Chapter 6112 Power Gap 6112 Power Gap As the Everchanger's Scarlet Ember burned halfway down the decapitated torso of its wooden twin, the three expert pilots hoped that it might be enough to destroy or at least disable one of their adversaries. "Did we kill it, Joshua?!" "No. It's not fatal. This ebony mech has no weak point!" Venerable Joshua could already see and feel it as his Scarlet Ember continued to burn and separate the Ebony Everchanger. The powerful wooden mech just incurred a huge amount of damage, enough to outright disable other mechs. Unfortunately, the Ebony Everchanger immediately leveraged its abundant vitality and attempted to heal all of the damage even when the Scarlet Ember was still embedded into the center of its torso. The huge influx of wood energy from the Emperor Tree supercharged the regeneration process. Burnt parts were being pushed away to make room for new growths. Split pieces of wood fused back together. The Ebony Everchanger even began to grow a new head from its empty neck! Venerable Joshua and his battle partner did not remain idle while their opponent recovered. The Scarlet Ember's powerful plasma edge continued to burn through the torso. The other arm of the Everchanger awkwardly pointed the muzzle of the Vitalus rifle at another section of the ebony mech and began to fire a low-powered but continuous fire beam. The Ebony Everchanger on its part tried to counterattack by whacking the original's resonance shield with its wooden sword and firing seeds at it from its ebony seed cannon. Neither Everchangers were able to get rid of each other in a short amount of time. They both remained entangled with each other for the time being. Venerable Joshua snarled in frustration. "Forget about the Ebony Everchanger. Do your best to burn the Ebony Zeal!" "On it." Venerable Dise spoke as her First Sword attempted to dive in and chop one of the seed cannons from the large ebony construct. However, the ebony copy of her own expert mech immediately got in the way and attempted to land a powerful hit. Venerable Dise already anticipated this response. The authentic First Sword did not slow down. Instead, the living mech sped up even as she thrust her Decapitator outward! "Sword of Lydia." The First Sword surged forward like a sharp spear! The ebony version of her mech attempted to block the incoming strike, but it was unable to resist the sheer force and momentum behind the blow. Ebony wood cracked and splintered as the imitation mech lost an entire arm from this collision! What was worse was that the Ebony First Sword failed to stop the real expert mech in her tracks. Venerable Dise's battle partner may have lost a lot of momentum from this attempted interception, but the expert mech continued to surge toward the Ebony Zeal with undaunted momentum. It looked as if the First Sword truly had a chance of chopping the Ebony Zeal apart! "Nothing shall stand in my way!" However, her declaration was met by 5 seed cannons. Four of them blasted out fragmentation seeds that exploded shortly after they were launched into the air. Boom! Boom! Boom! Boom! Hundreds of ebony shards flung out in every direction! Many of them even flew back and struck the Zeal's wood energy shield! However, a lot of fragments ended up striking the First Sword as well, causing her resonance shield to deplete by a huge margin right away. What was even worse was that the Ebony Zeal's much larger kinetic cannon fired straight into the path of the First Sword! The ebony mech opened fire at the right time. The First Sword had to force her way past the blockade of the Ebony First Sword, which meant that it had slowed down to the point where it was barely able to make an evasion attempt. BANG! The powerful kinetic ebony seed launched from a very poor attempt at copying the Devora Cannon blasted apart the resonance shield of the First Sword and grazed one of the thighs of the expert swordsman mech! The First Sword's leg malfunctioned! While it looked as if the limb could still support the expert mech, it had lost a lot of responsiveness. Venerable Dise winced, but she did not take the hit too seriously. Damage to the legs was irrelevant so long as her expert mech remained in the air. All that mattered at the moment was to finish off the Zeal! The Promethea assisted from behind by launching one purple fire beam after another at the Ebony Zeal. Kiroshi was already in the process of burning the surprisingly thick and powerful wood energy shield that protected the ebony mech. As the First Sword came close enough to view the salvaged pieces of mech armor in greater detail, Venerable Dise became more and more indignant. The Emperor Tree had no right to desecrate the memory of the Zeal! The existence of this strange ebony monster was an affront to the Larkinson Clan! "My blade shall chop you into pieces!" As the First Sword was about to land a blow that would doubtlessly overwhelm the Ebony Zeal's energy defenses and strike a solid blow against its enormous ebony frame, the largest of the three wooden champions made a surprising response. The ebony version of the Devora Cannon rapidly morphed into a segmented tail with three fang-like spikes protruding from the end. The kinetic cannon had turned into a powerful melee combat implement that roughly resembled a scorpion tail! The transformed wooden element possessed enough articulation to bend and uncoil straight into the path of the First Sword! What was especially dangerous about this sequence was that it happened too quickly! The First Sword was unable to form a proper response against this sudden measure. The living mech still possessed enough momentum that she wasn't able to avoid the scorpion tail attack. The only choice that Venerable Dise could make at this junction was whether she wanted to commit to her charge attack or whether she wanted her expert mech to retract the Decapitator in an attempt to block the incoming strike. The Ebony Zeal's stinger may be formed out of wood, but if it was as hard and sharp as the ebony swords wielded by the other powerful wooden mechs, then it was probably sharp enough to punch through the chest plate of the First Sword! There was no time for Dise to contemplate her decision. She had to choose right away. If a Swordmaiden had to choose between offense and defense, she would choose the former everytime. Besides, Venerable Dise yearned to become an undaunted and unstoppable swordsman mech pilot. It was impossible for her to get cold feet and focus on defense. "Even if I die, I will take you down with me!" She roared! Her entire will and focus became consumed with the need to chop apart the Ebony Zeal! Only by wiping out the remnants of her last failure would she be able to wipe out her disgrace! With Respa reinforcing the Decapitator, the greatsword gained a renewed sense of momentum and lethality! CLANG! The Decapitator sought to cut right through the ebony scorpion tail, but missed as the agile limb moved out of the way at the last moment. Instead, the scorpion tail struck the First Sword right in the chest, piercing through the alloys and damaging numerous internal components! However, what the tail gained in flexibility, it lost in rigidity. The momentum of the First Sword was so formidable that the segmented wooden limb forcibly bent as it was unable to punch its blades deeper. Venerable Dise grimaced as one of the pincer blades punched through the shell of her cockpit and actually managed to breach the chamber where she resided! Dise refused to flinch. She continued to focus all of her willpower and effort into driving the tip of the Decapitator right through the base of the scorpion tail! "Pierce!" The resilient ebony wood splintered and split as the powerful masterwork greatsword forcibly drove into the wood, damaging a lot of incomprehensible wood structures and 11:11 destroying the mechanisms that fed solid seeds into the imitation Devora Cannon. This was the extent of the damage inflicted by the charge! The remaining momentum of the First Sword caused her to collide against the Ebony Zeal in a messy fashion. The cockpit shook a lot more severely than it should. Venerable Dise quickly shook her head and focused on pulling her First Sword away from the Ebony Zeal. The powerful wooden mech did not receive nearly as much damage as Dise hoped. The wooden construct was too large, and a monstrous amount of wood energy and tree sap was already starting to heal the damage inflicted by the charge attack. As the First Sword pulled out her Decapitator and sought to chop apart the other seed cannons embedded on the surface of her target, the ebony scorpion tail regained its functionality within seconds and quickly started to attack the expert mech again! Venerable Dise let out another frustrated grunt as her expert mech quickly blocked the scorpion tail strikes. A melee mech was supposed to possess an absolute advantage when fighting against a ranged mech, but the Ebony Zeal did not play by the rules! Not only had it morphed its strongest ranged weapon into a melee weapon with a long reach, but its formidable size and abundant energies constantly enabled it to regenerate any incoming damage. As Venerable Dise's willpower grew more frayed as the fight went on, she began to lose hope that she would be able to demolish the Ebony Zeal. The cold hard truth was that she and her battle partner simply weren't strong enough to defeat the Ebony Zeal or any of the other ebony mechs for that matter. "My swordsmanship isn't destructive enough." As much as the proud expert pilot wanted to deny this conclusion, she could not lie to herself. None of the three expert pilots were able to defeat their opponents. Even though the ebony mechs were made from only small fragments of the calamity tree's core, they were extensions of an extraordinary organism that could be compared to an ace pilot in many aspects! Venerable Dise and the other two expert pilots slowly learned the hard way that unless they were able to display the attack power of an ace mech and an offensive one at that, they had no chance of defeating the ebony mechs in their current states! This was especially pertinent for Venerable Dise as her First Sword suffered a severe blow to her chest that weakened her in various ways. It took a lot of effort for Venerable Dise to keep her First Sword reasonably intact! She no longer had any room to think about launching any further attacks. "We can't go on like this." Venerable Joshua concluded in a resigned tone even as his Everchanger failed to make any progress in defeating his ebony mirror. "I think it is time for us to employ our final gambit. If that doesn't work, then the only way for us to kill the Emperor Tree is to rely on a lot of orbital bombardment." "..." "..." All three expert pilots felt as if they failed somehow. None of them managed to kill the Emperor Tree, let alone one of his ebony avatars. They should have been able to do it if they managed to break through, but despite all of the pressure, none of them managed to trigger their second apotheosis by themselves. "Let's go." Venerable Isobel spoke as her purple flames continually failed to burn the incredibly resilient ebony wooden mechs. "The longer we stay, the greater the chance of accidents." "You're right. Follow me." Joshua said. His Everchanger pulled back from the Ebony Everchanger at the cost of suffering another sword blow and immediately started to fly away while gaining altitude. The other two expert mechs did not dawdle either and utilized their superior mobility to outpace their ebony opponents and rise into the air. The three ebony mechs did not pursue their enemies, wary of getting lured away from the Emperor Tree. Instead, the Ebony Everchanger and the Ebony Zeal both employed their seed cannons to continually shoot at the retreating expert mechs. It took quite a lot of effort for the three Larkinson expert mechs to evade all of the seed attacks aimed in their direction, but they did not stop in their effort to ascend into the skies. Soon enough, the three expert mechs broke past the Solus Gas layer and entered into a much clearer airspace! The top of the Emperor Tree extended from this layer as well and looked especially majestic. The three expert pilots did not pay attention to it at the moment because they had a more important purpose in mind. "Do it." Venerable Dise said. "Get ready, then." Now that the expert mechs were no longer surrounded by Solus Gas, they regained all of their functionality. This included contact with design spirits! The Everchanger immediately adopted Lufa as his current design spirit and began to channel the transcendence glow right away. A very profound aura began to spread from the expert hero mech. As the Everchanger deliberately amplified the range and to a lesser extent the power of this glow, all three expert pilots voluntarily dropped their mental barriers as best they could in order to allow the transcendence glow to take effect on their psyches. This gambit was not without danger, however. In order to let the transcendence glow influence their thoughts, they had to open the door to the Emperor Tree as well! Nobody knew what might result from this operation, but all three expert pilots had already made up their minds to brave this danger in the hopes of transforming their lives!