In situations like these, Ves almost always selected the most exciting option rather than the most effective option!
From the moment he locked in this upgrade track, his descent into darkness truly took off at that point.
While Ves acquired an affinity for the darkness element at an earlier date, he believed he had done a good job of combining it with his existing works.
He mainly focused on the concepts that resonated with him the most such as struggle and adversity.
That sounded like a decent position. How did he transition into sacrificing actual human lives just to power up his creations?
The answer was simple.
He did not go from point A to point B overnight.
He took baby steps. He made a gradual transition.
As long as the process was dragged out over several months or years, Ves wouldn't be able to sense that his judgment had become impaired until it was too late.
In other words, he was the frog that got boiled in a pot.
It was too late to realize that he had gone too far. From the moment he conspired with Helena to harvest the souls of human beings and torment them to the point where they devolved into demons, he had already engaged in an unforgivable act.
Though Ves lamented his fall, he had no intention of going back.
The Survivalist in him believed that red humanity needed his tainted works.
Creations such as the Bitter Scimitar and the Riot Mark III may not be 'innocent', but no one could deny their effectiveness, especially when compared to more ordinary equivalents!
After Ves confronted his own darkness, he was no longer in the mood to be hypocritical towards the ritualists.
"Let us get back to work." He suggested instead. "We still need to analyze the data and supplement our theoretical frameworks. We may not be able to plug all of the gaps, but we should at least gather enough clues to point out areas of improvement. A stolen willpower generator that can only generate an output of 0.27 laveres is practically useless."
That was not entirely true.
Distorting reality at this magnitude was already enough to turn impossibilities into reality.
However, the limited degree of reality distortion put a hard limit on what could be done.
True resonance only truly started to reach game-changing levels when it reached 1 lavere. That was partially what the scale was based upon.
As the various mech designers and researchers studied the abundant amount of data, the Larkinsons already received a lot of messages of congratulations as well as additional inquiries.
The latter ranged from exchanges to offers for further collaboration.
Ves was not in the mood to engage in them, and neither was his wife.
"Our focus should not remain on stolen resonance technology." Gloriana softly declared. "This may have been an interesting diversion, but the reality is that it is too impractical to be used on mechs. We are mech designers. We have certainly broadened our horizons and learned many lessons. We should use what we learned to design mechs that can fight better alongside other units that make use of this emerging tech. If red humanity can deploy warships that are just as resilient as the Ixith Goliath, then our mechs no longer have to withstand as much damage on an open battlefield. The two can compliment each other better. Let the fleeters and the others invest their vast manpower and resources into this new field. They are much better equipped for this task than our clan. With our connections and our contributions so far, we have already earned the qualifications to leech from their efforts."
Her message did not sound particularly noble, but she was right.
The Larkinsons only gained an advantage this time because the research specimen had yet to be delivered to the Yernstall Central Star Node.
Once proper research institutions got their hands on the captured Ixith Goliath, the big players would definitely be able to advance their understanding of stolen resonance technology by leaps and bounds!
Rather than try to compete directly against these bigshots, the Larkinsons should obediently stay in their lane.
At most, the clan might set up a dedicated research unit that was focused on developing a very narrow application of stolen resonance that most aligned with the Larkinsons, but that was the best they could do for the time being.
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