Chapter 104: Dragon Species
, border defense line.
The roar of tanks and the howl of heavy machine guns wove together into a single chorus of steel fury.
Twelve 99A main battle tanks rumbled over the concrete barricades, their 125mm smoothbore guns letting out dull thunder.
Armor-piercing rounds tore through the fog, plowing bloody swaths through the crystallized .
But the gaps were refilled within half a second.
Crystallized zombies poured out like a blue flood from every street and every building in .
Blue cold light burned in their eye sockets, and their limbs skimmed across the ground in beastlike strides.
And mixed among them were many first-stage and second-stage mutants.
Crystallized , Abyssal Centipedes, and even Pilgrims—all appeared in the middle of the .
“Too many!” a team member shouted. “At least ten times more than before!”
“Tanks, advance and suppress! Armored vehicles, seal the flanks!” 's orders were calm and rapid. “Artillery positions, cover target zones C-3 through C-7!”
Wearing the “ ” , he gripped a priority-issued and directly suppressed a massive stretch of the .
The crystallized shells were like paper before the hypersonic hail of the , easily shredded to pieces.
Yet the monsters surging out of the pale fog seemed endless.
“Left flank! Three o'clock! A ' ' is coming!”
A team member gave the warning.
Ahead, dozens of monsters whose arms had mutated into crystal long-blades were charging in at speeds far exceeding their kind's norm. They even understood how to use abandoned vehicles as cover, weaving closer in a zigzag.
“Grenade suppression!”
Before 's words had even faded, several rifle grenades were already howling out, bursting a net of fire among the pack and stalling their advance.
The artillery positions in the rear had also opened fire. Dozens of 152mm high-explosive shells streaked across the sky and landed precisely in the forward blocks of .
A continuous chain of explosions turned the entire area upside down, and shattered blue crystals scattered like hail.
But the pale fog always sealed itself back up quickly after the flames of the explosions died out, then spat out even more monsters.
And just as the ground battle was bogging down in a stalemate, everyone felt an increasingly violent tremor coming from the earth beneath their feet.
In the direction of the , the gigantic crystal serpent that had been coiled there all along finally moved.
Upon its colossal body, a thin layer of old crystalline shell, frail as cicada wings, cracked and peeled away inch by inch.
And what emerged from the shed old shell was a brand-new, even more ferocious silhouette.
Its size had swollen by nearly a third. The originally thick serpentine body had become longer and sleeker, and the scales covering it had transformed into a strange crystal, like colored glass, that rippled with iridescent halos in the sunlight.
But the most striking change lay along its spine—from the head and neck to the tail tip, two rows of flat, finlike translucent crystal wings extended symmetrically along the spine. Inside each wing membrane, fine, intricate vein-like patterns flowed with light.
Its head was no longer a mere serpent's skull, either. Two backward-sweeping crystal horns had grown from the crown, and whisker-like antennae extended from either side of its lower jaw, drifting in the air currents.
And at the roots of the crystal wings along its spine, dozens of fully crystallized human-shaped outlines were merging into the serpent's body in an uncanny manner.
Their forms were half-sunk into the crystal shell, faces turned upward, lips moving, letting out low chants whose meaning was utterly unintelligible.
As each one merged in, the light veins on the giant serpent's wing membranes brightened a degree.
When the final fusion was complete, the giant serpent's crystal wings suddenly spread wide.
ROOOAR——!
A roar shook the heavens. At that moment, it even made all the zombies on the ground battlefield and 's men locked in combat with them pause for a beat.
An indescribable terror burst in their hearts, making their bodies instinctively go rigid.
Then the crystal wings on the giant serpent's back gave one violent beat, and somehow carried that absurdly colossal body free of gravity's pull, soaring straight up into the high sky and speeding away toward the southern horizon at tremendous velocity.
With the lesson of fresh in mind, reacted almost instantly.
This attack had been a feint all along—they were trying to run!
Run? Did you ask my opinion?
Almost at the exact moment the giant serpent took to the air in that impossible manner, a deep-gray phantom tore through the clouds and dove at supersonic speed—the .
But just as it closed to within two kilometers of the giant serpent—
Six black shadows suddenly shot out from deep within the , charging straight into the 's flight path.
They were six giant eagle mutants, each the size of a small airliner. Their wingspans exceeded fifteen meters, and their entire bodies were wrapped in a smooth blue crystal shell. Every flight feather of their wings was like a razor-sharp .
And beneath that semitransparent crystal shell, countless endlessly rotating eyeballs were packed densely together, forming their skin.
The moment these crystallized giant eagles appeared, they flung themselves fearlessly at the , converging in a three-point encirclement. With a flap of their wings, countless fist-sized blue crystal clusters detached from their wingtips and streaked toward the at high speed, cold light trailing behind.
BOOM!
The instant the crystal clusters touched roads and buildings, they detonated violently.
Each one packed enough power to blast a three-meter-wide crater into the ground.
And the density of their volleys nearly sealed off most of the 's evasive space.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The crystal clusters collided midair with the decoy flares the drone had released, bursting into blinding clusters of blue light. The savage energy shockwaves even warped the air into rippling distortions.
At the same time, put the drone through an extreme barrel roll, narrowly surviving the barrage.
The closest crystal cluster detonated less than ten meters below the drone's belly, and the shockwave sent the lurching violently.
But what rattled even more was these mutants' speed—they had actually kept pace with a at Mach 2.8!
A sudden flash of understanding went through 's mind. This was a defensive line prepared specifically for him!
But if they thought this could stop his pursuit, they were being far too naive!
TSSSS——!
The next second, three enormous plasma rounds, like blue meteors, tore across the sky at extreme speed, sealing off one giant eagle's route.
The couldn't even react before one of the plasma rounds struck it head-on.
The hard crystal shell on its body vaporized in an instant like thin paper, and along with the densely packed eyeballs beneath and its entire frame, all of it turned to drifting ash in that blaze of blue-white light.
The remaining crystallized giant eagles were thrown into complete disarray by the sudden blow, and what awaited them were over ten thousand suicide drones surging in from every direction.
No tactics. No dogfighting. Only the most artistic saturation self-destruction.
The light of the explosions dyed nearly the entire sky orange-red.
And against this backdrop of devastation, the giant serpent turned its head in alarm and saw something terrifying enough to strike fear into its heart.
In the sky, eight deep-gray phantoms identical to the previous had arrived on the battlefield.
Together with the original one, nine deep-gray blades split the sky at once, tearing through the last remnants of the explosions in an unstoppable manner, and came straight after it!
Maximum speed, Mach 3.5!
The crystal wings on the giant serpent's back beat frantically at an unprecedented frequency, and its speed climbed another notch, approaching Mach 2.6.
These crystal wings seemed to supply it with lift and thrust in a way that defied aerodynamics. But compared with the , this speed was still far too slow!
Nine drones swept in from three directions in groups of three, compressing the serpent's escape route into an ever-narrowing channel.
First round of attacks.
Three drones launched air-to-surface missiles simultaneously. Six missiles struck the serpent's waist and belly in a crossfire.
The explosions blew off great swaths of the newly grown crystal scales, exposing the luminous tissue within.
The giant serpent let out a deafening, hissing roar and swept its tail in a violent arc.
That tail, over forty meters long, carved an arc through the air with such force that even the airflow was churned into visible vortices.
But the nine drones were spread too wide and too fast. The serpent's tail swiped at nothing.
Then it swung its head around. The crystal horns on its crown drew slightly together, and a blue-white orb of light condensed between them.
The next instant, several plasma jets burst from the orb, lancing in every direction and sweeping across a vast stretch of sky.
But to , this was still too slow. The drones evaded the attack with ease.
They could even fire back with their lasers at the same time.
Nine purple high-energy lasers struck simultaneously.
Four hit the crystal horns. The horns snapped and scattered.
One punched through a wing membrane, and the light-flowing veins suddenly dimmed.
Two struck the torso, burning deep charred marks into the crystal scales.
Wracked with pain, the giant serpent thrashed and rolled ever more violently, but the nine drones worked in seamless coordination, never giving it a chance to open a breakthrough.
In less than three minutes of fighting, the 's magnificent colored-glass crystal scales were covered in cracks. From several bloody holes, crystal blood glowing with faint blue light gushed out like waterfalls, splashing down onto the land below.
Seeing that it could not break free, the giant serpent let out another earth-shattering roar, then abandoned all further counterattacks.
The beat of its wings suddenly quickened once more, and its speed approached Mach 2.8.
And ahead of it, a cloud bank of highly abnormal color was drawing near.
It was a vast dark red cloud.
Lightning flashed and thunder rumbled within the cloud, and vast silhouettes could be faintly seen swimming in its depths.
It wanted to charge inside and escape—use the cloud as a screen to run!
saw through its intent in an instant. That cloud bank was clearly wrong. Once this serpent got inside it, this entire pursuit would become meaningless.
With that thought, steeled himself.
The next second, the four vectoring engines at the tail of the lead erupted with unprecedented radiance, and its speed broke through its limits in an instant.
The temperature of the fuselage shell spiked under aerodynamic heating, and the radar-absorbing coating on its surface began to peel and char.
Then it swung around to the front of the , and like an arrow loosed from a bowstring, flew head-on straight into the giant serpent's skull!
BOOM——!
A violent explosion blasted a huge fireball into the high sky. The shockwave snapped the giant serpent's head back, and its forward charge was forcibly checked by the blast.
At the same time, the other eight drones seized the chance to concentrate their fire. Their missiles were emptied in rapid succession, blasting several more bloody holes into the giant serpent.
And eight high-energy laser beams bored in at maximum power, until at last they forcibly sliced the giant serpent's body into three sections.
The crystal serpent's colossal body stiffened abruptly, and the light in its eyes dimmed swiftly.
Finally, carrying the crystallized people already merged into its body, it plummeted like a falling meteor, smashing toward the land below, shrouded in storm and thunder.
Almost at the same moment, deep in 's consciousness, a cold system notification sounded.
[Ding! Detected: has slain a mid-tier , ' ( )' x1. gained: 5000.]
[Ding! Special drop blueprint obtained: ' ' tactical frame blueprint x1.]
Only after receiving the kill confirmation did relax a little.
Right after, he immediately brought the remaining eight drones down to a lower altitude, trying to lock onto the 's crash coordinates so its corpse could be recovered later.
However, as the drones followed it down through the cloud layer, the scene that filled their view made instantly cast aside every trace of ease.
Below was what had once been the southeastern coastal region.
But now, it was unrecognizable.
The coastline had pushed inland for who knows how many kilometers. Murky seawater had swallowed the former cities, leaving only the upper halves of high-rises exposed, like a field of gray tombstones.
An unending storm whipped everything in sight, and lightning continually struck down among the red clouds in the distance.
And among the half-submerged ruins, the shadows of colossal beasts, each the size of a mountain, flickered past from time to time.
The giant serpent's corpse, at this moment, was falling toward the edge of a ruined city.
But just as it was about to smash into the ground—that “city” opened a gaping mouth.
Countless buildings toppled to either side like building blocks, revealing a colossal, bottomless maw lined with teeth beneath.
That was no city at all. It was a colossal creature that mimicked an entire city block.
At the instant the serpent's mangled remains were about to land, the giant mouth snapped shut, swallowing them along with the ground for a hundred meters around into its belly.
Then the giant mouth slowly opened again, and the “ground” disguised as city ruins settled back into calm, as if nothing at all had happened.
Only the terrifying roars, rising and falling from every direction, proclaimed to just how profoundly abnormal and dangerous this land was.
did not try to attack again. Not because he was unwilling, but because he couldn't.
The eight Lightning-Chasing Shadows were nearly out of power. He had to head back.
But he had already marked this place. It dared to steal his kill—sooner or later, one day, he would come back to settle the score.
The next second, the eight Lightning-Chasing Shadows reversed course and sped home at full throttle.
Behind them, the roars rising and falling in the storm were gradually swallowed up by distance.