Personally think option 3 is the best. Ves’ mechs are highly dependent on their spiritual abilities. Without them, they are just normal mechs, maybe below average even. It’s better to focus on his specialization, which I believe will help him advance to senior mech designer, and it is a unique skillset that no one can really 100% duplicate. It’s also the most versatile option. Most of the options can probably be obtained if he master and develop different spiritual techniques. He could also create better gear for himself and develop similar abilities to the compact which would drastically improve his survivability and offer the best protection against the compact sorcerers. Really hope Ves choose this one, but knowing Exlor, he will probably choose something else, just solely based on the fact that this option is too similar to the 5SC and Exlor seems to want Ves to deviate from this path.

I wonder if in the future Ves will create a spiritual mech for himself to go against the dark gods. Since he could create firearms, in theory, he should be able to create a spiritual mech where he acts as a pilot and have Blinky as a design spirit creating his very own type of symbiosis. This way, he could utilize his spirituality like the rest of the spiritual lifeforms while still keeping in line with his life/creation domain and his methodology as a mech designer/spiritual engineer. Probably won’t happen though, since this very much deviate from his role as a mech designer, but it will be good to see him on par with the likes of the dark gods since he will definitely go against them someday. Since these ‘lifeforms’ can become more powerful than ace pilots, it will be weird if Ves doesn’t find a way to do something similar.