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The Mech Touch (Web Novel) - Chapter 7599: Grotesque
Chapter 7599: Grotesque
This chapter is updated by JustRead.pl
From the moment he started to play around with a method as dangerous as the Last Defiance Manual, Ves had become a lot more acquainted with the ways a person could become addicted to power.
Even so, he had failed to foresee this outcome.
The extreme contrast between a state of near-death to a state of overflowing strength and vitality had caused practically all of the Poison Willows to lose control!
Not a single living mech or Terran test pilot managed to resist the temptation of taking their rejuvenation a step further.
Ves quietly watched the archival footage. He observed with great attention how each and every Poison Willow first regained their vitality, then began to grow and mutate as if they had removed all of their limiters.
The initial runaway process appeared nearly identical. Whatever differences the Poison Willows may have, they all ventured down the exact same path at the same pace.
This indicated to Ves that this was not a personal failing. If only a couple of weak or mentally impaired pilots lost control, then the overall product should still be sound.
That was not the case this time.
All 20 variants suffered the exact same mishap. This was very strong proof that the problem was structural in nature.
The design was at fault. Ves had failed to foresee this problem and implement enough effective measures that could stop this disaster from taking place.
"In hindsight, maybe it was a good idea that I was only able to convert 20 of my Woodsap mechs into Poison Willows." Ves slowly remarked. "If our enemies had been willing to give us more time, then there would have been a dozen more organic bombs on the battlefield. The fact that only these biomechs actually lost control should have made the problem a bit more manageable."
Gloriana shook her head in disapproval. "You love to push the boundaries of what is possible. Whenever you are confronted by the unknown or the dangerous, you often fail to take them seriously. There is a part of you that possesses so much curiosity that you cannot help yourself. You always have to cross the line and find out what you can do. The only reason why you haven’t received any strong admonishments this time is because the initial plan worked. The Poison Willows did their job and made an enormous contribution to our eventual victory. It is just unfortunate that it also came with an unnecessary sacrifice. Those Terran pilots didn’t have to die for reasons that were completely beyond their control."
She made a valid point. As much as Ves did not want to acknowledge it, his decision and judgment had failed him this time. The blood of those 20 living mechs and Terran mech pilots was on his hands.
"You know what makes this situation even worse in my eyes?" Gloriana continued to press her opinion. "Nothing will change. You are not the type to learn from your mistakes, especially ones of this nature. You will continue to go on taking risks as before. You have been rewarded for your bold risk-taking often enough that it has already become seared into your soul. Even if you stumble and fall every now and then, you can still convince yourself that you are doing the right thing by arguing that your success rate is high enough to justify all of your failings. Have I guessed your thoughts correctly?"
"Uhhh... pretty much." Ves lamely replied.
She knew him too well. She even managed to predict his internal justification!
His wife simply snorted in response. "Typical. Since you are unwilling to restrain yourself, you need others to tell you that you are going too far. I have been derelict in exercising this duty in the past, but this will change starting from today. I admit that your wiley Devil Tongue has managed to mesmerize me into participating in your dangerous schemes, but no more. I have woken up and seen the truth. I will no longer accept any reckless suggestion about how good it is for us to drag ourselves into the depths of the Red War. It is completely inappropriate for you to force your wife and children to participate in an action as dangerous as roaming behind enemy lines!"
Her arguments cast his previous decisions in a bad light. Though Ves still believed in his own vision of the future, he did not feel as eager to defend his standpoint as in the past.
His wife had every right to complain about the potentially disastrous consequences that might have occurred if they had a little less strength and luck during the last engagement.
Once Gloriana had her fill on this issue, she slowly calmed down and directed her attention back to the problematic biomechs.
"Although your Poison Willows all mutated out of control, it is quite interesting to see their monstrous forms. They reveal new facets about the tech and materials that make up your Woodsap mechs."
She manipulated the interface to display all 20 mutated Poison Willows after they had completed their initial growth surge.
Though the rogue biomechs never truly stopped growing since they went out of control, their shapes did not undergo any drastic changes after their initial surge died down.
Pretty much all of them had multiplied in size. The smallest ones had become at least as tall as an Ascended Giant!
Most of the Poison Willows retained their humanoid form, but only loosely. The wild growth progressed so chaotically that they had lost all sense of symmetry and proportion.
For example, one Poison Willow possessed a pair of mismatched legs. One of them grew abnormally long and thick, causing it to resemble an extension of the torso!
The other leg meanwhile failed to grow at the same rate. It even began to mutate into a branch that possessed no other useful function aside from growing a few dozen leaves.
The upper body looked like a mess as well. The torso grew larger but also thinned out at the upper end. The head looked comically undersized. One arm morphed into an absurdly long wooden tentacle while the other arm mutated into a giant cannon!
Despite how grotesque this biomech had become, it was anything but harmless.
An entirely different personality had seemingly taken control over this rogue biomech. The overmutated Poison Willow lashed out at the nearby Woodsap mechs and managed to inflict considerable damage at first!
Many human units became disarrayed as they suddenly had to shift their attention to the new and unexpected threats.
At first, the Woodsap mechs showed clear hesitation when fighting back. They never expected for their own colleagues and comrades to turn against them. For whatever reason, they still believed that the Poison Willows could be subdued without resorting to lethal attacks.
That belief began to dissipate over time as the Poison Willows never let up. The misshapen biological menaces not only grew stronger as they continued to absorb more life energy from the environment, but also remained completely irresponsible to the urgent messages transmitted to their silent cockpits!
Eventually, the Second Elf and other commanders assumed the worst and gave up on the notion of holding back.
"The living mechs and their pilots are already dead." Caracalla Shuku transmitted over the command channel. "It does not matter whether they are actually dead or brainwashed to the point of treating us as their enemies. If they are still true to themselves, they would never want to use their weapons against their fellow soldiers. We must put this travesty to an end for their sake as well as ours."
Despite saying this, the Woodsap mechs still struggled to put down the Poison Willows.
Nobody liked the fact that they were being forced to kill their former brothers and sisters in arms!
Another reason why the Woodsap mechs struggled to solve this problem was that they were far too lacking in power.
The Poison Willows may have turned into ugly wooden giants, but they still enjoyed many of the advantages of normal Woodsap mechs!
In fact, those strengths became a lot more pronounced due to their continued absorption of life energy!
Each attack that managed to chip away at their enlarged wooden mech frames healed within a matter of seconds. The Poison Willows attracted so much life energy that they could recklessly squander huge amounts of it to restore or fuel any system that demanded resources!
Their speed, strength, resilience and above all else their regeneration became supercharged!
If not for the fact that the rogue machines had lost virtually all of the skill, judgment and cohesion of their former pilots, they could have inflicted a lot more damage to their human opposition!
Even so, their sheer power and endless super-regeneration meant that they could still inflict a considerable amount of damage with their haphazard actions!
Mechs suffered crippling damage. Starships endured strong blows that breached compartments and disabled various systems. Their defiance alone created rifts in the battle lines that caused other human units to endure even greater pressure from their alien opponents!
The Poison Willows needed to be eliminated in a much more decisive manner.
How?
By overpowering their regeneration.
Eventually, the Saint Commander managed to solve this escalating problem by directing the greatest guns at her disposal towards the rogue biomechs.
Although the Amaranto Mark III was too preoccupied to lend her considerable firepower, the Tortuous Scream was more than willing to do what was necessary!
The former orven battleship had lost much of her secondary and tertiary gun batteries in order to make room for lots of bunkers.
Her primary gun batteries remained intact, though.
The caliber of these battleship-grade weapons were so enormous that some of them could even fit mechs inside their massive barrels!
Normally, battleships did not bother to use these primary guns against strike craft and anything of a similar nature.
Mechs were too small to hit at a reliable rate. As long as their pilots were alert enough, they could easily execute evasion patterns that made it a lot more difficult to swat them down at longer ranges.
This time, the main cannons did not miss.
The mutated Poison Willows had become much bigger targets than before. Even if they had not lost any of their mobility, their loss of control had actually made them more predictable!
The Saint Commander did not even have to intervene in person to predict the trajectories of these out-of-control biomonstrosities. The Tortuous Scream’s own smart AI’s proved more than capable enough to calculate the most effective firing solutions.
In the face of plasma bolts that were so large that they could burn a hole through a large fortification, the mutated Poison Willows could hardly put up a resistance.
When multiple battleship-grade cannons struck the biomonsters at the same time, their rampage instantly came to an end!
