CH 16

First battle (2)

In the blink of an eye, the body of the IP escaped the red snake’s double teeth in a thrilling way. Just before touching the ground, it did another front flip. The frozen ground exploded behind him, and the shards of ice flew around, hitting the alloy shell of the mecha with a “ding”.

After the dust dissipated, a snake tail full of sarcomas was across the place where the explosion just happened, and a sharp crystal bone was condensed at its tip. If Jiang Jianming dodged just a second slower, more than half of the mecha would be destroyed.

Lieutenant Raymond sucked in a breath of cold air and turned his head to look at the officer in surprise. “Lieutenant Colonel, this disabled young man…is something.”

No, it’s more than just something. At this age and with such technology, it is not an exaggeration to call him a once-in-a-lifetime genius!

Thinking of this, Raymond couldn’t help but sigh with regret: If, if only he was a new human being….how good would it be!

“Hiss….!!”

The red caterpillar became even more frantic after several missed attacks on the mecha. 

Jiang Jianming continued sliding the mecha in front of it for the nth time. The red snake snarled again and lowered its body, bared its fangs and jumped up!

Inside the mecha, Jiang Jianming smiled lightly. He had already grasped the attack pattern of this thing and was waiting for it to open its mouth again. Under the eyes of the public, the blue-black IP suddenly accelerated and rushed forward, its left and right mecha cannons opened, and light quickly gathered between the muzzles.

“Fire.”

Two 100% fully charged mecha cannons fired instantly!

The energy exploded was like two fireballs, and were gracefully sent into the giant snake’s mouth by the pilot. At the same time, Jiangming forced the fuselage down hard to its limit, and the IP slammed sideways, almost parallel to the ground. Its friction brought out a string of flying sparks and simply like this, the red caterpillar would be done for—

—in the next moment, a deafening explosion sounded, mixed with the scream of the alien red snake, as it resounded throughout the icy forest.

Everyone was stunned.

In the third team, Joe rubbed his plump face, and the whole person was stupefied. “This Jiang Jianming… Is he so powerful…..”

Tang Zhen didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. “Look at me, do I look like I’ve seen him fight in a mecha before!?”

Li Youfang, looking like a dying ember, murmured, “Don’t look at me, he only takes theory courses with us in the Second College….”

Above the mecha Evil Shark, Lieutenant Raymond glanced at the timer and said in a dreamy voice. “It took four minutes and three…he broke the record, Lieutenant Colonel.” 

But when he looked to the side, he was stunned to see Lieutenant Colonel looking gloomy. 

Lieutenant Colonel: “…Not yet. “

In the cockpit, Jiang Jianming’s expression did not show any relaxation.

He stared at the place where the giant snake fell, and said lightly, “It’s not over yet, Seth, accelerate the data calculation.”

A gust of wind blew away the dust, ice fog and gunpowder.

A black shadow rose from the ground, and the fallen red caterpillar raised its long snake body again! The corners of its mouth on both sides were painfully spurting green smoke. Its hard head swung furiously and to their surprise, it directly knock the mecha as it flew above its head.

“Not….not pierced!?” 

“No, my God, the guns were almost in its mouths, and yet it still can’t be pierced!?”

Jiang Jianming was prepared early on, and the IP did not lose its balance. The four metal feet drilled four deep dents on the frozen soil, barely stabilizing its fuselage.

However, the next moment, the snake tail wrapped around the mecha again.

The red snake’s golden pupil flickered. It had just suffered, and when it raised its head high, it didn’t actually open its mouth, in fact, it was trying to use the tail to directly twist the mecha and the human inside together!

Boom! 

At the critical moment, the IP’s muzzle shrank, and the left and right arms stretched out, firmly stopping the constriction of the snake body. However, the crystals attached to the scarlet snake scales suddenly erupted with spikes, and the released crystal bones clamped the mecha a little bit more. The metal casing being rubbed created a string of sparks, then became deformed and dented visible to the naked eye.

There was an uproar all around, and Li Youfang suddenly stood up in the cockpit.

“Mecha! The mecha is damaged!” Cold sweat slid down, and he muttered with a pale face. “The sturdiness of the mecha is not comparable to crystal particles, so……”

“—That’s why I said, it’s impossible to fight alien creatures without crystal bones!!” Ellie shouted in horror, “It will kill people, why doesn’t Lieutenant Colonel Huo Lin stop it!?”

It was at this time that Lieutenant Colonel Huo Lin, who was watching the battle, raised his head and spit out a hoarse and ruthless sentence. “You lose, give up.”

The voice of the lieutenant colonel was transmitted through the internal communication channel into the inside of the mecha that was struggling.

In the cockpit, a red warning light kept flashing.

Warning, the degree of damage of the mecha is 4%..6%….

At the moment where the crystal bones of the alien creature was coming in, and the turbulent crystal particles slammed in like a huge wave, Jiang Jianming simply gritted his teeth in cold sweat.

He took a breath, and the corners of his lips hooked up. “No.”

The red snake raised its head high, blocking the light of the sun that was at its highest peak for a moment. Afterwards, its head and neck rushed down towards the mecha.

There was a loud noise.

The IP’s left arm collapsed, hanging down a few centimeters from the ground amidst the smoke.

Ellie: “My God, he’s going to die!”

Bei Maner was about to cry when she saw it, and she couldn’t help screaming out, “Student Jiang! Forget it, don’t do this, we still have another chance…..!”

“Cough…!” 

Jiang Jianming’s back slammed into the driver’s seat, and the violent impact made his chest swell with blood and his consciousness started to faint.

For a moment, about a tenth of a second, his mind was elsewhere, and his consciousness flew back to a few years ago.

At two in the morning, no one was around that late. In the tactical training room of the Kaios Military Academy, there were red X marks of failure one after the other on the calculation model.

The military cadet hung his eyelashes low, pressed his index finger to the corner of his lips, and said to himself, “Is it really not possible?..…”

Hearing a light sound behind him, Jiang Jianming turned around subconsciously. His Highness Ryann stood at the door with pain flashing in his eyes.

“Little Highness? Why are you here?”

“You want to only use a mecha to fight alien creatures.” The Crown Prince walked over step by step. His emerald eyes looked at the model that was judged to be a failure by the system, his voice was a little hoarse, “You…”

The young prince stood in front of the military academy student and asked softly, “Do you want to go to the distant interstellar battlefield?”

For a disabled human being, there could be no ideal that was more distant and almost cruel than this.

“Don’t look like that, Little Highness.” Jiang Jianming shook his head gently. “If you can’t, you can’t. There are some natural things that can’t be helped. “

Ryann frowned, he reached over Jiang Jianming and turned off the power of the simulator. “You don’t need this kind of thing.”

“Where you want to go, I will take you there.”

…..liar.

In the cockpit, Jiang Jianming gasped lightly and raised his sweaty eyelashes. Countless strings of data flickered in his dark eyes. That was the trajectory of the red caterpillar’s head and neck smashing calculated by Seth Henry based on the previous attack.

Liar. I am now here, but where are you?

The red snake raised its head and neck again. It was going to give this stubborn mecha the final blow, killing this ant that overestimated itself.

Yet time seemed to slow down.

Some screamed, others closed their eyes. Huo Lin and Raymond unfolded their crystal bones and both rushed towards the red snake.

The change only happened in an instant. Beyond everyone’s expectations, the mecha IP actually took the initiative to retract its struggling arms.

The snake’s tail, which coiled with force, lost the target stopping its movement, and the inertia caused it to relax for a moment. Jiang Jianming calmly pushed the lever all the way to the end. The IP’s both arms immediately clamped the snake’s tail, and at the same time pulled it backward with maximum power!

The snake’s tail was lifted up by the strength of the mecha, like a whip thrown up high. The crystal bone at the tip was like a sharp knife, and the ice light reflected from all sides fell on its edge, making it look very dazzling.

The head of the red snake was slammed down at this moment, and in its eyes, a crystal bone reflected on it became larger and larger.

Everything was too fast, and it was too late for the red caterpillar to even react.

Hiss——!!

The blood of the snake splattered and gushed straight up into the frosty sky.

The wind seemed to stop blowing, and everything was silent. The screams disappeared, and the young people opened their mouths in astonishment. The two officers, Huo Lin and Raymond, kept their forward movements and stopped there, looking at the spectacle in front of them in shock.

The body of the red caterpillar fell limply, hitting the ground in a twisted posture. The luster in the golden pupil dissipated, the alien creature was dead, and the sharpest crystal bone at its tail pierced its own snake neck.

Amidst the rising icy fog, the M-IP 18 stood up again and slowly walked towards the crowd with its back to the snake corpse. The baffle plate in front of the cockpit fell, and the dark-haired, pale pilot inside was still breathing heavily, drenched in cold sweat, but his expression was calm.

Jiang Jianming leaned out and shouted, “Sir? Did the two of you forget to time me?”

Raymond touched his pocket in a daze, and realized that the timer had been thrown into the mecha by him.

Jiang Jianming didn’t care, “Then the time on my side shall prevail… It should be seven minutes and forty-nine seconds, which is a pass.”

His attitude was too casual and natural, as if everything should be the way it was now, and that everything was under control.

Based from the initial observation and analysis–using the mecha cannon to scare the red caterpillar as soon as the fight starts, forcing it to give up its sharp teeth and only use the crystal bone of its tail to attack; and then using itself as a bait to contain the red caterpillar’s tail, lured it to smash the mecha with its head and neck; finally, relying on the power advantage of the mecha, and used the enemy’s sharp crystal bone to break through the enemy’s shield–

Indeed,  everything looked like it was under control.

The surrounding voices gradually boiled but Jiang Jianming was a little dizzy and couldn’t hear what they were shouting. He glanced back at the corpse of the giant snake, and vaguely remembered the red X marks on the calculation models back then.

He thought to himself in his heart: Your Highness, now I understand.

It was not the power of the IP itself that killed the red caterpillar. The calculation results of the model feedback were correct, and the mecha was indeed unable to defeat an alien creature….

Jiang Jianming released the lever. He lowered his eyes quietly, raised his right hand, which was covered in a black glove and was trembling from loss of strength, in front of his eyes, and suddenly smiled with fatigue and contempt.

…but I can.