Though this problem plagued him longer, this time he felt he should be able to do something.
He had tried this before with his own spiritual energy, but that was different from the spiritual foundation.
He began to experiment further, forgetting that he was wasting precious minutes that he could have used to flesh out the technical mech design further.
He became so enthralled by the idea that he was convinced he could accomplish something!
"Maybe I need to change my approach."
What was a spiritual foundation? It was the imaginary bedrock of a design. It spiritually embodied his vision for his mech design.
The more he designed his mechs with focus, the more he shaped and grew its spiritual foundation.
This was why even if he didn't instill his mech designs with any design spirits, they still exhibited some X-Factor!
Ves recalled the time where he had reached a bottleneck in the X-Factor. Instead of developing the spiritual foundation further, he entered a crooked path and resorted to borrowing power from design spirits instead.
While he didn't regret his choice, he knew that he could have eventually achieved some results if he kept on developing his original path.
"Well, I think I'm getting closer."
He had to go over all of his theories and assumptions on the spiritual foundation.
Eventually, he came up with a hypothesis.
If he wanted a construct to stick, then it had to match the character and attributes of the spiritual foundation.
Once Ves developed this theory, he twisted his fingers and began to shape a different construct.
He knew what he did wrong previously. By suppressing an existing attribute or introducing a new aspect, he deviated from the original framework of his vision.
If he wanted to make something stick, he had to create something that the spiritual foundation actually supported!
"Right now, the strongest trait of this mech design is superiority!"
Superiority was the central theme of his striker mech design and his best hope of defeating Jovy's inscrutable specialty.
So how could he make it stronger?
Ves stumbled upon an idea. He molded a portion of the spiritual foundation and turned it into a facsimile of the statue of the Superior Mother.
Even though it wasn't a complete match of the real statue, the likeness was close enough for his purposes.
He didn't settle for this. He applied another idea as well, one that sounded very counter-intuitive.
Ves began to concentrate even more and began to apply his special trick to separate certain spiritual attributes.
Right now, he wanted to draw out every attribute related to superiority and stuff it into the 'statue'.
Under normal conditions, it was very hard to keep spiritual attributes isolated. They had a tendency to diffuse like gas in the air.
When Ves attempted to corral all of the superiority attributes in a random location, they faintly repelled each other as if they all shared the same charge.
Yet once he put them into the spiritual statue, it was as if they encountered the opposite charge.
"They're sticking in place!"
The moment the superiority-attributed spiritual energy entered the statue, it began to stick to its shape, causing the entire construct to become more spiritually active and powerful!
When Ves tentatively drew back, the construct remained erect.
It was as if the plot of land suddenly hosted the statue of the Superior Mother. Though the spiritual foundation no longer radiated as much superiority, the strength and concentration exuded by the statue more than made up for it! It was as if concentrating spiritual energy that shared the same attributes resulted in some kind of magnification!
His eyes grew as wide as saucers. This odd change had not only altered and strengthened the spiritual foundation of his mech design, but also seemed to support its own existence!
It had become a permanent spiritual construct!
Even after Ves completely withdrew for a time before coming back, the construct showed no sign of dissipating or breaking apart!
This was a fundamental breakthrough, and perhaps one of the biggest since he chanced upon the idea of utilizing design spirits!
Now, even when he wasn't making any use of living spiritual entities, his mech design already exhibited more spiritual potency than usual!
Compared to the stakes of this design duel, this singular innovation was the real prize!
"Hahahahahahaha!" Ves broke out into laughter. "This is it! This is the key! This is the way to go forward!"
As Ves completely lost his composure, the two women floating far above his head looked at him with surprise.
"Your partner appears to be very.. enthusiastic." Master Willix remarked.
Gloriana smiled lovingly at her boyfriend. "He managed to achieve another breakthrough. His mech will definitely become stronger!"