Unlike the Crossers, the Glory Seekers all shared the same mindset.


    "You are a mech designer. Fighting is thest thing you should do, sir." Venerable Eona Ballentine of the Glory Seekers said as she looked at Ves as if he was sick. "As the son of the Superior Mother, it is our duty and our mission to sow death on your behalf. If you are ever in a position where you are forced to fight for your life, then we have failed. That will never happen as long as we breathe."


    Venerable Olivia Remis, the other Handmaiden of Death, nodded in agreement.


    "No one is good at everything, sir. Aside from our Supreme, anyone lesser than her can only excel at one''s respective phase of their lives. You are the embodiment of the life phase and a creator that spawns all beginnings. As powerful and as magnificent as you are, it is clear that your talents lie in creation, not destruction. We are the agents of your holy sister and the destroyers of your foes."


    ording to the adherents of hexism, men or ''boys'' traditionally corresponded to the first phase of existence. Since Ves possessed so many strong associations with life, the Hexers all developed the notion that he was the ultimate good boy!


    Naturally, good boys needed to be protected by as many strong and valiant women as possible!


    "I don''t even know why I bothered to ask your opinion." Ves grumbled and as he rubbed his face.


    He continued to tour various ces in order to collect more input. There was no such thing as too much input. The more people he asked, the more angles he collected. He already started to look at his avable options in a much moreprehensive light.


    After he concluded his brief visit to the Glory Seekers, he sought out the Aduc Family next.


    With the help of Gaia''s powerful support, the Aduc Family managed to take rapid root in the Krakatoa Star Sector.


    Gaia Worldcrafting Services was only a recent entrant in thepetitive terraforming industry, but already made a name for itself in this sector.


    Although the Aducs hated rush jobs, they were realistic enough to know that many pioneers wanted to settle and start living on thes they picked out as soon as possible.


    Though Gaia Worldcrafting Services did not win any records when it came to speedy deliveries, the quality of thes terraformed by this upstartpany quickly stood out for their pleasant climates andck of problems!


    The Green Dream, the Aduc Family''s gship capital terraforming ship, was pretty much never present in the Davute System. She traveled around from one star system to another in order to perform the biggest and most cumbersome terraforming assignments.


    Even though Gaia Worldcrafting Services had drastically raised its prices in order to temper the demand for its services, the Aduc Family still received a lot ofmissions!


    Rtively few Aducs remained in Davute due to all of these jobs. The family did not want to stay idle and wanted to earn as much money as possible in order to build up its foundation in the Red Ocean.


    Fortunately for Ves, the Aduc Family always made sure to station a fixed contingent in Davute. These were the specialists who had been assigned to work in the T Institute which they partly owned.


    Ves had many dealings with Pesca Aduc. She was a good exobiologist and was particrly interested in ecology and such.


    While her specialty was not a perfect fit for the research that took ce in T Institute, her high birth meant that she knew how to take charge and handle administration.


    In the years since Ves worked with the T Institute, he had fewints on how Director Pesca Aduc ran the jointly-owned research organization. Her frequent contact with Gaia had not only strengthened her activated spirituality, but also granted her insights beyond the reach of ordinary people.


    Visiting her at her workce was quite an ordeal.


    p Situated within the underground tunnelplex of the Cat Nest, few people heard of the existence of the T-1 Building. The deliberately nd and boring name was meant to disguise the fact that a lot of interesting metaphysical research took ce within its halls.</anda>


    The entrance to the T-1 Building wasn''t on any maps. Ves had to go through various secret entrances and go through numerous mandatory security checks before he got through.


    It was all worth it, though. He immediately entered into a different world once he stepped inside the amazingb.


    Trees and nts of various kinds were nted in biomes that were locked behind transparent walls.


    Many of therger trees were already growing various fruits that glinted in the light that shone down from above.


    Different exobeasts and designer beasts roamed throughout the artificial environments. Many of them were unique and one-of-a-kind. Ves could sense the growing spiritualities of these extraordinary creatures.


    Ves looked at each of them as either potential design spirits or potential ingredients for other purposes.


    Whether they would turn into the former or thetter depended on their development potential. Not every mutated beast was worth nurturing, especially since the T Institute and its parent organizations only had so much space to grow all of these animals.


    "Grow well, little fellows."


    After passing through numerous corridors, he entered ab where a group of researchers in pristine whiteb coats were monitoring an ongoing experiment.


    Ves looked through the reinforced window and saw that the current test centered around a member of the pakton race.


    He happened to recognize the bird-like sentient alien that was in the process ofmanding a group of feral exobeasts belonging to different species.


    Normally, these dangerous alien predators would have reacted with intense hostility to other species. They would have torn each other as well as the tall avian apart if left to their own devices!


    Yet what actually urred was that each carnivorous beast obediently stood in several neat rows.


    When the female pakton raised her winged arm, the creatures all ran around in a circr route while maintaining the exact same pace.


    If Ves didn''t know any better, he would have thought that these exobeasts had all undergone months or years of beast training.


    In reality, the creatures had all been randomly taken from their biomes and dumped in front of the pakton test subject for the first time in their short lives!


    "How is it going, Pesca?" Ves casually asked as he approached the side of the Director of the T Institute.


    Pesca Aduc curled her lips downwards. "My day could be better, if that is what you were asking. Subject 5 showed great promise in the first few years, but her growth and development has stagnated as ofte. Many of her fellow pakton test subjects have exceeded her in terms of spiritual development and ability proficiency."


    As her number suggested, Subject 5 was one of the first pakton prisoners that the Larkinsons had converted into a test subject. She had taken part in one of the first research projects rted to the development ofpanion spirits and provided a considerable amount of useful data that helped him refine this remarkable spiritual application.


    Ves was quite charmed by Subject 5''s ability to dominate exobeasts, but so far she had never seeded in taking control overrger, stronger and more intelligent creatures.


    She also couldn''t control too many creatures. Ves could already see that her spirituality was straining and struggling to exert fine control over so many different exobeasts.


    "It''s not that surprising for her growth to stagnate." Vesmented. "She was one of the earliest recipients of apanion spirit. I did not add a lot of structure to the design of my creations back then, so there is a huge degree of variance between the strength and abilities of every spiritual pet. The newer generation ofpanion spirits are much stabler in this regard."


    This was one of the advantages of founding the T Institute. Although much of the research on spirituality and rted phenomena were rather vague, spective, tentative and messy, the lessons and insights that Ves gained from the results helped with developing more refined spiritual applications.


    Ves continued to discuss about Subject 5 and the state ofpanion spirit research with Director Pesca for a while.


    It wasn''t until the researchers concluded the current round of testing that Ves addressed his actual purpose.


    Director Pesca Aduc briefly fell into thought.


    "I don''t really understand why you would ever think about bing a mech pilot. It makes no sense even if you have the ability to do so. You have done great work. There is no one in human space that can do what you can do. I am convinced of that. Even your work in your capacity as a mech designer is not as important as the many new and amazing possibilities that you have brought to life with the help of our institute."


    "So you think I should spend even more of my time on our spiritual research projects?"


    "If I were you, I would stop designing mechs entirely." Pesca Aduc said. "Please don''t judge me too quickly. Hear me out please. How many mech designers are active in the industry at this time? There are so many people who are dedicating so much of their lives to designing mechs that you are but one among many."


    She waved her arm across the entireb. "This is where you can truly change our entire society. All of the work we have done on spirit trees,panion spirits and breakthrough solutions will shock all of human space if others learn about the results we have gained so far. The Transhumanist Faction''s increasing interest in our research is a reflection of how much more valuable your contributions in this area matter. Inparison, your mechs are not as remarkable. There are plenty of mechs that can satisfy the mech market. Maybe they don''t have the same properties as your living mechs, but it is not as if your customers will be ruined if they can only work with ordinary mechs."


    She was right. From a societal perspective, Ves'' work as a spiritual engineer was much more impactful than his work as a mech designer, at least for the time being.


    Though Ves could continue to invest a huge amount of time and effort into progressing his design capabilities, he could achieve a lot more if he dedicated himself entirely towards spiritual engineering!


    "No one can do what you can do." Pesca Aduc repeated. "While there are other powerful individuals who are able to wield simr powers, none of them havee out with so many different forms of empowerment. Your dedication to researching different spiritual applications that can make people stronger and more capable than before is highly praiseworthy. If you decide to spend less time on mech design, then our T Institute will truly be able to take off! We will surely be able to help humanity ascend higher than any other race in the Milky Way and surroundings!"


    That was a powerful boast, but one that might actuallye true if Ves truly became more serious about his spiritual engineering activities.


    Taking time off his mech design sessions was out of the question to Ves. He would never ept an approach that forced him to abandon the root of his identity.


    However, if Ves opted for Spiritual Ascension, he could easily imagine a future where he became so good at spiritual engineering that he could aplish a lot more results in much less time!


    This was the perfect way for him to maximize both his mech design and spiritual engineering pursuits!


    What was even better was that if Ves became better at spiritual engineering, his ability to design mechs would be even stronger!


    Each of his products would be a lot more remarkable and useful on the battlefield. His ability to service the needs of mech pilots would skyrocket, primarily because there weren''t any other mech designers that coulde up with so many powerful spiritual engineering applications!


    "You make a good point, Director Pesca."