One of the inadequacies that Ves had recently recognized was his overreliance on his design spirits.

No matter how you looked at it, relying on design spirits to enhance the overall value and capabilities of his mech designs was much like hiring outside consultants to perform your own work.

There was always a price to relying on others.

Though Ves did not intend to stop his use of design spirits to empower his mechs, he gradually realized that it shouldn't be his only method.

He could do more with his design philosophy.

For a rather long period of time, Ves faintly felt as if he hit a bottleneck. At his current level, there wasn't much more he could do to strengthen his mech designs.

Even the exceptional creation of the Superior Mother had only been possible by relying on another external aid. Once his high-grade life-prolonging treatment serum ran out, what could he do? It was too difficult to develop an advanced form of spiritual life by relying solely on his own spiritual energy at this point!

Ves recognized that he had to address this inadequacy sooner or later.

If his own skills couldn't keep up with the development of his design spirits, eventually both would stagnate.

He always felt as if he should do something more with the spiritual foundation of his mechs. To that end, he began to study the building blocks he had already laid.

Even though his design still needed a day to reach completion, its spiritual foundation already looked respectable and solid. While it wasn't a completely accurate description, the spiritual foundation appeared as a solid platform where it could safely stow any design spirit of his choosing.

Of course, a rushed mech design was not as spiritually solid as Ves liked. There was no helping it as the act of designing mech was like showering it with love and life.

The more time he spent on nurturing a mech design, the stronger its spiritual foundation!

In the past, the spiritual foundation served as a platform for his images. Weaker and much less livelier than his design spirits, his living images had been borne completely from his mind.

This effectively made them his own strength and an extension of his own will. Though it sounded simple to create them, Ves had to pour in an unimaginable amount of concentration in order to keep everything straight.

Of course, with the growth of his Spirituality Attribute, it became easier to create an image.

Yet no matter how many of them he made, they all started without that much life. It took a considerable amount of spiritual feedback from mech pilots to transition them into greater lifeforms, but even then they possessed too many holes to count.

Creating life was not that simple. There was a very big reason why Ves chased after multiple ingredients that came from other lifeforms.

It was much easier for Ves to rearrange life than create it from scratch!

However… now that he thought about it, creating a fully-fledged spiritual lifeform without relying on spiritual fragments sounded like a very useful ability to have.

This might even be the key to advancing to Senior or Master!

"I'm too far away from that, though." He muttered dejectedly.

Yet as he studied the spiritual foundation of his competition mech, Ves began to develop the notion that even if he couldn't create new life, what about stuff that wasn't alive?

It wasn't as if he attempted it before. Inspired by spiritual engineering, he had already attempted to form constructs with his spiritual energy. From spiritual hammers to spiritual knives, these lifeless constructs acted as his tools whenever he wanted to accomplish something.

"It's just that they disappear when I lose my concentration."

His spiritual projections had to be actively maintained. Once he relaxed, his spiritual projections broke down into a disorganized collection of spiritual energy.

Would the same happen with the spiritual foundation of a mech?

"Not necessarily, but…"

He hadn't paid enough attention to the spiritual foundation of his mechs. He treated it as a bed for his design spirits, nothing more. Yet now that he looked at it, they seem remarkably bland and boring to his eyes.

Compared to real spiritual engineering, the spiritual foundations of his mechs were no better than empty ground!

Certainly, by themselves, the spiritual foundation laid the groundwork for the X-Factor of a mech. However, they were so simple and uniform that Ves began to think he had been wasting its potential for a very long time.

It was like he was staring at an empty plot of land. There was nothing on the plot except for grass and soil. This was hardly a nice place for his design spirit to live in. Being forced to sleep out in the cold and lacking too many amenities meant that his design philosophies needed to do all of the heavy lifting.

What if Ves tilted the balance back to the spiritual foundation of his mechs?

Making it stronger by injecting more thoughts and energy into it only resulted in a more solid plot of land. No matter how high the quality reached, it was still a barren site!

What Ves truly needed to do in his opinion was to develop the land. He had to bring in some materials or take it from the existing plot of land in order to build something.

At the very least, a simple bench or a tent could do wonders in diversifying the spiritual foundation!

Of course, all of the talk about plots of lands and building tents was nothing more than an analogy that helped him put the problem in perspective.

The main point was to see if he could transform the spiritual foundation into something more interesting.

He began to reach out his arm in order to visualize what he was about to do. He wanted to manipulate the spiritual foundation.

He started off with something simple. He took a piece of the foundation and molded it into a suppressor.

He wanted to suppress the Superior Mother's tendency to look down on boys. While Ves had no doubt that Joshua was flexible enough to adjust to any design spirit, it would still make life easier for him if the Superior Mother didn't treat him like a baby!

Though he wasn't exactly sure how to make a suppressor, he let instinct and prior experience guide his efforts. Eventually, he felt as if he accomplished something.

The moment he completed his endeavor, the spiritual foundation of his mech suddenly became remarkably less hostile towards boys!

Ves widened his eyes.

This was an exceptional result, yet it took relatively little effort to achieve! Usually, he had to create entire new mech designs or blend several fragments and motes together in order to achieve a change.

Yet now, he just managed to accomplish something profound by actively developing the foundation!

However, the biggest test was yet to come. When Ves drew back, he didn't even had to lift his concentration to see that the construct fell apart.

It was as if he dug up some soil and created a sandcastle, only for the wind to scatter it into pieces!

"Damnit!"

The spiritual foundation turned back to normal once this occurred. The changes he made were temporary. For some reason, his efforts didn't stick!

Though this problem plagued him longer, this time he felt he should be able to do something.

He had tried this before with his own spiritual energy, but that was different from the spiritual foundation.

He began to experiment further, forgetting that he was wasting precious minutes that he could have used to flesh out the technical mech design further.

He became so enthralled by the idea that he was convinced he could accomplish something!

"Maybe I need to change my approach."

What was a spiritual foundation? It was the imaginary bedrock of a design. It spiritually embodied his vision for his mech design.

The more he designed his mechs with focus, the more he shaped and grew its spiritual foundation.

This was why even if he didn't instill his mech designs with any design spirits, they still exhibited some X-Factor!

Ves recalled the time where he had reached a bottleneck in the X-Factor. Instead of developing the spiritual foundation further, he entered a crooked path and resorted to borrowing power from design spirits instead.

While he didn't regret his choice, he knew that he could have eventually achieved some results if he kept on developing his original path.

"Well, I think I'm getting closer."

He had to go over all of his theories and assumptions on the spiritual foundation.

Eventually, he came up with a hypothesis.

If he wanted a construct to stick, then it had to match the character and attributes of the spiritual foundation.

Once Ves developed this theory, he twisted his fingers and began to shape a different construct.

He knew what he did wrong previously. By suppressing an existing attribute or introducing a new aspect, he deviated from the original framework of his vision.

If he wanted to make something stick, he had to create something that the spiritual foundation actually supported!

"Right now, the strongest trait of this mech design is superiority!"

Superiority was the central theme of his striker mech design and his best hope of defeating Jovy's inscrutable specialty.

So how could he make it stronger?

Ves stumbled upon an idea. He molded a portion of the spiritual foundation and turned it into a facsimile of the statue of the Superior Mother.

Even though it wasn't a complete match of the real statue, the likeness was close enough for his purposes.

He didn't settle for this. He applied another idea as well, one that sounded very counter-intuitive.

Ves began to concentrate even more and began to apply his special trick to separate certain spiritual attributes.

Right now, he wanted to draw out every attribute related to superiority and stuff it into the 'statue'.

Under normal conditions, it was very hard to keep spiritual attributes isolated. They had a tendency to diffuse like gas in the air.

When Ves attempted to corral all of the superiority attributes in a random location, they faintly repelled each other as if they all shared the same charge.

Yet once he put them into the spiritual statue, it was as if they encountered the opposite charge.

"They're sticking in place!"

The moment the superiority-attributed spiritual energy entered the statue, it began to stick to its shape, causing the entire construct to become more spiritually active and powerful!

When Ves tentatively drew back, the construct remained erect.

It was as if the plot of land suddenly hosted the statue of the Superior Mother. Though the spiritual foundation no longer radiated as much superiority, the strength and concentration exuded by the statue more than made up for it! It was as if concentrating spiritual energy that shared the same attributes resulted in some kind of magnification!

His eyes grew as wide as saucers. This odd change had not only altered and strengthened the spiritual foundation of his mech design, but also seemed to support its own existence!

It had become a permanent spiritual construct!

Even after Ves completely withdrew for a time before coming back, the construct showed no sign of dissipating or breaking apart!

This was a fundamental breakthrough, and perhaps one of the biggest since he chanced upon the idea of utilizing design spirits!

Now, even when he wasn't making any use of living spiritual entities, his mech design already exhibited more spiritual potency than usual!

Compared to the stakes of this design duel, this singular innovation was the real prize!

"Hahahahahahaha!" Ves broke out into laughter. "This is it! This is the key! This is the way to go forward!"

As Ves completely lost his composure, the two women floating far above his head looked at him with surprise.

"Your partner appears to be very.. enthusiastic." Master Willix remarked.

Gloriana smiled lovingly at her boyfriend. "He managed to achieve another breakthrough. His mech will definitely become stronger!"