commanded the Solemn Guardian to saturate it with spiritual energy. What usually happened in these situations was that the mech pilot would just barely be able to pilot his machine. The mech and design spirit actively disliked the mech pilot and tried their best to put up difficulties. These hindrances usually weren't too threatening, because what could the spirituality of a mech actually do? It's strength was very limited, especially when they hardly had any time to develop. "I changed that." Ves realized. "It's as if I enlarged a tiny ant into a formidable monster who towers over me. The creature is still the same, but the scale is on another level!" Simple actions such as biting his skin turned from a minor annoyance into a life-threatening scenario! Since Ves attempted to pair up his empowered mech with a highly incompatible mech pilot, the life within the Desolate Soldier did not hold back in attempting to repel the unwanted visitor. Mechs weren't human! They weren't raised as one and did not undergo the decades-long nurturing and indoctrination that taught them how to behave in certain situations. They were killing machines. The most they could do was to assist any friendlies, disregard any neutrals and kill any enemies. Nothing else! Though Ves genuinely made a mistake in overlooking the likelihood of provoking a rejection reaction, he could not be blamed for missing the fact it would produce a result as extreme as head explosions. Lately, that only happened when he went too far in performing spiritual surgery on his test subjects. He should have recalled the times when he experimented on the indigious folk of Aeon Corona VII. Back then, he hadn't developed an elaborate repertoire of spiritual techniques. He mainly messed around with neural interfaces to achieve results. "This is kind of similar." Ves hummed. The mech had become too strong. The man-machine connection may be able to protect its own mech pilots from getting attacked by excessive neural input, but it wasn't programmed to modulate the spiritual input from the mech! Without any safety limits, the mech was able to leverage its full strength against the mech pilot it hated without any reserve. Ves grimaced and scratched his head. "This isn't something I can restrain." He did not specialize in neural interface technology. While he learned a few scattered bits of knowledge about them, he didn't really know how to set up a gate that limited the maximum spiritual input of a mech to a range that was tolerable to humans. Even if he did possess the capability, he wouldn't do it anyway. The MTA didn't give him the approval to tinker with neural interfaces. If he was caught doing so, his career would probably be over! "Not even Master Willix can bail me out if that happens!" Rules were rules. As much as Master Willix showed obvious interest in his work, she still held strong opinions against anyone who broke the MTA's taboos. Ves looked at his mech and figured that it was too strong for its own good. Let alone sticking another test subject in its cockpit, Ves didn't even want to subject his own clansmen to such a dangerous mech! Even if the empowered Desolate Soldier cooperated well with a Larkinson mech pilot, Ves didn't want to take the risk. He needed to reverse what he had done. He needed to weaken the Desolate Soldier so that it wasn't able to kill its own mech pilot whenever it liked! "Can you give back some of what you absorbed?" He mentally asked the mech. It didn't respond. "Figures." Ves contacted the Solemn Guardian and asked the design spirit to forcefully take back half of the spiritual energy it donated to the mech. To his surprise, the Solemn Guardian was able to do this, though the process wasn't smooth. Its connection to the Desolate Soldier mechs were very close. Even if the machine in question was unwilling, it couldn't cut off the connection or prevent its energy from being taken away. The design spirit was too strong compared to the mech! "This is rather useful!" He grinned. The interaction showed that his design spirits could harvest the spiritual energy of any mech it chose, though Ves noticed it became harder over time. It seemed that the spiritual energy that the Solemn Guardian recently donated was still under its control. The rest, which included the mech's original spiritual foundation, remained largely untouched. Were his design spirits able to strip the spiritual foundations of his mechs? Ves wasn't sure. Due to the direct connection between the design spirit and mech, there weren't any barriers in the way. The only troublesome aspect was that it was harder to affect spiritual energy that didn't belong to the entity in question. While it sounded unlikely for this to happen, Ves still needed to take the possibility into account. What if his design spirits betrayed him one day? What if they wanted to stab him in the back? Killing the life within every active mech in use was a dastardly way to harm his reputation! He shook his head. "This isn't something that is likely to happen. I'll probably figure something out in the future." Once the Solemn Guardian took away half of the energy it originally passed over, the presence of the Desolate Soldier mech had weakened by a huge margin. It didn't appear as filled with life as before. "Bring in our next captive." He commanded his guards. He repeated the initial experiment. Every condition remained the same. When Ves stepped in front of his workstation and activated the command to boot up the mech, he paid close attention to the interior of the cockpit and the life signs of the mech pilot. Just like the previous prisoner, the guards stuffed his mouth with a gag. "MMWMFWMMFM!" Ves frowned. The increased anxiety, rising heart rate, increased brain activity, rising body temperature and violent physical moments were very familiar. Was the mech still too strong? "MMMOWWMWWOOWOWWWWWFF!" Even when it looked as if the test subject's head was approaching its limits, Ves did not interrupt the experiment. He wanted to let the situation play out in order to record the complete result. "I still have a couple of test subjects to spare." He muttered. After a couple of minutes, the test subject abruptly collapsed in his piloting chair. The pirate no longer fought against his restraints. Ves frowned. He studied the telemetry and noticed that while the mech pilot's physiological indicators remained active, much of his brain activity had dropped. This conformed with what he had seen with his spiritual senses. The mech hammered the man's spiritual potential. While the force of the mech's spiritual resistance wasn't as overwhelming, it was still sufficient to break the spirit of its current mech pilot! The final result was that his second test subject had died in spirit, if not in body. Sure, the man's body was still intact. Sure, his head hadn't exploded. Yet the loss of his spirit made him indistinguishable from a clone. The test subject wasn't strictly a human anymore. Instead, the body had devolved into a collection of flesh, bone and other body tissues. The structure was there, but the body no longer held the spark of life that granted it sentience. Some bots entered the cockpit and removed the inanimate body. Ves had no interest in keeping a useless bag of flesh and bone, so he commanded the bots to chuck it out of the airlock. Space was one of the biggest garbage dumps in reality. No matter how much junk people ejected into space, there was no way it would ever fill up to capacity! "Hmm, let's try again, shall we? This time, I'll see what happens if the mech only has a quarter of its strength left." The third attempt proceeded much better than the previous two times. The severely weakened Desolate Soldier mech still resisted its pirate mech pilot, but its attempts at lashing out only induced severe headaches and mental torture to its mech pilot. "MMMEMFEMWFMMWWM! MWMEMFEMWEMFWM! MMEMFMWMMW!" The muffled screams of the third test subject sounded like music to his ears. As long as the mech pilot was still thrashing and capable of expressing his discomfort, he was still alive! "Finally, a success!" He established a general impression of the lethal threshold of a mech towards mech pilots with spiritual potential. This was not enough, though. If he wanted to understand this phenomenon to the fullest, then he had to obtain hostile mech pilots who lacked this potential. The problem was that he didn't have any test subjects who met this criteria. He regretted his decision to allow the clan to execute them before leaving Ulimo Citadel. Since Task Force Predator hadn't met any pirate groups lately, Ves would have to wait for a very long time until he gained the test subjects he required. Was there a way to remedy this problem? "Wait a minute. What if I make them myself?" Was it possible for him to destroy or strip someone's spiritual potential? That sounded rather difficult without killing them. Still, it was worth a try!