Ves wielded more power than ever before.
Mere mortals were never meant to have so much destructive power at their hands.
Though Ves was far more than an ordinary baseline human, the enormous strain of maintaining an empowered state that was far beyond his normal capacity continued to wear him down.
It was like lifting up a weight that was just a bit too much for him to handle. He constantly had to muster up his willpower and keep the heavy weight aloft, knowing that it would tear up his muscles and potentially inflict worse damage.
There was no way to describe the pain of bearing so much concentrated fire energy. Blinky tried his best to eject the huge influx of fiery energy as quickly as it entered his body, but the continuous exposure to power that was fundamentally incompatible with his own was not doing his body, his mind and Spirituality any favors!
Fire filled his entire being. Despite his various advantages, he shouldn't have been able to tolerate so much exposure to the energies released by a dormant entity that was at least partially a True God!
No mortal would have been able to withstand such might, and it was only due to his unorthodox cooperation with Caramond and Blinky that he was able to make it a little more bearable.
Even so, the powerful energy should have cooked his flesh and fried his Spirituality by now. The difference in strength and the lack of compatibility were significant hindrances that prevented him from fully acclimating to all of this burning power.
So why hadn't he died already?
It was due to the lighting baptism he received from the clone of the Subjugation King.
Whether intentional or not, each time his true body struck the energy barrier of the powerful lightning manifestation, his whole body would get shocked by tribulation lightning.
Initially, more of his muscles and other organic matter would break and tear from the destructive energies coursing through his body, but the creation energies that came after magically put everything back together.
This effect did not always work as ideal as he wished, but Ves found that as long as the countershocks were not too strong, his damaged flesh would always find a way to bounce back somehow.
Each time this happened, his flesh became a tiny bit stronger. Since Ves was extremely sensitive towards any manifestations of growth, he could easily track the slow but continuous rate of improvement of his phase lord cultivation.
He was already sure that his phasewater concentration had grown by at least 0.5 percent!
This might not sound like much, but it was a huge proportional improvement compared to his state from before the lightning tribulation.
A higher phasewater concentration not only meant that he had a lot more phasewater circulating through his veins, but also enabled him to expand the size of his body by another margin.
Ves actively increased his height and size to his new limit whenever possible. Letting his body expand on a gradual basis allowed Caramond to adjust to the new physical realities of gaining more mass without throwing him off-guard.
It helped that a larger and stronger body was able to tolerate the countershocks a little better.
This did not reduce his agony, though. When Caramond found out that Ves' true body gradually became more tolerant towards tribulation lightning, he sped up his pace and stuck increasingly closer to his target!
The cycle of destruction and rebirth was not contained to his massive true body either. Ves could feel that his Spirituality was getting cracked and healed at a dizzying pace during this fight.
The pain of feeling his most fundamental part of himself get torn and glued back together in a repetitive cycle made his state even more unbearable!
Combined with the strain of withstanding so much exposure of fire energy, any lesser being would have been driven mad a lot sooner!
Still, as much as Ves increasingly felt the urge to retreat or kill himself to escape all of this misery, he refused to give in to these easy cop outs.
This was hardly the first time he endured great pain in the hopes of earning a greater payoff.
Intellectually, he knew that this suffering was only temporary, and that the rewards for pushing through was more than worth the price.
The feedback of restoring his injuries and promoting his growth after every destruction and rebirth cycle was a powerful motivator that drove him to endure the constant pain. It had been quite a while since he last managed to promote his phase lord cultivation.
Already, his body had exceeded the proportions of a typical second-class mech. His height had almost doubled from his previous state, and he was gradually reducing his size difference with the clone of the Subjugation King.
When it came to phase lords, bigger was better.
His spatial abilities grew stronger due to multiplying the amount of phasewater he had at his disposal. His spatial barrier became increasingly stronger and helped a lot with reducing the sting of countershocks whenever the clone of the Subjugation King launched another destructive lightning attack.
Greater size translated into greater mass. This not only allowed Caramond to put more momentum behind his string of attacks, but also made Ves a lot harder to assassinate.
Already, Ves had less to fear from ordinary mechs.
If Ves ever managed to evolve into a greater phase lord, then the only way to kill him in a short amount of time was to employ a planetoid-killing weapon!
An even stronger reason for him to grit his teeth and endure all of the punishment was the steady growth and refinement of his Spirituality.
Typical mech designers had to work hard to achieve the same progress over decades. As passive cultivators, there was not much they could do to speed up their growth in spiritual strength.
While there was far more to becoming a successful mech designer than possessing a lot of raw spiritual strength, it certainly made any professional's job a lot easier if they had more to spare!
At the very least, Ves vaguely felt that he was shaving off years from the threshold where he could potentially trigger his ascension to the rank of Master Mech Designer.
This did not mean it was a good idea to do so. He still needed to develop his design philosophy, expand his knowledge base and design a lot of different mechs before he was ready to take the next step.
The benefit to growing his Spirituality so much was that he would not get bottlenecked by this requirement when the time had finally come.
The imaginary planet grew larger and stronger. Everything became a little more solid and stable than before. Even the very boundaries responsible for protecting and containing the Blinkyverse grew firmer. It became increasingly harder for hostile parties to intrude into this private space!
Of course, Blinky benefited a lot more from all of this growth. The lightning baptism affected him as well. Not only was it improving his capacity to serve as a summoning vessel for the likes of Caramond, the Blinkyverse also experienced a lot of improvement!
Blinky actually played an important role in reducing the damage inflicted by all of the tribulation lightning by redirecting a part of it into his internal universe.
The imaginary planet grew larger and stronger. Everything became a little more solid and stable than before. Even the very boundaries responsible for protecting and containing the Blinkyverse grew firmer. It became increasingly harder for hostile parties to intrude into this private space!
"Hah! We are growing stronger! As long as we keep this up, we shall save the Dominion of Man and lead red humanity to a new Age of Conquest!"
Ves responded by curling his lips upwards.
Personal motivations played a large role in his decision to persevere, but there was one overarching reason why he willingly subjected himself to all of this painful torture.
He wanted to do right by his creations.
Caramond was a promising ancestral spirit that brought hope and strength in a time where red humanity needed his help.
Ves could not claim credit for the initial development of the Dominion of Man, but now that he had transformed her into a living dreadnought with insane potential, he gained a sense of responsibility over the evolving warship.
Though Ves tried his best to maintain his wits, his constant exposure to a powerful spiritual entity that was obsessed with human supremacy was gradually bleeding into his mind.