As the Everchanger radiated the transcendence glow far and wide in order to stimulate the greatest obsessions of the three expert pilots, each of them developed radically different ideas and insights!
Venerable Joshua came to believe that he would never be able to advance his understanding of life if he did not deepen his comprehension of death.
What better way to make this happen than by pushing himself closer to death than ever before?!
As Joshua stared down the barrel of his service gun, elsewhere a different expert pilot entertained another extreme idea.
From the moment Venerable Dise lowered her guard and allowed herself to be affected by Lufa's glow, she spontaneously thought back on her life before the Larkinson Clan.
Lydia's Swordmaidens used to be a ferocious but relatively small pirate gang beyond the border of the Komodo Star Sector.
The frontier she grew up in was a lawless and uncivilized region of space. The great galactic society that made up the vastness of human civilization was like a giant that towered over all of the chaotic human societies that tried to eke out a living beyond its direct sphere of influence.
Life was hard in the old frontier. Dise enjoyed a better childhood than most Swordmaidens at the time, but she had grown up on an aging space station that was constantly beset by malfunctions.
The hardy people that lived and worked on the space station always managed to find an ingenious way to fix broken parts and systems in the cheapest possible ways, they had to struggle every day in order to keep the station functional.
Dise never truly felt happy when she grew up in that awful space station. It lacked a lot of basic goods and services that even the poorest third-raters took for granted.
From clean air to a basic education, Dise and many other station rats never had a chance to enjoy those simple luxuries.
They could only dream of becoming one of the rich and powerful people that seemed to have access to every imaginable comfort over in the heart of human civilization.
It was only when Dise managed to get into Lydia's Swordmaidens that she truly had a chance to escape that dingy space station and experience the vastness of the Milky Way.
Sure, Lydia's Swordmaidens only dared to roam around the Faris Star Region, but that was already a much larger boundary than the old space station!
Dise felt fulfilled. The Swordmaidens molded her into a warrior and a mech pilot. She did not stand out from her sisters at the time, but she was already happy because she got to travel to many exciting places.
In the years since she became a qualified Swordmaiden pilot, she stepped foot onto much larger space stations as well as unimaginably vast planets.
Each new destination expanded her horizons and made her appreciate the universe she lived in. Every new curiosity satisfied her desire to experience anything that was different from her gray and monotonous childhood.
Eventually, she took up hunting as a hobby and a means to earn additional income for the Swordmaidens.
She fell in love with this activity. She not only got to land on exotic untamed planets where exobeasts had reigned for millions of years, but also got to test and hone her fighting skills against a diverse array of weird and challenging monsters.
Venerable Dise missed those simple days. She was just another Swordmaiden pilot at the time.
She may have begun to stand out from the rest of her sisters after a time, but she never thought she was any better or worse than the rest of the Swordmaidens.
Much had changed since then.
The Swordmaidens almost got wiped out on the surface of Aeon Corona VII. Commander Lydia and many veteran sisters died unjustly during that fateful battle.
Dise and other sisters who managed to retain a semblance of their composure had been forced to step up and prevent the remnants of the Swordmaidens from dying out entirely.
Joining the Larkinson Clan was the most fortunate turning point in the history of the Swordmaidens.
It was also a rather helpless move, because the Swordmaidens struggled to rebuild themselves in the aftermath of the search for the Starlight Megalodon.
Venerable Dise had much to praise about the Larkinson Clan. Although a lot of old sisters ended up dying in the battles waged by their new patriarch, they died like warriors in much better circumstances than they coud have imagined.
The survivors such as Dise and Ketis cherished their memories of their old sisters, but also tried to befriend new sisters.
Under the umbrella of the Larkinson Clan, the Swordmaidens far exceeded their previous height and became more rich and powerful than any of the sisters back then could have imagined!
Venerable Dise should have felt happy about this. While she was certainly content that the Swordmaidens successfully preserved Commander Lydia's legacy and elevated it to a greater height, the expert pilot stilled missed the old days to an extent.
Life was a lot harder but also a lot simpler back then. The Swordmaidens had no intersection with galactic politics and wars against multiple alien civilizations.
They were only concerned about winning fights against hostile pirates that sought to take them down. Their greatest challenge aside from pure survival was to earn enough income to keep their cozy collection of carriers and mechs in working condition.
The Swordmaidens were a lot less civilized in the old days, but that was exactly the time where Venerable Dise was the happiest.
"Has life in civilized space made me soft?"
She wanted to claim that the answer was no. Living under Ves was a dangerous but also exciting experience. His penchant for making enemies and seeking out dangerous encounters ensured that Dise received plenty of stimulation.
Yet as the Larkinson Clan grew more powerful, the sense of desperation and weakness that the Swordmaidens endured under the leadership of Commander Lydia had disappeared.
The sisters were only human. The old veterans increasingly lost the sharp and savage edge they held before. The new recruits never possessed an edge to begin with as they had all grown up on civilized planets located in third-rate or second-rate states.
The Swordmaidens were changing before her eyes. They evolved and adapted to life under the Larkinson Clan.
Life for all of them became better, but all of their fame and fancy mechs came at a cost.
Venerable Dise thought about everything she had gained and everything she had lost since she started to fight for the Larkinsons.
Had she managed to obtain more than she lost? Undoubtedly.
Without the patriarch, she would have never been able to pilot a living mech like the First Sword.
Ketis would never have been able to learn the knowledge and gather the materials needed to forge the masterwork Decapitator greatsword.
Ever since she became an expert pilot, Venerable Dise felt more powerful and fulfilled than ever.
Yet the more she felt fulfilled, the more she distanced herself from her older, more savage self.
There were far too many times where she needed to restrain her original self. She had to maintain the decorum of an honorable expert pilot and a citizen of a civilized society.
Any insults and disputes had to be solved with words as opposed to swords.
Though Venerable Dise still managed to thrive under these circumstances, she was no longer certain whether this was enough to push her over the threshold.
What if she failed to break through after Ketis finally upgraded the First Sword to the current mech generation?
Dise did not want to end up like Ark, who still didn't manage to overcome his bottleneck after receiving an impressively powerful quasi-first-class high-tier expert mech.