Chapter 2340: Drooping Tree Subjecting his own clansmen to his experiments was a step too far to Ves. He struggled with his desire to extend his current study to his own clansmen. Even if he weakened the spiritual foundation of his test mech to a large degree, he still couldn't rule out the possibility that something detrimental might take place. The last thing he wanted to do was to cripple a valuable Larkinson mech pilot! Every single member of the clan was family to him. He was unwilling to expose any of his Larkinsons to this kind of danger so soon after leading hundreds of them to their deaths. The Battle of Ulimo Citadel had already killed enough brave mech pilots. As Ves stared at the empowered Desolate Soldier, he began to develop some misgivings about the machine. A sense of bloodiness emanated from the machine. The mech had killed its own mech pilots not just once, but thrice! With this bloody track record, Ves was afraid the mech had acquired a taste for blood. Two mech pilots with spiritual potential and one without had already fallen victim to this deadly machine. Sure, much of the reason why the mech resisted its own mech pilots was because the two were incompatible. According to his current theories, it should be safe for any Larkinson to pilot this machine. The Desolate Soldier mech may have returned to its peak, but it was unlikely to exhibit any hostility towards compatible mech pilots. Yet even if Ves weakened the mech, he wasn't sure whether it was a good idea to send it back to the Sentinels. The more he looked at the mech, the more he felt he created a monster. His intuition didn't sense much good in keeping it around. Though he wanted every mech of his to live a good life, some would only spread misery if kept in use. As much as he wanted to keep the mech around, Ves didn't want any of his mech pilots to inadvertently hop into its cockpit during an emergency. "Sorry mech, but I can't keep you around anymore. You're a menace to society." Ves reluctantly commanded the mech be brought away to one of the logistics ships of his fleet. The mech had to be scrapped. Once a crew came to take the pilot-killing mech away, Ves contemplated his subsequent steps. He still hadn't achieved his original goal. The entire point of these experiments was to figure out a way to accelerate the growth of his mechs. While he believed that performing a limited degree of spiritual foundation enhancement had great potential, he was troubled by the fact that he was unable to test it without potentially harming someone. Considering the current circumstances, it was not appropriate to stuff his captive pirates into mechs and hope that something happened. "Wait a minute. Do I have to enact this change to someone within my reach?" Not necessarily. The most important step was inducing a design spirit to perform spiritual foundation enhancement. If he wanted to do so, he could ask the Solemn Guardian to donate some of its spiritual energy to a couple of the many millions of Desolate Soldiers in active use! No one would know the affected mechs had changed. Their mech pilots would probably utilize the machine the same as before. Ves would only have to wait a month or so before checking back on the results. The only difficulty he had with this course of action was that it was rather difficult to keep track of an empowered mech by remote. In order to obtain the most comprehensive results, Ves needed to access both the mechs and mech pilots in person to gather as much data as possible. He couldn't resort to any other option if he wanted to study the spiritual changes of the affected mechs and people. Therefore, affecting random people throughout the star sector didn't happen. He needed to perform his experiment on someone closer to home. How could he do so without attracting any suspicion? Ves didn't have a habit of personally approaching the existing customers of his own works. He didn't really need to hear their praise when he could already obtain it from the galactic net. "Wait a minute! There is at least one member of the clan who I don't care about!" How could he forget about Vincent Ricklin? Ves never wanted him to join the clan in the first place. If not for Raella persuading the recruiters to make an exception, this former rebel and enemy would have never become a Larkinson! Ves contacted Bravo and easily persuaded him to donate some of his spiritual energy to the Adonis Colossus. With Vincent's vanity, he was sure to pilot his personal mech on a regular basis. The only issue was that Bravo was one of his weakest design spirits. Ever since Ves created him, Bravo only bonded with a single mech pilot. Ves hadn't seen fit to reuse him in his other mech designs. Even so, the strength of a design spirit was still greater than that of a mech. They were inherently different existences and couldn't be compared at the start. Performing this experiment on Vincent and the Adonis Colossus was a good idea for multiple reasons. First, the Adonis Colossus was tailor-made for Vincent. The chances of rejection were some of the lowest possible out of all of the possible pairings between his products and his customers. There was a high chance that Ves would see fantastic results once he returned to civilized space and observed Vincent and the Adonis Colossus in person. In the meantime, he could access the Larkinson Clan's own monitoring system at Cinach VI to observe Vincent and his mech without interruption. If he wanted to, Ves could probably watch a feed of Vincent showering or washing his body! He coughed. "Not that I want to. I am not curious at all. Nope." Of course, Ves couldn't rule out that empowering the Adonis Colossus might produce an unexpected accident, but he wouldn't shed a tear if Vincent somehow ended up brain damaged or something. Second, Vincent did not possess spiritual potential as far as Ves knew. This meant that his tolerance against any dangerous spiritual attacks should be fairly high. For this reason, Ves commanded Bravo to bleed a significant amount of spiritual strength into the Adonis Colossus. He wanted the mech to reach fifty percent saturation, which was slightly dangerous to people with spiritual potential but still very tolerable to those who were weaker! A spiritual dull mech pilot like Vincent would only experience some pressure, and that should only happen if he somehow pissed off his own mech! It was these mech pilots that Ves wanted to empower with his mechs the most. Those who were spiritually gifted already possessed their own opportunities to grow stronger. It was the lowest and most abundant type of mech pilots that Ves wanted to give a leg up with his legacy mechs. As long as even the stupidest and most incompetent mech pilot was able to grow the mech he piloted into a complimentary life, then the power of these weak mech pilots might surprise the galaxy one day! After Ves documented his actions and observations into his implant, he ended the long session and returned to his stateroom. There, Lucky was moping about as always. This time, he moved to sofa, only to fall asleep while splayed over the armrest. Ves approached his injured cat and carefully studied the wounds. They had grown a bit smaller before. "Rest well, Lucky." He whispered. At this time, the design lab had already emptied. His experiments took so long that it was already evening in standard time. Aside from the low humming that ran throughout his ship, his personal space was completely quiet. Just as he thought about taking a bite of one of the new Ulimo nutrient packs that Ketis had gifted to him, he suddenly paused. "This.." Ves stood up from his desk chair and approached the display that held some of his sentimental possessions. He briefly grinned at the mug that depicted him in his Devil Tongue visage before turning towards a very small tree. To be honest, Ves hadn't studied the little tree at all. For a very long time, the tree largely remained the same. If not for noticing how it grew a couple of millimeters by comparing its length against how it looked in the past, he would have thought his grandfather scammed him somehow! "According to grandpa, it's supposed to be a prosperity tree that grows according to how much luck or success its owner enjoys." He received it a very long time ago during his thirtieth birthday celebration at Cloudy Curtain. Back then, Ves was just a recently-advanced Journeyman. The Larkinson Clan didn't exist at that time. Ever since then, Ves and his newly-founded clan went on to grow meteorically. At this time, Ves and his fellow clansmen wouldn't be able to recognize themselves a year ago! So much had changed for the better that the prosperity tree should have grown more drastically if it really did as advertised! "Is my tree defective?!" Ves tapped his finger against the tree's gnarly surface. It looked a lot more droopier than it should. In fact, if he didn't know any better, the tree looked like it was about to die! "What the hell? Has it reached the end of its lifespan? That shouldn't be possible! This is supposed to be a young tree!" While he couldn't be bothered with watering the prosperity tree and refreshing its soil, he had already obtained a gardener bot to perform this chore a lot better than he could have accomplished. "Yesterday, this stupid tree looked the same as always." Ves keenly remembered that the plant featured vigorously green leaves and strong branches. Now, those leaves had darkened and greyed a bit while its branches became as feeble as the arms of an old granny. He scratched his head. He tried to inspect it through his spiritual vision, but the plant didn't really possess any. This was also one of the other reasons why Ves thought his grandfather had scammed him. How was the tree supposed to grow according to his level of 'prosperity' if not through the most obvious means? Regardless, the fact that his tree suddenly looked like it was about to croak gave Ves a very bad feeling. "This…" As much as he wanted to dismiss the tree's strange behavior as a product defect, he couldn't help but fear that it might be an indicator of something more. While Ves puzzled over what was actually going on, a chime sounded in the compartment. He had a visitor. As soon as Ves commanded the hatch to open, Calabast stormed in with an alarmed expression on his face. She did not look calm and poised as usual! "I have some very bad news, Ves!" "Tell me. What is " "The Allidus Alliance are hunting us down!" What?! "As far as I know, their main elements are all supposed to be in the core regions. Even if they set off to hunt us down right away, the chance they'll be able to catch up with us is low. Our task force isn't slow!" "You're wrong, Ves. The Allidus Alliance isn't chasing after us from the core regions. One of their punitive fleets took some sort of secret space channel that instantly transported it to Wreckage Paradise. Don't you realize what this means? As long as the pirates can track our coordinations, the Allidus Alliance can preemptively cut off our escape route! The enemy pirate fleet can block every possible exit we want to take!" This time, Ves did not dismiss the threat anymore. While he wasn't sure whether the prosperity tree's abrupt drooping was related to this development, this wasn't good! "Is there anything else, Calabast?" "The Allidus Alliance has also called upon its local pirate allies to harass or hinder us while keeping us under observation." She said. "While I doubt that any local pirate group is willing to sacrifice themselves against us, some of them might be stupid enough to try something. Expect plenty of traps to hinder our path forward." This was truly bad news!