The Mech Touch (Web Novel)
chapter-6147

When Ves entered the System Space without anyone noticing it, he instantly felt relief.

As long as the Mech Designer System functioned correctly, time in the outside universe should have come to a standstill from his perspective.

The actual mechanics were doubtlessly a lot more complicated, but Ves did not bother to waste his time and brain power on trying to uncover the truth.

He paused for a while and gazed at the idyllic white clouds floating in a peaceful blue sky.

Seeing as there weren't any wrathful lightning bolts trying to pierce the peaceful facade of the mountaintop, Ves became assured that his gambit worked.

It had been a risk to enter the Mech Designer System in full view of a hostile lightning tribulation.

Either the heavenly authority of Messier 87 already detected it and knew about its existence beforehand, or it just managed to discover that the cheeky mech designer who attracted tribulations on a regular basis carried an immensely powerful artifact from another galaxy!

Whatever the case, Ves was already prepared to respond to either situation. There was not much the heavenly authority of Messier 87 could do against him. It was bound to the same rules as it was meant to uphold.

Seeing that the lightning tribulation did not retaliate against Ves, there was no need for him to do anything special.

This granted him the time to focus on the more immediate issue.

How to make the Elegant Rage better.

He already came up with the idea of allowing his living mechs to make more effective use of E energy.

Technically speaking, any mech was able to utilize the power of E energy in a lot of handy ways. Hyper technology existed as a means to enable mechs and other machines to attract certain kinds of E energy and make use of them in predefined ways.

The Elegant Rage also possessed a bit of rudimentary hyper technology, though it was not as strong or systematic as Ves wished.

The Lucid Rage model that the current mech was based upon was a product of the Phasewater Generation.

The Elegant Rage only 'accidentally' became a hyper mech after it merged with a lot of Emperor Wood.

Ves may have upgraded this inferior material with a much better variation of wood, but it did not change the fact that the Elegant Rage was vastly underutilizing the potential of wood energy by only using it to fuel its damage restoration capabilities.

"There's also the thorns."

This was the greatest strength of the Elegant Rage. The living mech became contaminated by Venerable Lanie's talent, and was partially able to mobilize her distinct ability.

Unfortunately, the Elegant Rage was much less competent in this regard. The living mech was not the one to break through.

Ves rubbed his hairless chin in thought. "If I have to develop an active ability for the Elegant Rage, it has to be based on wood energy as well as her thorns."

He had to work with what he got. The Elegant Rage did not possess a lot of strengths. The mech served as an excellent platform for melee combat, and its Sprout Rifle presented interesting options, but this was rather barebones.

That still left Ves with a lot of possible choices, so he quickly tried to narrow them down in order to set a goal that he could work towards.

"The Elegant Rage is more suited to fight long, drawn-out fights, but it cannot do so against her current opponent. The alien swordsman can fight all day while continually borrowing energy from the lightning tribulation as well as ambient E energy radiation. This means that the Elegant Rage needs to eschew the most fitting abilities and pull off a move that is fast, explosive and preferably instant. It should be powerful and practical enough to cripple the alien swordsman or at least throw him out of his rhythm."

The wood element was not typically associated with powerful and explosive attacks, but as one of the five classical elements, it was so varied and versatile that it could still be employed in this fashion.

Ves began to dig up the basic spells that he had learned years ago. He never really made use of them as he would rather prefer to rely on technology if he wanted to start a fire.

"Let's see. It's hard to be able to do this without any plants around."

Perhaps he could buy one from the System, but he was unwilling to spend his AP. He had yet to make any significant strides in completing the Missions he accepted.

"I really need to work on that." He admonished himself. "This situation would have been a lot easier to deal with if I have lots of AP to spare."

He focused back on what he could do for the Elegant Rage by going over the exhaustive list of basic spells.

Promote the blooming and flowering of plants? Pass.

Revive diseased plants and trees? Pass.

Increase the mass and nutrition of edible crops? Pass.

"A lot of basic wood spells are nothing more than farming techniques!"

It made sense. Cultivators needed to eat as well, and promoting the growth of plants was probably a big deal at the time. Various elixirs and other powerful medicines could only be made with extraordinary plants as raw materials.

Fortunately, there were still a few basic attack spells.

Ves raised his hand and gathered a bit of wood energy in order to form a very small and weak wood thorn.

"Launch!"

The thorn propelled forward and struck a nearby rock with barely any sound.

Suffice to say, the attack was very underwhelming. Ves seriously doubted that the Elegant Rage could produce a better result by launching her thorns at the alien swordsman. The latter probably possessed a powerful means to fend off such an assault.

"What about this then?"

He waved his hand and spent more time gathering more wood energy. A very thin vine formed in the air before it launched forward to entangle and wrap around a smaller rock.

Once the vine latched on to its target, it tried to reinforce itself and tighten its grip.

"This is an excellent means of entangling an enemy… if it was powerful enough."

Much of the reason why the conjured vine did not impress Ves was because he had to make it from wood energy. The conversion of E energy to a matter was very slow and inefficient, especially for a cultivator that did not excel in this element.

The entanglement would probably become a lot more impressive if there was already an existing vine available.

Ves recalled that the Elegant Rage managed to retrieve a condensed thorn vine produced during the last tribulation challenge.

Major Jankowski wanted to save it up as a means to trip up the alien swordsman, but so far he did not have the opportunity to draw upon this handy vine.

The Elegant Rage was at risk of getting chopped to pieces from the moment it stopped blocking all of the incoming sword strikes!

"There should still be a way to activate this vine. The mech just has to do this hands fee."

The vine was a fairly powerful resource, especially when it still retained a proportion of Gaia's wood energy.

Ves needed to leverage this resource as well as the wood energy in the environment to produce a fast and explosive result.

"Should I induce it to explode?"

No. It wouldn't work. He very much doubted that the vine could be made to explode all at once.

It was best to work with the existing strengths and inclinations of what the Elegant Rage possessed.

In the case of the vine, it had grown extraordinarily tough, and its thorns were also capable of inflicting decent damage. It had become a good tool for trapping and injuring anything caught by this growth.

"Then let's make its ability to entangle opponents stronger. How can the alien swordsman remain a threat when the vine has wrapped up his limbs?"

The vine did not even have to inflict any damage onto the lightning manifestation. It was already enough for the vine to immobilize and stop the alien swordsman's attacks. The Elegant Rage herself could do the rest!

There were several major concerns, though.

For one, the vine needed to be launched at the enemy without getting intercepted by a fire or ice sword.

The vine also needed to endure a lot of fire and frost exposure. This required a constant infusion of wood energy to rapidly repair itself while also fending off the elemental attacks over an extended period of time.

"A regular effort is not enough." Ves concluded.

Both fire and ice had proven to be highly effective against wood!

Fire posed the most direct threat to the vine because the latter was inherently vulnerable to catching flame.

Ice could freeze the cells of the vine, thereby causing its activity to slow down and find it much more difficult to maintain its regeneration processes.

Ves could only draw upon the example of the Emperor Tree to resist these dangerous effects.

"As long as the vine has access to a lot of wood energy, it can outlast any hostile effect!"

Only an overwhelmingly powerful attack had a chance of overcoming the rapid regeneration of the vine, but it was unlikely for the four-armed swordsman to possess this capability.

So long as the vine successfully inhibited the lightning manifestation's ability to perform his elemental sword techniques, much of the threat posed by this enemy should be gone.

"The vine doesn't have to last forever. It only needs to maintain a strong hold long enough for the Elegant Rage to land the killing blow."

In short, it all came down to energy. The Elegant Rage not only needed to draw upon a lot of wood energy, but infuse it all into the thorny vine so that it could do its job.

It was not easy to attract a large quantity of wood energy. The Elegant Rage was far weaker than the Emperor Tree in this aspect. Its inherent wood energy reserves were also rather paltry and inadequate for the job.

Ves quickly came up with two potential ways for the Elegant Rage to summon a lot more wood energy in a hurry.

"It can drain itself to fuel her vine."

This was the first idea that came to his mind. It should be fairly effective as the Elegant Rage should be able to release a lot of wood energy by depleting the strength of her wooden components.

So long as the Elegant Rage absorbed a lot of wood energy or replaced her withered wooden parts with healthy ones after the battle, the self-inflicted damage shouldn't be permanent.

The problem with this approach was that it would leave the mech drained and weakened after overcoming this challenge!

This was bad as a lightning manifestation that was 30 percent more powerful than the alien swordsman would appear shortly afterwards!

The Elegant Rage absolutely could not afford to start the final fight for her survival in a drained and weakened state.

Ves therefore directed his attention elsewhere. It was not acceptable to drain the wood energy from the Elegant Rage's vital components, but what about other reservoirs of wood energy?

"What if… the Elegant Rage can drain the energies of the trees in the surrounding forest?"

This was a much more acceptable idea!

Although the devastation to the forest and the local ecosystem would definitely be considerable due to the need to requisition a huge amount of wood energy, it was all for a good cause!

Nothing came for free. Ves would rather sacrifice the lives of a million trees than have the Elegant Rage sacrifice her own life.

"It won't be easy, but I think there's a way to do it." He grinned.

Ideas already began to swirl in his mind. He needed to puzzle out a way for the Elegant Rage to quickly and efficiently drain an entire forest of all of its wood energy.

"The faster, the better!"