Chapter 6060 It's Learning The Emperor Tree created its own mechs! This was a capability that the calamity plant had never shown before! The fact that the tree felt the need to produce its own version of mechs also indicated that it had adopted a deliberate strategy to deal with the invading humans. All of this had scary implications. Many thoughts ran through the minds of the mech pilots. Each of them began to feel more and more that they had underestimated the depth of the Emperor Tree. Even though the initial wave of wooden mechs had been dealt with remarkable ease, none of the mech pilots dared to relax. "This is just a probing attack." Venerable Dise cautioned everyone. "The Emperor Tree most definitely has many more wooden mechs under its command, and it is possible for the newer ones to be stronger and increasingly harder to handle. Don't forget what kind of enemy it is. The tree did not evolve from a big brutish exobeast that is born with violent and savage instincts. It used to be a passive exoplant that came to learn how to deal with its enemies by controlling other exobeasts. It is a swarm master, similar to the Army of One. It is not supposed to fight by itself. Its true weapons are its minions." Venerable Joshua widened his eyes. "You're right, Dise. I don't think this Emperor Tree chose to copy our mechs on a whim. It is intelligent and it has been observing our task force defend Chimera Base for several months. From the tree's perspective, we are much stronger than the native beasts. Think about it. We only deployed a few hundred mechs at most, but have you counted how many beasts we killed? We harvested so many giant corpses that we needed to contract a shipping company to transport all of the exobeast carcasses that we had sold in bulk. Every beast wave attack starts out with us being heavily outnumbered, but by the time the battle comes to an end, we have suffered minimal losses while all of the monsters have died!" None of them thought about it before, but now that Joshua mentioned it, perhaps he made a good point! Just as the humans were curious and vigilant towards the mysterious capabilities of the Emperor Tree, the calamity plant must have grown alarmed and fascinated by how well the human mechs fought! Of course, much of the reason why all of the battles ended in total victory for the humans was because the dominated exobeasts fought mindlessly, but that did not change the fact that their enormous quantity failed to threaten Chimera Base! The evidence so far suggested that the Emperor Tree had lost faith in the local exobeasts. Not only were they beginning to thin out in the surrounding regions, they also weren't strong enough to annihilate the invading human force. Since the Emperor Tree wasn't able to beat the powerful mechs, it might as well produce its own versions of these powerful and fascinating humanoid constructs! "If the Emperor Tree had formed this plan more than a month ago… then it must have experimented on many wooden mechs." Lanie guessed. "It may have produced crappy ones at first, but studied what went wrong and tried to make a better one afterwards. I don't know how many times the tree went through this process, but the mechs we just fought are pretty good considering they are made out of wood." The wood material used for the strange mechs was not as tough as the trunk of the Emperor Tree, but it was not too bad. The wooden mechs would have been able to last a bit longer if they hadn't been deployed against the best mechs of the task force. The First Sword adopted an anticipatory stance and began to gather energy. The Decapitator greatsword began to glow with deadly intensity. "Careful. A much larger wave of wooden mechs are coming. This will be a much more serious probe attack." "How can you tell, Dise? This Solus Gas is messing up my senses. I think those wooden mechs are built with them as well. It was much harder than usual to notice their approach and take them seriously at first." "Experience. This is far from my first hunt against a swarm master. I think they have come closer!" Hundreds of wooden mechs suddenly emerged out of the surrounding gas clouds at a frightening short range! "Elegant Rage, cover the Zeal." Joshua instructed even though the melee mech in question had already assumed the right position. "Don't worry about the enemies away from the Zeal. Dise and I will mop them up. Your only job is to make sure not a single wooden mech gets to touch our heavy artillery mech, understood?" "Yes, sir." Hundreds of wooden mechs suddenly emerged out of the surrounding gas clouds at a frightening short range! It was absurd how well they managed to hide their presence until they were almost right on top of the actual mechs! This could no longer be explained by the high concentration of Solus Gas alone. Venerable Joshua was likely correct in that the wooden mechs had been infused with this exotic substance! Not all of the wooden mechs that had exposed their existence were armed with melee weapons. There were also hundreds more ranged mechs positioned further away that had opened fire at the same time. Each of them were modeled after the Stingripper, the Bright Warrior in rifleman mech configuration and even Transcendent Punishers that were firmly rooted on the ground! Much of the seed projectiles launched by these wooden ranged mechs actually ended up striking their melee counterparts in the back or from below! It couldn't be helped as the melee mechs did not exhibit a high degree of coordination. They simply swarmed straight at the four mechs like a horde of voracious voribugs! This actually reduced the pressure on the human mechs and allowed them to deal with this latest threat with a bit less urgency than before. "Bladestorm." Venerable Dise unleashed her empowered sword technique at the right moment. The Decapitator slashed into the air multiple times at a dazzling speed, launching a literal storm of sword energy attacks that cut and dissected virtually every wooden mech in a very wide cone in front of the expert mech! The First Sword alone managed to wipe out a quarter of the wooden melee mechs at once! The Everchanger did not possess such an exaggerated ability to eliminate lots of enemies at once. The expert hero mech simply fired a multitude of fiery energy beams at low power at a rapid rate. Many wooden mechs either blew apart or caught fire after getting hit just once! The enemy constructs that managed to get close simply got brutally chopped apart by single swings of the Heartsword. Even though the Heartsword was arguably the least advanced weapon in the expert mech's arsenal, its sharpness could not be underestimated! The slaughter inflicted by the two expert mechs was impressive, especially when considering that each wooden mech was roughly as tough as a typical second-class mech. As a result, Lanie and Taon did not experience an excessive amount of pressure. They still needed to take care of the wooden mechs that targeted their machines, but they did not need to exchange words with each other to figure out a form of cooperation that worked out for them both. The Zeal began to lob explosive shells at large concentrations of wooden ranged mechs in the distance. Even though the thick Solus Gas concentration made it impossible for his sensor systems to detect their locations, the Zeal was more than capable enough to trace the trajectories of the incoming seed projectiles and form many estimates of the approximate coordinates of their origins. Boom! Boom! Boom! Very faint and distant explosions sounded in the distance. The incoming fire abated almost immediately, proving that the heavy artillery mech was on the right track! Taon found it must be easier to eliminate all of the wooden ranged mechs as they stupidly clumped together. However, what was special about the Emperor Tree was that it often made a lot of mistakes at the beginning, but always demonstrated enough intelligence to correct its greatest shortcomings at a remarkable pace! By the time more than half of the wooden ranged mechs got pulverized, the remaining ones not only spread out their formations, but also fired in a more irregular pattern, making it considerably harder to trace their locations! While the Zeal continued to deal with the ranged threats, the Elegant Rage diligently wiped out the wooden melee mechs that got close. Unlike the two expert mechs, the Elegant Rage did not possess the power to eliminate every threat with a single blow. This quickly caused Lanie's mech to become surrounded by multiple threats. Each of them swung or stabbed their weapons against the custom mech's energy shield, causing its integrity to drop at a worrying rate. Lanie felt much more pressured as she noticed the drop in shield integrity and urged her machine to eliminate the enemy threats faster and more efficiently! Unfortunately, this was very hard to do. The wooden mechs displayed greater resilience against blunt attacks. Only the plasma emitters built into the tonfas could wipe out the wooden enemies with a single hit, but they required constant delays before they were ready to discharge a lot of energy again. The Elegant Rage also fought best when she was on the move. The need to cover for the Zeal forced the melee to stay close around the heavy mech, thereby limiting how much she could avoid attacks through pure maneuvering. "You don't need to take so many hits on my behalf, Lanie! My heavy mech's azure energy shield is much stronger! The Zeal can take the abuse!" "NO!" Lanie shouted back. "I am not going to let these wooden dummies force me to compromise my mission. I will defend you even if these wooden mechs begin to dent my Elegant Rage!" Her resolve pushed her to concentrate and enter a state of heightened focus that she was only able to achieve with the help of her mech model's dual glow in the past. Her mind became filled with nothing but combat instincts and techniques. Her judgment in combat became sharper, allowing her to navigate the swarm of enemies more skillfully and optimally than before. Crack! Crack! Crack! The tonfas wielded by the Elegant Rage began to slam against the wooden mechs with brutal but efficient strokes. The melee mech also kicked out with her legs in order to temporarily push back some of the wooden mechs. If not for the fact that the Emperor Tree's minions did not appear to possess any identifiable weak points, the Elegant Rage would have found a way to eliminate each of them with single blows! Soon enough, the wave of wooden enemies subsided. Before the human mechs eliminated the last of the wooden imitation copies, Joshua issued a quick command. "Zeal, load an immobilizer shell and launch it towards one of the surviving wooden mechs. We need to preserve one of these wooden mechs and drag it back to Chimera Base." "On it, sir." The heavy artillery mech launched a single at a wooden copy of the Storm Sword. The poor construct had no defense against the explosion of slime that rapidly engulfed its form and hardened into a very tough resin-like material. Before the trapped and immobilized wooden Storm Sword could crash onto the ground, the First Sword sheathed her greatsword and picked up the wooden mech with both of her arms. "Bring it out of the red zone and drop it onto the ground. If the Emperor Tree doesn't reclaim it, we can take it along when we are on our way out. Don't forget to plant a tracking beacon." "I will not forget." The First Sword's flight system activated at full blast, causing the expert swordsman mech to disappear in an instant despite carrying a hefty prize. The remaining three mechs tried their best to recover from the earlier bout and prepare for the next clash. "Get ready." Joshua spoke. "Once the First Sword returns, we will advance right away. I think the Emperor Tree is done with probing us. Instead of waiting for it to launch an all-out attack, we should get close and start the process of harvesting samples. Get ready for a tough fight, and don't underestimate those wooden mechs. It will be much more difficult for us to deal with thousands of them at the same time, and the Emperor Tree itself also has a lot of means to defend itself." The mech pilots already gained a more up to date glimpse of the threat posed by the Emperor Tree, yet all of them were aware that they had only perceived the tip of the iceberg. Even though the tree undoubtedly had many more surprises in store, they could not continue to linger at a distance while they steadily lost more energy and ammunition. The mechs clearly wouldn't be able to win a battle of attrition against a gigantic calamity plant in the latter's home turf, so the mission needed to be concluded sooner rather than later!