Chapter 6113 Death Seeking Behavior 6113 Death Seeking Behavior Mech pilots tended to do the stupidest things in the hopes of triggering their breakthroughs. Those with fairly normal mentalities and modest ambitions would never think about resorting to extreme measures to step onto the path of godhood. This was a perfectly sane and valid career choice. Mech pilots were only human, after all. They feared death and lusted for life. Why must they take excessive risks and push themselves so close to their limits when the chance of success was so abysmally low? Mech pilots that clung to their sanity did indeed live longer than their less stable peers. They got what they wanted, but pretty much gave up their best opportunity to escape mediocrity. Only the mech pilots that possessed the courage to challenge their limits possessed the qualifications to step onto the path of godhood. There was no safe and peaceful way to advance to expert pilot. Every mech pilot had to push themselves one way or another in order to break through. A combination of strong pressure, concern and a good mech was usually a good combination that promoted the chance of breakthroughs. Yet nothing was certain. As long as the genetic aptitude of mech pilots was not exceptional, many pilots continually had to try their luck in order to grasp the fleeting chance of breaking through. The general theory was that as long as they tried enough times, they would eventually succeed. While this was technically correct, one of the conditions that had to be met was that the mech pilots had to stay alive long enough to win the jackpot. That did not happen very often as those that repeatedly gambled with their lives always ended up falling short one way or another. The worst part about this inhumane advancement method was that a pilot did not just have to challenge their limits once. They needed to do it again and again. Expert candidates had to be braver than ordinary mech pilots. Expert pilots had to be more courageous than expert candidates. Ace pilots had to be a lot more fearless than expert pilots. As for god pilots, the conditions needed to reach this exalted rank were so insanely demanding that far too many indomitable and successful ace pilots ultimately broke upon stepping onto the road of no return. This was the price that every mech pilot paid when they decisively chose to transcend their mortality. There was no free lunch. Willpower was one of the most difficult qualities to cultivate for humans, and every bottleneck needed to be overcome by demonstrating greater courage and conviction than before! There was little point in holding back as those that showed timidity during times where they must show courage already disqualified themselves from breaking through. It was a frustrating and tortuous advancement trajectory. Yet each year, millions of brave and daring mech pilots tried to get into fights where their lives or something almost as precious were at stake. Everyone knew the dangers. The galactic net regularly reported on the casualties. It was not too unusual for the news to announce the fall of another war hero. Yet still, the bravest among the mech pilots continued to go out of their way to test themselves in unreasonable ways. The allure of becoming a god pilot was too strong for them. Reaching the ultimate rank in their profession had become a permanent obsession to all who yearned to obtain greater power! Venerable Joshua, Venerable Dise and Venerable Isobel were no exception to this rule. None of them managed to trigger their apotheosis by lacking ambition. Each of them were a lot more power hungry than they look on the surface. This was also why they decisively chose to challenge the Emperor Tree even when the intelligence suggested that they might be biting off more than they could chew. Alas, the best case scenarios did not occur. The three expert pilots were not strong enough to defeat the Emperor tree in their current states, and neither did any of them trigger a breakthrough during the fighting. The depletion of the resonance shields and the severe damage done to the torso of the First Sword signaled the end of the attempt to defeat the Emperor Tree through conventional means. The three expert mechs still had a lot of fight left in them. The First Sword, the Everchanger and the Promethea could still struggle for at least several more minutes. Yet what was the point in doing so? Continuing to attack the ebony mechs would accomplish nothing as none of the damage stuck. The champion wooden mechs fought as if they were constantly under the effects of support link technology. This was an advantage that the three current expert mechs did not possess! Even if the act of damaging the ebony mechs forced the Emperor Tree to expend a lot of energy, the calamity plant was the least afraid of this consequence! It was incredibly demoralizing for the expert pilots to persist in fighting when all of their efforts amounted to nothing in the end. Trying to force the issue may create a small chance that one of the expert pilots would break through, but this fleeting opportunity was not worth the exponentially growing risks. Venerable Joshua and the other two expert pilots all knew that if they kept trying to tangle with the ebony mechs, their own expert mechs would begin to incur increasingly serious material damage. Once their proud living mechs received enough crippling blows, it would be too late for them to escape from the battlefield with their lives and expert mechs intact! Retreat was the most sensible choice to make. It was also the most cowardly choice to make. None of the Larkinson expert pilots could accept this ignoble outcome. While failure was a part of every experienced mech pilot's life, the three did not want to turn tail and return to Chimera Base with a powerful blow to their self-esteem. It would take a lot of time and effort to undo the damage and restore their moods back to a point where they were ready to seek out their breakthrough moments once again! This was why they committed to an alternative strategy. Since failing to break through was the most direct reason why they were unable to defeat the Emperor Tree, they should simply force the issue with the means they had at their disposal. No one knew whether employing the transcendence glow at this difficult and dangerous junction would yield a positive result, but all three expert pilots thought it was worth a try! Even though it hadn't been all that long since they became expert pilots, none of them wanted to remain stuck at their bottlenecks any longer than was necessary. It was profoundly frustrating for them to transition from rapid growth to very little progress. The prospect of spending years of their precious lives on repeatedly bashing their heads against their bottlenecks sounded like torture! Even if other expert pilots thought it was quite normal for them to remain stuck at their bottlenecks for a few decades to half a century, the Larkinson pilots were different! They had access to far more solutions than others. Not only did they have the privilege of piloting living mechs, they also had an opportunity to make use of the transcendence glow! The variation of Lufa's glow had proven to be effective at promoting the breakthroughs of ordinary pilots and expert candidates in the past. Nobody knew whether this solution was enough to trigger the much more demanding breakthroughs of expert pilots hoping to ascend to Sainthood. It sounded ludicrous that a mere glow could magically transform a peak expert pilot into an ace pilot, but what if there was a possibility of success? Neither Joshua nor the other two expert pilots wanted to let go of this fleeting chance! They committed to this choice even if it meant that they would have to make themselves more vulnerable to the Emperor Tree's formidable mental manipulation. It would be a lie to claim that the three expert pilots dismissed the threat posed by the Emperor Tree. The current battle had forced them to respect the calamity plant even more. This was definitely among the strongest adversaries that they had ever fought in their careers up to this point! However, the expert pilots believed in their willpower. They accepted the risks and threw themselves to the embrace of the transcendence glow, hoping that Lufa would be able to give them a crucial push that would allow them to step over the threshold that eluded them for so long! As the Everchanger continued to channel the transcendence glow in an unrestrained fashion, every expert pilot began to get stimulated in different ways. It was impossible for Lufa's glow to make a strong impact on their minds. The difference in power between themselves and Lufa was a lot smaller, so the expert pilots only received mild stimulation. That may or may not be enough. It all depended on their foundations and how ready they were to take the next step. Venerable Joshua had forgotten about most distractions at the moment. Now that the Everchanger had ascended high above the skies, his vision became clearer than it had ever been. "Beautiful." Reticula Corein V may be an untamed planet that had been occupied by unreasonably powerful exobeasts, but it was also a planet that held an incredible diversity of life. Joshua appreciated the native wildlife even if he was forced to kill them every once in a while. Just because life was precious and beautiful did not mean that it needed to be preserved at all cost. Exobeasts killed each other all the time. The survival of the fittest forced many creatures to compete against each other for limited resources and territory. 𝒇𝙧𝙚𝓮𝙬𝙚𝓫𝒏𝓸𝓿𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝙤𝓶 A huge amount of lives perished on this planet every day. The greater the amount of lives, the greater the amount of deaths that occurred on the surface. Life and death were intertwined. Life was already powerful by itself, but it felt incomplete if he left death out of the picture. Joshua began to gain a profound realization about the essence of his domain. "Life is worth less when it is cheap and abundant. It only becomes precious when it is short and fleeting." Immortality was an affront to life. A universe where every organism lived forever was a nightmare to live in. Many life forms would no longer possess a strong drive anymore as they had endless amounts of time to engage in their idle pursuits. The reason why Venerable Joshua and his fellow expert pilots worked so hard to break through was because they only had a limited amount of time to take another step onto the path to godhood. "Only when an expert pilot has come closest to death will his life finally explode with potential!" Joshua suddenly became inspired as he embraced the duality of life and death to an increasing degree! He felt as if he finally unlocked the secret that could help him overcome his bottleneck! His eyes shone as he recalled the stories and guidance shared by Saint Tusa after he had broken through. One of the stories that stuck to Joshua was that the patriarch actually poisoned Tusa with phasewater in order to drive the then-expert pilot to the brink of desperation! Though the crazy stunt could have backfired spectacularly, Tusa had exceeded his own limits and lived up to everyone's greatest expectations by breaking through in the end! The most outrageous part of his story was that he did so without stepping foot on the battlefield with his upgraded expert mech! Since Tusa could do it, Joshua should be able to do it as well. "I understand now." He whispered as he became increasingly more obsessed with his latest insights. "How could it have eluded me for so long? Only when I have embraced the power of death will I be able to understand the driving force of life!" Joshua decided to act right away. He reached down to his side and pulled out his service pistol. It was an expensive high-end transphasic laser pistol that Joshua had never used in the field. The expert pilot decisively switched off his personal shield generator, opened the faceplate of his helmet and pointed the muzzle of the pistol straight into his mouth! There were only two possible outcomes in Venerable Joshua's mind! Either he broke through to ace pilot on the spot, or he would die without any chance of recovery! "Life is death! Death is life!"