The successful trial of the Instrument of Doom presented a fundamental change in the application and use of mechs. Of course, Ves was not naive to think he was the first mech designer to break the limit of mechs. This was far from the first time that a mech weapon was able to burst out with power that was far in excess of its size, technical design and material composition. Ves had read articles in the past where other, more brilliant mech designers were able to transform junk into treasure through even greater feats of brilliance! The Age of Mechs had persisted for over four centuries and the amount of mech designers working in the industry was too many to count. There were always a handful of inspired inventors among them who had succeeded in developing groundbreaking tech. Ves believed his work was different, though. The reason why he thought this way was because of several reasons. Theoretically, he could turn anything into blessed equipment. The only requirement was to match a design spirit with the right sympathetic material. He could only work with relatively expensive phasewater for the time being, but he was hopeful that he would find a different pairing that was based upon cheaper material! For example, if Ves was able to match Vulcan with ordinary iron, then he could easily transform any mech or product into a blessed product without paying any extra! The overall implications of his new invention was that it enabled mechs to make leapfrog challenges! A standard mech might gain the power to threaten an expert mech. An expert mech might gain the power to threaten an ace mech! It was not impossible for a bunch of mechs to defeat a formidable warship by outputting damage that was far more potent than what their technical specifications could produce! "This technology can change the entire mech landscape!" Ves exclaimed! He was boasting a bit. The truth was that the blessed equipment concept suffered from a massive weakness that severely constrained their mass adoption. The additional power channeled by the Gray Lotus and the Instrument of Doom did not emerge out of nowhere. The law of conservation of energy still remained valid as far as Ves knew. This meant that if either of those powerful guns suddenly became a lot more powerful, then there had to be another source that paid the price! In this case, the design spirits footed the bill for every blessed attack. Ves understood their situation quite clearly. Most of his design spirits had grown considerably over the years, but many of them were still at the start of their journeys. They still had a long way to go to form a Divine Core and evolve into a post-divinity entity! From what little clues that Ves had obtained from the System, it was only when a spiritual entity became a so-called True God that they ostensibly broke away from the confines of the law of conservation of energy! In other words, True Gods were likely capable of producing an endless amount of energy! This was how mythical existences such as god pilots were able to materialize any material, no matter how rare, by exerting their supreme willpower. While this likely meant that True Gods could only produce so much matter or energy at a time, this still meant that they could support the usage of many more pieces of blessed equipment! Ves could already envision a future where elite envoys wielded terrible power. These chosen mech pilots became strong not by virtue of their own development, but because they were chosen by a higher power to act as their representative in the cosmos! At first, Ves felt repelled by this possible vision of the future. Mech pilots ought to rely on themselves and seek to break their limits in order to attain greater strength. Rather than surrendering themselves to other True Gods, they should step on the path to godhood just like many other strong-willed mech pilots! It sounded as if Ves had inadvertently created an alternate path to wielding power, one that was easier and less demanding than trying to become a god pilot. "Maybe it is possible to pursue both paths for a time, but there is ultimately a limit to how much you can borrow from another source." Advancing to the rank of god pilot remained the ultimate pursuit for many mech pilots, but that didn't mean that blessed equipment had no place. Far too few mech pilots possessed all of the qualifications necessary to make it to the end. There were pilots that had taken the wrong turn, incurred too many injuries or exhausted all of their potential. There were also warriors who had lost their heart in battle and wanted to focus on other pursuits such as spending time with family or growing a new company. Whatever the case, these mech pilots had a need for greater strength as well, and these were the people who he could serve with his blessed products! "Hm, if this is the case, then I shouldn't be making this stuff for my best and brightest expert pilots." Ves murmured as he rubbed his smooth-shaven chin. "I should be handing them out to mech pilots who I don't care about or have no hope of advancing too far such as Commander Melkor." In this case, it was fine for Ves to hand Venerable Stark a weapon that relied on an external source to produce greater power. The vengeful woman would leave sooner or later, so why should Ves invest too much in her personal development? In contrast, Ves needed to be a lot more careful about granting unearned power to hopefuls such as Venerable Tusa and Venerable Joshua. Giving them gear that caused them to rely too much on the power of a design spirit and not enough on pushing their own limits would cripple their growth in the long term! Ves thought about all of the difficulties his expert pilots experienced during the Battle of Pima Prime and noted that each of them had stepped up when it mattered. The data clearly supported this idea as the resonance strengths of all of the Larkinson expert pilots had jumped by a significant margin immediately afterwards. Not only that, but his expert pilots continued to grow at a considerably faster rate than in the past, showing that they were still reaping the benefits from passing their life-and-death challenges! Ves had thought about this issue before, but the emergence of blessed weapons caused this matter to become a lot more relevant. "Are my expert mechs becoming too strong for their own good?" He wondered. This was a valid question and one that could significantly impact the future of his clan. Advanced technology tended to make mech pilots overly reliant on their machines. This was not the most optimal outcome as the power of mechs was based on the strength of both the machine and the man. The two needed to be within a reasonable distance in order to foster the growth and evolution of the latter. If the machine continued to bear all of the burdens, how could the man ever get the 'exercise' he needed to grow stronger muscles? "There is already a good example of what will happen if the man has given up on developing his own strength and foisted every responsibility on the machine. The Common Fleet Alliance is the epitome of this philosophy." This was exactly what Ves did not want to pursue. The aim of the Mech Trade Association and anyone who supported its cause was to match technological development with human development. According to this philosophy, Ves should seek to limit and restrain the use of incredibly powerful blessed weapons as much as possible. Their specifications were so high that they could turn many difficult battles into trivial affairs, thereby robbing many mech pilots of the opportunity to grow under pressure. "This is also an important reason why the breakthroughs aren't as prevalent among first-class mech pilots." The mechers as well as other first-raters enjoyed much better lives and had access to much more powerful mechs. Though these high and mighty individuals also had their own fair share of problems, the sheer amount of conveniences they enjoyed along with the powerful tech at their disposal led to lower rates of breakthrough. Sure, the first-raters tried to compensate for this by utilizing their formidable tech and knowledge base to stimulate their mech pilots through special training programs and so on, but there were limits to everything. "If I'm not careful enough, my clan will be following in the same footsteps!" This was not an outcome he desired. Perhaps he could employ his own brand of tech such as the transcendence glow to counteract this downward trend, but Ves preferred not to rely on one flawed solution to solve another flawed solution. He shook his head. "This is way too abstract for me. I shouldn't be too high-minded about how I should utilize my work. My clan urgently needs strength." With all kinds of powerful enemies spread across the new frontier, Ves did not feel reassured with the means he possessed at the moment. He and his clan would be a lot better off if he developed a bunch of blessed weapons that the Larkinson expert mechs could pull out in case they bumped into an overpowering opponent such as a phase whale. Between death and stalled human development, Ves would rather choose the latter over the former any day! Besides, Ves was never one to follow the rules. He did not take all of the existing assumptions too seriously. "There has to be a way for mech pilots to continue their progression while also relying on the help of blessed equipment." He recalled his design philosophy, which centered around the concept of mutual growth. The fundamental premise of his work was that he believed that mech pilots do not have to rely on themselves to win their battles and grow stronger throughout the process. It was okay for them to partner up with their living mechs and work together for a better future. The addition of blessed equipment did not have to sabotage human development as long as Ves found a way to incorporate his new invention in the framework of his design philosophy. 𝓯𝓻𝒆𝙚𝒘𝓮𝙗𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝒍.𝙘𝓸𝙢 He just couldn't figure it out as of yet. He needed to think more deeply and form a proper model of a relationship between a mech, a mech pilot and a design spirit. This was a matter that he had never spent much thought on in the past. "I can't leave it like this anymore." Ves shook his head. "If I want to advance to Senior, I need to come up with a better answer than 'I don't know' or 'forget about it'. Mech designers who are too afraid to address difficult problems do not have what it takes to realize their design philosophies." Master Mech Designers earned a lot of admiration from Ves and other people because they truly mastered their own specialty in every possible dimension. They could provide answers to almost every problem at their level and could even begin to explore the greater mysteries that far transcended mundane reality. Ves had a long way to go before he could decipher any of those greater truths. He first needed to resolve all of the lower-level problems, and that would inevitably take a lot of time and effort! Ultimately, Ves gained more out of this experimental weapon project than he thought. Though the successful realization of the blessed equipment concept did not directly progress his design philosophy, he felt more aware and certain of what he needed to do in order to take this crucial leap. His eyes burned with ambition. "The Dullahan Project… will become even more exceptional than I originally planned." Just as he was about to wrap up the current project and turn his attention back to his ongoing expert mech design projects, the expected call from the MTA finally arrived. Ves had to move to a special ship which carried the Darkbreak module, which was connected to a secure MTA communication network. Though neither Ves nor his contacts trusted it completely, it was at least a much better option than talking over the public galactic net which was as leaky as a sieve!