Chapter 6132 Emperor Tree Sap With the active cooperation of the Elegant Rage, Ves made faster progress in figuring out a theoretical framework for Woodsap mechs. Ves continually felt grateful towards the Elegant Rage for providing him with an excellent example on how to fuse wood-based technology with conventional metallic technology. To put it in extremely simple terms, Venerable Lanie's mech already possessed an incomplete prototype of the Carmine System! Ves merely had to make use of the existing foundation of wood integration and add a few more elements in order to turn it into a Woodsap mech. There were two important problems that he needed to solve in order to complete his modifications. First, he needed to find a way to replace the regular variety of wood with ebony wood. Back during the sample retrieval mission, the fallen Elegant Rage absorbed the remains of fallen wooden mechs in order to make her mech frame whole again. Although the material was already pretty good, it was among the weakest and least promising variations of Emperor Wood produced by the calamity plant. The Red Association may be able to upgrade this inferior wood material with a vastly more superior formula that it had developed in-house, but Ves believed that it was best to make use of ebony wood. This was why Ves remained stuck on this issue. He had to wait until a fast transport vessel finally delivered the shipment of ebony wood to his doorstep. The second problem that hindered his progress was that he needed to figure out a powerful liquid medium that could safely be circulated in Lanie's human body. This was a troublesome issue as there was no way that the raw tree sap from the Emperor Tree could safely be circulated in the vascular system of a typical human! It sounded as absurd as replacing all of the blood in a person's body with maple syrup! There was no way this could work! In order to gain a better understanding of the consequences of using tree sap as a substitute of blood, Ves collected a bit of tree sap from the Elegant Rage and stuffed it inside an injection needle. Ves momentarily stared at the pointy container. He could sense the high concentration of wood energy. The sap of the Emperor Tree was thick and enriched with all kinds of organic and non-organic substances, so it was also dense with nutrients and chemical energy. This was the lifeblood of a calamity plant! "It's almost just as dangerous as phasewater." All of this meant that it was a bad idea to inject it into any random organism. Of course, Ves did not leave this to speculation alone. He already brought in a number of specimens in order to observe the consequences in person. "You first." Ves stood before a table that held a small tree. It was a perfectly normal, unmutated standard tree derived from an authentic old Earth species. He used the sharp needle to press inside the slender trunk of the plant before injecting a minute amount of exotic tree sap. The tree immediately started to droop. It was losing its stiffness and integrity with each passing second! The foreign tree sap literally poisoned it to death! "Damn." He moved on to the next table which held a plain white lab mouse. Animal testing was the logical next step. Ves ignored the cute critter's eyes and injected it with a few drops of Emperor Tree Sap. An energy shield cage immediately came to life in case it was necessary to contain the aftereffects of a violent explosion. Nothing of the sort took place. Instead, the mouse immediately started to squeak in pain before dropping dead. Its body began to discolor and bleed, but other than that the carcass did not do anything else. "So dangerous." Ves moved on to an exobeast whose species and properties he did not bother to study. Ves only wanted to get his hands on an organism with a tough body and high tolerance towards different ailments. When he injected a small amount of tree sap into the body of the reptilian beast, the creature looked fine for half a minute, but slowly began to die. Its passing was similar to the lab mouse, though its greater size allowed it to hold out longer. Suffice to say, Ves was not happy with the results. He had only injected minor quantities of tree saps into every test subject, and already they started to croak! It would probably help if he reduced the dosage by at least one or two orders of magnitude, but Ves did not like this adjustment. The point of the Carmine System was to ritually connect two different beings by blood. It was of utmost importance that the two participants circulated the same blood. Excessively diluting the Emperor Tree Sap until there was hardly anything related to the Emperor Tree left in the final mixture would probably invalidate the blood connection. It was best to adulterate the tree sap as little as possible in order to form the strongest possible Woodsap Pact. "Hmmmm…" Ves stared at the syringe. He hadn't even used up most of the tree sap. The test subjects all got killed before he could increase the dosage on them. That left him with a considerable excess. "Well, I shouldn't waste this stuff." Before he could question himself any further, he proceeded to stick the needle into his own arm and injected all of the remaining tree sap into his bloodstream! Of course, most needles, including the reinforced one attached to the syringe, wouldn't have been able to pierce into his surprisingly tough skin. His true body was much larger and possessed far thicker skin! Ves had to utilize his inherent phase lord capabilities to deliberately weaken his skin and allow his body to get injected by the needle. Once he had done so, he waited and tried his best to sense his body's reaction to the unwelcome intrusion of tree sap. "..." Nothing. Ves felt absolutely nothing. To be fair, his true body was so enormous that the dosage was far too trivial to poison his body in any way! Ves merely hoped that he could gain a more intuitive feel of how tree sap behaved inside his body, but he would probably have to inject tens if not hundreds of liters of tree sap. "Never mind, then." In the end, Ves drew an important conclusion from this round of experimentation. The tree sap was extremely lethal to most human physiologies. Perhaps the Red Association was currently in the process of applying heavy augmentations to Venerable Lanie's body, but that would not necessarily make her compatible with the extremely lethal Emperor Tree Sap! "What about the other way around?" Ves wondered. "Can Emperor Wood tolerate exposure to human blood?" He conducted another quick experiment to find out. Much to his relief, Emperor Wood was so strong that it did not weaken when it was exposed to normal human blood. The only problem occurred when he decided to expose samples of Emperor Wood to his own phasewater-enriched blood. Each and every sample crackled and split apart as the spatial fluctuations tore them all apart. "Okay, that answers that question." This was another problem. Phasewater technology had become a big deal in modern times. The Hyper Generation may have supplanted the Phasewater Generation in the Red Ocean, but that did not mean that phasewater had lost its relevance! If Ves wanted to prep the Elegant Rage for future use within the ranks of the Red Association, he had to make sure that its organic components became compatible with phasewater. "If ebony wood doesn't solve this problem, then I will have to modify it so that it can get along with phasewater." Ves was reaching the limits of what he could do on his own. The Larkinson Biotech Institute might be able to help, but it would take months or years before its biotech researchers produced solid results. That was too slow. He decided to call over Alexa Streon in order to gain a second opinion. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢 Once his protege arrived and received an extensive heads-up, the clever Journeyman Mech Designer fell into thought. "I do not think it is a large problem to develop a variation of Emperor Wood that is compatible with phasewater." The woman shared her own thoughts. "There are many native plant species that have evolved on planets that are endowed by phasewater deposits. As long as you can transplant or reverse engineer the genetic code that enables these plants to contain and resist the effects of phasewater, your scientists should be able to develop phasewater-tolerant Emperor Wood." Ves smiled. "You're right. I don't think it will be easy to modify the wood derived from a calamity plant, but it shouldn't be too difficult either. The right building blocks are already in place. We just need to piece them together." "As for the tree sap problem, I am unable to devise any obvious solutions. I am afraid that you have to make a difficult choice. The first option that comes to mind is to admit that you are not yet equipped to develop a Woodsap mech and give up on this ambition. Why must you insist on turning the Elegant Rage into a Woodsap mech? Can't you turn her into a regular Carmine mech? In fact, why must she forge a Blood Pact with Venerable Lanie in the first place?" Alexa asked a number of sharp questions. There was no clear reason why Ves had to turn the Elegant Rage into a Carmine mech. Many pilots including the likes of Saint Tusa were doing just fine without relying on such a special feature! "I don't have much choice, Alexa. The Mace of Retaliation directly instructed me to turn the Elegant Rage into Venerable Lanie's Carmine mech. He wants to raise the stakes and force Venerable Lanie to win or gracefully retreat from every battle she participates in. There should never be an instance where she suffered such a heavy defeat that she has lost her entire mech." The young woman's expression changed. "That is… harsh. Is it truly a benefit for Venerable Lanie to be mentored by such a strong personality? The stories and rumors about the Mace of Retaliation have never been too positive. He is only a pale shadow compared to his much more successful father." "Let's not gossip behind a peak ace pilot's back." Ves awkwardly coughed. "In any case, the only hard requirement is to turn the Elegant Rage into a Carmine mech. If I want to, I can complete the conversion in two days, and that is if I try to be really careful. This is not what I want, though. The Elegant Rage is the strongest wood-aligned mech that I have encountered up to now. It is an ideal candidate to become my first wood-aspected Carmine mech. It is just that I have yet to flesh out the concept of my revolutionary new elemental Carmine System." His latest student knew how Ves could become stubborn about these kinds of issues, so she did not persuade him to change his mind. They could spend their time much more productively if they figured out a proper solution to this problem. "I see no other way to make a Carmine System that substitutes human blood for Emperor Tree Sap than to force Venerable Lanie to undergo extreme body modifications." Alexa spoke with a heavy tone. "I think the Red Association must figure out a way to turn her into a partial plant in order to make her compatible with this dangerous sap." This was not an impossible demand. Ranya Wodin had already integrated herself with a plant a long time ago. This was a more extreme instance, though. Ves had no idea whether Venerable Lanie would even agree to such a radical body transformation. "We will have to contact the Red Association if there is no better option." Ves tiredly sighed. "We cannot go any further unless we gain the explicit approval of Venerable Lanie and the active cooperation of the mechers." Developing a Woodsap mech was far more troublesome than he thought!