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."