The Mech Touch

Chapter 6061  Immature Wooden Constructs

During the time the four mechs faced the Emperor Treeʼs probes, two mech designers quietly observed the proceedings from afar.

Ketis and Ves had successfully employed a remote avatar channeling technique to deposit their respective companion spirits into their masterworks.

For now, Blinky remained quietly embedded inside the Everchanger while Sharpie continued to ride inside the Decapitator.

Neither companion spirits spent any effort to aid the expert mechs. There was no need to provide any assistance as the high-tier expert pilots were already strong enough to take care of themselves.

So far, the probing attacks allowed the two sides to gather a lot of information from each other.

The Emperor Tree gained a very clear understanding of the individual combat capabilities of each of the four mechs.

The two expert mechs stood out for their remarkable attack power and their incredibly strong resonance shields.

The two custom mechs were remarkably weaker, but they excelled in either melee or ranged combat.

The combination of the four mechs was very difficult to deal with, but the Emperor Tree apparently did not perceive an acute threat towards its life, or else it would have gone all-out a lot sooner.

If the calamity plant was truly a sapient being with the capacity to think in a logical manner, then it should understand the importance of planning and timing.

It became apparent that neither side intended to fight a decisive battle that would decide the overlord of this region on this day.

That did not mean that the Emperor Tree intended to be lenient towards the invading mechs!

Whether it understood that the mechs needed to return to Chimera Base in order to supply valuable data and tissue samples to the Larkinson Biotech Institute, the Emperor Tree was not about to let them return alive!

In the meantime, the human mech pilots grew more and more vigilant towards the Emperor Tree.

Their understanding of calamity beasts was relatively poor. The galactic net hardly supplied any detailed and reliable information on these mysterious twice-evolved creatures. The Hunting Association probably conducted the most research on them, but its most valuable data was only available to hunters and cooperating biotech organizations.

If the Larkinsons really wanted to, they could probably gain access to that valuable data, but that would require them to pay a price and become more entangled with the recently reformed and expanded association.

When Task Force Solus initially arrived in orbit of Reticula Corein V, the Larkinsons chose to collect information about calamity beasts themselves. There were over a dozen of them on this untamed planet alone, so that should make it easier to figure out their capabilities.

At least that was what they thought.

What the Larkinsons did not account for was that the calamity beasts were considerably more intelligent, powerful and adaptive than they thought.

Compared to mutated beasts, the difference was like night and day!

The Larkinsons learned the hard way that despite the lack of an overpowering Saint Kingdom, the claim that calamity beasts should be regarded as beings on the same level as ace pilots became more and more justified!

Perhaps the only consolation to Venerable Joshua and the other three mech pilots was that the Emperor Treeʼs comprehensive power did not exceed that of a junior ace pilot.

That was still a powerful being, but it was not entirely unbearable as Venerable Joshua and Venerable Dise were already ace pilot candidates.

Only a single barrier separated them from Sainthood!

Still, the Emperor Tree had not yet demonstrated all of its capabilities.

The ability to replicate mechs with its own wooden variant was the biggest surprise of this encounter so far.

How many wooden mechs did it manage to produce?

Were any of them stronger than the ones shown before?

What exactly controlled these mechs in battle?

More importantly, what could Ves learn from these remarkable creations?

Ves fixated on the latter question the most. From the moment he observed the wooden mechs emerging from the clouds, he instantly became fixated as if he had just come across an entire basin filled with phasewater.

As a man who craved novelty, how could he not become charmed by the Emperor Treeʼs weird attempt at replicating mechs?

Even though the calamity plant obviously did not possess a systematic understanding of basic science and engineering, the massive creature clearly possessed its own special talent and abilities. For it to be able to make a poor but relatively functional imitation of mechs already elevated the Emperor Tree far beyond any other calamity beasts and plants as far as Ves was concerned!

Ves even developed a strong urge to preserve the Emperor Tree and maybe even seek cooperation with it. From his perspective, it would be a waste to destroy such a magnificent and productive entity!

However, according to the Hunting Association and other sources, calamity beasts and to a certain extent plants were fundamentally hostile towards civilized life forms. They had proven to be utterly unreliable and untameable.

Many forces had already attempted to do so, but it had always ended in disaster!

Perhaps the reasons for all of these failures was because of lack of knowledge. There were still a lot of groups out there who stomached the losses and continued to perform different experiments.

The hope was that they would finally be able to develop their own proprietary taming method through trial and error.

Still, even if it was possible to form peaceful coexistence with a calamity beast or plant, iti would take time for red humanity to develop an established and proven methodology.

If the Larkinsons wanted to tame their own calamity beast, then they had to take a lot of risks and potentially incur a lot of losses before they could get everything right!

This was clearly not an easy task to say the least. Ves did not dare to think about it any further. This was not the right time and place to harbor wild ambitions.

”What do you think about the wooden mechs, Ketis?” Ves asked over the still-active communication channel.

Deep inside the Wild Torch, the swordmaster furrowed her brows as she continued to think about what Sharpie managed to perceive of the strange imitation products.

”They cannot be defined as mechs.” She spoke with certainty. ”Sharpie is not as good at sensing life as you, but she has only sensed one controlling spirit inside each wooden construct, and it is not too strong either. They were all spawned by the Emperor Tree a relatively short time ago and developed to their present size and strength in haste. It would be more accurate to say that they are wooden battle bots.”

Ves nodded in agreement. ”I concur. Blinky is able to perceive a lot of interesting details about these wooden constructs. What I can tell you is that they are all strongly infused by fairly high-quality wood E energy. What is special is that the constructs themselves are not strong or developed enough to generate all of this wood energy. It is instead supplied by the Emperor Tree from remote. Whether accidentally or through deliberate attempts to imitate my living mechs, it has found a way to assume a role similar to a design spirit. Since it is the creator of its own wooden constructs, it is trivially easy for the Emperor Tree to forge a strong bond with these detached products.”

In fact, becoming a design spirit was not very difficult so long as the receiving party was sufficiently alive.

The wooden constructs may be awful at replicating the full brilliance of their authentic mech counterparts, but they were alive in a sense!

Combined with their fantastic affinity with wood energy, it became easy for the Emperor Tree to convert its creations into tiny wooden extensions of itself.

”So the wooden mechs are not completely independent, but they are not directly controlled by the Emperor Tree either.” Ketis summarized. ”Either way, neither option is good at piloting mechs. The calamity plant may have attained some success in replicating our mechs, but it is much less able to replicate the decades of education, training and combat experience of actual mech pilots.”

”It is learning quickly, though. Have you noticed that the second wave of wooden mechs started off the previous bout with absolutely no sign of any deliberate tactics and positioning, but gradually began to adjust their operations as they suffered disproportionate losses? By the time the four mechs finished off the last of their wooden opponents, the Emperor Tree seemingly mastered some of the basics of tactics and formation theory.”

That was scary. The Emperor Tree may have emerged from a low starting point, but its frightening capacity to learn from its enemies had raised its upper limit!

The Emperor Tree would definitely become a fearsome opponent if it ever managed to evolve into a god plant, especially now that it had already become exposed to human fighting methods!

Ketis narrowed her eyes. ”After our mechs have collected the necessary samples, I wonʼt wait too long for the LBI to present me with all of their data and conclusions. We need to get ready to mobilize a kill force in order to take this tree down once and for all. The longer we delay, the harder it becomes to defeat it without generating lots of noise.”

Generating too much noise would alarm all of the other calamity beasts on the planet. In the worst case scenario, they might spontaneously decide to band together to demolish the extraterrestrial invaders!

”It wonʼt be easy to kill the Emperor Tree in a short amount of time without relying on massed firepower.” Ves noted. ”Saint Tusa canʼt help even if his Dark Zephyr has been upgraded to an ace mech because his machine simply isnʼt configured for mass destruction. You are better off fielding the Promethea instead.”

Ketis frowned. ”In hindsight, I shouldnʼt have let Venerable Isobel Kotin transfer back to the expeditionary fleet.”

”She went back in time to speed up the downfall of the Torment Fleet and prevent multiple alien warships from eliminating a lot of good mechs and mech pilots. In any case, the expeditionary fleet has retreated from the frontlines, so there is no problem with transferring the Promethea back to your task force. You will need her firepower now that burning a huge amount of biomass in a short amount of time has become desirable again.”

The reason why the Promethea only fought on the surface for a short time was because the Larkinsons did not want her to burn all of the exobeast carcasses.

Even if Venerable Isobel and the Promethea went against their nature and deliberately suppressed the propagation of their purple flames, it was too difficult to completely tame such a volatile force.

Far too many valuable beast carcasses got burned into worthless ash due to the Prometheaʼs fiery firepower!

”Are you willing to let the Promethea burn down the entire Emperor Tree?” Ketis asked.

”To be honest, no. I have a strong suspicion that I can harvest unimaginable gains if I can capture the Emperor Tree alive. It would be irresponsible for me to request your task force to subjugate it to the point where it has completely surrendered to our control. Just do your best to harvest as many gains as possible. Even if the tree is lost to us forever, we will most certainly encounter other calamity trees in the future. We donʼt need to get too hung up over missing a lot of opportunities this time.”

It was not quite certain what Ves could gain out of studying the Emperor Tree anyway.

Perhaps its wooden constructs did not really possess anything significant that was worth studying and reverse engineering.

Wait. That was not quite true. Ves could think of one benefit that elevated the research value of these wooden creations!

”Did you notice that both the Emperor Tree and these wooden constructs have infused Solus Gas into their structures? This has made them a lot more difficult to detect and read through different means. The effect is remarkably stable and consistent. We may be able to learn a thing or two about how to make practical use of Solus Gas by studying the powerful treeʼs methods.”

Depending on the supply of Solus Gas and the ease of integrating this exotic substance into metallic mechs, this could potentially make every Larkinson mech harder to detect and read!