During the time he assisted with the preparations for the upcoming attack on Ulimo Citadel, Ves also directed some of his attention to studying the grey phantom.

The more he examined the tortured alien spirit, the less interested he became.

There was not much value in the existence of this eroded entity. It was old, undying and completely incapable of forming any coherent thought.

Ves attempted to communicate with it many times. He achieved no results. The only instance where he managed to elicit a reaction was when he did something that hurt the grey phantom.

The entity released even greater wordless cries when Ves stabbed it with a spiritual projection.

Strangely enough, the torture that Ves had inflicted on the phantom never persisted. For some reason, the ancient alien entity immediately returned to its previous form immediately afterwards.

This was very strange to Ves. Normally, spiritual entities were very fragile when they existed by themselves. In fact, such spirits usually succ.u.mbed to the corrosive winds in the imaginary realm after a period of time.

Whether that meant that the actual 'souls' of the deceased had returned to nihility or passed on to a completely different realm, Ves didn't know. He had not performed any studies on life after death. His mother probably knew a lot more, but she was never in the mood to share.

Though Ves found the grey phantom's condition to be intriguing, he soon found out that this remarkable property did not originate from the entity itself. The more he knew the alien spirit, the less exceptional it appeared.

It lost too much. There was no sentient thought left in the phantom. Long years of torture had rendered the grey phantom into an instinctive beast that solely existed to endure the endless soul-searing pain inflicted on its being.

This was why the phantom managed to cling on to a few helpful notions such as relief, forgiveness and mercy. Without at least some pillars of strength, the grey phantom would have certainly devolved into an even more pathetic existence!

As Ves spent hours in the vault to study the grey phantom, he no longer paid attention to the upper half of the spiritual entity. Instead, he cast his eyes downwards.

The interesting part about the grey phantom was that it was visible to the n.a.k.e.d eye ever since Ves pulled it out of the spiritual vortex.

This was why even Calabast and Nitaa could perceive the spiritual entity with the n.a.k.e.d eye.

The cause of this effect and many other abnormalities was the spiritual restraint that had fused with the grey phantom!

Visually, the grey phantom looked like a humanoid whose feet and lower legs were engulfed by a swirling cloud of energy.

It was this cloud of energy that was truly responsible for turning the grey phantom into an undying, tortured soul!

Even Ves exhibited a little fear at the spiritual restraint. While the grey phantom was fairly weak, Ves could not say for sure whether he would be able to defend himself against the powers of this fearsome spiritual tool!

Yes, spiritual tool!

Ves recognized the spiritual shackles to be a very sophisticated application of spiritual engineering.

While Ves could study the Grand Dynamo in his mind at any time, it was just a single example to him. Its extreme complexity and profound, high-level principles meant that he couldn't really derive anything valuable from the spiritual energy generator.

When he cautiously studied the spiritual restraint from a distance, he vaguely felt a similar degree of incomprehension.

It was too advanced! Ves felt as if he was a first-year mech design student staring at a mech designed by a Master. The gap was so wide that it would take hundreds, if not thousands of years of dedicated study in order to decipher all of its principles!

Obviously, Ves couldn't spare the time on such a marginal endeavor. As powerful and versatile as the spiritual restraint appeared, its design principles were completely alien and did not conform to his own methods.

As an innovator, the work of other spiritual engineers merely served as references to him. Ves never wanted to follow the footsteps of others. He preferred to innovate his solutions that fit his needs and capabilities the best!

Therefore, Ves also planned to shatter the grey phantom and its shackles and reform the broken shards into a completely new spiritual product!

This way, not only would he be able to obtain a design spirit for the Sanctuary mech, but also convert something incomprehensible into a form that he was more familiar with. Turning something that had completely lost every coherent thought into a design spirit that he could communicate with was a solution that suited him best!

Of course, Ves was aware he needed to pay a price for this radical act.

At least some form of destruction preceded each act of creation. Destroying the precise, exquisite spiritual engineered mechanisms that empowered the spiritual shackles meant losing a lot of strange but powerful restraining capabilities. Ves would lose access to much of the unknown, alien spiritual engineering principles.

"It's a worthy price to pay." He muttered as he continued to stare at the dangerous cloud of energy engulfing the lower half of the grey phantom. "It's not as if I'm interested in learning these alien methods in the first place."

He didn't mind learning some alien engineering principles if it was worthwhile for him to do so. The reason why he eagerly studied luminar crystal technology was because it was accessible and didn't impose too much demand.

This was different. He didn't have access to textbooks or research papers that could help pave the way for him. Ves would have to start from scratch, and that was unacceptable.

He constantly reminded himself that he was a mech designer rather than a spiritual engineer.

He only dabbled in spiritual engineering because it improved his mech designs.

When his studies in spiritual engineering began to form a detriment to his primary profession, then Ves resolutely stopped his current pursuit no matter how interesting it seemed.

"I'm only one person. I can only do so much."

Therefore, Ves did not exhibit excessive interest in the grey phantom's shackles. He only studied and recorded as much as he could observe on the surface. He had no intentions of probing deeper, knowing that he wouldn't be able to make any short-term gains.

When Ves reached the limit of what he could learn from the grey phantom on the surface, he resolutely halted his examinations.

Instead, he began to plan the formation of his latest design spirit.

The Sanctuary mech was supposed to dampen and weaken any glow that entered its range.

Before, Ves did not have any solid ideas on how to accomplish this feat.

Yet now that he obtained the grey phantom and figured out some of the properties of the spiritual restraint, Ves believed he held the key to achieving the effect he desired.

"This restraint has an interesting interaction with B-stones."

In order to indulge in his curiosity, Ves had commanded a bot to pick up a B-stone and bring it close to the grey phantom.

When the B-stone touched the grey phantom's body, the entity suffered a great amount of discomfort!

Sadly, the experiment failed to prove that B-stone could be used to make weapons that were easily capable of harming spiritual entities. The material merely blocked spiritual energy, which vastly limited its offensive properties.

What surprised Ves a bit was that B-stone interacted much differently when it came into contact with the spiritual restraint.

As far as he knew, As long as a B-stone was big enough, it could block any spiritual energy!

Yet as soon as the bot caused the B-stone to overlap with the spiritual restraint, the two showed no signs of repulsion!

"This is amazing!".

Exceptions were very rare, and now he happened to observe one of them in action. Ves immediately revised his theories on spiritual energy and B-stone upon observing this seemingly impossible phenomenon.

B-stones weren't supposed to get along with spirituality! Yet now it did, and that interested him a lot!

"What are B-stones, and how are they connected to spiritual restraints?"

No one could answer this question for him. Ves was completely in the dark as far as he was concerned.

All he could tell was that the two were likely related to each other. He came up with numerous new ideas from this experiment.

"Can I use a B-stone in the creation process?" Ves asked himself one day.

The idea sounded ridiculous. How could he form a new spiritual life in the presence of something that naturally constrained anything spiritual?

Yet the idea simply did not disappear once he came up with it. He believed that as long as he involved a B-stone, he might be able to form a design spirit that completely conformed to his demands!

Every other design spirit he created or employed up until now were at least somewhat constrained by B-stones. Adding a new design spirit in his collection that was immune to their blocking effects sounded very interesting!

Ves had to plan the creation process carefully, though. He did not intend to waste this opportunity.

He took the time to form a number of spiritual images that defined the personality, role and capabilities of his upcoming spiritual product.

He knew quite well that there was not much point to adding lots of detail. Life was inherently chaotic and rarely emerged as planned. What Ves merely did was to add some guidelines to the formation process of the spiritual product so that it did not go out of bounds and evolve in an planned direction.

"Your only role is to constrain glows. Nothing more."

The images were relatively pure and one-dimensional by design. He did not tack on anything else because splitting up the purpose of his new design spirit would only weaken its primary function.

Ves believed it was better to create something that was strong to begin with and modulate its power expression afterwards depending on the application.

If he created something weaker because he added too much complexity, then the resulting design spirit would lack a lot of strength just when he needed it most!

The more he planned the creation of his upcoming design spirit, the more he feared its potential.

What would happen if the resulting design spirit turned against him? What if it defected to his enemies and used its spiritual restraining powers to neuter his strong Spirituality?

This was an unacceptable outcome!

As someone who believed in good preparation, Ves implemented some additional solutions that would hopefully minimize these frightening possibilities.

"It would be stupid of me to create my own doom!"

After a couple of days, Ves was ready to form his latest spiritual product.

With his fleet slowly calming down and the preparations for the upcoming base assault nearing completion, Ves calmly prepared the ingredients for his latest act of creation.

This might be one of his riskier acts of creation. Yet it would also be one of the more exciting ones due to the innovations he came up with. He couldn't wait to implement his ideas!

"Hehehe." He grinned. "If one of these innovations succeeds, then all of my future spiritual products will possess greater potential as well!"

Ves moved ahead with this creation process because he believed the resulting spiritual product might be useful in the coming days. Even if he did not instill the newborn entity in any mech, its intrinsic properties and powers might be able to protect him against unconventional threats!

"Meow.."

Lucky huddled on the far side of the vault. As a cat who accompanied Ves for years, he keenly recognized that his owner was up to something again!

"Relax." Ves dismissively replied. "This won't be like last time. The main reason the birth of the Superior Mother went out of control was because I involved my mother. She's not here right now, so there is no way that the situation will spin out of control!"

"Meow!"