As far as companion spirits were concerned, Blinky was not the strongest in terms of direct combat.
The companion spirits of the expert pilots and most notable ace pilots of the Larkinson Clan could easily beat up Blinky if they wanted. Their power was partially derived from their principals, who happen to possess a lot of extraordinary willpower.
Ves on the other hand was a mech designer. He did not have any direct way to complement his companion spirit in battle. The most he could do was to dive deeper into E-technology and craft different forms of equipment for the Star Cat beforehand.
This was fine. Ves did not create Blinky with the intent to empower him. Blinky existed to assist and complement Ves instead.
In this capacity, Blinky had proven to be a qualified companion spirit. The purple spiritual cat not only possessed greater sensitivity towards E energy than Ves, but also possessed a huge reservoir of E energy based on many different attributes.
The Blinkyverse ensured that Ves would never run out of any type of E energy no matter his location. It was also constantly expanding and absorbing more ambient E energies all of the time.
At this time, the Blinkyverse was still in the beginnings of the fourth stage. There was a huge gap between forming a single star system and forming an entire galaxy.
The good news was that the accumulation of lots of E energy sped up the process of absorption and integration. The larger the Blinkyverse, the faster its pace of growth!
The bad news was that the thresholds required for it to reach another stage were also exponentially more demanding!
Ves had little idea how long it would take for the Blinkyverse to reach the fifth stage under normal circumstances. It may take decades at the very least. He needed to find a way to speed up Blinky's cultivation so that he could provide even greater help than what he was capable of at the moment.
When Ves casually bastardized the Dark Apostle Self Defense Manual to turn the object of worship from a terrible ancient dark god whose name he did not dare to speak to Blinky, the process was not as difficult as he thought.
The cultist staff fighting method was unfortunately embedded with a lot of foreboding and nonsensical prayers, each of which was designed to put the practitioner in the right mindset to harness a specific aspect of the darkness element.
Ves wanted to remove all of these crazy components, but doing so was counterproductive because he wouldn't be able to produce any cool effects anymore.
He had no choice but to leave all of the overt religious components untouched. He instead chose to work around them by changing the target deity into his own companion spirit.
This wouldn't work with any other spiritual entity, but Blinky happened to be special!
As Ves began to replicate the more advanced techniques with the Oceancaller, he actively put himself in a special mindset while trying to draw from Blinky's darkness energy reserves.
"Oh mighty Blinky, I beseech you to bring forth your terrible gaze so that you may drown these souls with your dark embrace!"
Ves adjusted the grip of his Oceancaller and began to perform a horizontal sweep!
This attack was different than usual due to the darkness energy that launched from the relic!
The wave of darkness energy crashing against the side of the mountaintop did not particularly look impressive, but it was enough for Ves to gauge the effectiveness of his hasty modification work.
"I knew it wasn't so simple."
A proper Dark Apostle with this level of skill would have been able to call forth a much wider sweep of corrosive dark energies that would have inflicted much greater harm!
Ves already knew why his bootleg version of this move paled in every aspect.
First, he used the wrong language. The original techniques were supposed to be performed alongside prayers with the use of a long-dead language. Ves assumed that intent alone was enough to generate greater harmony, but this assumption turned out to be inaccurate.
Second, changing the subject of contract cultivation to a much different entity messed up a lot of different stuff.
The Dark Apostles fine-tuned their fighting methods to the specific brand of darkness produced by their ominous deity.
Blinky's variation of darkness was like a very cheap and poor-quality version!
The disparity in strength, quality and accents threw the original extraordinary staff techniques completely out of whack.
Ves would have to spend a lot of time on breaking down the original staff fighting style and build an entirely new one that was optimized with Blinky as the principal source of darkness energy.
He did not have the time or interest to go through all of that trouble. The story may be different if he was more like Ketis, but he never intended to become a serious soldier. He only wanted to become strong enough to fend off a hostile phase lord.
"I am not getting my money's worth." He concluded.
There was a huge depth to modifying extraordinary fighting methods. It was not as simple as he assumed. He developed a lot more respect for Ketis as a result. Her mastery, insights and passion into swordsmanship was so strong that she was able to create all kinds of extraordinary sword styles!
Ves did not possess an equivalent foundation, so he could never replicate her kind of work unless he became a lot more serious about becoming a warrior.
If he wanted to increase his combat power in the short term, he could think of only two viable options.
The first was to revert to the original method and form a pact with the ancient dark entity worshiped by the extinct cult.
Suffice to say, Ves was far too afraid to resort to this solution!
The second was to find a way to improve the other variables that affected the height of his combat power.
He looked at the relic that he used as his staff. "I'm sorry, Oceancaller. I can feel your disgust. I know you don't like to channel darkness energy, but I may not have a choice."
The replica of the Oceancaller was a flute that was largely aligned towards the water element, with a special focus on oceans and other related sub-attributes.
Even though the Mistress of the Oceans used the original relic to murder the populations of entire planets to satisfy her greed, the Oceancaller did not actually possess a relation to the darkness element. It was not designed to channel this power, and trying to do so anyway not only displeased the high-level relic, but also reduced the efficiency of his actions.
However, Ves had no other choice. There was not enough high-quality materials left for him to design and fabricate a large staff that would be sturdy enough to stay in one piece in a clash between phase lords.
"It would have been great if I learned a staff fighting style that is based on the water element instead." He sighed.
Unfortunately, he could only make use of what the Tree of Possibilities had on hand.
If changing the staff was not an option, then maybe he could improve Blinky or his own darkness qualifications.
Ves briefly thought about whether it would be possible to pluck the Iron Resonant Crucifix Crown from Vulcan's Divine Core and place it on his head.
He immediately shook his head. "I'm not that crazy!"
Besides, the crown was a relic that was obviously biased towards the metal element, so even if it made him stronger, it wouldn't synergize with his new fighting skills.
What else could he improve?
"Maybe I can increase my own comprehension of the darkness element."
He already gained a lot of admittedly unwanted insights and understanding of the power of darkness. That subsequently affected his domain, causing darkness to become slightly more prominent in relation to life and mechs.