The Mech Touch (Web Novel)
chapter-6160

Ves no longer questioned why the heavens saw fit to subject the Elegant Rage to a lightning tribulation.

He severely underestimated the potential of Emperor Wood. The modified ebony wood that made up much of the mech frame of the Elegant Rage apparently retained a lot of possibilities from the former calamity tree!

Even when the Emperor Tree was already dead, his wood still carried his highly mutated DNA and other remnants.

The Elegant Rage only needed to activate the hidden legacies of the calamity tree in order to take on the form of the once-mighty Emperor Tree.

Even if the Woodsap mech was too weak to 'simulate' the full splendor of this powerful organism, the ebony tree form enabled the machine to gain the size as well as the effective combat power of a small juggernaut!

This was an amazing amplification of power that no one expected to witness from what looked like a strange second-class mech on the outside!

If this ability was not a one-time feature but instead a controllable option that could be toggled during every battle, then the meaning of a mech like the Elegant Rage had definitely changed!

Just the fact that the Elegant Rage managed to smack down the krelion judge so easily after her transformation into a tall and thorn-covered ebony tree was clear proof of the potential of a Woodsap mech!

Ves did not delude himself into thinking that the ebony tree form allowed the Elegant Rage to win every battle. Everything had a price. The transformed Woodsap mech had not only lost her mobility, but also drained a huge amount of moisture and minerals beneath the ground.

The ecological landscape of this entire forest was worse than the other ones! Not only had it been drained of life, but all of the minerals underneath the ground had disappeared as well!

This included many low-grade and mid-grade exotics that enriched this planet and made the ground more resistant against orbital bombardment.

Such a consequence would doubtlessly make people reluctant to deploy Woodsap mechs in a defensive capacity!

What was the point of working so hard to defend a planet against foreign invasion when its own protectors had already ruined the environment?

Perhaps the only suitable role for Woodsap mechs was to take part in offensive sieges against hostile planets!

As long as the Woodsap mechs were allowed to desecrate on planets that the attacking force didn't care about, they could give full play to their costly but powerful tree forms!

It would be like fielding an army of juggernauts, but only demanded a fraction of resources and transportation capacity!

However, Ves noticed that Woodsap mechs also acted under another constraint.

From the moment their tree forms took root, they lost the ability to move.

Sure, they derived a lot of power from the resources they could extract from the ground, but when that came at the cost of losing their mobility, they instantly turned themselves into obvious targets!

Ves did not make the mistake of assuming that every stationary object was weak. The Emperor Tree had managed to smack around several expert mechs without incurring any significant damage.

What if stronger enemies came around? Once a sufficiently strong powerhouse such as an ace mech confronted the tree, the latter had no chance to retreat!

In fact, it didn't take a phase lord or an ace mech to slay the Emperor Tree. All it took was heavy bombardment in order to exhaust its defenses and resources!

Unless the tree had a way of attacking far beyond its own position, it was helpless to block out the damage inflicted by orbital bombardment or the massed firepower of lots of heavy artillery mechs!

Ves recognized that an opponent like the krelion judge had lost the last battle a little unjustly.

If he was a real living being and not a manifestation created by tribulation lightning, then he could have made the most rational choice and simply retreat.

There was no advantage in fighting against the Elegant Rage in her powerful ebony tree form. This was especially the case at close range!

The proper way to deal with a strong opponent with a strong stationary advantage was to disengage and move out of the range where the ebony tree could pose a significant threat.

Once the krelion judge moved far away enough, he could either initiate a siege by bombarding the transformed Elegant Rage at an extreme distance, or simply stall and wait until the Elegant Rage could no longer afford to stick around and reverted to her mech form!

Unfortunately for the krelion judge, the rules of the game did not permit it to adopt these shameless tactics. The manifestation was not permitted to move outside of the reach of the tribulation storm that sustained it. He was also not allowed to adopt Fabian tactics because lighting tribulations were all about facing challenges head-on!

Therefore, the Elegant Rage lucked out big time as the krelion judge was essentially forced to fight the monstrous ebony tree on her own terms!

Tribulation manifestations literally could not retreat, so the outcome of such a lopsided battle became predictable.

Real battles should not unfold in such a stupid fashion. Most native aliens were not stupid. Once they learned what Woodsap mechs were capable of, they would definitely make the corresponding adjustments.

The tree form of a Woodsap mech therefore possessed very distinct strengths and weaknesses.

The presence of weaknesses did not invalidate the value of machines like the Elegant Rage. They just made it a bit more troublesome to use them to their full potential.

Combined arms was all about mixing different unit types together to cover for each other's weaknesses. The presence of heavy artillery mechs, light mechs and other supporting units could easily compensate for the obvious shortcomings of Woodsap mechs.

Woodsap mechs could easily act as movable fortresses that could quickly secure solid footholds or forward operating bases in enemy territory. Ves could already envision these machines being put to use in planetary raids and invasions. They were so much cheaper, quicker and easier to deploy than full defensive works!

This made Woodsap mechs especially suitable for use in the upcoming deep strike operations!

If Ves could figure this out, then so could others. He already knew that the Red Association as well as a lot of other observers had definitely taken notice of the Elegant Rage's absurd combat effectiveness under the right conditions. He could already foresee that he would get flooded with inquiries about mechs similar to this machine.

While he certainly had reasons to feel pleased about receiving validation for his hard work, the ongoing crisis was not over.

The defeat of the ninth and final wave of the multi-modal lightning tribulation should have made him feel relieved.

The problem was that the Elegant Rage had paid a heavy price in order to transform into her ebony tree form.

By unlocking the remnant of the Emperor Tree that was hidden inside her own wooden construction, the Elegant Rage became increasingly more contaminated by the calamity tree's powerful imprint!

In other words, the ebony tree not only tried to take on the form of the Emperor Tree, but also tried to revive the mentality of this powerful entity!

As a powerful lightning baptism continued to transform and strengthen the Elegant Rage, Ves quickly realized that this sequence could go horribly wrong!

"PAIN! KILL! SUFFER! GROW!"

Instead of reverting back to her mech form, the Elegant Rage doubled down on her current form and actively tried to grow her ebony tree form!

Ves could sense that the exterior of the current Elegant Rage was steadily growing taller by the second!

The thorns grew thicker and longer, making them look a lot more menacing than before!

Although the lightning baptism was also causing a lot of harm to the ebony tree, the berserk Elegant Rage simply took the pain and channeled her growing rage into shaping a larger and more aggressive form for herself!

The lightning baptism did nothing to improve the Elegant Rage's unstable mentality. Her deep contamination and her loss of rationality had caused her to pursue whatever instincts became dominant at this time, and she just happened to have inherited most of them from the Emperor Tree!

So long as the Elegant Rage wanted to become a more powerful tree from the bottom of her heart, then the lightning tribulation would endeavor to make her wish come true, even if that was not her original intention!

"Damnit!" Ves cursed. "This is not supposed to happen! If this goes on, all semblance of a mech will disappear! Jankowski, can you rein in the Elegant Rage?!"

"I can't!" The expert candidate responded with a desperate voice. "I am trying my best to help the mech regain her sanity, but my mind and will is too weak to get through her suffering. She's in so much pain that it is fueling her descent into madness. I have never experienced anything like this! I am already lucky that she has not seen any reason to lash out against me, but I cannot guarantee that she will stay this way."

The Elegant Rage was losing control, and the damned heavenly authority of Messier 87 deliberately fed this tendency just to screw the humans over within the confines of the rules!

"I see." Ves gritted his teeth. "I can't sit still."

He understood now why the living mech asked him to pull her back to sanity. She predicted that this might happen!

A lot of thoughts went through his mind. He quickly came up with a potential solution, though he was anything but certain whether it would work. He also doubted whether the lighting tribulation would let him get away with this action.

There was no time for doubts. The final lightning baptism was strengthening the Elegant Rage's ebony tree form so much that the process may reach the point of no return!

"Blinky! Bring over Lufa now!"

"Mrow!"

The Star Cat actively tried to reach out to the Angel of Tranquility.

The activity of the tribulation storm made it difficult to form a connection, but Lufa was already waiting to help.

As soon as Blinky formed a connection with the design spirit, the latter immediately began to spiritually possess the companion spirit.

The purple spiritual cat slowly began to morph into a humanoid shape with the wings of an angel!

The aura and glow of the possessed companion spirit also changed to the point where they mirrored that of Lufa!

As Blinky did his utmost to open his own spirituality to Lufa and allow the design spirit to channel as much of his power to this location as possible, the entire cockpit soon became a haven of peace and tranquility!

Major Jankowksi immediately relaxed his tense and frayed nerves as he succumbed to the influence of Lufa's soothing presence.

"This glow…"

The miniature manifestation of Lufa maintained a calm and stoic facade as he strengthened his presence inside the cockpit as much as possible.

His aura quickly began to spread outside of the confines of the cockpit and affect the larger tree!

Though Lufa's glow did not appear to be strong enough to force the Elegant Rage to regain her sanity right away, the design spirit had not yet exhausted his options.

He soon began to lift up his finger and press it onto his chin. As Lufa adopted a thinking expression, he began to shift his current manifestation from the Aspect of Tranquility to the Aspect of Rationality!

His glow no longer tried to suppress every mental and spirituality on an indiscriminate basis.

Instead, Lufa left the Elegant Rage's conscious and rational thinking alone and concentrated all of his efforts into taming her rampant emotions!

The effect of the 'rationality glow' was barely stronger than that of the tranquility glow, but every bit of progress mattered!

Meanwhile, Ves tried his best to wake up his Woodsap mech.

"Remember who you are. You are the Elegant Rage. You are not a tree. Venerable Lanie is waiting for you to come to her. Don't you want to reunite with your battle partner? Calm down. Let go. Endless glory awaits, but only if you are able to turn yourself back into a mech. You can do it. I believe in you. Let Lufa bring you back to sanity."