The Mech Touch

Chapter 6117  The Rebel Leader

How could she possibly manage to burn the powerhouses that possessed the strength and the abilities to snuff out her resonance-empowered flames?

"It is not enough to possess stronger willpower." Isobel believed. "The Emperor Tree does not possess any willpower that comes close to my own, but it still managed to douse my flames."

She suddenly figured out the most fundamental reason why she failed to burn down the calamity plant.

"My King Killer Flames fail to live up to their name because they… aren't able to burn everything that makes strong enemies like the Emperor Tree so difficult to defeat."

Venerable Isobel thought back on what stifled her attempts to burn down her opponents.

What did transphasic energy shields and the Emperor Tree's own flame suppression methods have in common?

They both relied on energy to stop her fire from burning solid matter!

No matter whether it was warship hulls or the wood of the Emperor Tree, her flames were technically able to burn them all up given enough time.

The problem was that energy-based defenses and countermeasures continually stopped her from burning what she wanted.

The solution was therefore simple.

"I need to evolve my flames to the point where they can burn energy much more easily."

Power in this universe was based on energy. Without energy, nothing could be done. Only when someone possessed a huge amount of energy would they be able to change nature, win difficult battles and maintain dominance.

Venerable Isobel firmly set her sights on those who wielded a lot of energy and therefore power.

What if she became good at burning the energy that they relied so much on to remain at the top?

They would instantly lose the foundation of their strength and collapse!

Her eyes blazed with fire as she instantly fell in love with this idea. In a dwarf galaxy and environment where the focus had shifted from matter to energy, becoming good at countering the latter would grant her the qualifications to threaten every powerhouse of the new frontier!

Her fire did not necessarily need to burn any hotter. There was no urgent need for them to spread at a faster rate.

What Venerable Isobel truly needed in order to defeat the likes of the Emperor Tree was to gain the ability to burn its greatest strength!

The calamity plant's most important reliance in battle was its astounding command over wood energy. Its sheer size and mass allowed it to leverage far more wood energy than a more reasonably sized opponent.

However, Isobel noticed that while the Emperor Tree was able to command a monstrous amount of wood energy, it was actually really bad at refining it. The quality of energy under its command was terrible because it absorbed a huge amount of wood energy from the environment without spending enough time and effort into assimilating it. The calamity plant was too young. Its rapid growth in the past few years had resulted in a very unstable foundation that possessed a lot of inadequacies.

Yet just because it possessed a few glaring weaknesses did not mean that the Larkinsons were able to exploit them all. Venerable Isobel first needed to gain the power to burn the Emperor Tree's enormous reserve of wood energy in order to exploit the calamity plant's greatest shortcoming!

She grinned. "It just so happens that I know what to do now."

The transcendence glow truly lived up to its name, unlike the current state of her King Killer Flames.

Form should follow function. She already settled on the criteria that her flames had to meet in order to fulfill her desires.

Now, the most important decision she had to make was to choose an image that her flames should conform to. Only by visualizing something more specific than a simple fire would she be able to evolve her power and overcome her bottleneck!

How should she visualize the concept of a king killer?

"An assassin?"

No. She immediately rejected this image. She was not discreet at all and did not like to attack her enemies by surprise. Her compatibility with anything related to assassination was vastly inferior to the likes of Venerable Zimro Belson.

"What about a rebel leader?"

That sounded more to her liking. Her ambition was to develop a flame that was powerful enough to destroy those who were stronger than her, at least on paper.

How could she do so if she only dared to attack those of equal or lesser strength than her? The only enemies that were truly worth fighting against were those that were objectively more powerful!

Unfortunately, the vast majority of cases where the weak confronted the strong ultimately spelled defeat for the former.

It was a statistical certainty that a lot of powerhouses were able to maintain their dominance due to the simple fact that they could easily defeat their challenges.

Isobel wanted to be the exception rather than the rule. She wanted to excel at overcoming those who ostensibly commanded more power and energy than herself.

How could she possibly make that happen?

By undermining the foundation of their strength.

Just as a rebel leader or a political agitator was able depose kings and sovereigns by turning their own subjects against their tyranny, Venerable Isobel wanted to produce similar results by burning up the energy commanded by her own enemies.

Fire was nothing but an exothermic reaction that caused flammable objects to turn into other substances.

Nothing actually got lost. The fire merely transformed something intact into burned husks and other byproducts.

This was what Isobel wanted to accomplish with her flames, but on a different level than before.

In the past, she was able to defeat formidable opponents by letting her flames convert their 'loyal' matter into 'rebellious' ash and soot.

In the future, she wanted to be able to defeat even more powerful foes by doing the same with energy, which was the true foundation of strength for every powerhouse!

"Just like how a rebellion can spread like a wildfire across a nation, my flames shall gain the power to spread across the energies commanded by my enemies and transform them into greater flames that cannot be commanded by anyone, no matter whether they are friend or foe!"

Rebellions were messy businesses. They could easily spin out of control and turn against their original principles. They produced huge amounts of collateral damage and often left the survivors miserable.

However, that did not always turn them into mistakes.

There were times where the rot had set in so deep that it had to be eliminated at all cost. Venerable Isobel intended to provide the spark that could topple an empire!

As for whether her actions started a chain reaction that produced a vast but uncontrollable configuration that harmed those she did not intend to threaten, Isobel couldn't care as much anymore.

There was always a price to pay for power.

"I am much more comfortable if I put myself in the shoes of the underdog."

As a former third-rater who climbed her way to her current height, Venerable Isobel lacked the arrogance and sense of birthright that first-raters possessed.

She did not take issue with becoming the embodiment of a rebel leader.

The only consequence she cared about was whether she would finally be able to gain the power to burn down the entire Emperor Tree down to its very roots.

"I can do it! I can feel it! As long as I maintain this visualization, I will definitely be able to evolve my flames!"

Even though there were numerous properties about a rebel leader that clearly did not align with herself, Venerable Isobel willfully set aside these discrepancies.

She did not want to waste any time on forming a more suitable image for her flames!

Now that she tasted the potential of power that was far beyond of her current self, she eagerly pounced on the opportunity to evolve and make her flames strong enough to become the Emperor Tree's worst nightmare!

She closed her eyes and concentrated hard on the image of the rebel leader bearing a torch that could spark a wildfire.

By actively trying to transform her flames into a more complicated image that possessed many different connotations, Venerable Isobel was jumping from simple to complex in a radical leap!

This was a risky prospect as many conflicts could occur that might compromise the results or cause the process to fail entirely.

Nonetheless, Venerable Isobel pushed through because she was convinced that this was the best course of action!

The more she fixated on the image of the rebel leader, the more she began to resonate with the entire concept!

"I am on the right track!"

Her increasing intimacy of her choice of visualization spurred her on and convinced her to go all out at this time.

She actively attempted to remold herself to fit the image of the rebel leader in her mind.

As she began to leverage her willpower even further, she also began to surrender all form of control over her own flames.

She became utterly convinced that the only way to make her flames strong enough to burn the energy of the power was to let them go free and act on their true nature!

"Everyone and everything possesses desires. Even fire merely wants to sustain itself by burning everything within reach. Who am I to restrain it and tell it what the flames are allowed to burn?"

By ceasing to care about who or what her flames ended up harming, Venerable Isobel believed she was on the right track to elevate her power past her current bottleneck!

"It's not enough, though."

Unfortunately, her beliefs fell short of reality. She still felt that did not go far enough into liberalizing her own flames.

"What else do I have to do? Oh…"

Even now, her expert mech still maintained a state of control as she was in the process of recovering her resonance shield.

Despite her depleted state, her living mech should have been able to tolerate a lot more heat and flame. The expert mech was specifically designed to be as fireproof as possible!

"If I let go… I will burn my entire surroundings." The expert pilot briefly frowned. "I am no exception either. If I truly want to unleash my flames… I have to expose myself to them! Only by letting go in earnest will they truly evolve into the King Killer Flames that can end the tyranny of the Emperor Tree!"

Venerable Isobel did not question her decisions any further and immediately set about releasing her flames to the point of setting her own cockpit on fire!

"Kiroshi, let's light it up!"

"Ya ya!"

Her companion spirit reappeared by her side and began to use her own flaming form to light a fire in her own cockpit.

Under normal circumstances, Isobel would never think about burning her own expert mech, let alone trying to engulf her own body with her King Killer Flames!

This was not a normal circumstance, though. After becoming inspired by the guidance that led her to fixate on the image of the rebel leader, she fully committed herself to it in the hopes of catching up to Saint Tusa!

As the temperature in the cockpit rapidly rose, Venerable Isobel felt increasingly hotter and more excited!

"That is it! Burn! Burn it all down! Burn so that I may transcend from the ashes of my own corpse! Let my fire go free and burn anything without restraint! No longer shall I impose any control over my flames!"

The cockpit began to fill with smoke. Actual components started to burn and break down from all of the heat damage.

As the unrestrained flames slowly spread across the limited area and approached her cockpit chair, Venerable Isobel grinned with anticipation.

She believed with all of her heart that once the King Killer Flames spread to her own suited form, she would be able to undergo rebirth that would make her stronger than ever!

Her willpower already started to press against her bottleneck with far greater force than before!

She could feel her bottleneck loosening in real time!

"Almost there! Just one… more… push!"