Directly affecting others through spiritual manipulation wasn't as easy as it sounded. From his earlier experiments, he learned that people with spiritual potential possessed a defense mechanism that caused their spirituality to turtle up and become almost untouchable.
While this largely cut the mech pilot off his own spirit, any external threat would have a very hard time abusing it any further.
What Ves sought this time was not to find a way to alter it. He wasn't trying to figure out how to create expert candidates and expert pilots on demand.
He wanted to achieve the opposite result. He wanted to downgrade a mech pilot with spiritual potential to someone who was still alive but spiritually dull.
"This will be a delicate operation."
Ves had moved to an enclosed test chamber elsewhere on his ship. He ordered his guards to bring in another captive pirate and strap the fellow down to an operation table.
