Chapter Eighty-Seven: Catching the Rat

The slaughter went on.

Beyond the six mechs that broke through the interception and tore off in pursuit of Tichi and Nangong, the remaining four began to ruthlessly sweep through the First Defense Army, the Taran Army, and Veronica’s battle unit.

Light weaponry inflicted only limited damage on the mechs. Though dense, interlocking fire could drive them back time and again, it could not cripple their combat effectiveness.

This batch of mechs specialized in close-quarters combat, but the machines themselves were tall and massive, and the caliber of their ranged weapons was astonishing.

After the mechs had spent a while pouring out suppressive fire in ferocious retaliation, the flesh-and-blood defenders suffered heavy losses, and the intensity of their firepower began to weaken.

And then the four mechs, with fire in their bellies, charged again.

This time, the mechs took the initiative, driving and splitting the defenders apart with tactical maneuvering.

Under the terrible impact of the mechs, the First Defense Army, the Taran Army, and Veronica’s battle unit could do nothing but retreat and fight as they withdrew in three different directions.

Once the ranks were scattered, there was no longer any way to suppress the enemy’s assault.

Soon the mechs, their engines at full power, smashed into the defenders’ positions.

And at that very moment...

From the dark forest, hundreds of tongues from the Lickers shot out.

Layer upon layer, they coiled around the mechs’ ankles.

Then, working in unison, they flung the machines into the air.

They made the same choice as Liana had done before: hurl them.

Again and again, back and forth.

The mechs kept carving arcs through the sky before crashing to the ground, hammering out enormous craters.

These Lickers had been modified by Dr. Donald, with small reactors implanted in their bodies, and their strength had increased dramatically.

With hundreds of them exerting force together, their power became truly astounding.

In terms of raw strength alone, they even surpassed Liana’s vines.

Soon the pilot inside one of the mechs was battered unconscious.

Then a giant moray eel leapt up and swallowed him whole.

Xavier nodded in satisfaction. Just as he had predicted, given the limitations of current mech technology...

The shock resistance inside the cockpit was not especially good.

This flaw was especially obvious in antimatter mechs.

When it came to mechs, Xavier understood them far more deeply than most.

Before antimatter mechs appeared, mech technology in the Leviathan Starfield had not been particularly advanced.

The label of bulky and rigid had long clung to mechs, though they could indeed offer considerable protection.

But they were extremely expensive, and thus rarely deployed in organized formations to the battlefield.

Because he understood mechs so well, Xavier could tell at a glance that this batch had been built on antimatter mech technology as a blueprint, becoming kinetic mechs.

Yet the greatest problem with antimatter mechs was shock resistance.

Even the kinetic mechs developed from them still had not fully solved that issue.

Though improved, they still did not adequately protect their pilots.

But to the corpse-catchers, this was no problem at all.

Unconsciousness is a self-protective mechanism the human body triggers after severe injury.

But for the corpse-catchers, whose recovery and regeneration abilities were terrifyingly powerful, unconsciousness would only be triggered at the brink of death.

For creatures with monsters hidden inside their bodies, this degree of vibration was nothing more than a nuisance.

They were perfect combat units.

Xavier grinned.

The pirate instinct carved deep into his bones over many years had been fully awakened at that moment.

If there was something good, and he did not snatch it, was he still a pirate?

So the hundreds of Lickers began racing toward the other mech.

By the time the second mech fell into Xavier’s grasp as well, Kline, who had been hiding in the shadows, had gone ashen-faced and could no longer sit still.

"Damn it, we’re actually losing ground..."

"That other mech has a surveillance device installed on it. Do those bastards really take me for an idiot?"

"The moment it’s used, everything here will be sent back to the Four Great Stars..."

Looking at the remote in his hand, Kline weighed his options again and again, and in the end, he finally pressed it gently.

Compared to having the footage transmitted back to the Four Great Stars, exposing the secret of Zombie Star to the great figure standing behind him, Kline feared even more that Tichi and Nangong might survive.

Though Kline had never shown himself, if anyone looked carefully and discovered that after parting from Tichi, he had not returned to the Chaos Star...

That would surely arouse Tichi and Nangong’s suspicion. Once they followed the trail, Kline would have nowhere to hide.

By then, before reinforcements from the Four Great Stars even arrived, he would probably already be dead at the hands of Tichi and Nangong together.

After the button was pressed, a form of liquid metal, made from the same material as Xavier’s antimatter mech, began pouring out from Kline’s clothing.

Very quickly, a giant mech more than three and a half meters tall took shape.

Unlike the mechs before it, this one was clearly not a mass-produced standard model at a glance.

On its silver-white shell, a faint blue glow formed strange patterns that flowed across its surface.

Its entire body was bristling with all kinds of ranged weaponry.

The whole mech was a terrifying fortress of firepower.

When the mass of Lickers began racing toward the last two mechs, Kline’s mech moved.

It burst straight through the cafeteria ceiling and hovered in midair, looking down upon the earth.

The two enormous, rocket-launcher-like devices on its shoulders adjusted their angle slightly...

Then the mech let out a thunderous roar as its engines surged to full power.

Instantly, beams of high-energy light blasted from the shoulder launchers and plunged into the Licker swarm.

Every beam that struck the ground erupted in a tremendous explosion, accompanied by horrendous heat.

With the Lickers’ agility, they could not even escape the blast radius.

In barely more than ten seconds, under the insane torrent of fire, the hundreds of Lickers were all killed by the explosions and the heat.

Only a pile of alloy skeletons remained.

Xavier was taken aback.

He had not expected such a terrifying ranged weapon to be hidden here.

Then he saw three rows of large-caliber high-energy machine guns extending from both sides of the mech.

They all aimed separately at the Taran Army, the First Defense Army, and Veronica’s battle unit below.

Xavier did not hesitate. He immediately ordered the giant moray eel to leap up from underground.

Opening its huge maw, it tried to tear Kline’s mech apart with its bite.

Xavier knew very well that if this mech, with such ferocious firepower, were allowed to unleash everything it had...

Not a single person on the ground would survive.

But just as the moray eel’s great jaws were about to clamp down on the mech, Xavier’s pupils suddenly contracted.

The mech in his line of sight had utterly vanished, as if it were a pencil sketch being erased stroke by stroke.

"Damn it, refraction stealth technology?"

As the giant moray eel reached the apex of its leap and plunged downward, preparing to burrow back into the soil, the mech reappeared, and all its firepower poured onto this biofortress.

The massive energy strike immediately tore open the giant moray eel’s body, sending blood flying.

In just one volley, the giant moray eel, whose defenses had reached the eighth stage, had a third of the flesh on its right side blown away.

Once the moray eel plunged back into the soil, flesh on its body began to sprout rapidly, filling in and repairing the wounded surface layer by layer.

The primeval virus of the Sun Ladder, left inside the moray eel’s body, had begun to take effect.

But since Donald’s bioweapons were based primarily on the zombie virus, and to prevent the two viruses from clashing violently...

There was not much Sun Ladder virus in the moray eel’s body.

As a result, unlike the corpse-catchers, the moray eel did not possess the ability to instantly mend its wounds.

With such extensive damage, it would take about ten minutes to fully recover.

But clearly, Kline had no intention of giving Xavier that much time.

The next moment, Kline’s mech unleashed its full firepower.

Explosions and screams rang out.

Terrifying firepower kept harvesting lives on the ground.

Xavier had no time to wait for the moray eel to heal.

He once again ordered it to leap out from underground.

The moment the moray eel burst out of the soil, Xavier stood inside its jaws and fired an antimatter cannon straight at the mech.

But in the blink of an eye, the silver-white mech in the sky disappeared once more.

Xavier’s expression darkened. A mech using refraction stealth technology could not be identified by the naked eye without specialized detection equipment.

That meant the other side could fight whenever it wanted, and leave whenever it wanted, completely on its own terms.

"Are they people from the Four Great Stars?"

"How can they have such advanced mech technology?"

"Have the research institutes of the Four Great Stars been studying mechs all these years?"

"They’ve actually built such a terrifying firepower fortress..."

"The mech flies by thrusting its engines, and then strikes with such overwhelming firepower... the energy consumption must be astronomical..."

"How could its power source possibly keep up?"

"Which one of the Four Great Stars broke through the technical bottleneck and made something this horrifying?"

"Looking at the weapon loadout on the mech, there are still quite a few empty hardpoints left unused. They haven’t even fully taken advantage of the weapon mounting platform..."

"Could this be... an experimental machine?!"

This time, when the moray eel appeared again, it was once more met with the enemy’s attack. Kline’s strikes were extremely precise, each one landing on wounds that had not yet fully healed.

The injuries widened and deepened further.

By Xavier’s estimate, if those wounds were hit once more...

It was very possible the moray eel’s body would be pierced through.

That would cause devastating damage.

Faced with the invisible mech in the sky, Xavier seemed somewhat at a loss.

Just as the silver-white mech prepared to attack again, to sweep away everyone on the ground...

And then go after Tichi and Nangong.

Suddenly, the two mechs on the ground both flew toward it.

Kline froze slightly.

He knew very well that the mechs under his command were purely ground-based machines and did not have flight capability.

Then why had they flown up?

Only when Kline saw that one of the mechs hurtling toward him had a horrifying mutated creature clinging to it, with four arms...

And that a huge eyeball on its shoulder was fixed upon him...

Did an inexplicable chill suddenly rise in his heart.

Without the slightest hesitation, Kline immediately entered stealth mode.

But then something terrifying happened.

That giant eyeball, more than half a meter in diameter, was actually turning continuously in step with his movements.

"Impossible. Without an optical radar... how could the naked eye possibly see through refraction stealth technology?"

"It must be a coincidence!"

However, when Ye Hai on the mech’s back revealed a ferocious smile and lunged at him, Kline no longer had the slightest hope.

At once, all the weapons on the mech were aimed at Ye Hai, and firepower erupted in an instant.

The pair of wing-like arms growing from Ye Hai’s back crossed before him.

They forcibly withstood the attacks of every weapon.

Kline clearly saw that arm being bombarded by explosions until flesh and blood melted away.

But in an extremely short time, it grew back again.

Even so, after taking that blast while airborne, Ye Hai’s forward momentum was no longer sufficient, and before he could reach Kline, he began to fall from the sky.

Kline had just let out a long breath...

The next second, one of the arms on Ye Hai’s back suddenly stretched out like a spring and seized Kline by the ankle...

Under Kline’s terrified gaze,

Ye Hai raised his head and looked at him with a savage grin.

"At last I’ve got you. Now let me see exactly which foul gutter you crawled out of..."