Volume 13 Ancient Bronze City Ruins Chapter 617: Ronin Squad
"Let the Ronin Squad go out." Terenz ordered.
"Is it okay to send out the Ronin Squad so soon? In the original offensive plan, they had to wait until the street fighting stage before they would be deployed as the decisive combat force on the battlefield." asked the old lieutenant general.
"Plans can never keep up with changes. If we don't solve the obstacles in front of us, we will never be able to break into the ruins of the Ancient Bronze City." said Terenz.
"Commander...Excuse me, are we going to send out the entire Ronin Squad?" Not to mention the old lieutenant general , even the staff officer in charge of delivering orders showed a hint of hesitation after hearing this instruction.
In this battle, Terenz did not have many cards in his hand, and this ronin team was one of the few.
As a result, less than twenty minutes after the battle officially started, this trump card had to be played.
"Yes, all four mobile teams are going to attack, and our hunting target is the giant erosion seeds under the ground in the area from A20 to B17." said Terenz.
"But...but it's still only the feint attack stage..." the staff officer said again.
"If we can't put pressure on the enemy in the Bronze City Ruins, our current action won't even be considered a feint." Terenz paused and added, "After you pass on this order, replace it with someone else. I don't need a staff officer who will question my orders. If you miss the opportunity to fight, even if I shoot you, it won't help."
“Yes, yes, sir…”
…
Soon, twenty-four extremely strangely shaped humanoid mechas jumped out from the belly of a transport ship and fell towards the "hunting target" directly below.
These twenty-four mechas are four-meter-class humanoid mechas. Rather than calling them mechas, it would be more appropriate to call them larger power armors. These armors are streamlined in design, with slender limbs and torsos. Unlike the heavy armor and numerous hedgehog-like weapons of conventional mechas, these twenty-four mechas are extremely thin, especially in the waist and abdomen, which are almost as thick as a normal person's waist. If someone like Maginot with a big pot belly were to be a pilot, he probably wouldn't even be able to squeeze into the cockpit.
But compared with the armor that is so thin that it can be almost ignored, there are two things on these strange mechas that are particularly "abundant" - the first "abundance" is the large number of thruster nozzles. In addition to the conventional backpack thrusters, foot thrusters and leg thrusters, large and small nozzles can be seen almost everywhere on these mechas. Even under the "cone-hat" style helmets on their heads, there is a whole circle of thruster nozzles tightly arranged.
The second "more" means more knives.
The Ronin Squad's mechas were not equipped with any long-range weapons, including live ammunition guns, laser weapons, and electromagnetic weapons. Instead, the extra weapon attachment points were filled with long and short swords. The shortest of them was about the same size as the Japanese sword Wakizashi, and the longest were the two curved long swords with light blades over three meters long inserted on both sides of the backpack.
If Ke Lan and the others could see this scene, they would be very surprised to find that the swords equipped on these mechas are exactly the same style as the one in Asano Akira's hand... Not only are the styles similar, but even the materials are exactly the same - the blades of these swords are all made of Nino alloy.
The biggest difference between the two is that the blade of Asano Akira's sword has some of the stalagmite fragments brought back by Ke Lan integrated into it, giving it a matte grayish-white color, while the swords equipped on these mechas are still the original black Nino alloy color.
Before the Ronin Squad's mechas landed on the ground, the tentacles rolled back into the air. Tentacles several meters thick swept towards them with a whistling sound - each mecha was facing at least ten tentacles attacking from different directions... Whether in terms of size or number, the Ronin Squad was at an absolute disadvantage.
"Attack back!" A stern shout came from the leading machine. With a "clang" sound, the two largest long swords were already in the hands of the machine.
At the same time, directly below the body, a dozen tentacles have already completed the "encirclement", waiting for the prey to fall into it and then crush it into pieces...
With the propulsion and maneuverability of the Ronin Squadron, they could easily rise in the air and avoid the attack range of the tentacles. However, they did not do so. The other 23 members of the team also followed their captain's example, drew out two long swords, pointed the blades outward, crossed their arms, locked the mechanical joints on their arm armor, and turned the nozzles on the body to one side and began to spray, pushing the entire body to spin at high speed in the air like a gyroscope!
Not only did they not dodge, but they accelerated and rushed towards the tentacles!
And when the tentacles tried to attack them, the rapidly spinning blades directly turned all the approaching tentacles into fine flesh, and the gushing pus and blood even formed "water tornadoes" suspended in the air under the drive of the blades.
Only at this time can the idiom "bloody wind and rain" be used without being an exaggeration.
The tentacles cut by the blade did not heal quickly, but showed signs of necrosis and decay. The swords of the Ronin Squad were not ordinary cold weapons. Inside the handles of these swords, there was a storage tank with a built-in freezing device, which contained compressed flesh-eating worm active cells. When the valve was opened, these active cells would flow forward along the pipes inside the blade and be released from dozens of tiny holes on the blade surface that were invisible to the naked eye.
For the Seeds of Corrosion, this kind of sword is like one that has been poisoned. The dose of active cells released instantly can achieve the effect of "killing with one blow" on ordinary Seeds of Corrosion.
However, it is not because they are equipped with this kind of weapon that the Ronin Squad is regarded as the "decisive combat force" in the street fighting stage... In addition to the special nature of the mecha, every member of the team is an eighth-level biochemical modified person, and only this level of modification can allow their bodies to withstand such a terrible load.
If a non-enhanced human were to pilot this machine, not only would they be unable to fully utilize the machine's performance, the acceleration generated by the nearly a hundred nozzles all over the body would be enough to tear the pilot's body apart.
The twenty-four "Ronin" landed on the ground almost unscathed, but the tentacles that attacked them were chopped and scarred by the rotating long swords - a large amount of "toxin" invaded these tentacles, making the self-healing speed of the Seed of Erosion extremely slow.
The Seed of Erosion hidden deep underground obviously had extremely high intelligence. When it found that the injured tentacles could not heal and the deadly toxins might spread along the tentacles to the main body, it actually cut off the injured tentacles on its own. The action was so decisive that even Terenz, who was closely watching the changes in the battle situation, was stunned.
"Very special...this guy is very special." Terenz murmured.
"Ordinary" erosion species, even those SP-type mutants with terrifying destructive power, would never take such action. It's not because they don't have the courage to cut off their own arms, but because they simply can't resist the temptation of the active cells of the flesh-eating worms.
The active cells of the flesh-eating worms are not very apt to be described as "highly toxic". Veterans of the Field Corps and agents of the Security Bureau privately say that if these seeds of corrosion are likened to hopeless "addicts", then the active cells of the flesh-eating worms are the "drug" they crave...
Even though this thing will kill them, as long as they smell the "smell", any seeds of corrosion will rush over like crazy... just like moths to a flame.
(To prevent censorship, I replaced the names of certain things with English. If you don’t know what they mean, just search Baidu. If there are “prohibited terms” that may become asterisks in the following content, I will also use English or character separation to handle them. I won’t explain it in detail. I don’t mean to deliberately fart. If you understand, you will understand... Writing a book is not easy, please understand.)
But now this "big guy" was able to resist this fatal temptation and took the initiative to cut off its "contaminated" tentacles. This can only mean two possibilities - one, this big guy has wisdom no less than that of humans and extremely strong self-control ability; two, there are humans... or human consciousness, directly manipulating its behavior.
Terenzi prefers the second possibility.
The Ronin Squad has entered the battlefield. They have thrown away their long swords that have "run out of ammunition", drawn out new weapons, and frantically chopped at the approaching tentacles while moving around.
Whenever the "unhealable" wounds on a tentacle accumulate to a certain extent, the Seed of Erosion will actively cut off the tentacle...Except for the largest few giants, nearly half of the first batch of tentacles that emerged from the ground have been cleared away, and during this process, more tentacles have emerged from the ground.
These tentacles were almost endless. After one was chopped down, another appeared. In contrast, the swords on the "ronin" were decreasing at a speed visible to the naked eye.
"We can't delay this any longer. The Ronin Squad will be exhausted to death!" the old lieutenant general said solemnly, "It's time to execute the next move."
"No hurry, wait a little longer." Terenz shook his head. "I've calculated the Ronin Squad's fuel and weapon reserves. They can hold out for at least five minutes. What they're doing is not in vain. Every time they chop down, they're actually consuming the power of the Seed of Corrosion."
“But you can’t treat them as disposable consumables!” the old lieutenant general said anxiously - the total cost of a “Ronin”, from human body modification, martial arts and operating technology training to equipment configuration, etc., is enough to offset the more than 2,000 “Black Widow Spider” drones that were just wiped out in the first batch... More importantly, there are very few candidates who meet the requirements. The requirement of being an eighth-level biochemically modified person alone is enough to screen out 99% of the candidates. The Ronin team was formed four years ago and was put into actual combat for the first time today. There are only 24 people in total.
It’s not that the military doesn’t want to expand their organization, but that it is simply impossible to expand it.
"In war, soldiers are consumables..." Terenzi stared at the screen without turning his head and said, "No matter which battlefield they are deployed to, they will be 'consumed' in the end. As long as they can maximize their value, the purpose of forming this team will be achieved."
“…”
Finally, when the two most aggressive members of the Ronin Squad ran out of energy and lost power, and were smashed into discus by the sweeping tentacles, Terenz issued a new order -
"Execute Plan No. 74!"
Under the protection of the armored forces, more than a dozen heavy vehicles slowly drove into the battle area. While the remaining "Ronin" were holding back the tentacles emerging from the ground, these dozen heavy vehicles advanced nearly 500 meters in one breath, until the ground ahead was severely cracked and there was no way forward, so they stopped.
A large number of anchors shot out from the bottom of these heavy vehicles, fixing themselves to the ground. Then, the device folded on the back of the vehicle body stretched out - it was a large mechanical arm, and at the front end of the mechanical arm was a heavy pile driver powered by energy crystals.
The accompanying engineering mecha inserted a metal stake as thick as two people could hug into the ground. Amid the deafening sound of hammering, the thick metal stake was completely sunk in, and the engineering mecha next to it quickly connected the second metal stake behind it.
According to the report from the observation department, the main body of the Seed of Erosion is located at least two hundred meters underground. Although this location can be reached with a bunker-buster bomb, the collapsed rock strata caused by the explosion will block the hole drilled by the bunker-buster bomb, making it impossible to shoot active ammunition into the hole.
And Terenz's decision was to completely remove this entire rock layer!
It would be difficult to achieve this level of success relying solely on the bombing of the air fleet. He could only let the ground troops venture into the war zone and use pile drivers to drill enough deep shafts directly above the heads of the Seeds of Erosion, and then throw a large amount of explosives into these wells.
There is no need to lift up the entire ground in the battle area, just lift up a corner to expose the body of the Seed of Erosion.
Every time these pile drivers drilled a vertical shaft, the mechas nearby would place a dozen crystal energy bombs into it - relying on the "resonance" between the energy crystals, these bombs could release a power far more terrifying than a nuclear explosion.
