5678 Unintended Power
When the strange cat 'dove' into Yuri and came into contact with his most fundamental self, the avatar of the god pilot did not act gently.
Now that the god pilot had made up her mind, she acted decisively.
Though she was only able to channel a tiny aspect of her power through Emma's faint connection to the Ultimatum, she was able to leverage more than enough power to induce far-reaching changes into Yuri's spirit!
The Ultimatum suddenly triggered multiple alarms as Yuri began to scream and thrash while he was strapped against his cockpit seat!
The Hooligan Barke became notified of the concerning development as well.
Commander Andrea Pellicky had been wondering what was wrong with one of her subordinates. To see him in pain and distress made her feel concerned. If she wasn't in the middle of commanding her mercenaries through an incredibly difficult battle, she would have stepped in and taken charge of this matter.
As it was, hundreds of good men had already died from the alien onslaught. With the native alien warships destroying human mechs and starships left and right, Commander Pellicky simply couldn't afford to spend too much time on the breakdown of a single pilot.
She just felt it was a pity that it had to happen to a mech pilot assigned to one of her precious Ultimatums.
"Commander! The Ardent Highlander has just suffered a hull breach that has crippled half of her mobility. She is drifting out of formation!"
The mercenary commander quickly set Yuri's abnormal condition aside and turned her attention back to more pressing matters.
Despite the fact that the mech pilot was suffering from a lot of pain and distress, the Ultimatum still remained active.
Its safety programming should have forcibly shut down the man-machine connection once it became clear that the mech had become a source of harm to the mech pilot, but the living mech forcibly blocked this directive and continued to maintain this connection!
This gave Emma the time she needed to complete an unprecedented transformation that sought to reinvent the mech pilot currently known as Yuri Enfame.
This was the first time that the Destroyer of Worlds did anything like this. Usually, she applied her powers on a wider scale. She embodied the concept of unbridled destruction.
She was not accustomed to applying her power in a much more subtle manner. God pilots usually weren't known for finesse because most of their problems could be solved by relying on brute force.
The willpower of a god pilot was also far too powerful to withstand for ordinary people. It was doubtful whether any of her peers could perform this delicate operation without utterly crushing the fragile soul of the recipient!
Irene herself would have never dared to go to this far if not for the fact she had Emma!
Her companion spirit represented a side of herself that still contained many vestiges of her past. Irene deliberately kept her feline alter ego free of her overbearing willpower to maintain her original character.
Emma was able to undertake actions that no other god pilot could do. The companion spirit was able to apply a lot more finesse and control her power to a much greater extent.
This was just enough to selectively alter Yuri's soul without exceeding a limit and killing the mech pilot in the process!
That said, this was the first time that Irene did anything like this, and she had no particular expertise in figuring out how to empower a mech pilot beyond his natural limits.
This was why she decided to take a few risks and try out a new and untested approach.
Irene relied on her powerful intuition to settle on an approach. She instinctively felt that she could remake Yuri into a stronger pilot by destroying the parts of him that held him back.
All Irene was really good at was wrecking stuff, so that was what she did. Emma carefully applied her power through her faint connection with the Ultimatum mech and surgically erased whole parts from Yuri's spirit.
Most of his fears, doubts and other parts got wiped out as Emma thought they held the pilot back.
However, destroying all of these parts was not only incredibly painful to the pilot, but also literally made him less than the person he used to be before.
The consequences to his psyche and his identity were extremely serious!
It would be a surprise if Yuri could still maintain his awareness and rationality after receiving so many crippling debilities.
His body may be physically fine, but his spirituality turned into swiss cheese after Emma had cut away so many parts that made up the mech pilot.
No matter how detrimental his fears and doubts may have been in his line of work, they were still parts that made up a complete life.
But wiping away these aspects, Yuri had literally lost essential parts of his humanity!
There was clearly no way for Emma to succeed in making Yuri stronger if she left at this instance.
Fortunately, Irene already had a follow-up plan in mind.
She became inspired by what a certain time-traveling mech designer once did to her own soul a very long time ago. Even if she was unable to recall that process, she could still figure out what he had done to a large extent.
The god pilot knew that there would be gaps in Yuri's soul, so she simply decided to fill up the gaps with other stuff.
The only viable source she could draw upon was Emma.
As a True God-level companion spirit, Emma's power was beyond doubt.
The problem was that she was far too powerful relative to Yuri's current state! His soul would definitely disintegrate if it came in touch with just a tiny fraction of Emma's potent energy!
However, Emma's power was more gentle and malleable than Irene's tyrannical willpower.
Even though Irene was not accustomed to doing this, she instinctively found ways to take a tiny mote of Emma's energy and selectively use her own destruction authority to weaken its power.
By destroying the parts that made it so destructive and harmful to other people, she gradually turned the mote of power into a weaker but much more digestible seed of power!
The Destroyer of Worlds actually derived a powerful sense of satisfaction when she created this delicate seed.
It had lost most of the extraordinary power that intrinsically belonged to a True God, but it still contained just enough of a trace that preserved the power to defy reality.
After all, what Irene wanted to accomplish went against the natural order. She did not think she could successfully empower Yuri without breaking the rules.
Once she created her seed of power, she carefully tried to integrate it into Yuri's fragile soul.
The screams that escaped from the mech pilot's throat became a lot louder all of a sudden!
The pilot's weak and injured soul forcibly fused with the seed of power.
Even if Emma had weakened the seed to such a degree that she was able to send it all the way to the Ultimatum, it was still too powerful for a mortal soul to bear.
Yuri originally wasn't worthy to bear this kind of power. His forced operation had improved his qualifications, but also injured his spirit to such an extent that he was not able to bear this power!