Chapter: Chapter 346
“Tch, if you don’t want to look, then don’t. I’ll ask Bai Ling tomorrow myself,” Leticia said unhappily, a faint black aura swirling around her body.
Judging from her appearance alone, it was easy to tell that the young lady was not in a good mood.
The leader could only offer a wry smile and comfort the pouting demon lord, as there was nothing else she could do about Leticia’s minor displeasure.
*Thump!*
“Did you hear something from over there?” Leticia suddenly raised her head, looking in the direction of the sound.
“Did I? I didn’t hear anything,” perhaps because the sound was too faint, the leader tilted her head in confusion.
“No, I’m sure… Black smoke?” After that muffled sound, a thick plume of smoke also drifted into the sky. This appearance could only mean that something big had happened. Someone was waylaying them!
*Beep beep beep.* The phones in both of their pockets suddenly vibrated.
Leticia and the leader exchanged glances, simultaneously pulling out their phones. On their screens, a bright red message had already appeared.
“Red… emergency mobilization order. It seems something big has indeed happened.” Leticia knew what this vivid red color represented. Upon receiving this message, heroes belonging to the Hero Association were required to drop everything they could and head to the location indicated in the message for support.
And such messages were only used in situations of extreme urgency.
That heavily guarded convoy had indeed been hijacked.
“Leader, let’s go!” Leticia waved to the leader. “Although I don’t really want to get involved in this mess, for the sake of the reward afterward, I’ll lend a hand.”
“Then please take me there, Qianqian.”
…
On a dark road in the suburbs outside Central City.
*BOOM!*
A rocket launcher, trailing a bright tail flame, impacted the front of the all-black armored vehicle, exploding in a beautiful burst of sparks. But when the flames subsided, the black armored vehicle was completely unharmed.
A nearly transparent energy barrier spanned the front of the armored vehicle, blocking all attacks from the front.
There were six such armored vehicles, arranged in a circle, tightly protecting a pure white truck in the center. Dozens of soldiers in black combat suits, utilizing the armored vehicles as a defensive line, continuously poured ammunition outwards, attempting to repel any enemies they encountered.
“When we received the mission, they said we might encounter danger, but the enemy’s firepower is too outrageous!” a young soldier, after emptying a full magazine, ducked back and complained to his comrade while reloading. “Are we really not facing regular troops?”
“Damn it, we *are* regular troops!” his comrade, who was spraying bullets outwards with a light machine gun, twitched his lips upon hearing the young soldier’s words.
Because he actually thought the same thing.
Their escort team was composed of elites from the Central City regular army, and at the moment the conflict broke out, they had indeed made the most correct choices. Even so, they were still being suppressed.
Although there were no casualties yet, the barrier generators on the armored vehicles had a limit. Once the barriers disappeared, their flesh and blood would be exposed to the enemy’s gunfire. Even though they also had small personal barrier generators, under such saturation fire, these barriers would last at most ten seconds.
“Hold the line, we’ve already sent out requests for aid to all nearby friendly forces! The Hero Association has issued a red alert demanding all heroes in the vicinity to provide support!” a captain-like man shouted loudly. Even amidst the deafening gunfire and explosions, his voice was clear, as if it were ringing in everyone’s ears.
A esper, he was an esper belonging to the military.
Although his superpower’s strength wasn’t very high, in this situation, such an ability appeared incredibly powerful.
A few more rocket launchers impacted the semi-transparent barrier, causing the barrier, which had been holding for nearly ten minutes, to vibrate slightly. After finding that their attacks couldn’t effectively break the barrier, the enemy changed their attack method and began to concentrate their efforts on attacking one side of the barrier. This indeed put the attacked barrier under considerable strain.
“How many more minutes can the barrier hold?” the captain shouted to the technician controlling the armored vehicle’s barrier.
Looking at the flashing alarms on the screen, the technician, covered in sweat, wiped his brow and gave a grim number, “Another five minutes at most. The barrier generator in that section needs to cool down. If we don’t cool it down, it can hold for another five minutes, at the cost of that generator becoming completely unusable.”
Ten minutes. The captain nodded. He had sent out a distress call the moment they were attacked, and the Hero Association’s response was the fastest. They had responded three minutes after the attack, and it was with the highest level of red alert.
Now, all heroes belonging to the Hero Association in the vicinity would be converging towards them. While undisciplined heroes might not be able to break through the enemy’s encirclement, they could at least cause some chaos, giving them some breathing room.
As long as they could hold on until the high-level heroes arrived, or their army’s reinforcements reached them, their mission would be considered complete.
“Captain, a high-energy reaction has appeared in the enemy’s position!” Just as the captain was mentally calculating the time, the technician suddenly shouted, “It should be something like a beam cannon. Damn it, they even have this!”
A beam of azure light struck the semi-transparent barrier. The barrier, which had remained stable under the bombardment, immediately began to fluctuate violently. This barrier had very poor resistance to energy attacks.
“It can only hold for another minute!”
“What about overloading the barrier?”
“It’s at overload that it can last for a minute!” The technician quickly operated the panel in front of him, but the constantly appearing danger warnings prevented him from changing anything. “Captain, we need to prepare to face the enemy’s frontal assault.”
This statement caused the captain’s eyes to darken. The enemy’s firepower was considerable. Once the barrier was shattered, how long could they last?
Most importantly, they couldn’t escape, because their mission was to protect that white truck.
And a soldier’s duty was to obey orders, even if they faced a certain death situation.
“Wait, the beam was interrupted! Is support here?”
Several bursts of fire flashed in the darkness. The azure beam disappeared with the appearance of these flashes. It was obvious that it had been interrupted.
And in this desolate place, only support from the city could interrupt the beam caster.
Indeed, outside the unknown enemy’s encirclement, the first batch of heroes from Central City had arrived and were attacking the enemies with their abilities.
“Fireball! Smash those things for me!” A blue-haired girl floating in the air observed the situation from her binoculars and directed her teammates to attack targets. “The infrared display doesn’t show the enemy’s appearance. Our enemies are probably not human.”
“Not human? Then what’s making all that noise over there?” Her teammate, a young girl, surprisingly threw a fireball the size of a washbasin. The fireball flew slowly towards the identified firing point, but was blown up in mid-air by a thin beam.
Seeing this result, the red-haired boy who released the fireball tutted with annoyance. He had already thrown four or five fireballs, but the damage they caused was almost zero.
The accuracy of those beams was too high, and he himself was only a B-class hero. His superpower’s strength could only be described as poor, so it was normal that he couldn’t achieve any results.
“Watch out! An attack is coming!” The girl in the air shouted loudly. At the same time, she made an agile turn in the air, dodging a bullet shot from a distance. It seemed they had attracted the enemy’s attention.
Unlike her graceful evasion, the red-haired boy was much more awkward. It seemed that the few fireballs had made the enemy consider him a greater threat than the girl, as the bullets targeting him were countless times more than those targeting her.
Completely disregarding his image, the boy rolled unceremoniously under a pre-selected cover. Listening to the sound of bullets hitting the dirt, he felt as if he had brushed past death.
“I didn’t know I was so popular!” he shouted loudly after the attack subsided, daring to speak again.
His teammate also landed from the sky. Once noticed by the enemy, the sky became a very dangerous place. There was cover on the ground, but none in the air.
Hearing the boy’s words, the blue-haired girl pouted. “We were just glanced at here. On the main battlefield, those A-class heroes have the hardest time.”
“Yeah, I don’t know when I’ll be promoted to A-class.” The boy gave a bitter smile. He actually knew that his potential was limited. To become an A-class hero, it didn’t just depend on hard work; talent was also extremely important.
However, it was okay to dream a little at this moment. He peeked his head out from behind the cover and looked in the direction where the fighting was most intense.
There was an A-class hero team there, which had arrived slightly earlier than them. A full five A-class heroes were drawing away a large portion of the enemy’s firepower, significantly reducing the pressure on the convoy they were supporting.
The price for this was that these heroes, who fought with superpowers, were currently not in good condition.
“No, we’re completely suppressed!” a burly man holding a large shield shouted to the people behind him.
“I know, but we just need to hold on a little longer!” The short-haired woman behind him placed her hands on his back, and a faint white glow emanated from her hands, quickly integrating into the man’s body, allowing him to withstand the onslaught not so quickly.
And further behind them, two male heroes surrounded a slightly shorter girl with stern expressions. The girl held her hands high, her eyes fixed on the area where the enemy was pouring fire.
Blue and white electrical sparks surrounded her, causing her hair to float uncontrollably, indicating that she was using her abilities to their limit.
“Every time she goes all out, we have to get frizzy hair, right?” muttered one of the male heroes acting as protection for the girl.
“If I could control it, I would already be an S-class hero!” The man’s words provoked a strong response from the girl. She pressed her hand down, and accompanied by a dazzling lightning strike that landed in a distant stronghold, she retorted.
The lightning attack caused a violent explosion, and the firepower suppressing the shield-wielding man instantly decreased by more than half.
Feeling the pressure on him instantly lessen, the burly man roared and charged forward with his shield. However, he had only charged about ten steps before the intensified firepower pushed him back again.
“New target has appeared, smash that position!”
And this was precisely their team’s tactic: the burly man would withstand the frontal firepower, and then the girl who wielded lightning would attack the firing points, incapacitating them with a single blow.
With such a straightforward approach, they had already eliminated three firing points, alleviating a lot of pressure for their supporting allies.
As for why the strongman was blocking the front rather than letting the girl attack from a distance… the girl’s superpower had a range, and that range, unfortunately, was shorter than the effective range of firearms.
If the girl were to stand openly under enemy fire to charge up, she would likely become a colander in less than a second.
“Wait, the attack has weakened?” While the girl was charging up, the burly man suddenly discovered that the attacks hitting his large shield had significantly weakened. As he was wondering what was happening, a beam of light suddenly struck from a distance, targeting the girl hiding behind the burly man.
Under normal circumstances, this beam should have passed directly over the burly man and hit the girl. But in this battlefield of espers, one couldn’t always think with common sense.
The beam bent in mid-air, hitting the large shield held by the burly man directly with a loud bang. The man’s face turned pale, “The power of this move is quite substantial…”
“Captain, new enemies have arrived!” Just as the burly man was regaining his breath, the man protecting the girl from behind shouted loudly.
After the beam attack, a figure, almost indistinguishable in the darkness, darted out from the firing point. Its target was the burly man, who had just been hit by the beam and hadn’t fully recovered.
An explosion occurred in the distance, as if a fireball had been detonated. With this fleeting light, the heroes saw the true face of the enemy.
It wasn’t human, but a robot with a dark metallic shell. Its entire body gleamed with metallic luster, and its blood-red eyes held no emotion.
And such a monster, which should have existed only in science fiction novels, now appeared on the battlefield.
