Chapter 582

Chapter 582: The Dragon Knight’s Mistress

The gold giant dragon Gold Coin remembers how, from the moment he understood the world, he scuttled like a pangolin, digging holes in the mountains and searching for metal veins, even risking his life to rush into human cities to snatch away their meager metals.

Even when he was brought, somewhat dazed, to the Dragon Knight Corps of the Su Lan Empire by the dragon elders, and secured a steady supply of black iron rations—though meager enough to barely fill his stomach—Gold Coin still ended up selling himself to humans.

The wasteful human race in this world discards so much metal as if it were worthless. As the gold giant dragon recalls the hardships of foraging for food, it feels like a treasure trove of metallic offerings.

Lin Mo feels a strong sense of disbelief at Gold Coin’s grumbling.

In team operations, there is no extra time to take this giant dragon hunting for scraps in abandoned vehicle piles around the cities. Although those places contain mountains of metals, the moment he strays from the group, troubles will come rushing back to him.

As of now, "Fenrir" alloy remains mysteriously untraceable, and tensions run high among countries.

Even Gold Coin himself does not know that the powered armor he mixed with Lockheed at Laboratory 41 received such a strange name. Because of this, even if the CIA and Lockheed were to interrogate Lin Mo a thousand times, they wouldn’t extract anything useful.

The other party accompanied him through life and death without complaint, a gesture Lin Mo deeply values.

To safeguard the gift from Qi Fei, Lin Mo does not treat this set of armor lightly but sends it to the Grade D storage to prevent Gold Coin from coveting it continuously.

If it were to be accidentally consumed, it would be a betrayal of this girl’s good intentions.

The Underground Base of the Night Special Forces has some areas that Gold Coin dare not enter, including the high-security storage for important items and munitions.

These areas are filled with various detectors and utilize fiber-optic signal transmission. Special monitoring measures are in place to prevent tampering with the power supply of the monitoring equipment. If Gold Coin were to show up, he would be immediately caught.

To compensate for the giant dragon, Lin Mo uses his authority to spend a considerable amount of money, purchasing a batch of strategic metals that cannot be found in society. This effectively silences the dragon’s appetite.

To avoid raising suspicions, Lin Mo must continuously create items, such as fighter planes. Otherwise, it would be easy for others to notice Lin Mo’s large purchases of metal, unaware that he does so to satisfy the dragon’s hunger, which is no small task.

“Back already?”

Old Pan, the leader of the Aircrew Group, has grown accustomed to Lin Mo’s frequent absences. Most of the time, this guy is either on business trips, avoiding trouble, or training; his actual time on duty is less than one percent.

“Yeah!” This time, aside from the heavy full-body armor sent by Qi Fei, Lin Mo does not have many significant gains.

“Well, there’s something you should see; is it yours?”

Old Pan points to a corner of the hangar.

Lin Mo’s gaze shifts to a black shipping container. The Aircrew Group has refrained from opening it, keeping it untouched.

Since Lin Mo arrived at the Night Aircrew Group, the once-empty hangar has been filled with more and more things.

It seems that Lin Mo, as a Dragon Knight, has completely made the Aircrew Group his home; whatever good finds he comes across outside, he brings here.

The container is huge, making it difficult to guess its contents.

The robot using the Gold Coin’s core processor does not open it out of caution, so the gold giant dragon cannot tell Lin Mo what is inside this container.

Finding a flashlight, Lin Mo tears open the sealing wax and pulls open the door, shining the light inside.

A partial airplane comes into view in the container.

Lin Mo instantly recognizes the aircraft inside the container—his personal ride—the ace fighter from World War II, the P-51 Mustang. He did not expect that during his days in America, the South China Sea Fleet would have it packed and shipped over.

"What’s inside?"

As Old Pan continues to work on maintaining the helicopter with other crew members, he calls out curiously to Lin Mo, who has just opened the container. As the group leader, he is indeed curious about what astonishing items Lin Mo brings into the base.

"A plane!"

Lin Mo’s words almost made Old Pan drop the tools in his hands.

Another plane? Is this guy throwing a plane party? Why does he keep bringing back aircraft? Isn’t there already a J-18 "Red Eagle"? Where did he manage to get another one?

Old Pan’s frustration felt like Lin Mo’s flirty antics outside, akin to having a second mistress added to the big house he already has, now he’s come back with a "little third" and seems unbothered.

The helicopter pilots only have two people per aircraft, and Lin Mo occupies an entire squad’s worth of jet fighters—doesn’t that feel a bit excessive?

“Gold Coin! Time to get to work!”

Lin Mo shouted, not just at the gold giant dragon on his wrist, which had transformed into its detachable form, but also at the hardworking robot named Gold Coin in the hangar.

The half-gold giant dragon-controlled, half-program-automated robot immediately dropped its tasks for the Aircrew Group and scurried towards the container—after all, Lin Mo held the highest authority.

“Hey, hey, Lin Mo, you need to let it finish our work first.”

A maintenance team voiced their strong objections to Lin Mo. This robot named Gold Coin had become an indispensable member of the Aircrew Group, hardworking and efficient. While it was occasionally a bit clumsy, it was still very useful.

“Wait a minute, just help me move the stuff out first, and then I’ll return it to you.” Lin Mo was somewhat surprised; the gold giant dragon-made robot was so popular. If it could be mass-produced, it would save a lot of effort.

Lin Mo’s idea was indeed sound. Demand determines production costs, factoring in the even higher maintenance costs. If intelligent robots could be mass-produced now, global warfare might have already transformed into battles of robots.

The P-51 "Mustang" fighter plane sent over by the South China Sea Fleet was essentially disassembled into eight pieces for easier transport. Each component was wrapped in shock-absorbing bubble wrap, secured with cardboard and wooden frames, and labeled for Lin Mo to reassemble later.

For an old-fashioned propeller aircraft like this, the Air Force Base of the South China Sea Fleet wasn’t too troubled; some training aircraft were of similar type and even bore “Mustang” lineage.

Lin Mo himself could barely manage to reassemble the vintage fighter that could be described as being torn apart.

Even so, it took him a full four days.

The South China Sea Fleet maintained it decently, swapping out some universal parts for new ones, but that wasn’t quite what Lin Mo wanted.

After all, this was an old clunker from over half a century ago, and it had certain metal fatigue. Most of the remaining work was done with Gold Coin’s help, restructuring it. The outer pure aluminum skin was replaced with titanium-aluminum alloy skin, using a lot of titanium alloy materials just like modern advanced fighter jets.

After the modifications, the original P-51 “Mustang” fighter was transformed in Lin Mo’s hands—it looked almost unrecognizable, enough to make any WWII military equipment enthusiast shed tears.

The original piston engine was replaced with a domestically ordered turbo-prop engine, fitted with a five-blade propeller.

Compared to the factory-installed piston engine of the original “Mustang,” the new engine was lighter, reducing weight by about 10%, while also increasing output power by 5% and extending its lifespan.

One important reason Lin Mo chose to change the engine was that it was readily available, and the parts were cheaper. There were fewer restrictions when procuring domestic products.

In reality, as long as one has the money and handles the necessary approval licenses, the authorities do not impose strict limits on sales of such engines.

In China, turbo-prop technology is quite mature. While domestic jet engines are still undergoing constant improvement, turbo-prop engines have long dominated the domestic aviation engine market. The performance and quality of new products rival those of top international brands.

As the peak achievement of World War II, even the modern “Super Dodo” engine does not exceed the output power of the “Mustang.” Thus, Lin Mo chose a relatively good engine and had the gold giant dragon optimize the materials used.

As an air superiority aircraft, this performance boost raised the capabilities of the fighter that still looked like a P-51 “Mustang” to those of a propeller fighter. Meanwhile, the entire avionics system was modernized with a contemporary electro-optical system, making the aircraft appear increasingly modern.

Most of the work was done by the robot named Gold Coin. Improving this vintage fighter didn’t pose much technical difficulty, as modern aviation has achieved modularity, and many components simply need to be suitably matched to self-assemble.

In truth, Lin Mo was more interested in the “Abyss Nirvana” international pilot death match.

Lockheed was using a strategy in plain sight against Lin Mo.

In most of Lin Mo’s missions, he primarily engages in ground attacks. Even when he participates in the rare air-to-air battles, he mostly just picks on beginners and has little experience facing high-level aerial knights.

The country and military wouldn’t allow Lin Mo to participate in the competition in the J-18 “Red Eagle,” but the P-51 “Mustang”—well, aside from its slightly similar appearance, it has devolved into a propeller fighter that is practically unidentifiable, yet it still retains the name “Mustang.” At least it is Lin Mo’s personal fighter, not part of the military’s combat sequence.

Perhaps this air superiority aircraft could suffice, especially if the gold giant dragon occasionally gave it some extra power; even jet fighters might struggle to match up with it.