Energy by itself was powerful, but only if it was being used.

Reality consisted of energy and matter interchanging with each other. Order arose when lots of processes took place that converted one form of energy into another form of energy, allowing someone or something to take advantage of the process to accomplish something useful.

An ordinary human converted the energy absorbed by the food he absorbed to perform his job and go about his day.

A simple mech consumed the energy supplied by its energy cells and power reactor in order to move around or attack its opponents.

A star released energy at a massive scale due to the immense gravity pressing a huge amount of atoms together, fusing them into bigger atoms that also happened to release a lot of energy in the form of electromagnetic radiation.

The entire cosmos, from tiny specks of space dust to astronomically huge galaxies, operated along these lines. The conversion of matter to matter, matter to energy, energy to matter and energy to energy basically explained every single process that took place from the beginning of time.

As a mech designer, Ves possessed a deep appreciation of energy. It was the most essential pillar upon which human civilization rested. Without harnessing a sufficient amount of energy, how could humanity possibly fuel the enormous industries that produced the huge amount of weapons and war machines that kept humanity dominant?

Without developing and sustaining enormous power reactors, how could humanity's awesome battleships defeat the previously-dominant alien empires during the Age of Conquest?

Without powerful weapons of mass destruction, how could the human race almost make itself extinct in the span of less than a century despite spreading widely across the galaxy?

Energy could be used to create and destroy. No matter what form it took, energy was neither inherently good or evil. It was neither aggressive nor peaceful.

It just existed.

It was up to someone or something else to make use of energy.

After performing an extensive series of repetitive tests on the Valkyrie Prime, Ves had gained a slightly deeper understanding of all of the spiritual energy dumped into the mech.

First, the spiritual energy used to enhance the spiritual foundation of the mech did not vanish. The 'soul' of the mech appeared to be a self-sustaining entity that did not exhibit any changes in the short term. It did not need to be fed, though piloting the mech slowly caused it to grow and develop further.

While this largely ruled out many means of accelerating its growth, at the very least Ves didn't have to worry about its upkeep, unlike his expensive factory ship.

"This also explains why the triggered abilities of my recent mech designs aren't that powerful." He suddenly realized.

The Marked For Death ability of the Valkyrie Redeemer.

The Disorientation Pulse of the Doom Guard and the Ferocious Piranha

The Guided Aim ability of the Deliverer.

All of these triggered abilities were impactful in their own way, but that was mainly because they affected the human mind. In truth, none of the triggered abilities that Ves developed over the course of his career was ever able to affect reality itself.

It was only now that Ves explored other applications of spiritual energy that he understood the fundamental reason behind the limitations of glows and triggered abilities.

There wasn't enough energy!

Every LMC mech that was alive possessed spiritual energy in the form of spiritual foundation. Yet without any active enhancement, these freshly-made mechs measured at almost 0 Ves.

How could a mech with only a tiny amount of energy possibly be capable of affecting reality? It was already a miracle that it was able to influence people's minds!

Even if a mech's spiritual foundation absorbed a lot of spiritual energy, either through spiritual foundation enhancement or by collecting the spillover of the breakthrough of its expert pilot, it still did not change anything.

This was because a mech's spiritual foundation was not set up to consume its own energy to power energy-intensive processes!

It was like any normal living entity. When a normal human like Gavin Neumann ran laps throughout the Spirit of Bentheim, he would probably collapse in less than an hour.

Even if the personal assistant felt as if his entire body was sucked dry of energy, in fact his body still possessed more than enough energy to sustain its normal physiological activities. Otherwise, his muscles would no longer be able to move, his brain would no longer be capable of producing thoughts and his digestion system wouldn't be able to replenish the body's energy levels!

"The spirit of a mech is akin to a normal human." Ves concluded. "It's not a power reactor that rapidly consumes fuel in order to release a huge amount of energy."

The spiritual energy required to affect reality was massive. Ves couldn't help but recall the instances where Ketis demonstrated her 'superpower'.

That was actually a very good example of how spiritual energy could be used to achieve something energy-intensive but meaningful.

It also illustrated how the price was very onerous. Ketis could only empower the edge of a blade for a single attack before she was done for the day!

This single case proved that spiritual energy could accomplish more if it was being expended in some fashion.

Ves himself also expended spiritual energy when he performed his more demanding techniques. Creating design spirits, channeling the strength of design spirits, donning a spiritual mask and performing remote domain sharing with Gloriana all drained a lot of his energy, but the results were always drastic!

"In order to get something, you have to pay something. The more you pay, the more you get."

Of course, it wasn't that simple. Every process and transformation generated waste. Not even spiritual energy was immune to the concept of efficiency.

In any case, the realization that consuming spiritual energy produced a lot of remarkable outcomes was a very important insight.

It explained many powerful phenomena that previously seemed like mysteries to Ves.

Even the power displayed by high-ranking mech pilots and supermechs was no longer inexplicable as far as he was concerned!

The successively greater power exhibited by expert mechs, ace mechs and god mechs in combination with their pilots also resulted from a combination of expending spiritual energy and willpower!

Ves looked intrigued. "Is this also a part of the secret that mech designers need to understand in order to design an expert mech?"

Regardless, the realization he made was such an important acknowledgement of how reality worked that Ves was actually experiencing another round of sublimation in his mind.

His design seed evolved!

Even though the shift wasn't very drastic, Ves could definitely feel his design seed had reached another stage of growth.

This was because this fundamental realization had the potential to unlock many powerful ways of applying his design philosophy. Enabling prime resonance was only a preview of what he could accomplish now that he understood a new truth about spiritual energy!

"I have taken one step closer to becoming a Senior!" Ves joyfully guessed.

It sounded so incredibly simple and obvious in hindsight, yet he was still limited by his imagination.

Now that he knew more than before, Ves became a lot more eager to explore the new methods he came up with to employ spiritual energy in a greater fashion.

Still, as exciting as these new possibilities sounding, his enthusiasm dampened when he recalled the price he had to pay.

"Everything has a price."

The greater the value, the greater the price.

Ves winced as he recalled he lost his Grand Dynamo. While this sacrifice produced an incredibly powerful result, the fact of the matter was that he had lost a very powerful source of renewable spiritual energy!

In the case of prime mechs, they continually needed to be supplemented with additional spiritual energy when put into use. While Ves welcomed the discovery that piloting the Valkyrie Prime exercised Venerable Joshua's force of will, it was by no means a cheap process!

As Ves thought about developing more prime mechs in order to give his other Larkinson expert mech pilots their own workout tools, he inevitably faced the problem of sustaining their energy consumption.

According to Venerable Joshua, he was only capable of arousing prime resonance with the assistance of his mech and its design spirit.

That essentially meant the expert pilot had to develop a good relationship with the source of the spiritual energy infused in a mech.

Venerable Jannzi, Venerable Orfan and Venerable Dise should be alright as long as they piloted a mech that was compatible with Qilanxo.

The problem was that aside from Jannzi, he didn't have a readily available mech to accommodate the latter two. They were offensive mech pilots who fit poorly with the Aurora Titan and were much less flexible than Venerable Joshua when it came to befriending an entity like the Superior Mother.

Venerable Tusa and Venerable Stark were even worse off. Ves lacked the second-class mech models to adapt suitable prime mechs for them. He needed to wait until his Design Department completed the Ferocious Piranha IB and the Bright Warrior IB Projects to even consider developing their prime mechs.

There were many other problems and complications surrounding this issue. All of these headaches caused him to appreciate a flexible and adaptable expert pilot like Venerable Joshua even more.

Whereas other expert pilots became more narrow and specific with regards to their demands, Venerable Joshua was just as tolerant to different mechs and circumstances than before. He didn't present much resistance when being asked to pilot an Ylvainan or Hexer mech.

With Venerable Joshua, Ves did not need to adapt a mech for his specific demands and inclination.

Instead, he could rely on the eager expert pilot to adapt himself to a mech instead!

Joshua was a real treasure to Ves for this reason!

After making all of these profound realizations, Ves tried to figure out how he could put it all into practice.

Much like energy, theory was only powerful if he put it to use.

After considering a number of options, he quickly set his sights on one of his most powerful innovations. He had used his invention to very good effect during the Battle against the Abyss.

It was a pity that it was very hard to replicate the effects at the magnitude shown during the fight. Ves essentially relied on the one-time outburst of forced resonance to achieve an outcome that ordinarily required true resonance to produce.

"Forced resonance is like winning the lottery. True resonance is like earning a regular paycheck. Fake resonance is like begging on the street. Prime resonance is like… working part-time because you can't get a real job."

This statement illustrated his views on the different forms of resonance. Forced resonance was more powerful than true resonance, but the latter was actually more desirable and sustainable.

However, as his expert pilots didn't have any means of generating true resonance, Ves had to settle for the discount version, which was prime resonance.

Still, discount or not, it was better than nothing!

It was because of this that Ves issued a special mission to a large number of Penitent Sister mechs and mech pilots.

When they realized what Ves wanted to do, the Penitent Sisters felt very mixed!

This was why they made a move when the fleet emerged out of FTL and the mechs were being prepared to sortie into space.

An angry group of Penitent Sisters led by their mech captain stormed up to Ves as he was setting up his workstation in the hangar bay!

"Patriarch Larkinson! What is the meaning of this?!" Captain Chelsea Vidovic indignantly demanded.

"What is the matter?" Ves frowned as he calmly turned to face the female mech pilots.

"While we Penitent Sisters are at your disposal, we cannot understand why you would put a male in charge of us!" She stated while waving her hand in the direction of Venerable Joshua and the Valkyrie Prime. "Why don't you give your new Valkyrie mech to us? It will be in much better hands when piloted by someone who is truly devoted to the Superior Mother!"