Ves encountered several expert pilots in his life. What he always found remarkable was that they possessed a strong sense of confidence and certainty in their values.
Naturally, they had cause to be confident, but now he knew the exact mechanics behind the secret to advance to expert pilot.
As Ves expected, a mech pilot needed to possess spirituality before they could even be eligible to advance! Of all the mech pilots he met in his life, practically none of them possessed spirituality in any appreciable amounts, causing their chances to go beyond advanced pilot to be a pipedream.
Eloise Pelican should have been one of them. No matter how many battles she went through, no matter how much she piloted the Valiant Warden to the point of developing an organic bond with it, no matter how much she practiced to learn every single nuance and idiosyncrasy of her frankenstein mech, there was no way for her to ever ascend beyond her mortal limits!