Chapter 5998 My Prison After a lengthy and difficult upgrade process, the Dark Zephyr Mark III gradually neared completion. It became clear to everyone that the upgrade project no longer had any chance of failure. The Larkinson Clan's first true archemech was less than an hour away from becoming operational. This should have been good news, but none of the Larkinsons had any cause to celebrate just yet. Nobody could tell for certain whether the Dark Zephyr Mark III reached masterwork quality. Although the upgraded expert mech could still evolve into a masterwork by relying on the god body method integrated into the archmech, it was different from becoming a masterwork by virtue of pure craftsmanship. The Red Association only awarded masterwork certificates in the latter case. Aside from that, creating masterwork mechs was the only reliable method for Ves to earn radiant lottery tickets. Ves was afraid that the Mech Designer System might suspend this overly generous reward one day. Compared to his past state where he had to rely on luck and serendipity in order to fabricate a masterwork mech, his craftsmanship improved so much that he could produce masterwork mechs every couple of months if he was in a good state of mind. Once he started to accumulate dozens of radiant lottery tickets, he was not sure whether the System would want to add to his collection! In any case, Ves had a good feeling about the Dark Zephyr Mark III. Sure, many of the early foibles related to producing archemetal components in the first day affected their quality to an extent, but the ones produced later on were remarkably superior. Ves had also put a lot of effort into preserving the mech's spiritual foundation. Even now, the Dark Zephyr's existing personality was tentatively integrating with his brand-new archemetal frame. This was why he paid more attention to Tusa's delicate and volatile state. Through the design network, he gained a pretty good understanding of the expert pilot's mental journey. Although Tusa managed to adapt to his exposure to phasewater to an extent, it was not enough. The expert pilot relied a lot on Blackwing's control of shadow energy to suppress the spatial turbulence generated by phasewater. While that was not necessarily bad as the companion spirit increased his familiarity with the properties of phasewater, the main point of the challenge issued by Ves was to force Tusa's willpower to undergo a significant improvement. Right now, Tusa had remained awake for almost a week. If not for the fact that he had already exceeded human limitations, he would have lost this struggle a few days prior! Even so, his lack of augmentations still meant that he needed to receive regular injections of stimulants to maintain his focus and awareness in the absence of sleep. This was not a sustainable form of treatment, but it was enough to keep Tusa awake on a continuous basis. Although the lengthy effort had strained his willpower far beyond his previous limits, his overarching desire to overcome this challenge and force the phasewater into submission had successfully allowed him to last all this time! The threat posed by the phasewater that was very clearly running through his body like timebombs had stimulated him into drawing out his potential. This was an amazing result, and one that Tusa should already be proud of! He had always considered himself to be a sprinter, but now he managed to fare surprisingly well in a marathon run! Yet this was not enough for Tusa. He never set out to win an endurance race. The only victory that mattered to him was vanquishing the threat of phasewater by himself! He did not spend the previous days in vain. Although Tusa had spent an awful lot of time reminiscing about the past and reviewing the journey that brought him up to this point, his increasingly severe exhaustion could not stop him from formulating a plan on how he could break this deadlock! "Ngh… I have won every struggle in the past by freeing myself from the constraints that hold me back… If this is true, then I should make use of this to deal with the phasewater in my body!" It would have been a lot easier for him to do this if he was interfacing with the Dark Zephyr. The powerful true resonance generated by a high-tier expert pilot and a properly adjusted high-tier expert mech was already very strong. Although it was not as magical and far-reaching as the Saint Kingdom of an ace pilot and ace mech, Tusa did not think it would take much effort to neutralize the phasewater in his blood in a permanent fashion. Yet this challenge was never about borrowing the strength of his expert mech. He needed to solve this problem by himself if he wanted to prove he was worthy to pilot his new and improved mech. In the last two years, Tusa had gotten the sense that his growth had outpaced his expert mech. He always tried his best to treat the Dark Zephyr as an equal, but since they interfaced with each other so many times, he could never hide his true thoughts from his battle partner. Each day that passed by without an upgrade was another day where the Dark Zephyr was getting further left behind. This increasing tension was one of the reasons why Tusa urged Ves and Gloriana to upgrade his expert mech as quickly as possible. Now that he was finally getting his wish, Tusa felt concerned for a different reason. He could tell that the Dark Zephyr Mark III had become much more powerful than before, so much so that the upgraded expert mech exceeded the strength of his expert pilot! It was quite difficult to produce such a large and noticeable gap. Tusa had recently become an ace pilot candidate with the help of general cultivation elixirs, and fought enough battles against alien raiding fleets to digest most of his rapid gains. His multi-day phasewater torture session had also tempered his extraordinary willpower further. Tusa could feel that if he stepped away from this situation without any further improvements, he would continue to display a lot more endurance than before! Yet despite all of these improvements, Tusa still felt that he fell short of reaching parity with the Dark Zephyr Mark III. He should have been happy about this discrepancy, because it indicated that he would have plenty of room to grow. It should take a lot more years before he needed to crawl back to the Design Department and beg for another upgrade to his battle partner. However, his pride and ego did not allow him to accept the disparity in strength. He felt in the bottom of his heart that he could do better! The shadows around his body swirled faster as his force of will started to become more volatile. Tusa decided to be more proactive! Simply using his willpower as a defense against phasewater was not enough. He realized that he needed to utilize his willpower to change reality in order to force a permanent change! Doing so outside the cockpit of his expert mech was nearly impossible, but Tusa no longer thought about other people's claims. An expert pilot should never compromise his ideals due to outside pressure! The more Tusa comprehended this truth, the more he was able to focus his willpower. As every Larkinson present in the darkened workshop continued to observe the struggling expert pilot in silence, Tusa finally gained an epiphany. "I can already use the Leap of True Freedom to make my mech ignore any transphasic energy shields in his path. This means that I am already familiar with using the power of freedom. If this is the case, then I should be able to use it for other purposes!" That was easier said than done. Freedom was a very abstract concept, and Tusa never channeled this E energy attribute outside of the cockpit. However, that did not stop him from trying! The only uncertainty left was how exactly Tusa wanted to leverage the power of freedom to solve his current condition. Should he pull off the Leap of True Freedom by himself and try to move aside while leaving the phasewater in his body behind? He shook his head. That was too clumsy and exhausting. His willpower shouldn't be able to pull off such a major feat. Should he employ his extraordinary willpower to liberate the drops of phasewater by displacing them from his body? This was a much less costly solution, but Tusa did not like it. His body still remained susceptible to the danger posed by phasewater. Besides, Tusa also needed to display a lot of fine control to pull it off. The likelihood of accidents was too high as it was difficult for him to exert so much control over foreign contaminants, especially ones that possessed so many weird and powerful properties related to space. Should he employ the power of freedom to liberate his body's vulnerability towards phasewater? This was an option that aligned a lot more with his inclinations. It was a solution that could temporarily or permanently make him immune to the spatial disturbances produced by phasewater. Of course, Tusa did not expect that he could gain absolute immunity. Ves had only injected a small amount of phasewater. If the quantity and concentration of phasewater was much higher, then it would not be as easy to withstand the stronger spatial phenomena! "It's enough." One of the lessons that Tusa learned over the course of his career was that he should never be too greedy. He was already pushing his limit by trying to resolve the threat of phasewater on his own. He had managed to make it this far by relying on a lot of incremental improvements. There was no need to break this pattern. Now that Tusa settled on an action plan, he began to execute it right away. "Nggh! I need your help, Blackwing!" "Chirp! Chirp!" The avian companion spirit had almost completely blended in the surrounding shadows, but became a lot more visible when he strained in an effort to channel more shadow energy into Tusa's body. Although Blackwing couldn't keep up this intensive effort forever, he could still buy time for Tusa to shift the focus of his willpower! What he did next was extremely dangerous. He lowered his suppression of phasewater. This freed up much of his willpower, which he promptly focused on his body as a whole. Soon enough, Tusa began to exert more of his willpower than ever before! Even though he had abused his willpower to the point where he had squeezed out its potential, Tusa firmly believed that he could still produce another miracle! "Come on… transform!" "Chirp! Chirp!" His willpower continued to surge across his body, yet without the suppression of before, the phasewater circulating inside began to wreak havoc! "Ahh!" His right arm, his left thigh and one of his lungs started to tear as Blackwing tried and failed to suppress the phasewater that had spread to those areas! "Chirp chirp chirp!" Blackwing was already doing his best to limit the damage. The companion spirit prioritized the suppression of phasewater that had spread to Tusa's brain and heart. This meant that there were less resources left to prevent the phasewater located in less sensitive parts of the body from injuring Tusa! The outburst of injuries alarmed the medical team. The doctors were already on the verge of stepping in to stabilize the expert pilot's body and remove the phasewater in a hurry, but the pain and injuries only stimulated Tusa further! "I SHALL NOT LET MY BODY BECOME MY PRISON!" A barrier seemed to break! Tusa's willpower surged to the point a lot of wind suddenly flew in his direction! His body flashed as a fundamental transformation took place! By the time the doctors arrived alongside Tusa's bed, they discovered that the expert pilot had somehow stabilized the phasewater circulating in his body. Tusa had managed to overcome his vulnerability towards phasewater!