Chapter 452

Chapter 452: Arms Race

With a swift motion, the blade fell.

Along with the blade came the head of an extraordinary beast that could not close its eyes even in death.

Bright red blood shot out from its neck; this should have been a perfect kill, but unfortunately, it wasn’t.

Because the other four heads of the extraordinary beast were still glaring fiercely at Liu Xiaoheng.

He heard an angry shout from a researcher beside him:

“I told you not to chop off heads! These extraordinary beasts average 2.7 heads, but none of them have two bodies. If you want to take one down with a single blow, you have to chop the body! Do you understand what efficiency means?”

Liu Xiaoheng found the researcher’s voice a bit too loud and adjusted the volume of the speaker near his ear by rolling his eyes.

At the same time, his hand changed its motion, and the already swung long blade shifted to his side, emitting a faint buzzing sound. With a swift upward thrust, he completely bisected the extraordinary beast.

Today was May 10, 2053, and on the northern side of Hope City, a small beast tide had arrived.

Just like how Lin Qingliu insisted on harvesting the Mycelium Ecology every day, the Mycelium Ecology regularly sent traditional extraordinary beasts to attack humans.

Such attacks actually posed no real threat to either side; it didn’t matter if they succeeded or failed.

But experience was crucial for both humans and extraordinary beasts.

Both sides were putting their all into preparing, and the sporadic back-and-forth battles on the city walls looked like training grounds for weapon adjustments.

The mycelium gained experience from these encounters to improve their increasingly cheap extraordinary beasts.

Meanwhile, humans finally chose to publicly unveil new weapons, and Liu Xiaoheng and others were deployed onto the battlefield for the first time.

Of course, along with the five of them was the slightly crazed designer from the research institute, who was now a hundred meters behind, observing the battlefield through binoculars and occasionally gesturing toward the five.

Yet, what he said always made sense; following his methods did indeed improve the efficiency of killing extraordinary beasts. The only problem was that this guy might be a bit too radical.

After training, or rather testing together for a few days, Liu Xiaoheng had vaguely heard about this somewhat mad researcher’s background.

To put it simply, he was an ordinary researcher who suddenly had a breakthrough after the family of a city defense army member was sacrificed, coming up with many practically meaningful weapon concepts.

Although most of his ideas were closer to torture devices than weapons, it was undeniable that these things were indeed useful.

As another extraordinary beast lunged at a soldier, Liu Xiaoheng pressed down with his foot to activate the short-range propulsion device attached to his back.

He felt a surge of heat at his waist, and his body soared into the air.

He twisted and turned, completing a flip in mid-air while driving his blade down to pin the head of the bear-like extraordinary beast to the ground.

“Bang!”

His exoskeleton landed perfectly, but the shock absorption system was still not perfect; the sudden impact jarred his body for less than a second.

“Damn it…”

Another angry shout from the researcher reminded Liu Xiaoheng that he was still chopping heads, just from a different angle, and that wouldn’t do.

He quickly steadied himself, gripping the knife handle again, and made a powerful slash forward. The feeling of skin splitting and flesh tearing surged through the mech into his mind.

With just one swing, the extraordinary beast was sliced in two, only the front half of its head still connected.

The furious shouting from the speaker suddenly vanished.

Liu Xiaoheng chuckled to himself, then proactively activated his microphone:

"There seems to be an issue with the shock absorption; the recent landing made me feel nauseous.

“Additionally, could we enhance the heat insulation? Using the thrusters feels like being pan-fried meat.”

The voice on the other end of the communication shifted dramatically, becoming very calm and steady:

“It has been noted, and adjustments are expected to be completed by tomorrow; you can try again then.”

The range of the small beast tide typically affects only a few kilometers of the city walls, but the introduction of new weapons has completely transformed the current battlefield.

These infantry soldiers deployed directly onto the walls initially caused a significant stir among the city defense army.

If not for the obvious metallic texture of their bodies, they would have instinctively focused their fire on these large figures.

Their landing point was precisely at the center of the battlefield between extraordinary beasts and humans, and the moment they confirmed the direction, they charged towards the enemy.

Flame throwers were unsuitable for the current situation; even the researchers couldn’t predict the reaction of the extraordinary beasts when ignited.

If they chose to charge recklessly upon being ignited, the number of casualties would significantly increase.

Therefore, the five experimenters were only permitted to use cold weapons in this battle, which was exactly what they desired.

The high-frequency vibrating edges sliced through the bodies of Low-Level Extraordinary Beasts like a hot knife through butter.

Using a chainsaw might result in bone barriers and splatters of minced meat, but this weapon performed even better in that regard.

After slaying one extraordinary beast, they could seamlessly continue swinging without worrying about jams, providing them with a significant advantage on the battlefield.

Such scenes inspired the soldiers providing cover from the rear, who were eager to grab cold weapons and join the fray.

But this wasn’t the appropriate combat style for them, so they pushed themselves harder to fire cold guns from the back.

With the taunts from the five infantry soldiers, the extraordinary beasts quickly locked onto their attack targets, even ignoring the bullets aimed at them.

Thus, a temporary victory came naturally.

One wave of the beast tide was cleared, but suddenly the sky dimmed.

Everyone looked up to see dense gray specks appearing in the formerly bright sky.

These were the self-detonating bugs, and now that the extraordinary beasts had retreated from the city walls, they began a round of carpet bombing.

In the inner city, General Command.

The spacious room had few people; to better organize defenses, Arthur had delegated some command authority, allowing the attacked walls to make quicker decisions, including requesting various forms of support without the previous layers of approval.

But Ji Yongxing was still here, keeping a close eye on the battlefield; he had to prepare for unexpected events.

Indeed, the scene he dreaded most occurred: a rain of self-detonating bugs fell from the sky, with less than ten seconds until impact.

Ji Yongxing had already developed a contingency plan for such probabilistic attacks, but it hadn’t been implemented due to the research and development cycle.

Now was the best testing opportunity.

“[Skydome]!”

“I’m here!”

“Shoot them down.”