It took longer for Ves to figure out why the experint failed than to clean the interior of the cockpit.
As Ves beca more accustod to the explosive results of so of his failures, his cleaning bots evolved as well. They had cleaned up so many bodies and sticky bodily remains that their AIs developed even better and better thods to get rid of all of the sses he made.
"Quite handy." Ves nodded as he witnessed the army of bots exiting the cockpit.
The interior had been thoroughly cleaned and sterilized until not a single speck of blood or dust was left.
In fact, Ves could lick his tongue all over the piloting chair and consoles without any worry!
Not that he would do it. He loved chs, but not in that way.
He coughed. "Enough thinking about irrelevant stuff. Let's get back to business."
Why did his test subject's head explode?
From his experience, spiritual energy was wondrous and potent. Ves and many other people could literally warp reality by utilizing it in specific ways.
While Ves followed the path of a creator and chose to specialize in channeling this energy into empowering his chs, others accomplished more direct outcos.
Expert pilots such as Venerable Jannzi and ancient 'dark gods' like the Unending One directly channeled their powers to affect their enemies and allies!
That was sothing Ves couldn't do with his limited applications. He was largely limited to setting up his forces for success.
In any case, only a small number of people were capable of harnessing and manipulating spiritual energy.
Those without spiritual potential possessed the least sensitivity towards it. This protected them sowhat against spiritual attacks, but obviously this wasn't foolproof. The artificial anomaly the Grey Watcher had summoned warped the fabric of reality around people.
People with spiritual potential were a bit more special. They possessed greater sensitivity towards spiritual energy but also possessed a bit more strength to resist its negative influence.
The problem was that unless they tapped their potential, it was largely undeveloped. Potential did not necessarily equal strength. It rely paved the way for the future. The individual in question still had to make sothing out of this gift.
When Ves ran through his spiritual observations, he roughly guessed why the experint went wrong.
"The ch has beco too strong."
Ves overlooked sothing. Even though the empowered Desolate Soldier ch hadn't developed an individual personality, it still retained the character inherent in its design!
Desolate Soldiers stood for duty. They also represented both honor and sacrifice. The entire ch's purpose revolved around serving a greater cause because it was the right thing to do. Any ch pilot that was reasonably good in character easily gained the ch's acceptance.
It was the opposite towards ruffians.
During the Sand War, Ves developed a variant that was more acceptable to underground organizations. This was necessary because the base model was seen as too upright and proper by the more selfish, ferocious and immoral ch pilots.
Once the LMC released the Prideful Soldier, irregular ch pilots such as Raella Larkinson were finally able to pilot a Soldier ch without fighting against their own machines!
What Ves just noticed from this experint was that the Desolate Soldier in front of him exhibited the sa rejection reaction towards his test subject.
The Desolate Soldier abhorred the depravity and selfishness of typical pirates. Sticking one of them in its cockpit was a recipe for disaster!
"The difference here is that the disaster is at least an order of magnitude greater than usual!"
The answer was that simple. The intense rejection exhibited by the ch would have taken place even if Ves hadn't commanded the Solemn Guardian to saturate it with spiritual energy.
What usually happened in these situations was that the ch pilot would just barely be able to pilot his machine. The ch and design spirit actively disliked the ch pilot and tried their best to put up difficulties. These hindrances usually weren't too threatening, because what could the spirituality of a ch actually do? It's strength was very limited, especially when they hardly had any ti to develop.
"I changed that." Ves realized. "It's as if I enlarged a tiny ant into a formidable monster who towers over . The creature is still the sa, but the scale is on another level!"
Simple actions such as biting his skin turned from a minor annoyance into a life-threatening scenario!
Since Ves attempted to pair up his empowered ch with a highly incompatible ch pilot, the life within the Desolate Soldier did not hold back in attempting to repel the unwanted visitor.
chs weren't human! They weren't raised as one and did not undergo the decades-long nurturing and indoctrination that taught them how to behave in certain situations.
They were killing machines. The most they could do was to assist any friendlies, disregard any neutrals and kill any enemies. Nothing else!
Though Ves genuinely made a mistake in overlooking the likelihood of provoking a rejection reaction, he could not be blad for missing the fact it would produce a result as extre as head explosions.
Lately, that only happened when he went too far in performing spiritual surgery on his test subjects.
He should have recalled the tis when he experinted on the indigious folk of Aeon Corona VII.
Back then, he hadn't developed an elaborate repertoire of spiritual techniques. He mainly ssed around with neural interfaces to achieve results.
"This is kind of similar." Ves humd.
The ch had beco too strong. The man-machine connection may be able to protect its own ch pilots from getting attacked by excessive neural input, but it wasn't programd to modulate the spiritual input from the ch!
Without any safety limits, the ch was able to leverage its full strength against the ch pilot it hated without any reserve.
Ves grimaced and scratched his head. "This isn't sothing I can restrain."
He did not specialize in neural interface technology. While he learned a few scattered bits of knowledge about them, he didn't really know how to set up a gate that limited the maximum spiritual input of a ch to a range that was tolerable to humans.
Even if he did possess the capability, he wouldn't do it anyway. The MTA didn't give him the approval to tinker with neural interfaces. If he was caught doing so, his career would probably be over!
"Not even Master Willix can bail out if that happens!"
Rules were rules. As much as Master Willix showed obvious interest in his work, she still held strong opinions against anyone who broke the MTA's taboos.
Ves looked at his ch and figured that it was too strong for its own good. Let alone sticking another test subject in its cockpit, Ves didn't even want to subject his own clansn to such a dangerous ch!
Even if the empowered Desolate Soldier cooperated well with a Larkinson ch pilot, Ves didn't want to take the risk.
He needed to reverse what he had done. He needed to weaken the Desolate Soldier so that it wasn't able to kill its own ch pilot whenever it liked!
"Can you give back so of what you absorbed?" He ntally asked the ch.
It didn't respond.
"Figures."
Ves contacted the Solemn Guardian and asked the design spirit to forcefully take back half of the spiritual energy it donated to the ch.
To his surprise, the Solemn Guardian was able to do this, though the process wasn't smooth. Its connection to the Desolate Soldier chs were very close.
Even if the machine in question was unwilling, it couldn't cut off the connection or prevent its energy from being taken away. The design spirit was too strong compared to the ch!
"This is rather useful!" He grinned.
The interaction showed that his design spirits could harvest the spiritual energy of any ch it chose, though Ves noticed it beca harder over ti.
It seed that the spiritual energy that the Solemn Guardian recently donated was still under its control. The rest, which included the ch's original spiritual foundation, remained largely untouched.
Were his design spirits able to strip the spiritual foundations of his chs? Ves wasn't sure. Due to the direct connection between the design spirit and ch, there weren't any barriers in the way. The only troubleso aspect was that it was harder to affect spiritual energy that didn't belong to the entity in question.
While it sounded unlikely for this to happen, Ves still needed to take the possibility into account. What if his design spirits betrayed him one day? What if they wanted to stab him in the back? Killing the life within every active ch in use was a dastardly way to harm his reputation!
He shook his head. "This isn't sothing that is likely to happen. I'll probably figure sothing out in the future."
Once the Solemn Guardian took away half of the energy it originally passed over, the presence of the Desolate Soldier ch had weakened by a huge margin. It didn't appear as filled with life as before.
"Bring in our next captive." He commanded his guards.
He repeated the initial experint. Every condition remained the sa. When Ves stepped in front of his workstation and activated the command to boot up the ch, he paid close attention to the interior of the cockpit and the life signs of the ch pilot.
Just like the previous prisoner, the guards stuffed his mouth with a gag.
"MMWMFWMMFM!"
Ves frowned. The increased anxiety, rising heart rate, increased brain activity, rising body temperature and violent physical monts were very familiar.
Was the ch still too strong?
"MMMOWWMWWOOWOWWWWWFF!"
Even when it looked as if the test subject's head was approaching its limits, Ves did not interrupt the experint. He wanted to let the situation play out in order to record the complete result.
"I still have a couple of test subjects to spare." He muttered.
After a couple of minutes, the test subject abruptly collapsed in his piloting chair. The pirate no longer fought against his restraints.
Ves frowned. He studied the teletry and noticed that while the ch pilot's physiological indicators remained active, much of his brain activity had dropped.
This conford with what he had seen with his spiritual senses. The ch hamred the man's spiritual potential. While the force of the ch's spiritual resistance wasn't as overwhelming, it was still sufficient to break the spirit of its current ch pilot!
The final result was that his second test subject had died in spirit, if not in body.
Sure, the man's body was still intact. Sure, his head hadn't exploded. Yet the loss of his spirit made him indistinguishable from a clone.
The test subject wasn't strictly a human anymore. Instead, the body had devolved into a collection of flesh, bone and other body tissues. The structure was there, but the body no longer held the spark of life that granted it sentience.
So bots entered the cockpit and removed the inanimate body. Ves had no interest in keeping a useless bag of flesh and bone, so he commanded the bots to chuck it out of the airlock.
Space was one of the biggest garbage dumps in reality. No matter how much junk people ejected into space, there was no way it would ever fill up to capacity!
"Hmm, let's try again, shall we? This ti, I'll see what happens if the ch only has a quarter of its strength left."
The third attempt proceeded much better than the previous two tis. The severely weakened Desolate Soldier ch still resisted its pirate ch pilot, but its attempts at lashing out only induced severe headaches and ntal torture to its ch pilot.
"MMMFEMWFMMWWM! MWMFEMWEMFWM! MMFMWMMW!"
The muffled screams of the third test subject sounded like music to his ears. As long as the ch pilot was still thrashing and capable of expressing his discomfort, he was still alive!
"Finally, a success!"
He established a general impression of the lethal threshold of a ch towards ch pilots with spiritual potential.
This was not enough, though. If he wanted to understand this phenonon to the fullest, then he had to obtain hostile ch pilots who lacked this potential.
The problem was that he didn't have any test subjects who t this criteria. He regretted his decision to allow the clan to execute them before leaving Ulimo Citadel.
Since Task Force Predator hadn't t any pirate groups lately, Ves would have to wait for a very long ti until he gained the test subjects he required.
Was there a way to redy this problem?
"Wait a minute. What if I make them myself?"
Was it possible for him to destroy or strip soone's spiritual potential?
That sounded rather difficult without killing them. Still, it was worth a try!
User Comments
0 comments from readers