The Mech Touch

Chapter 6130  Emperor Wood

The operation to kill the Emperor Tree yielded a lot of gains to the Larkinson Clan.

The Emperor Tree's downfall left behind a lot of wooden remains. Much of it was high-quality wood that acted as a natural hyper material that still retained a semblance of the Emperor Tree's extraordinary properties!

It would have been great if Director Ranya Wodin had already completed her EdNet training.

Her specialization was related to exobotany, so she would have definitely loved to play around with all of the high-quality specimens harvested from one of the most powerful exoplants the Larkinsons had ever encountered!

Unfortunately, her continued absence for at least two more years meant that other eager biotech researchers managed to get their turns first. Multiple research teams drafted interesting new research proposals that promised to enrich the Larkinson Biotech Institute's solutions related to plant organisms.

The cost of conducting all of this research was not too high. Despite the fact that Saint Isobel Kotin burned a lot of wood during the previous operation, there were still millions of tons worth of wood and huge amounts of tree sap available for the taking.

Nobody worried about running out of Emperor Tree materials anytime soon!

Only a couple of parts of the Emperor Tree proved to be scarce, such as ebony wood.

Saint Isobel had done too good of a job at burning down the most precious tree heart. Her King Killer Flames also devoured the Ebony First Sword until there was nothing left and obliterated the Ebony Zeal from a distance.

The search teams hadn't found all that much unburnt remains of the Ebony Zeal.

However, the biotech researchers who eagerly conducted their first experiments on the remains of the Emperor Tree managed to make an explosive discovery.

The Larkinson Biotech Institute placed so much importance on this revelation that Vice Director Maria Abselon chose to contact Ves at the first possible opportunity.

"What's up?" Ves asked the physical projection as he turned away from his research into Woodsap mechs.

It was exactly because he was preoccupied with the development of wood element Carmine mechs that he still placed a high priority on any news related to the Emperor Tree.

"We have made a very critical discovery, sir." The former Terran woman replied. "We have discovered a reliable mechanism to reproduce the biomass of the former Emperor Tree. The immediate consequence is that the wood salvaged from the deceased calamity plant is no longer finite anymore. As long as we satisfy the right conditions and supply the correct input materials, we can slowly increase our stock of wood that is almost identical to the biomass of the Emperor Tree. As far as we have been able to ascertain, this mechanism applies to every variety of wood, including the most valuable ebony wood."

"What?!" Ves became a lot more attentive after hearing this explosive news. "You can clone the Emperor Tree's wood despite the fact that it is not alive anymore?!"

"Life and death has different meanings for exoplants." The physical projection of Maria Abselon smiled. "The powerful consciousness of the calamity exoplant is deceased, but its enormous physical body is still performing all of the routine biological functions to sustain its physical condition. It has turned into the equivalent of a brain dead human patient that is perpetually stuck on life support. When you break the patient's bone, his body's natural mechanisms will still work to mend and heal it as this is a subconscious physiological process. The same applies to the regeneration ability of the Emperor Tree's wood. It is still present even if Saint Isobel Kotin managed to terminate the ego."

From the way Maria Abselon described it, the regeneration process was like a hardcoded subroutine that could still be run even if the main operating system had been wiped. There was no requirement that the subroutine had to be controlled by the original controller. As long as the original Emperor Tree was gone, there was no inherent protection left to prevent others from manipulating the subroutines!

The vice director played several pieces of footage where the scientists successfully managed to produce different quantities of wood from numerous existing samples taken from the Emperor Tree.

Brand-new sections of wood slowly grew from the original samples when fed with different materials as well as large amounts of wood energy.

The fact that the scientists already managed to produce more high-quality wood variations with similar properties as their originals meant that the remains of the Emperor Tree were not finite anymore!

The Larkinson Clan did not have to worry about running out of this wood as if they were exhausting an ore deposit.

This was the fundamental advantage of using organic materials. It was relatively easier to reproduce them so long as the producer was able to source the right input materials.

Ves immediately focused on the latter. Nothing came for free. Not even the Emperor Tree was able to violate the laws of conservation of mass and energy.

In order to gain something, the Emperor Tree had to lose something of equivalent value.

Ves recalled that the calamity plant expended huge amounts of wood energy and tree sap in order to supercharge its own regeneration processes.

From what he could observe from the laboratory footage, the scientists simply exposed the pieces of Emperor Tree wood to a lot of ores, exobeast remains and other materials taken from the local environment.

Continuous exposure to E energy radiation slowly stimulated the wood pieces into absorbing the raw materials to grow in size, thereby increasing the amount of wood available to the Larkinsons.

"Amazing."

The preliminary results had massive implications for the Larkinson Clan's use cases for this collection of organic materials. Ves saw hope of perpetually using wood derived from the Emperor Tree in the mass production of many different varieties of Woodsap mechs!

In fact, Ves even started to dream about whether it was possible for him to design and mass produce a fully functional wooden mech that could be piloted by humans!

Although Ves had not yet come up with a reason why his customers must purchase wooden mechs as opposed to classical metallic mechs, he was sure he could come up with a good enough value proposition to impress the mech community.

As Ves continued to study the footage and the accompanying data, he soon discovered a glaring problem.

"The production process is not… efficient." He said. "It's too slow. Seeing as there is a plentiful amount of wood and raw materials available, I guess the bottlenecks that are holding back the production rate is the lack of central direction and the limited input of wood energy."

Maria Abselon nodded. "Those are our conclusions as well. As it is, the production of 'Emperor Wood' is not challenging from a technical perspective, but it is slow and energy inefficient. When we compare the laboratory results to the much more rapid and efficient regeneration process of the Emperor Tree back when it was alive, there is an enormous sea of difference."

"Why is there such an enormous discrepancy?" Ves asked with a frown.

This was an important question. The extremely slow wood production rate of the early laboratory experiments had no field applications at all. It would probably take weeks to produce a decent chunk of Emperor Wood, and months to produce enough of this material to produce an entire wooden mech!

While the biomech industry was accustomed to growing its products over a span of multiple months, Ves was not satisfied with this terribly slow production rate.

The Emperor Tree was able to produce large amounts of wooden mechs in a matter of days. It was able to regenerate tons and tons of high-quality wood in a matter of minutes during battle!

If the Larkinsons managed to master the method of regenerating wood at the same speed as the Emperor Tree, then any mechs made with Emperor Wood would be extremely easy to restore in the field!

Ves did not want to give up on this promising capability. Without this insanely high regeneration factor, there was no reason to favor Emperor Wood over other materials in the development of wood-based biomechs!

Fortunately, the Larkinson Biotech Institute managed to investigate this problem a little further.

"We have formed a number of hypotheses that we are in the process of testing. Our main hypothesis is that the reason why the performance was so high when the Emperor Tree was alive was due to quality and quantity."

"Explain."

"The Emperor Tree has demonstrated the ability to channel large quantities of wood energy back when it was alive. In both engagements against our Larkinson mechs, it has actively leveraged large amounts of wood energy to accelerate the regeneration of its wooden constructs as well as its main body. Our clan currently does not possess a device or mechanism that allows us to increase the concentration of wood energy in a small environment. We are in the process of remedying that by importing high-grade wood hyper materials, but it is unlikely we will be able to match the performance of the Emperor Tree in the short term."

Ves nodded in understanding. "What you have said makes sense. What else?"

"We hypothesize that there are specific factors that can dramatically increase the efficiency of wood energy usage. As you already know, E energy is psychoreactive. This means that it is a mistake to treat it as a mundane form of energy such as electricity. Strong mental activity can significantly alter the behavior of E energy. When the ebony heart of the Emperor Tree was still operational, the calamity plant possessed such a strong cognition that it was able to unlock some of the potential of wood energy and amplify its regeneration properties by several orders of magnitude." Nôv(el)B\\jnn

"How big of a difference does this make?"

"We cannot give you any precise numbers, but let me give you a simple analogy." The leading biotech expert said. "Take the Promethea's energy rifle. This is a large weapon that requires a large quantity of energy to fire a single energy beam. Under normal circumstances, only a mech or a machine of an equivalent size can satisfy the Ignitron rifle's consumption. If there is a strong conscious mind that focuses hard on inflicting damage with this weapon, it is possible to inflict just as much damage by using a battery that is designed to power infantry-scale energy firearms!"

"That much?!"

"A calamity plant is very strong. How else do you think that it managed to grow to such an enormous size?"

The analogy described by Maria Abselon may sound a bit exaggerated, but it most definitely conveyed the message that the vice director wanted to convey.

There was a huge difference between a subroutine that was being run on autopilot and a subroutine that was actively being supported by a powerful and compatible mind!

Ves had a better understanding of the current problem. The death of the Emperor Tree deprived the Larkinson Clan of an easy way to handle Emperor Wood.

He suddenly thought of the captured Ebony Everchanger.

"Vice director, since the regeneration process can be accelerated and more efficient when it is actively directed by a strong and compatible consciousness, does this mean the Ebony Everchanger can replicate the performance of the Emperor Tree?"

"It depends, but we believe it is possible. It will take time to turn the Ebony Everchanger into an industrial-scale production machine. It is too immature and incomplete in its current state."

Ves briefly thought about turning the Ebony Everchanger into a full-time Emperor Wood production machine, but he was very reluctant to do so. He wanted to turn the ebony mech into a powerful combat asset!

"Is it possible to use other powerful exoplants to produce Emperor Wood on an industrial scale?"

"It is plausible, but we have yet to test it. We need to conduct many more experiments before we can give you a solid answer. We have only examined and experimented on the samples for a short period of time. More discoveries are forthcoming."

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