Chapter 6063 Without Assistance 6063 Without Assistance While Ves became distracted by the ideas sprung from observing the wooden constructs, the battle on Reticula Corein V resumed. The First Sword was a fast machine and did not take too long to deposit the captured and preserved 'wooden mech' outside of the red line. Once the expert swordsman mech rejoined the other three living mechs, the mech pilots all prepared for a much tougher confrontation ahead. There was no need for too much discussion as they already held an extensive briefing before the start of the mission. They only needed to take into account the possibility that they might get swarmed by a lot of wooden mechs in the process of collecting the samples. "The good news is that we have tentatively secured at least one sample, and it is probably the most valuable one of all as far as our clan is concerned." Venerable Joshua spoke. "If we fail to gather any other samples for the remainder of this mission, we won't return empty-handed." Although he did not mention it, the expert pilot clearly detected the presence of Blinky and even Sharpie. With his heightened sensitivity towards life, Joshua was even able to sense Blinky's constrained excitement towards the wooden mechs! It was not difficult to conclude that the wooden constructs produced by the Emperor Tree held a lot of research value to Ves. This was also the reason why Joshua ordered the First Sword to bring the captured specimen out of the red zone right away. "It is better to collect as much data about this calamity plant as possible. To that end, we should proceed to harvest all of the samples demanded by our biotechs. We need to take away a tree branch, a tree root and a piece of bark. The larger the samples, the better. We also need to collect as many leaves and seeds as possible. We have limited equipment that we can use to contain or carry all of that stuff, but there are only four of us, so don't obsess too much with trying to overcomplete the mission. As far as I am concerned, it is better to settle for smaller samples, because we need to go in and out as quickly as possible." "Agree." Venerable Dise said. "We cannot afford to linger too long here. The Emperor Tree is not strictly an ambush predator. It is a tree version of a persistence hunter. It wants us to stay as long as possible and outlast us in a battle of attrition. It may even be smart enough to present attractive bait to us. We cannot fall for its trap." "Three minutes." Joshua stated. "We stay for three minutes at most. Regardless of how many samples we have collected, we need to get out of the danger zone before the deadline passes." "Will we still prioritize the collection of a tree root above all other objectives?" "No, Lanie. There is a change of plans. We must return with at least one fluid container filled with the sap of the main trunk." That caused the other three pilots to frown as it was the riskiest objective by far. Anyone could tell that lingering close to the trunk would provoke the most violent reaction from the Emperor Tree! "I will do it." Venerable Dise proposed. "My Decapitator should be able to cut straight through the thick back." Joshua shook his head. "No. My mech and I will do it. Your First Sword is harder to hit, but this mission requires your living mech to linger at a single location for a longer period of time. My Everchanger is not a defensive machine, but he is tougher and better able to recover from serious hits. Focus on the roots instead. Those look like they are just as hard to cut through." "WE SHALL NOT FAIL." The First Sword answered on behalf of her mech pilot as her greatsword glowed with increasing sharpness. "What about us?" Lanie asked. "Stick to the original plan, but with adaptations. The Zeal should focus his Devora Cannon on trying to sever one of the tree branches, but reserve his heavy artillery cannons to mopping up the seed cannons and wooden mechs. The Elegant Rage must guard our only heavy artillery mech and be ready to act as an emergency porter if necessary." In fact, the latter shouldn't happen now that the Emperor Tree exposed its wooden mechs. It was far more important to protect the Zeal than to collect more samples! After issuing a few instructions, Joshua finally gave the command. "Start!" The four mechs blasted directly towards the Emperor Tree! Even though the machines had already crossed the red line, they had maintained enough distance to slightly lower the calamity plant's vigilance. Their bold and unconstrained approach changed all of that and caused the Emperor Tree to go all-out in repelling the incoming intruders! Loud wooden groans and cracking noises sounded as the gigantic tree began to sway! Its humongous branches began to swing back and forth at a seemingly slow but incredibly powerful manner! Winds whipped and leaves flew into the air as the turbulence produced by the violent motions completely turned the airspace around the Emperor Tree into a no-fly-zone! The thick Solus Gas did not help matters either. The concentration began to fluctuate as the Emperor Tree stirred up the exotic gas and caused sensor systems to struggle to perceive details at further distances. This did not stop the four mechs as the Emperor Tree was just too damn big. "Careful!" The Emperor Tree had managed to summon a lot of additional seed cannons. The difference this time was that they were a lot larger! Not only that, but the Emperor Tree had spread them out along its entire bark so that a dozen of them could no longer be eliminated with a single explosive strike. If that was not bad enough, the seeds launched by these wooden cannons were thrice as massive and struck with considerably greater power than before! The Zeal's floater platform stabilized in the air, allowing the heavy artillery mech to assume a stable firing position and begin to open fire. The living mech's four heavy artillery cannons immediately engaged in counter-battery fire, although he was also the focus of much of the incoming projectiles. Since neither of the two sides of this artillery duel were mobile, this confrontation had turned into a test of their offensive and defensive power. The larger wooden cannons were able to endure greater punishment before reaching their limits, so the Zeal had to launch far more transphasic explosive shells in order to eliminate the larger seed cannons one by one. Yet just after the Zeal eliminated one of the isolated seed cannons, the nearby bark would retract, causing another hidden seed cannon to emerge from its protective enclosure before opening fire! "I cannot suppress the Emperor Tree's firepower." Taon reported. "It has far more seed cannons in reserve, but it knows better than to expose them all at once." That did not stop the Ylvainan pilot from continuing to fire the heavy artillery cannons while at the same time taking aim with the massive Devora Cannon. The oversized super-heavy gauss cannon began to exude a lot of threat as it took aim at one of the swaying branches of the Emperor Tree. It was actually quite hard to track individual branches through the motion of millions of branches of different sizes. Taon also had no guarantee that a hit would cause a branch to get severed in one or two heavy kinetic impacts. He tried his best to aim for the smaller and less sturdy looking branches, but the problem with that approach was that these were far more flexible and difficult to target as a consequence. It was times like these that Taon missed the Guided Aim ability the most. Having to pilot the Zeal without the presence of the Great Prophet at hand was like trying to dance with one foot. His eyes sharpened as he and his living mech tried their best to focus on the job and sever one of the branches from the Emperor Tree. "We can do this, Zeal." The two worked together like they had always done in the past. The Zeal performed all of the calculations and adjusted the aim of the massive forward-facing super-heavy gauss cannon. Taon relied on his intuition, judgment and training to minutely shift the angles of the Devora Cannon. Once he felt that the timing was right, he mentally pulled the trigger, causing the massive kinetic cannon to launch a transphasic super-heavy gauss round straight into the mass of branches and leaves of the massive Emperor Tree! BOOOOM! Although the power of this attack was impressive, the transphasic super-heavy round actually missed the target by over half a meter! "How could we miss?!" Instead of striking a branch that looked small and thin enough to get separated in a single hit, the massive transphasic round proceeded to push through a lot of leaves before striking a much larger tree branch! Bark and wooden splinters immediately erupted from the crater, yet the branch still remained mostly intact! What was worse was that a powerful infusion of wood energy from the Emperor Tree caused the branch to regenerate from the impact damage at a remarkable speed! "What?!" The regeneration speed of the main body of the Emperor Tree was much greater than that of its wooden mechs! The tree branch became whole again in no time! Both Taon and the Zeal became dismayed. The Emperor Tree's vitality and recovery ability were just so damn strong that it was effectively impossible to sever one of its branches with two or more sequential attacks. Unless Taon decided to give up and shift his responsibility to the other mech pilots, he needed to stick to his initial plan and focus on hitting the smaller and more vulnerable branches! This was going to be tough. He was already allocating a part of his focus on making sure the heavy artillery cannons continued to demolish the large seed cannons that constantly emerged from different parts of the trunk. The azure energy shield of the Zeal might be able to withstand a lot more attacks than other standard mechs, but it was visibly losing integrity as each large seed strike drained it a little bit further! What was even worse was that the wooden mechs had made a return! Hundreds of them emerged from the upper canopy of the Emperor Tree. The calamity plant had apparently converted parts of it into production facilities and hangar bays. The sight of so many wooden mechs appearing from the thick Solus Gas and besetting the Zeal and the other mechs from above was intimidating! "Break for me!" Lanie shouted as her Elegant Rage flew above the Zeal and intercepted the descending wooden mechs with brutal and efficient tonfa strikes! Occasionally, the Elegant Rage was forced to push or kick away the falling wooden constructs to prevent them from crashing on top of the Zeal's increasingly more strained azure energy shield. However, the Elegant Rage was unable to prevent the wooden mechs descending further away from attacking the Zeal at other angles. The heavy artillery mech was forced to divert his firepower into blasting the wooden mechs that approached from every other direction. Though the constructs were just as fragile as the ones that showed up in the last waves, the problem was that their quantity was far too great this time! "The Emperor Tree is targeting one of my Zeal's weaknesses!" Taon gasped. "It is attempting to swarm my battle partner with cannon fodder!" The combination between the Elegant Rage and the Zeal was not enough to cope with such a massive quantity of enemy units. The Zeal might possess the ability to wipe out large amounts of enemies at a time, but that was only when the latter were clumped up and positioned much further away. As soon as the swarm of enemies came close enough, it became a lot more difficult for the Zeal to defend itself. Lanie had no choice but to direct her Elegant Rage to fly closer to the Zeal and mop up the wooden mechs that had come close as fast as possible!