Directly affecting others through spiritual manipulation wasn't as easy as it sounded. From his earlier experiments, he learned that people with spiritual potential possessed a defense mechanism that caused their spirituality to turtle up and become almost untouchable.
While this largely cut the mech pilot off his own spirit, any external threat would have a very hard time abusing it any further.
What Ves sought this time was not to find a way to alter it. He wasn't trying to figure out how to create expert candidates and expert pilots on demand.
He wanted to achieve the opposite result. He wanted to downgrade a mech pilot with spiritual potential to someone who was still alive but spiritually dull.
"This will be a delicate operation."
Ves had moved to an enclosed test chamber elsewhere on his ship. He ordered his guards to bring in another captive pirate and strap the fellow down to an operation table.
Once the guards left, Ves approached the scared and thrashing pirate and contemplated his options.
What he wanted to do was very cruel. People who were lucky enough to develop spiritual potential possessed more chances at achieving greatness. Becoming an expert pilot or Journeyman was a dream to many people, but the strength of their spirit determined whether they could even open these doors.
To Ves, depriving someone of most of their spiritual potential was almost as bad as killing them. He felt as if there was something profoundly wrong and abhorrent about what he was about to do.
"Why do I feel this way?" He frowned.
In a way, the act went against everything he wanted to accomplish. As a creator and a service provider, he oriented his life around improving the lives of those who used his products.
The thought of millions of mech pilots happily using and entrusting their lives to their LMC mechs gave Ves an immense amount of satisfaction. His success fueled his motivation to continue with his work and develop even better ways to meet the demands of his customers.
According to this outlook, it was wrong for him to induce actual harm to his people. Developing ways to actively harm people sounded more like something the Five Scrolls Compact would do. What he wanted to do was exactly what the MTA least wanted to occur!
"Well, it's for a good reason." Ves shrugged and excused himself. "As long as I succeed in figuring out how to design a legacy mech, then everything will be fine!"
After solving his moral conundrum, he faced his frightened test subject without any measure of guilt. Scientific progression couldn't be stopped. If he wanted to make a few omelets, then he had to break some eggs.
Ves grinned at the thought of what he was about to do. "I've never done anything like this before. How exciting! Let's see how I can cripple you. Don't worry. You probably won't die!"
The test subject in question only fought harder against his restraints!
"MMMEMMFMWWMFMFW!"
"Calm down, man! Don't you know how hard it is to perform a surgical operation on you when you are lashing out all the time?"
Despite his advice, the man did not follow his advice despite the fact it was in his best interests to do so. Why were pirates so stupid?
"Oh well, don't blame me if anything goes wrong."
In order to affect someone's spiritual potential, he had to worm inside the person's mind. The key was to perform his operation quickly. If more than a second passed, his test subject's spirit would probably realize it was under attack and bury itself in a hole. By then, it was too late for Ves to do anything meaningful for a long time.
For this reason, he wasn't in a hurry to do something. He carefully acc.u.mulated his energy and formed a strong and stable spiritual knife in his mind.
Though the pirate was unwilling to subject himself to a dangerous experiment, he could only thrash against his restraints for so long. The fellow slowly tired himself out. When the pirate gradually grew tense but less afraid, Ves finally struck!
He held his palm over the test subject's face to gain access and thrust his spiritual knife forward.
Cut!
With a single attack, Ves attempted to cut off around seventy percent of the pirate's spiritual potential!
Yet as soon as his 'knife' touched its target, he barely had any time to cut off a chunk of spirit before his attack became invalid.
The man's spirit had rapidly engaged its self-defense mechanism!
"MMFMMEW!"
The pirate's stress levels abruptly spiked as the man experienced unimaginable pain! Even so, the vast majority of his spiritual potential remained intact, if temporarily bottled up in order to protect it against external influence!
Vs frowned at this outcome. His test subject's spiritual potential was a lot more reactive towards active threats than against other forms of manipulation. Its reaction time was pretty insane!
No matter how much he thrust his spiritual knife, the man's spiritual potential had already entered a different phase. There was no way for Ves to proceed with his experiment.
"Damnit. Off you go, then. Bring in the next test subject!"
He thought about why he failed. Now that he looked back on what he had done, he realized that his test subject was still on guard against him when he performed his cutting procedure.
"I knew it wouldn't be so easy." He sighed.
Ves believed he might achieve better results if he lowered his test subject's guard. Naturally, he wouldn't be able to do so through persuasion. He could only resort to other means.
Once the next test subjects arrived, Ves took out a sedative and injected it into the body of the next pirate to endure his experiment.
"Go to sleep."
Once the pirate fell unconscious, Ves inspected his latest test subject and saw that the spirit was still somewhat active, but not as bad as before.
Just to be sure, Ves waited for an entire hour in order to calm the spirit even further. In the meantime, he spent his time supervising the work of his design teams and made some small tweaks to his ongoing mech designs.
After an hour had passed, his patience wore thin. He returned to the testing chamber and quietly approached his current test subject.
The man had calmed a lot, whether in body, mind or spirit. Though Ves could wait a couple more hours, he didn't think it would make that much of a difference.
He formed his knife and performed a cut without hesitation!
This time, he succeeded!
"MMWMWMWWEFF!"
The muffled man's body suddenly woke despite the sedatives trying to keep him under! Ves didn't care as he recognized he succeeded in cutting away at least eighty percent of the pirate's spiritual potential.
The test subject's self-defense mechanism hadn't been on guard! It activated too late!
Unfortunately, this was not enough to achieve the result. While the test subject's remaining spiritual potential had lost a huge amount of strength, it still remained intact!
"Damn! I should have cut off more!"