The Mech Touch

The Woodsap Pact.

The Elegant Rage in her current iteration would never be able to unlock her true potential so long as she was still being used as a standard mech.

There was nothing wrong with her neural interface. The Elegant Rage was still able to perform almost comparable to how she was in the past.

However, it was undeniable that she was still fighting as if one of her hands was tied behind her back.

Ves found it painful to witness his creation struggle for survival while being subjected to a handicap.

The Woodsap Pact could make everything better.

Even if she was not paired with her intended mech pilot, Ves was convinced that the Elegant Rage would definitely be able to unleash her greater potential if she formed a Woodsap Pact with Major Jankowski.

The option tempted him a lot. If Ves had to choose between seeing the Elegant Rage crumble into dust like the Elemental Lord or seeing her live by pairing up with the wrong pilot, he would gladly choose the latter option any day!

"Wait. It can't work."

The Red Association had installed a lot of powerful augmentations into Simon Jankowski, but that did not mean he was able to endure Emperor Tree Sap running through his veins.

Any attempt at replacing his blood with a toxic alien substance was bound to threaten his life!

Perhaps his powerful implants might allow him to sustain himself by relying on backup systems, but the continued intrusion of Emperor Tree Sap would poison him both physically and spiritually.

Ves immediately shook his head. There was truly no point for Major Jankowski to form a Woodsap Pact with the Elegant Rage.

The performance of the mech would decrease as a result of Jankowski's suffering and debilitation.

Once he deteriorated to the point where he was unable to muster up effective resistance, the Elegant Rage was doomed to defeat.

Even if Jankowski magically managed to take advantage of the Woodsap Pact to put up a good fight and make it to the end of the lightning tribulation, there would be no point.

The bonded pilot would either die or become disabled.

The Elegant Rage, which had permanently bonded with a pilot that was no longer available, would turn into a giant but very expensive ornament!

Just like any other Carmine mech, the moment a Woodsap mech formed a pact with a mech pilot, it had vowed to never accept the control of another mech pilot again. This was a promise made with a much more powerful form of blood, so its binding force became especially strong!

In other words, it was pointless for the Elegant Rage to survive this way, because neither her old or new pilot could make use of her features.

The unfortunate mech's only remaining value was to serve as a research object that could aid in the development of subsequent Woodsap mechs.

This was not a trivial benefit, but it fell far short of Ves' hopes and expectations.

Ves inwardly shook his head. He no longer considered this option. The Elegant Rage was made for Venerable Lanie Larkinson. It would be an affront of her purpose and existence if he forced her to form a pact with a completely different pilot!

He could spend his time much better if he considered more realistic options to turn this situation around.

This was difficult because the circumstances did not permit him to employ a lot of options.

In terms of raw physical performance, the Elegant Rage was not that different from the alien swordsman.

In terms of combat skills, Major Jankowski was at a heavy disadvantage. There was no way for him to outfight or outmaneuver a genuine master in his discipline. The most he could do was to maintain the tightest possible defense and prevent his mech from getting struck too many times.

In terms of E energy utilization, the lightning manifestation also enjoyed an advantage. The mysterious form of elemental swordsmanship practiced by the four-armed alien effectively made it so that the Elegant Rage had to fight back against the environment as well!

Crack!

One of the battered tonfas held by the Elegant Rage almost snapped in half after it got repeatedly pummeled by strikes augmented by flame and frost. The condition of the weapon had already dropped to the point where Major Jankowski felt reluctant to use it to resist any further hard blows.

Ves furrowed his brows.

What else could he he reverse this decision?

Could he channel the transcendence glow in order to promote Major Jankowski's breakthrough?

No. It wouldn't work. Major Jankowksi was in the wrong place at the wrong time. The expert candidate had not fought enough serious battles to temper himself to the point where he became eligible to trigger apotheosis.

Even if Jankowski was much further ahead than Ves thought, it did not change the fact that he was piloting the wrong mech!

Mechs mattered when it came to breakthroughs. Most of them took place when the pilot was either using a machine that he had been familiarizing with for months or years, or a very new and powerful product that better matched his fighting style.

Neither of these conditions applied to Major Jankowski at this junction.

As admirable as he may be for rapidly becoming familiar with the Elegant Rage's unique quirks, he still looked as if he would rather pilot one of the RA's trusty first-class multipurpose mechs.

It was hard for a professional first-class mech pilot to find any joy by being forced to make do with a mech of a lower class.

The soldiers of the Bluejay Fleet may have been shadowing Ves long enough to understand that his second-class living mechs possessed special qualities, the enormous gap in hard performance still made Major Jankowski uncomfortable!

Ves silently ruled out the possibility of inducing a breakthrough. He needed to find an entirely new and different way to turn this battle around.

There was not much time left for him to make a difference, so he concentrated hard and rapidly went over the variables.

It was like he was trying to run a marathon while being weighed down by a backpack that weighed over 100 kilograms. No matter how much his augmented physique allowed him to bear this burden, he would never truly feel fulfilled throughout this entire experience!

Ves silently ruled out the possibility of inducing a breakthrough. He needed to find an entirely new and different way to turn this battle around.

There was not much time left for him to make a difference, so he concentrated hard and rapidly went over the variables.

He soon concluded that the fundamental issue that caused the Elegant Rage to fall behind was the disparity between energy.

If the Elegant Rage and the alien swordsman fought by relying on their own power, then the latter wouldn't have been able to gain a strong advantage.

Unfortunately, the alien swordsman was incredibly good at using his swordsmanship to borrow the power of heaven. The power of fire and ice added a lot of lethality and other troublesome factors to his attacks!

As for the mech that was trying and failing to keep up with the lightning manifestation, the current iteration of the Elegant Rage amounted to a stopgap model that only served as a preview to her future form as a fully fledged expert mech.

The Elegant Rage was also a hyper mech, but her ability to leverage the power of heaven through her ebony wood was far behind compared to a native of Messier 87!

The aliens of the supermassive galaxy had been born and raised in a high-energy environment over countless generations.

They were much more sophisticated and efficient at this game. Their ability to harness the power of heaven might not be as good in a fairly distant place like the Red ocean, but their techniques gave them an edge against most forms of hyper technology!

Ves narrowed down his possible options until he was left with two different options.

He could either find a way to inhibit the alien swordsman's ability to draw upon the power of heaven, or he could improve the Elegant Rage's ability to do the same.

The former option was too difficult. The alien swordsman was not actually real, but the lightning tribulation had made sure to emulate much of his intelligence and initiative. There was no way the adversary would allow Ves to tamper with his ability to draw upon the power of ice and fire.

Ves could only shift his gaze to the cybernetic mech. In the end, he had to solve this problem like a mech designer.

"How?"

It was not as if the lightning tribulation would calmly allow Ves to hit the pause button and bring the Elegant Rage back to his workshop in order to apply hasty upgrades.

The only way to improve the machine was to do it on the spot, which was anything but easy!

Ves rapidly went over the possibilities that came up in his mind.

What if he added transphasic capabilities to the Elegant Rage?

Although he had made the Woodsap mech more compatible with phasewater after he upgraded the old Emperor Wood with an artificially improved version of ebony wood, he had yet to add any transphasic parts to the living mech.

Ves had been acting like a cheapskate by expecting the Red Association to spend its own reserves of phasewater.

This decision created an opportunity for Ves to apply spontaneous upgrades to the Elegant Rage!

Where would he get the phasewater?

"My blood should be able to do the job in a hurry."

The idea sounded tempting, but Ves soon figured out that it wasn't all that practical. There were very limited ways he could upgrade the Elegant Rage with transphasic components in the middle of an active battle.

The tonfas were almost gone. The backup knife needed to be worked by an industrial machine in order to infuse it with phasewater. Ves might be able to infuse phasewater into the ammunition of the Sprout Rifle, but the alien swordsman would never give the Elegant Rage a chance to employ her firearm!

Ves soon rejected this choice. Phasewater could not make a difference in this bout.

What else?

A cultivation method probably wouldn't work either. The Elegant Rage already ditched the Greater Larkinson Metal Guardian Mantra because the artistic conception bestowed by Venerable Lanie did a far better job just by existing.

"Wait a second."

Ves might be able to cheat the lightning tribulation by entering the System Space in order to buy additional time.

However, it was extremely unlikely that any cultivation method he developed over there would lead to an instant performance boost.

Ves had a better chance of doing so if he somehow managed to develop a powerful desperation technique! There were actually many ways for cultivators to overdraw their potential or pay a heavy price to gain a momentary advantage in battle.

So long as he developed a suitable method for the Elegant Rage, the Woodsap mech may be able to turn this battle around!

This may be a way to empower not just the Elegant Rage, but also his other living mechs!

"Why didn't I think of this before?!"

Cultivation was too new to red humanity. Ves was barely scratching the surface of what it was capable of. Even though he had managed to learn a lot of basic spells with the help of an enlightenment fruit, he never really thought about how others could make similar use of E energy.

This was one of the factors that distinguished the Elegant Rage from the alien swordsman.

The latter not only practiced an unknown cultivation method that allowed him to become more in tune with the power of heaven and earth, but also mastered a lot of sword techniques that enabled him to actively mobilize fire and ice energy for specific purposes!

It was painful to compare the sophisticated methods of the lightning manifestations to the entirely passive regeneration factor of the Elegant Rage!

Now that Ves spotted this difference, he could no longer unsee it anymore. His professionalism as a mech designer compelled him to fix this glaring shortcoming as soon as possible!

The only way forward for the Elegant Rage was to actively master the use of all of the wood energy under her command!

She could do way more with this versatile resource than to promote the restoration of her damaged components!

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