Chapter 6107 Purple Wildfire
The assault against the Emperor Tree started off a lot better than any of the Larkinsons expected.
They already figured that the Promethea would be a lot more effective when fighting against the Emperor Tree than any other high-end machine, but this was something else!
The Promethea dominated the battle right now. The expert rifleman mech easily outpaced the purple wooden mechs while relying on her Ignitron rifle to set one purple wooden mech ame after another.
None of the elite constructs were able to offer any effective resistance!
No matter how much wood energy the Emperor Tree transferred to its constructs by remote, it all turned into additional fuel to feed hungry mes.
If the Promethea''s shots only spread ordinary mes, then the Emperor Tree should have been able to prevent its elite constructs from burning down.
However, Isobel spent a lot of time and effort strengthening her ability to light up the toughest and most inmmable pieces of exotic alloys.
With the help of her growing willpower, her King Killer mes was able to burn down virtually every alien warship if she went all-out!
How could the wood developed by the Emperor Tree possibly perform any better?
Even if it was reinforced by a lot of metallic ores that the cmity nt managed to extract from the ground as well as exobeast corpses, the wood was still a lot more mmable than anything made out of pure metal!
Combined with the inability for the Emperor Tree to ovee the attribute suppression in this instance, its purple wooden mechs turned into nothing but mmable decoys that were just waiting to get burned!
Venerable Isobel constantly sought to increase her burning efficiency. She precisely dialed the power settings of the Ignitron rifle so that it inflicted the right amount of damage to light the purple mechs ame.
Under her masterful control, the Promethea''s efficiency grew, allowing the living mech to aplish more while expending less energy.
Throughout this sequence, the First Sword and the Everchanger had been relegated to bystanders.
They did not even receive any opportunities to act as the Promethea''s bodyguards as the VIP straightforwardly burned down any wooden threat that attempted to get close!
The sight of so many difficult purple mechs catching me was awe inspiring.
The purple machines did not go down without a fight. The ones armed with ranged weapons attempted to bombard the Promethea with hardened seeds.
The organic kic projectiles traveled faster and hit much harder than before. The Emperor Tree had clearly managed to refine this tech.
Yet the performance of the seed rifles was only good whenpared to the weapons of other standard mechs.
Against an expert mech piloted by a high-tier expert pilot, the iing seeds inflicted virtually no discernable damage!
The purple resonance shield covering the Promethea easily resisted the seeds that managed to hit their targets.
Many more seeds failed to aplish anything useful. The intelligences responsible for controlling the purple wooden mechs did not possess the skills, experience or intuition of professional mech pilots.
It was incredibly trivial for Venerable Isobel to track all of the iing shots and evade most of them. If not for the fact that the density of projectiles was a bit too much, the Promethea could have avoided taking any damage.
As the Promethea continued to show absolute dominance against the purple wooden mechs, the remaining constructs abruptly ceased their attempts to pursue the powerful expert mechs.
Even the stupidest exobeasts would realize that continuing this futile pursuit would only lead to further losses!
The purple wooden mechs turned around in an instant and all flew away before they could get burned by the Promethea''s disturbingly effective mes.
The Promethea tried to shoot as many of them as possible before they ascended into the leaves and branches of the Emperor Tree. Dozens more purple wooden mechs turned into torches, but Venerable Isobel grew disappointed when she was unable to wipe out the entire elite force.
If her expert mech had been updated, she would definitely have the confidence to wipe out all of those constructs!
"Amazing…" Venerable Joshua spoke in an admiring tone. "I tried so hard to burn the purple wooden mechs myself, but my luminar crystal rifle and sma de never managed to do the job."
This was the difference between an expert pilot who dabbled with thermal weapons and an expert pilot who earnestly wielded the power of fire.
"Focus, Joshua! Don''t get distracted by drooling over Isobel''s ability to burn wood." Dise admonished. "The Emperor Tree is still alive and well. It definitely has a lot more tricks in store."
She was right. Joshua quickly regained his focus and studied the cmity nt carefully through all of the Solus Gas.
After a short dy, the Emperor Tree decided to attack the expert mechs in a different way.
"The bark is moving again. The tree is about to unveil its improved seed cannons!"
The Emperor Tree clearly spent a lot of effort into improving its ranged armaments after witnessing how much they managed to get done when employed by human mechs.
Simr tost time, the Emperor Tree embedded a lot of seed cannons underneath its bark. There were hundreds if not thousands of cannons buried across the length and surface of the main trunk.
However, when the cmity nt finally unveiled its formidable array of cannons, the three expert pilots all set aside their contempt towards their opponent''s ranged solutions.
Just like the three enormous seed artillery cannons that were bombarding Chimera Base from afar even now, the Emperor Tree had clearly increased the size and power of its other cannons.
Their predecessors failed to aplish anything usefulst time. The response from the Emperor Tree was therefore understandable. It switched from prioritizing quantity to prioritizing quality.
The alien tree straightforwardly builtrger and longer cannons even if it came at the cost of reducing the total quantity of armaments that it could amodate onto its bark!
Fortunately, the immense size of the main trunk yed in its favor. The Emperor Tree was still able to direct hundreds ofrge muzzles in the direction of the three mechs.
Venerable Isobel could already sense how much these up-scaled seed cannons could pose a threat to her expert mech.
There were so many cannons that it didn''t matter if their hit rates were low. They just needed to weave a dense of seed projectiles to ensure that at least some of the projectiles hit their intended target!
The consequences of getting hit were doubtlessly greater than before. A dozen or so heavy seed impacts might not be able topromise the Promethea''s resonance shield, but what about a hundred impacts? What about a thousand impacts?
Even expert mechs could fall when attacked by enough firepower to match that of an entire mech regiment!
"We need to back off and make it more difficult for those cannons to overwhelm the defenses of our mechs." Isobel quickly determined. "Joshua. Dise. The two of you must shield my Promethea against iing attacks. My mech''s defenses are not that good, and it is impossible to evade every heavy seed."
"Roger."
"Let''s move."
The three expert mechs backed off as there was no reason for them to stick so cose to the Emperor Tree.
Visibility decreased rapidly due to the high concentration of Solus Gas, so the high-end machines did not retreat for long. They still needed to maintain an eptable degree of visibility to allow for the sensor systems of their mechs to observe the detailed state of their target.
"Opening fire."
The Promethea aimed herrge rifle straight in the direction of the enormous but faint tree silhouette in the distance.
The scorching hot purple fire beams cut straight through all of the Solus Gas and sessfully struck the upper half of the tree!
Isobel ignored the roots and the lower half of the tree as she figured it would be a lot harder to light them all on fire.
She instead chose to spread her mes to the much more mmable leaves. The Emperor Tree possessed so many of them that it looked as if she needed to attack all day in order to manually light them all on fire.
However, it was not necessary for the Promethea to do all of thatbor.
From the moment the first set of leaves caught fire, the surrounding ones began to burn as well!
The Promethea did not disperse her shots, but instead focused her attacks on lighting up all of the surrounding leaves and branches.
The small spark turned into a muchrger ze in a brief span of time!
Many of the purple mes spread too fast for the Emperor Tree to cut them all off. Even if it managed to sever branches before they could spread the deadly fire any further, the elevated heat levels in the surroundings made it easier for the Promethea to catch other nearby branches on fire!
The heat levels rose while the surrounding moisture quickly disappeared. The Emperor Tree shook and attempted to deal with the burning branches by forcibly severing them from the reist of its body, but it didn''t help!
Many of the purple mes spread too fast for the Emperor Tree to cut them all off. Even if it managed to sever branches before they could spread the deadly fire any further, the elevated heat levels in the surroundings made it easier for the Promethea to catch other nearby branches on fire!
The Emperor Tree began to sway more violently as it tried to channel a huge amount of wood energy to suppress the mes.
It failed. Initially, it looked as if the abundance of wood energy may actually stifle the mes, but once the fires reached arge enough scale, it was no longer as easy as before to snuff them out with wood energy.
While the Emperor Tree was experiencing growing distress, the three expert mechs were not in afortable position either.
This was because the erged seed cannons had all begun to open fire!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
Bang!
The resonance shields of the First Sword and the Everchanger received numerous hard impacts as they tried their best to prevent the iing attacks from interrupting the Promethea''s rhythm.
"These seeds hit much harder!" Joshua eximed! "They''re heavier, harder and areunched at much higher speeds than before. They''re harder to avoid as well!"
The Emperor Treeprehensively improved almost every parameter, ranging from muzzle speed to uracy. With hundreds of these powerful cannons at its disposal, it was legitimately able to drown out the three expert mechs in a flood of heavy seeds!
Therge seed cannons did not possess a high firing rate, but when hundreds of them were able to fire in a specific direction, the First Sword and the Everchanger immediately witnessed their resonance shields draining at a worrying rate.
"The Bastion should havee as well." Joshua said through gritted teeth.
Venerable Jannzi''s expert mech excelled at this role. It would have been able to endure the iing attacks a lot better than a pair of offensive melee mechs.
The Everchanger managed to endure the onught for the time being. The expert hero mech''s malleable properties meant that he was able to reinforce his resonance shield and speed up its regeneration.
The First Sword was clearly worse off. Her defenses were never her highlight. The living mech primarily relied on evasion to keep herself alive, but now that she was on protective duty, she had little choice but to resist any heavy seed that sought to strike the Promethea!
Venerable Dise chose to utilize the Decapitator to deflect the iing seeds!
ng!
ng!
ng!
The masterwork mech greatsword managed to divert at least a few seeds this way. The projectiles came so fast that the First Sword was not able to move quickly enough to redirect every threatening seed.
The mech also had to endure a lot of shock with every hard impact. In addition to that, Venerable Dise constantly had to maintain maximum focus in order to anticipate, detect and deflect every iing heavy seed.
It was much harder for her to do so when there was a lot of Solus Gas interfering with her sight and intuition!
Still, this was nothing if not a challenge. Venerable Dise gradually managed to improve her performance as she began to adapt to the abnormal circumstances.
"How many more shots will it take for your Promethea to light the entire tree on fire?!"
"Too many!" n/?/vel/b//in dot c//om
"Then try to burn those seed cannons instead! Our expert mechs can''t withstand the seed attacks for long. We need to get rid of as many of them as possible!"
"We shall try."