aircannonsinc Chapter 161 Blocking the Door and Fighting Head-on! Heavy Fortress Upgrades!
Chapter 161 Blocking the Door and Fighting Head-on! Heavy Fortress Upgrades!
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Jiang Ming used one hand to brace himself and flipped back onto the top of the chariot.
The corpse of the armored rhinoceros king, a warrior-level creature, below had been shriveled up by the dark red tentacles protruding from under the tracks.
This flesh and blood engine is indeed very useful; it didn't even spare bone fragments, converting them all into the tank's reserve kinetic energy.
Zhao Hu, along with several soldiers covered in blood, trudged around from behind the sandbag pile.
"Brother, you..." Zhao Hu swallowed hard, his gaze darting back and forth between the tank and Jiang Ming. "Which war zone's secret unit are you from? This is too impressive."
"A private contractor in Dongjiang City," Jiang Ming casually remarked, glancing down at him. "Where's the spatial rift?"
"It's right in the third reactor workshop behind here!" Zhao Hu pointed in a direction, his tone urgent. "Dozens of rhinoceros monsters ran out just now, and you cleared them all out. But the commotion inside hasn't stopped; I heard something even bigger banging on the door."
"Alright, your men step back and clear the way." Jiang Ming bent down and crawled into the cabin.
Zhao Hu was taken aback: "Retreat? Then what about our defensive line...?"
"No need to defend anymore." The hatch slammed down with a bang, and Jiang Ming's voice came through the armor. "I'll just go over there and block the source."
Company Commander Zhao Hu stood frozen in place, watching as the steel behemoth suddenly floored the accelerator, turned sharply, its tracks kicking up large chunks of cement as it hurtled straight toward Workshop No. 3.
"Company commander, who is this guy? He's so arrogant!" The young soldier next to him, holding an empty gun, was dumbfounded.
"Who cares who he is? Killing monsters is all that matters!" Zhao Hu wiped the blood from his face. "Listen to him, everyone, retreat two hundred meters and make room for this guy!"
Inside the cockpit.
Marlow gripped the neural interface panel with both hands, so excited that he even blurted out goblin language.
"Boss, there's a wall in front!"
"Hit it." Jiang Ming stood in front of the driver's periscope without even blinking.
boom!
A half-meter-thick load-bearing wall is no different from paper when faced with a bulldozer blade.
The tank broke through the wall and rushed into a factory that was the size of two football fields.
In the center of the factory, the air twisted into a huge vortex, its edges flashing with eerie blue electric light.
This is an extremely stable point of spatial overlap.
From within the vortex, a monster covered in pustules and with long, thin limbs was continuously emerging.
Plague Ghoul (Lv.18)
Quantity: Extremely large
"It's the necromancer class again," Chen Qi cursed from inside the turret. "Are these skeletons never going to stop?"
"More is better, more is more experience." Jiang Ming patted the command platform. "Marlowe, turn the car sideways and block the exit of the crack."
"Alright!"
The tank executed a beautiful drift, its massive 15-meter-long body wedged firmly into the widest part of the crack.
The hundreds of plague ghouls that had just run out pounced on the living humans like mad dogs as soon as they smelled them.
Sharp claws scratched at the chariot's exterior, producing a harsh scraping sound.
"Marlo, start grinding!" Jiang Ming ordered.
Instead of reversing, the tank started rotating its left and right tracks in opposite directions while remaining stationary.
This is like a giant meat grinder spinning in place.
The metal tracks, weighing tens of tons, rolled over the ghouls, crushing them into pools of foul-smelling black blood before they could even scream.
The dark red tentacles beneath the chassis stretched out wildly, plunging into the minced meat and devouring it greedily.
The system panel started displaying a barrage of notifications.
[Devour a Lv.18 Plague Ghoul.]
[Tank kinetic energy replenishment +0.5%.]
Upgrade progress: 255/1000
Upgrade progress: 280/1000
……
"Chen Qi, don't just stand around, use machine guns to clear the area!"
"receive!"
The twin 30mm magic cannons mounted on the roof began to roar.
The pale blue orbs of light rained down on the distant horde of monsters.
Each explosion clears out an area.
But these ghouls seemed to feel no pain, stepping over the corpses of their companions as they continued to surge upwards.
Several larger and more mutated [Giant Ghouls (Lv.22)] jumped onto the roof of the vehicle and opened their blood-red mouths to bite at the armor plate.
"You're asking for it." Jiang Ming sneered.
The newly acquired trait, [Partial Armor Hardening], was triggered instantly.
A layer of dark gold patterns emerged on the surface of the armor plate that was bitten.
The giant ghoul took a bite, but instead of biting through, it broke all its fangs.
Jiang Ming pressed a red button on the control panel.
The explosive reactive armor mounted on both sides of the vehicle detonated simultaneously!
Boom boom boom!
The shockwave from the directional blast blew the giant ghouls on the roof of the car away, tearing them to pieces in mid-air.
The tank itself, due to this hardened property, didn't even leave a scratch.
"This vehicle is too tough!" Chen Qi exclaimed, his blood boiling as he watched from inside the turret.
I've never fought such a rich battle before when I was in the special operations team.
"This is nothing, the real challenge is yet to come." Jiang Ming watched the upgrade progress rise and pondered how to add some more ingredients.
In just ten minutes.
There were at least a thousand ghouls that rushed out, but not a single one could get past the chariot's defensive line.
The ground was littered with severed limbs and broken arms.
The flesh-and-blood engine was running at high load, and the flames spewing from the exhaust pipe had turned a blinding deep red.
Zhao Hu and the others, watching from a distance, were stunned, their binoculars in hand.
"Company commander, this isn't fighting a war, it's like a combine harvester harvesting wheat!"
Zhao Hu swallowed hard. "Stop talking nonsense, call the brigade headquarters right now! We have to stick close to this powerful figure!"
Just as the chariots were wreaking havoc on all sides.
The spatial vortex suddenly began to vibrate violently.
The originally dark blue lightning turned into a blinding scarlet.
A deep roar came from the depths of the crack, making the sheet metal on the factory roof rattle.
A pale, bony hand gripped the edge of the crack.
Immediately afterwards, an extremely large body was forced out of the crack.
[Skeleton Troll Lord (Lv.32, Boss Level)]
This guy is nearly eight meters tall, his body is made up of countless thick white bones, and he drags a huge bone hammer made of his spine.
As soon as it appeared, the remaining ghouls around it all lay on the ground, trembling.
"This size... is even bigger than that Rhinoceros King from before." Chen Qi gasped in shock inside the machine gun turret, his hands sweating as he gripped the control stick.
"Boss, this guy is not someone to mess with. What if he smashes our car flat with a hammer?" Marlowe was also a little scared.
Although the tank has thick armor, it can't withstand the brute force of this pure power-type boss monster.
"What's there to be afraid of?" Jiang Ming stared at the boss monster on the screen, not treating it as a formidable enemy at all, but rather as a large piece of fat meat.
The flesh and core of the leader-level weapon are enough to allow this chariot to break through the bottleneck of the black iron level.
"Marlowe, back the car thirty meters to allow for firing data."
"Chen Qi, cease fire and let me observe first."
Jiang Ming issued the instructions.
He opened the crafting panel.
There are still quite a few materials left from the loot we got at the monastery.
Especially that pile of [High-level Necromancer Crystal Cores].
He then took out twelve live 107mm rockets from the armory that he had previously looted from the system space.
[Start synthesis!]
[107mm High-Explosive Rocket] + [High-Tier Necromancer Core] + [High-Effect Corrosive Liquid]
The progress bar flashed by in an instant.
[Ding! Synthesis successful!]
[Obtained: 12 Wraith Corrosive Rockets (Blue, Rare)]
[Effect: The explosion generates a highly corrosive acid mist with a radius of 30 meters, and also inflicts the "Life Repulsion" attribute, which is extremely abhorrent to undead creatures, dealing an additional 200% armor-piercing damage to undead/skeleton monsters.]
Jiang Ming directly stuffed the twelve freshly fired special rockets into the twelve rocket pods on the top of the tank.
"Chen Qi, it's your turn. Aim for its head, don't miss a single shot!"
Jiang Ming patted the communicator.
Chen Qi, inside the turret, grinned as he looked at the twelve green lock boxes lit up on the control screen.
"clear!"
The skeletal troll lord has just adapted to the gravity of Earth.
It twisted its thick cervical spine, and two eerie green flames ignited in its empty eye sockets as it stared intently at the steel behemoth in front of it that was constantly spewing red flames.
That's the thing that just wiped out most of its army.
The troll lord let out a deafening roar, raised his massive spinal hammer, and strode toward the chariot.
When this eight-meter-tall creature runs, the entire factory shakes violently.
The distance has been shortened.
Fifty meters.
Forty meters.
"Fire!" Jiang Ming roared from inside the cockpit.
Chen Qi suddenly pressed the launch button.
Whoosh whoosh!
The twelve-tube rocket pod instantly spewed out a blinding trail of flame.
Twelve [Wraith Corrosion Rockets], accompanied by piercing shrieks, traced twelve deadly arcs in mid-air, striking the Bone Troll Lord precisely on the head and chest.
Boom! ...
The violent series of explosions ripped off half of the factory's roof.
This is not an ordinary high-explosive munition.
At the moment of the explosion, a blinding, ghastly green acid mist burst forth, completely engulfing the troll lord's massive body.
"roar--"
From within the acid mist came the troll lord's agonizing screams.
The "life repulsion" effect, combined with the highly corrosive liquid, was a devastating blow to its prized bone armor.
A sizzling sound, so offensive it made your teeth ache, came from the acid mist.
Those bones, as hard as iron, are being melted and peeled away at a speed visible to the naked eye.
Wait until the acid mist dissipates a little.
That once arrogant Lv.32 boss-level monster is now in dire straits.
The bone hammer in his hand was blasted in half, and a large section of his ribs was corroded and pitted, revealing the huge crystal core inside that was pulsating with a green eerie light.
He could barely stand, so he knelt on one knee, his whole body emitting white smoke.
"Marlowe, ram it! Strike while the iron is hot!" Jiang Ming slammed his hand on the command platform.
"Boom!"
The tank's exhaust pipe suddenly spewed out a two-meter-long jet of dark red flame.
The flesh and blood engine has entered an overload state.
The heavily armored fortress, weighing tens of tons, transformed into a raging black beast, crashing with immense force into the troll lord's mangled body.
boom!
The troll lord attempted to block with his remaining bone hammer, but the terrifying kinetic energy from the bulldozer blade snapped his arm bones at the root.
The chariot rolled forward and crushed everything in its path.
The tracks were jammed tightly in its chest cavity.
Click!
With a crisp cracking sound, the huge crystal core, which was pulsating with a green glow, was crushed by the chariot's tracks.
[Defeat the Skeleton Troll Lord (Lv.32, Boss Level)]
[Gained 85000 experience points.]
[Current level increased to Lv.20.]
[Gained 2 free attribute points.]
Jiang Ming casually added both attribute points to Strength.
Strength surpassed 47 points!
But that's not the best part.
The dark red tentacles beneath the chariot's chassis surged out like madmen, plunging directly into the massive wreckage of the troll lord. They didn't even spare the scattered fragments of high-level necromancer crystals on the ground, pulling them all into the flesh-and-blood engine.
The progress bar on the system panel started jumping wildly.
[Devouring the core and high-level flesh of boss-level monsters.]
【升级进度：500\/1000……800\/1000……1000\/1000！】
[Ding! Upgrade progress is complete!]
[Heavy Armor - Mobile Fortress Tier Upgrade!]
[Current Rank: Bronze]
[Armor Upgrade: Reinforced Composite Armor (Physical damage reduction increased to 60%, magic resistance +35).]
[Power Source Upgrade: Flesh Furnace Engine (Fuel conversion rate increased by 300%, consumption efficiency doubled. Unlocks new effect: Frenzied Overload - Increases vehicle performance by 50% for a short time, requires cooldown afterward).]
[New Module: Modular Weapon Interface *2 (can freely mount any weapon system of suitable size).]
[Internal Space Expansion: Unlocks basic folding space inside the vehicle, allowing storage of a certain volume of supplies and ammunition.]
Inside the cockpit.
The fleshy tubes became thicker, and the originally rudimentary nerve panel was transformed into a more sophisticated holographic control panel.
Marlowe was so excited he almost jumped up: "Boss! This car is alive! I can feel that the interior space has increased, and the engine horsepower has at least doubled!"
Jiang Ming looked at the completely revamped attribute panel and was very satisfied.
Especially the [internal space expansion].
This means that he no longer needs to rely on his own storage ring to transport large items; the war chariot itself is a mobile warehouse.
Just then.
The spatial rift ahead flickered a few times, the vortex's rotation slowed down, and finally, with a "pop," it completely dissipated into the air.
The source has been destroyed.
The chemical plant's crisis was averted.
Jiang Ming pushed open the hatch and jumped off the tank.
The sky outside was already beginning to lighten.
Company Commander Zhao Hu led the remaining soldiers, stepping over the broken bones and pus scattered on the ground, and ran quickly over.
The way she looked at Jiang Ming was no longer like she was looking at a person, but like she was looking at a god.
"Brother... no, you're a tough guy!" Zhao Hu stood at attention and gave a perfect military salute. "Thanks for your support! If it weren't for you, all of us, including the ammunition depot behind us, would have been wiped out here today."
Jiang Ming waved his hand and casually said, "No need for formalities. I've already negotiated the terms with Commander Chu: keep the chemical plant, and I'll keep two-thirds of the explosives inside. Lead the way."
"No problem! The brigade commander has already given instructions on this over the walkie-talkie."
Without hesitation, Zhao Hu turned around and led Jiang Ming toward the underground bunker deep inside the chemical plant.
The heavy blast-proof door of the No. 2 ammunition depot slowly opened.