Chapter 444: Tactical Nuclear-Level Energy |
The unexpected arrival of an uninvited guest forced the Red Demon mech to pause its assault.
After a brief assessment, its AI judged the newcomer as an enemy, and the autocannons mounted on its arms aimed at Guan Tong, unleashing a deluge of bullets!
Guan Tong had already dropped to the ground and raised a shadow wall to shield himself from the gunfire.
Adam said quickly beside him, “This war machine was probably designed by Bruce specifically to counter Ascendants. The designer must have considered me one of its hypothetical opponents from the start, so most of my abilities are countered by it.”
“Really? Seems your king is quite insecure, then. He can’t even trust his own nation’s Ascendants and prepared defenses early on.”
While Guan Tong reinforced the shadow wall to withstand the Red Demon mech’s varied attacks, he also split off shadows and steered them to quickly approach the mech from both sides.
External attacks are ineffective against such an extremely sturdy mechanical construct; the best method is to sabotage it from the inside.
After all, the more precise the machine, the more complex its internal systems. If you can damage a few critical components, you can cripple it into a heap of scrap. And when it comes to infiltrating and sabotaging from inside, few things are better than his shadows.
Adam let out a wry laugh. “Yeah, I used to think we were special. Turns out in the eyes of the king and the Senate we’re just expendable. How naive. Watch out for the laser!”
Guan Tong manipulated a serpentine, insubstantial shadow to burrow up from underground and enter the Red Demon’s interior, then used his Simultaneous Substantial-Insubstantial ability to materialize the shadow inside the mech.
Through the shared vision, he saw the mech’s interior filled with extremely complex mechanical circuits.
The dense tubing and lines crisscrossed like the water and pipe network of a building, governing the operation of the whole mech.
At the “heart” position there was a completely sealed black box about the size of a television. Guan Tong guessed this was the mech’s logic core — essentially its intelligent brain.
Suddenly the mech’s treads recoiled and the unit stepped back, as if it detected an intrusion and activated another processing routine.
At the same time, alarms rang inside the mech.
[External intrusion detected, purge system activated!]
A large number of buzzing sounds emerged from the mech’s interior. Through the shadow-shared vision, Guan Tong saw dozens to hundreds of micro-drones fly out from all over the mech toward his shadow, which stunned him.
The mech actually had so many drones built inside?
All these drones carried sharp metal blades to cut at Guan Tong’s shadow.
Such a purge system might work well against other intruders, but against a shadow it was doomed to fail.
The instant they neared the shadow, Guan Tong immediately made it insubstantial. The drones collided and destroyed each other en masse; the survivors spiraled aimlessly like headless flies.
An insubstantial shadow has no physical target, so the drones had nothing to hit. After circling a bit, they all flew back. Guan Tong then re-solidified the shadow and sent it straight for the mech’s core!
“Damnit!”
In the laboratory, Dr. Haisen looked at the black screen and slammed the table in fury.
He was now sure Eden Island was suffering severe electromagnetic interference, so the video feed couldn’t transmit; he had no idea what was happening on site.
But he knew this had to be Adam’s reinforcements arriving, using some EMP device to burn out the island’s communications.
“The Red Demon’s armor has EMP protection, so it shouldn’t be affected, but…”
Dr. Haisen’s brow was tightly furrowed. Being unable to see the scene made him extremely anxious.
Even though he had full confidence in his design for the Red Demon, unexpected situations like this naturally caused concern.
After hesitating for a moment, he contacted King Bruce, reported the situation, and requested that warships near the island be dispatched to investigate.
Bruce treated the matter seriously when he learned of it; he hadn’t expected Adam to have outside help.
According to the intelligence department’s long-term surveillance, Adam had almost no familiar Ascendants besides a few wives. Who would come to his aid at a time like this?
After Bruce issued orders, the nearest naval port to Eden Island immediately dispatched a medium-sized warship that was in harbor, sending it to the island as quickly as possible.
The warship raced toward the island and would soon be close enough to see Eden Island by sight.
Suddenly an alarm blared throughout the ship.
“Beep—beep—beep—beep!”
The pattern of three long and one short indicated hull damage. The captain’s face changed drastically as he ordered an inspection.
Soon a commotion arose on deck.
The captain personally rushed over and saw a fully wrapped mysterious figure standing at the edge of the deck. The large hole at the figure’s feet was undoubtedly the source of the shipwide alarm.
“Who are you? How did you get aboard? How dare you damage Suroma’s warship hull!”
“Captain, don’t approach. This person is very likely a hostile Ascendant!” a soldier warned.
A hostile Ascendant?!
The captain stared at the person while surrounding soldiers trained their weapons. The figure remained still under their aim, silent.
The captain shouted, “Identify yourself immediately, or I will order you shot!”
“I don’t want to kill you,” the mysterious figure said in a somewhat stiff voice, “If you don’t want to die, stay where you are and do not approach that island.”
“!”
The captain was startled. So this person had come to stop the ship from heading toward Eden Island.
But his orders were to proceed to the island. If he backed down because of the threat of a hostile Ascendant, he might later face a court-martial!
“Open fire!”
At the captain’s command, the soldiers pulled triggers and bullets rained down on the mysterious figure.
“Clang clang clang clang clang…”
The sounds of bullets hitting that person and the deformed bullets dropping to the deck stunned the captain and his men.
What is this person? Is his body bulletproof?
Even the sturdiest body armor can't withstand thousands of bullets.
“You asked for this.”
Uenoshi pulled off her hood, revealing snake-like pupils for a fraction of a second. Soldiers who met her gaze clutched their heads and screamed, their bodies convulsing uncontrollably and instantly transforming into swarms of Serpent Servants.
“Monsters!!!”
Those who hadn’t looked into Uenoshi’s eyes escaped the conversion but weren’t safe from the converted Serpent Servants’ attacks.
As Uenoshi’s power increased, the Serpent Servants she produced became increasingly powerful, each almost two meters long with frightening speed and strength.
The soldiers were no match; they were systematically eliminated. The warship’s captain was no exception, surrounded and killed by several Serpent Servants.
After slaying the attackers alone, Uenoshi glanced toward the island, wondering whether Guan Tong was proceeding smoothly.
The two had acted together this time but split tasks.
After arriving at sea, they only found the island Adam had gone to because they observed destroyed watchtowers.
Then they separated: Guan Tong went ashore to assist Adam, while Uenoshi stayed in the waters around the island to prevent ships—especially Suroma warships—from approaching.
It had been over half an hour since Guan Tong went ashore. For someone of his ability, this was a long time, and Uenoshi couldn’t help worry that things might not be going well.
...
The drone defense system inside the Red Demon was completely helpless against Guan Tong’s shadow’s ability to switch between insubstantial and substantial states; it could not stop the shadow from reaching the core.
When the shadow arrived at the core, Guan Tong once again made it materialize, transforming it into multiple sharp spikes that pierced the black box.
“Sizzle—!”
Sparks flashed and the Red Demon’s entire body stiffened, beginning to twitch.
The mech’s actions were driven entirely by the intelligent system module in the core; once that was damaged, the whole unit’s functions would be strongly affected.
Adam had realized the effectiveness of Guan Tong’s attack when the Red Demon began retreating. Seeing it twitch and collapse now, he showed a pleased expression. “Shadow, you successfully brought it down!”
But Guan Tong did not feel elated; instead, his brow furrowed deeply.
From the shadow-shared view, once the black box was pierced by the shadow spikes it began heating rapidly and emitting a bright light.
A wave of frequent vibrations arose inside the mech, and through the shadow he could clearly sense the tremendous energy contained within!
What’s happening?
Guan Tong didn’t think his shadow had caused this; it seemed the black box itself was vibrating spontaneously.
Not only the black box, but the entire machine’s parts were resonating with the vibration. Multiple powerful energies were oscillating together, as if some chain reaction was occurring inside.
“No good!” His heart tightened as he realized a terrifying possibility. “This mech has a self-destruct system, and it’s already activated!”
If the core is damaged, the mech can’t continue fighting. If you don’t leave a contingency, once the core is captured the enemy might extract design secrets — a huge disadvantage.
Moreover, the self-destruct might be intended to take others down with it, eliminating enemies while preserving secrecy — two birds with one stone.
“Self-destruct?”
Adam saw rapid white lights flashing across the Red Demon and realized the danger.
He steeled himself and suddenly charged forward.
Guan Tong, moving away from the Red Demon, called out in confusion, “What are you doing? It’s going to explode!”
“I know!” Adam shouted without turning his head. “This thing might have a massive explosive device inside. If the explosion is allowed to fully release, everyone else on the island will die!”
Guan Tong was taken aback; he hadn’t expected Adam to try to save the others at a time like this.
By now the self-destruct system had completed its preparations. A massive detonation was about to erupt that could not be stopped.
Based on the energy density Guan Tong sensed, the damage from the detonation would probably be comparable to a tactical nuclear warhead!
Adam, skilled at manipulating force fields and meticulous with energy calculation, sensed the explosion’s horror even more intensely. He dared not hold back, exhausting the remainder of his Mind Power and opening his arms toward the mech.
“Vacuum field, full power!”
A blinding radiance erupted from the Red Demon for an instant and was then instantly suppressed!
Guan Tong watched from a distance in complete disbelief.
An energy release of that magnitude had been isolated? How was that possible?
Adam had created a vacuum field that blocked the propagation of the energy? His power could reach that level?
Just as Guan Tong was stunned, Adam, who had been frozen in place for a few seconds, suddenly exploded with a “boom” and fell backward onto the ground.
Guan Tong dashed over and saw Adam lying there, drenched in blood, one arm and one leg blown to pieces, teetering on the edge of death.
This guy... hadn’t fully blocked the energy transfer. He’d used the vacuum field to isolate part of it and redirected some of the energy into himself...
“...”
Guan Tong was at a loss for words. He quickly pulled out some medicinal items and applied them to Adam to save his life first.
Because the energy had been blocked, no earth-shattering explosion occurred. The Ascendants who had been hiding on the island all came out.
They were shocked by Adam’s ravaged condition, unsure of what had happened.
Guan Tong told them, “Adam took this form to protect you. You’d better remember that.”
“No, impossible,” one person said, unbelieving. “Adam just used us as hostages to negotiate with the king! How could he be protecting us?”
Guan Tong didn’t know about Adam negotiating with Bruce; he hadn’t come to the island during those talks.
Still, from what he’d seen of Adam’s actions, he believed Adam hadn’t truly treated them as hostages but rather had been trying to trick Bruce.
“If he hadn’t protected you, you’d already be blown to bits,” Guan Tong said. “Or do you think that heap of scrap metal over there existed to protect you?”
They all looked at the Red Demon destroyed in the explosion, their faces instantly falling.
They knew the man was right. No matter how Adam had dealt with them, a war machine secretly placed under the residential area did not seem intended to protect them.
“He’s right. Don’t you understand? To His Majesty we’re already irrelevant,” a woman stepped forward. “From the start the king didn’t trust us. This mech was prepared to suppress us!”
“…Even if that’s true, what can we do?”
“I’m leaving Eden Island!”
“I’m leaving too!”
Guan Tong, although ignorant about this Eden Island, guessed it might be a Suroma facility for cultivating Ascendants.
The Ascendants’ rebellious feelings were understandable. He didn’t intend to intervene in that now. The priority was to save Adam’s life — otherwise if the Moon Key’s prophecy comes true, this trip would all be for nothing!