The Mech Touch

Chapter 6121  Burning Wood

The Larkinson Clan gained its second ace pilot.

Although the journey that Isobel took to smash through her bottleneck was highly unorthodox and fraught with far greater peril than usual, her strength was undeniable.

By forming a purple sun around her expert mech through the explosion of forced resonance, Saint Isobel Kotin gave the Larkinson Clan a short preview of how she wielded her power now that she had unlocked an entirely new tier of strength.

As the purple sun continued to burn the large and extremely tall main trunk of the Emperor Tree, it looked as if nothing could stop the Promethea in her supercharged state from completing her goal.

The tree clearly suffered from the overwhelming heat spread by the purple sun.

Any part of its trunk that came in direct contact with Saint Isobelʼs exaggeratingly energetic Saint Kingdom burned within seconds!

Nothing could stop the purple sun from devouring the touch and metal-reinforced wood from drying up before crumbling into ash.

What was worse for the Emperor Tree was that its wood actively fed the purple sun!

The Saint Kingdom behaved like a starved beast that eagerly inflated as it devoured more and more of its prey. The purple sun visibly glowed hotter until its violent flames started to look like a bright magenta star!

Not even the ebony mechs could do anything to stop the purple sun from devouring everything related to the calamity tree.

When the Ebony First Sword courageously charged into the purple sun, it disappeared without any fluctuations!

When the Ebony Zeal attempted to bombard the Promethea that was at the center of the purple sun, the ebony seeds accomplished nothing of note!

So much heat radiated from the increasingly more fed purple star that the previously untouched sections of the Emperor Tree also started to dry up and burst into flames!

More and more purple flames started to spread from the purple sun.

The Emperor Tree was clever enough to understand it was almost hopeless to stop the purple sun from burning its trunk.

However, the descent of the purple sun had slowed down. It would take minutes for the supercharged Promethea to reach the surface.

This gave the calamity plant a chance to survive this encounter, especially if it was smart and informed enough to know that Saint Isobel could only sustain this outburst of power for a relatively short amount of time!

The tree did not work to attain an immediate victory, but instead shifted its strategy in order to outlast its most threatening opponent.

The supply of tree sap and wood energy no longer reached the purple sun. The Emperor Tree had clearly written off the parts of the trunk that came into direct contact with the purple sun.

Instead of trying to do the impossible, the tree instead focused on transferring its resources to repair and maintain the health of the trunk below that point.

The overwhelming heat radiated by the purple sun no longer burned up the bark and wood lower down the length of the trunk.

The abundance of tree sap covering the vulnerable wood and the wood energy nurturing all of the organic matter successfully formed an improvised fire barrier that prevented the entire trunk from burning down at an accelerated pace!

If this went on, it truly looked as if the Emperor Tree would outlast the purple sunʼs attempt to kill the calamity plant before Saint Isobel ran out of steam!

Unfortunately for the target of the Prometheaʼs ire, its thoughts were too simple.

Though it looked as if Saint Isobel had gone crazy to the point where she had lost all awareness, there was definitely at least one intelligence driving the current state of the Promethea.

Saint Isobel may have gained the sheer power necessary to burn the Emperor Tree to death, but her endurance was seriously in doubt!

Forced resonance never lasted long. Newly ascended ace pilots always required a period of adaptation and consolidation before they could truly exert the power of their rank. They also needed a proper ace mech that was fully configured and calibrated for their extraordinary willpower.

Right now, Saint Isobelʼs circumstances were undoubtedly worse than that of Saint Tusa.

Unlike the Dark Zephyr Mark III which was the most modern high-end mech that the best mech designers of the Larkinson Clan were able to develop and deliver in recent times, the Promethea was a much older product of the Phasewater Generation.

Combined with the fact that the Promethea was much more of a second-class expert mech rather than a quasi-first-class expert mech, the machine was overstraining her mech frame to a horrendous degree.

Forced resonance was never a gentle phenomena!

Any mech that was not designed to perform at a power level that surpassed the pilotʼs current rank would inevitably suffer!

It was not an unusual phenomenon for heavily abused mechs to break entirely after the forced resonance state had run its course!

Combined with Saint Isobelʼs terrible physical state, the foundation of the purple sun was surprisingly fragile and brittle!

Yet still, the power of the duo could not be underestimated while they remained in this forcefully elevated state.

Right in the center of the purple sun, the Promethea finally did more than radiate her Saint Kingdom like a destructive aura.

The Ignitron rifle, which Saint Isobel forcefully shielded from the ruinous heat of her own purple sun with the help of her own willpower, quickly started to accumulate energy while pointing downwards.

The Promethea was supposed to be a ranged mech. Saint Isobel finally chose to utilize her battle partner in accordance with her role.

The Emperor Tree sensed the sharp buildup of heat and power inside the purple sun. It quickly started to release a waterfall of tree sap, uncaring about depleting its reserves!

”My flames can not be stopped.”

Saint Isobel put truth to these words as a purple resonance-empowered energy beam that surpassed all of the ones launched by the Ignitron rifle shot straight out the purple sun and soared straight downwards!

All of the Solus Gas particles, tree branches and leaves that got in the way spontaneously ignited in an instant before beginning to propagate more purple flames in every direction!

The Emperor Tree was past the point of caring about the condition of its branches and leaves. Multiple conflagrations of purple flames broke out and started to light multiple layers of the tree crown on fire!

If the Emperor Tree did not do anything to retard the King Killer Flames, they would most certainly devour the rest of the branches and leaves that stuck out of the main trunk.

Yet that was not the intent of the shot.

When the supercharged purple fire beam passed through the crown, it continued to surge downwards at the speed of light until it finally struck the enormous mass of roots that were sticking out from the surface!

What happened next was completely outside of the expectations of the observers.

Instead of bursting out a huge amount of King Killer Flames that devoured all of the nearby roots as if they were flammable tinder, the energy beam instead produced an enormous explosion that outright blasted apart the roots and even managed to produce a large hole in the side of the trunk!

The Alfari Corps Detonation Corps!

Saint Isobelʼs comprehension and mastery of the mysterious techniques bestowed by an enlightenment fruit had not improved upon her breakthrough.

However, there was a world of difference between the power of a high-tier expert pilot and an ace pilot.

In her current forced resonance state, the explosion produced by the combustion of all of the potential energy locked inside the energy beam was one if not two orders of magnitude more powerful than before!

The Promethea was not done with firing her luminar crystal rifle.

Soon, a second flaming purple energy beam shot out of the purple soon!

This time, the attack did not produce an immediate explosion.

Instead, it exploded into a firestorm from the moment it made contact with the crater of dirt, damaged roots and tree sap on the surface of the planet!

The Emperor Treeʼs massive trunk seemed to vibrate in pain. It immediately began to redirect massive amounts of tree sap to drown out the purple flames, knowing that if the King Killer Flames burned out the entire base of the trunk, there would be nothing left intact aside from its enormous root structure!

The mass and volume of the calamity plant was so gigantic in scale that it was easily able to dump a torrent of tree sap onto its burning roots.

Although the King Killer Flames had proven to be a lot more effective at burning the Emperor Tree than before, they were not omnipotent so long as they lacked the support of the Prometheaʼs Saint Kingdom.

Yet just as the Emperor Tree was prepared to expend a lot of tree sap and other moisture to douse the threatening flames, a second source of fiery power emerged from the fire that had taken root at the base of the trunk!

”Yaaaaaaa!”

A much larger and more evolved version of Kiroshi had finally made a reappearance!

The catʼs presence completely changed the dynamic of the flames. Not only was she able to extend Saint Isobelʼs powerful forced resonance away from the purple sun, but she was also able to nurture and encourage the spread of all of the surrounding fires!

”Yaaa! Yaaa! Yaaa!”

All of the tree sap that threatened to douse the King Killer Flames forcibly evaporated before all of the extraordinary liquid could do its job.

Much of the wood energy that the Emperor Tree attempted to leverage in an attempt to stifle the purple flames instead went on to feed them due to Kiroshiʼs empowerment!

The actions of the companion spirit that had promoted to the second major cultivation rank at the same time as Isobelʼs breakthrough completely threatened the survival of the Emperor Tree!

Two powerful sources of King Killer Flames soon began to operate in concert to fell the Emperor Tree as quickly as possible.

From above, the Promethea continued to leverage its absolutely powerful Saint Kingdom to devour the trunk from above.

From below, Kiroshi mainly focused on burning down the entire base to the point of amputating the enormous trunk from the even more gigantic root system!

Together, the two also sought to locate and burn down their adversaryʼs most crucial tree heart.

So long as they managed to destroy the core of the massive calamity plant before the forced resonance state ran its course, the Emperor Tree would undoubtedly die!

Time was running out, though. The Promethea may be releasing so much energy that it was able to sustain an extremely powerful purple sun, but the sheer waste and inefficiency of producing such a spectacle added an enormous drain on Saint Isobelʼs limited accumulation.

Regardless of how coherent the newly ascended ace pilot was at the moment, she clearly understood the need for haste.

The purple sun started to pick up the pace and descend at a faster rate, even if it came at the cost of preserving the innermost layers of the trunk.

In the meantime, Kiroshi actively tried to burn her way to the very center of the massive root system. This was the most likely location of the critical tree heart.

If the Emperor Tree was more cunning than it appeared and successfully managed to displace its tree heart in a distant root, then it might be able to survive this ruinous ordeal!

This was unacceptable to the pilot who vowed to burn down the Emperor Tree through her own efforts.

”Where is your heart?!”

Saint Isobel decided to make a bet. She abandoned her current approach and rapidly instructed her straining Promethea to descend to the ground!

The purple sun reunited with Kiroshi and worked together to burn the wood that kept the massive trunk connected to the roots!

Even if Saint Isobel was not able to find and destroy the tree heart with this measure, she would undoubtedly be able to inflict crippling damage to the calamity plant!

”Yaaaaa!”

The purple sun burned hotter and with more direction after Kiroshi returned again. More and more wood outside of the range of the Saint Kingdom started to ignite and burn.

The Emperor Treeʼs massive trunk shook with increasing intensity as its base quickly lost stability!