Chapter 6110 Ebony 6110 Ebony The Emperor Tree clearly tried to imitate the mechs employed by the invading humans. There was a clear distinction between different generations. The basic wooden mechs and the elite purple wooden mechs already granted the calamity plant a lot of versatility on how to handle a lot of threats. When that did not prove enough to stop the most powerful human mechs, the Emperor Tree decisively invested more effort and resources to produce a small selection of the champion ebony wooden mechs. The latest wooden constructs already demonstrated their power. Just one of them was able to wear down the Promethea's resonance shield by a considerable extent with fast attack runs. It was also able to attack from a distance as it apparently wielded a luxurious version of a seed cannon. That made this enemy unit a lot harder to deal with as it was able to attack at any distance. Now, a second ebony wooden mech made an appearance. This one was notable because it was clearly modeled after the Zeal! Although the Emperor Tree's interpretation of a heavy artillery mech was very rudimentary, it did not change the fact that it had desecrated the Zeal's memory by building a crude imitation of the custom heavy artillery mech! "Wait! Are those pieces of metal?" "I think you're right, Isobel. The Emperor Tree must have salvaged the exploded remains of the Zeal and fused them into this powerful wooden variant." Joshua responded with a stupendous expression. The Emperor Tree was more perverted than the Larkinsons thought! It did not break down the torn and deformed metal pieces of the Zeal, but instead reused whatever it could to form this unholy fusion between modern alloys and dark wood! "Careful!" 𝘧𝑟𝑒𝑒𝘸𝘦𝘣𝑛𝑜𝘷𝑒𝓁.𝘤𝘰𝓂 Now that the ebony wood version of the Zeal had exposed its existence, it went all-out and aimed all five of its seed cannons at the Promethea! Two explosive seed cannons and one much larger kinetic seed cannon opened fire at Venerable Isobel's battle partner at the same time! Fortunately, Venerable Isobel had been paying close attention to the wooden artillery mech. She jerked her Promethea to the side, allowing her expert mech to evade four out of five ebony seed projectiles! Unfortunately, Isobel's inability to rely on her intuition meant that she failed to anticipate that she had moved her expert mech directly into the path of the largest and most powerful dark seed projectile! BANG! The Promethea got struck so hard by the solid ebony seed that its resonance shield actually got damaged to the point of faltering! Just another heavy impact would be enough to strip the expert mech of her most reliable form of defense! The Promethea hastily tried to recover from the powerful blow, but the wooden clone of the Everchanger closed in and attempted to strike at the expert mech with its wooden sword! "Not this time!" Isobel did not attempt to bury the incoming ebony mech with purple flames. Instead, she activated a command that caused the Ignitron rifle to extend a pair of 2 fang-like alloy bayonets! Clang! Alloy clashed against metal-reinforced wood! Though the incoming force was great, the Promethea successfully deflected the ebony mech by judging to the side! "I need help." Venerable Isobel spoke with clear strain in her voice. "The Ebony Everchanger and the Ebony Zeal are ganging up on me. I can't deal with one of them while the other is constantly attacking my expert mech from another direction." "Got it." Venerable Joshua responded. "Please take care of the remaining purple wooden mechs. There are less than a hundred of them or so left, but they are too difficult for us to kill. You are much better at this job. We'll hold back the ebony mechs." The three expert mechs all switched gears. They began to circle around the tree trunk at higher speeds. The Promethea rapidly struck the purple wooden mechs with fiery energy beams while the other two expert mechs ignored the targets in front of them in favor of pursuing the more powerful wooden constructs. "There!" The Everchanger charged towards the ebony copy of himself while firing his Vitalus rifle at the wooden construct! The powerful wood energy shield continually resisted the attacks, but when the real Everchanger sliced against it with the Heartsword, the energy barrier collapsed, allowing the blade to sink into the ebony wooden exterior! Unfortunately, the charge attack ran out of steam a little too soon. The ebony hero mech managed to dislodge itself from the Heartsword before launching a counterattack with its own blade! Clang! Clang! Clang! The two mechs began to exchange blows with each other. The differences between the two soon became apparent. The Everchanger demonstrated exquisite control. Joshua was hardly the best swordsman among the Larkinson expert pilots, but beingmarried to a swordmaster still had its perks. His fundamentals were solid and his swordsmanship possessed very few flaws. Whoever or whatever controlled the ebony Everchanger wasn't nearly as good. What it did have was a complete lack of fear towards taking damage. The ebony Everchanger's swordsmanship was very inconsistent, as if the Emperor Tree did not even understand the concept of swordsmanship. Nonetheless, there was nothing too complicated about stabbing, slashing, blocking, parrying and so on. The raw intelligence controlling the Ebony Everchanger learned quickly and visibly improved its swordsmanship. Only a minute after the two Everchangers sparred, the ebony mech no longer received as many hits as before. Even if Venerable Joshua managed to fool his adversary with a feint or other clever trick, any damage that managed to get past the constantly regenerating wood energy shield only inflicted modest wounds on the ebony mech. This was practically meaningless as the Ebony Everchanger instantly absorbed a lot of wood energy from the Emperor Tree and restored its wooden frame back to its original condition! Venerable Joshua had a feeling that this duel may drag out for many minutes if nothing changed. He needed to find a way to break the game! "Dise, can you lend a hand?!" "I cannot. I have met my own match." Two versions of the First Sword hovered in front of each other. The original version held her Decapitator greatsword with a firm but emotional grip. Venerable Dise and her living mech both grew indigent at the third and latest ebony mech to appear from the mist. The ebony wooden variant of the First Sword resembled its original to a much greater degree! It appeared that while the Emperor Tree had chosen to apply a lot of creative variations to the Ebony Everchanger and the Ebony First Sword, it had chosen to stay true to the original in the case of the Ebony First Sword! Although the calamity plant had done a good job at replicating the proportions and contours of the expert swordsman mech that Ketis had lovingly designed, the authenticity was still very much in doubt! "I sense no heart or respect towards swordsmanship in you." Dise spoke, uncaring whether the Ebony First Sword and its creator could understand her speech. "Your existence is an insult. You not only defile Ketis' work, you also make a mockery out of my swordsmanship!" The Ebony First Sword held its dark wooden greatsword in a stance that looked remarkably similar to that of the real expert mech. However, there were many small discrepancies that ruined the effect and introduced flaws that Venerable Dise would never make. The ebony swordsman mech also possessed another shortcoming that rankled Dise. "You copied my old swordsmanship!" Dise especially took offense with that. She considered her older self to be weak and incompetent. She did not want to be reminded by her past failures by seeing a mirror of her old swordsmanship. "I will chop you to pieces!" Both First Swords charged into each other and struck their greatswords with so much momentum that they bounced apart from the counterforce! The original First Sword recovered faster as Dise was especially more attentive towards momentum and rhythm as of late. The metallic swordsman mech quickly began to suppress and push back the ebony copy as Dise's swordsmanship was simply better in every way. Even though the Ebony First Sword was not weak, it was unable to prevent the real expert swordsman mech from breaking its guard. Numerous heavy sword strikes struck the wood energy shield and cleaved through it before striking the ebony wooden exterior. The Ebony First Sword soon began to bear the scars of multiple greatsword wounds! Though the damage should have been serious if Venerable Dise faced any other mech-like opponent, the Ebony First Sword outright cheated in this bout by receiving a copious amount of energy from the Emperor Tree. The ebony swordsman mech quickly reset its physical state to a pristine condition! Dise initially thought little of it, but then she noticed that the Ebony First Sword was constantly copying her sword moves. The learning efficiency was frighteningly high. Even though it remained clear to Dise that the Ebony First Sword only copied the mechanical motions but failed to copy the corresponding heart and feelings, there was no denying that it was leveraging its strengths more effectively. The ebony mechs were too enduring! They possessed a huge amount of buffer that allowed them to make a lot of mistakes without suffering any major consequences. The Ebony First Sword continued to improve over a minute until it had reached a state where it was able to block 80 to 90 percent of the original's sword strikes! Venerable Dise grew angry at this point. "Take this, then!" The original First Sword briefly disengaged, but this was only so she could circle around and charge at the ebony copy with much greater speed! "Sword of Lydia!" The Decapitator glowed with extraordinary power and momentum. The blade not only grew a bit sharper, but it also conveyed the desire to break through every barrier in the way at all cost! Crash! The ebony mech was not able to resist this extraordinary sword technique at all. The wood energy shield collapsed before the tip of the Decapitator punched straight through the torso! The Ebony First Sword was impaled by the real First Sword! Venerable Dise quickly wanted to take advantage of this opportunity to squash the construct that resembled her expert mech, but the impaled wood strangely grew softer before it managed to dislodge itself from the enormous blade! Fueled by an abundant amount of wood energy, the Ebony First Sword quickly became whole and undamaged again. Venerable Dise scowled. She had put a considerable amount of power in his special technique, but the Sword of Lydia failed to split apart the ebony mech in half. Unless her swordsmanship improved dramatically, it seemed unlikely for her to defeat this ebony mech in a short amount of time. She needed help. More specifically, she needed Isobel's help. Unfortunately, the Promethea had to take care of her own responsibilities. Not only was the living mech almost done with shooting down the purple wooden mechs, but she had also began to tangle with the Ebony Zeal! Although the false Zeal was not particularly good at tracking high-speed targets, its projectiles hit with great force. The Promethea's response to this latest adversary was the same as with her other enemies. "BURN!" "Ya ya yaaa!" Venerable Isobel specifically dispatched Kiroshi towards the Ebony Zeal. After burning her way through the wood energy shield, the flaming companion spirit reached the surface of the ebony mech and attempted to burn this exceptionally tough wood! "Yaaa yaa yaa…?" "Why isn't it burning?!" Venerable Isobel grew shocked when her flames finally met an intangible object that she wasn't able to burn! This wasn't supposed to happen! She had burned down many objects that also claimed to be fireproof, but this was one of the rare moments she had become stymied. "Why aren't you burning?!" As Kiroshi continued to wander across the large ebony construct, the Ebony Zeal ignored the threat posed by the companion spirit and continued to suppress the Promethea with its formidable seed cannons!