Ves and Gloriana each devoted time on two separate design projects.

Ves mainly devoted his time on the Ylvainan marksman mech project. Though he started off with the intention of designing a commercial mech for the market, in truth it was more of a passion project.

"Have you thought of a name for this mech design yet?" Gloriana asked as they entered the design lab.

He nodded. "For now, I'm going with the Deliverer."

"That's.. a simple name."

"I contemplated other names such as Ylvaine's Punishment or the Sagittarius, but they're either a bit too heavy-handed or they don't send the right message. I think the Deliverer fits well alongside the Transcendent Messenger. They are quite related to each other. The only reason why I haven't decided to call it the Transcendent Deliverer is because their quality and performance is not worth a grander name."

"It's your choice." She shrugged. "So what is the idea behind the name."

���A Deliverer is a savior or rescuer." Ves described. "The word has a religious connotation. The Ylvainans have always regarded Prophet Ylvaine as their deliverer. Since the marksman mech I've envisioned is a mech that is directly tied to the Great Prophet, then calling it the Deliverer is fitting."

"Because this mech will deliver them from the threat of the sandmen, right?"

"Exactly. Maybe the Deliverer might be useful in other situations as well. While it's not a very resilient or mobile mech, it can still be a potent threat as long as it enjoys a lot of protection."

"Are you hoping that your Deliverer will continue to be useful after the Sand War?"

"I'm leaving that option open." Ves responded. "Since the Deliverer is my inaugural commercial mech design of the new mech generation, I don't want it to become irrelevant if we win the Sand War. I think the Ylvainans are more than willing to depend on the Deliverer if it shows its value against the sandmen. The only point I'm uncertain about is whether Ylvaine will continue to offer his support."

"He's one of the more benevolent proto-gods in your arsenal. I'm sure he's willing to do what is necessary to protect his flock. If not, you can always pull him aside and teach him a lesson!"

Ves sheepishly smiled. "It's not that simple."

Every design spirit earned a spiritual dividend. While Ves only employed a tiny mote of spirituality in the Holy soldier design, it still offered Ylvaine's spiritual fragment a connection to hundreds of thousands of mech pilots!

Since they all happen to be Ylvainans, the spiritual feedback between the mech pilots and Ylvaine's spiritual fragment happened to be substantially stronger than usual!

Every mech pilot resonated with the spiritual remnant that Ves had rescued and amplified. Such a strong reaction empowered Ylvaine's spiritual fragment to an enormous degree in the last few months!

Along with the benefits that the fragments already gained from its strong bond with the mech pilots of the Transcendent Messengers, Ves did not have the confidence that he could exert any control over the fragment anymore!

The only way he could overpower Ylvaine's spiritual fragment was if he borrowed the power of the F-stone.

Ves did not wish to do that. Not only would he ruin his relationship with Ylvaine's spiritual fragment, he would also waste a portion of the F-stone's formidable charge.

He still needed to keep its remaining charge in reserve in case Nyxie ever rebelled or something.

That reminded him of something. He excused himself from Gloriana for a moment and concentrated his mind and began to visualize the Desolate Soldier. He soon made contact with the Solemn Guardian and checked up its status.

Compared to all of the design spirits he utilized, the Solemn Guardian had grown to be the second-strongest spiritual entity under his control!

The continued success of the Soldier product line had benefited it enormously! The time when the LMC sold over a million Soldier mechs was near! Almost every state involved in the Sand War employed the Desolate Soldier or one of its variants!

While the average spiritual strength of every mech pilot was rather poor, the sheer quantity of people connected to the Solemn Guardian accumulated to an incredibly scary degree!

Was it any surprise that the Solemn Guardian grew to an incredible degree in a matter of months?

Ves was even worried that its growth had been too rapid. The only reason why he didn't express more concern was that its strength had already begun to level off. At a certain point, the spiritual product no longer benefited from a huge quantity of low-quality spiritual feedback.

He speculated that the Solemn Guardian had reached a limit or a bottleneck. The only opportunity for it to grow further was if it could forge a connection with an expert pilot.

Cases like Davia Stark who hid her expert pilot status and stuck to standard mechs were very rare. Most of the Soldier mechs were rather modest in performance, which meant that any sane expert pilot would never be satisfied!

Since Ves was scared of what would happen if the Solemn Guardian grew further, he was relieved that its strength had plateaued.

"How have you been? Have you made sure to direct the dividends in the right direction?"

The Solemn Guardian responded with a vague wave of emotion and meaning.

Ves slowly interpreted its response and found out that it still heeded his earlier instruction.

"I know you don't like it, but it's for your own good. Your other 'parent' won't hesitate to kill you and reclaim what is his if you land in his clutches."

After a few more inquiries, he became satisfied that nothing had changed since he last checked in with the design spirit.

When Ves first came up with the concept of spiritual dividends, he paid a lot more attention to the spiritual feedback between his spiritual products and their 'parents'.

Ves did not have to worry too much about his first spiritual product. Vescas, the design spirit of the Kinslayer custom mech he designed for Lady Miralix, only governed a single mech.

From what Ves had looked up in the news, Lady Miralix had long stopped piloting the Kinslayer. She instead put the mech on display at her mansion on Felixia.

"Maybe I should recall Vescas and put him to use elsewhere." He muttered.

He even contemplated recycling Vescas so he could employ it as the design spirit of the Adonis. It was a quick and convenient way to solve this problem.

However, his professionalism disdained such a lazy solution. For better or worse, the Adonis would certainly attract a lot of attention from the public. Leland already told him that the government planned to utilize Vincent and his custom mech in a lot of propaganda.

If Ves wanted to do a proper job, he could not afford to cut any corners.

"I should probably form my third spiritual product, then." He judged. "I have to make a new one so that it matches my vision for the Adonis."

He left that for later. For now, he wanted to confirm whether the Solemn Guardian had sent its excess spiritual feedback to the right recipient.

Ves originally formed the Solemn Guardian out of three spiritual ingredients. Nyxie was the biggest contributor, so Ves was always afraid that his spiritual product would secretly pass on its energy to the ancient alien spiritual entity.

When Ves inspected the Solemn Guardian thoroughly, he saw little sign of that taking place so far. Instead, most of the spiritual feedback went to Venerable Plinter.

Though Ves also possessed a connection to the Solemn Guardian, he did not benefit from spiritual feedback.

The attributes had to match.

The Solemn Guardian's attributes did not really have much relation to his own mix of attributes.

In addition, Ves suspected that the spiritualities of high-ranking mech designers like him weren't able to grow at all from external assistance.

From what he could tell, expert pilots and certain spiritual entities were different. Qilanxo obviously benefited most of all so far, and Ves had a strong suspicion that some of the expert pilots he sourced had grown as well.

Since Ves directed the Solemn Guardian to dump most of the spiritual feedback it couldn't handle onto Venerable Plinter, the expert pilot should have benefited considerably.

"Is that true, though?"

Ves hadn't really looked up on the consequences of making use of the spiritual fragments he borrowed from expert pilots.

Information on Venerable Fontain was classified. He already nagged Leland once and evoked a lot of suspicion. Ves knew better than to follow up on the expert pilot of the 8th Spiral Shockers.

As for the expert pilot who was responsible for imparting the duty-related attributes to the Solemn Guardian, Ves had not really paid that much attention to her since he returned to the Bright Republic.

"I hope she's doing well."

Ves activated his comm and tried to look up any news about Venerable Zoe Plinter.

"Ah, damn."

The Hertog Dominion had already started to succumb to the sandman invasion. The state was a bit more distant from the Bright Republic.

The Desolate Soldiers entered its mech market a bit late. The absence of his mechs and their helpful glows caused many citizens of the Hertog Dominion to flee the state even though it could still hold off the invasion!

"Well, the Dominator isn't entirely free from blame either."

Ves always had a poor impression of the Hertog Dominion in the brief time he spent there. The Dominator ruled Hertog with an iron fist and always suppressed his own subjects. Was it no surprise that most of its people held very little loyalty to the state?

A loyal and devoted expert pilot like Venerable Plinter was rare. Her strong duty to the state was a product of focused indoctrination. Her famed loyalty along with her specialization were the biggest reasons why he decided to borrow a spiritual fragment from her so long ago.

Should he have been more concerned with her condition after he cut a portion of her spirituality away? Probably.

Did he care? Not really.

"The problem is that she's gone."

To be more precise, the news reports coming from the collapsing Hertog Dominion did not mention any word about Venerable Plinter.

As one of Hertog's loyal expert pilots, she always enjoyed some media attention.

Yet now, there were no more confirmed sightings of Venerable Plinter and her Crax Shooter expert mech.

"Did she die?"

Ves wasn't sure. While it was normal to withhold news of the death of an expert pilot from the public, his intuition suggested to him that it was not so simple.

Right now, the Solemn Guardian directed a considerable amount of spiritual dividends to Venerable Plinter. She received her own share as well as Nyxie's share, so her spiritual growth must have been quite significant if his theories were correct!

"This is a bit problematic."

He wasn't sure if she knew of her connection to the Soldier product line. If she suspected something, she might knock on his door one day, and she probably wouldn't be very happy!

"I can only hope she doesn't come." He muttered.

If nothing else, he would just have to rely on his Avatars and the formidable defenses of the Mech Nursery and the Cloud Estate to fend off a rogue expert pilot.

Ves shrugged off his concerns and decided to return to work. He still needed to refine the draft of his Deliverer project a bit further to confirm whether he selected the right components.

While he went back to work, Gloriana spent most of her time on preparing for the Adonis project. She dragged Vincent to the design lab and subjected him to a lot of scans and tests.

Fortunately, Ves had managed to convince Vincent to leave his entourage and his recorder bots outside!

A few days went by as Ves and Gloriana each worked on the projects they favored.

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