Alien Relic Hunter

"Deep Sea Giant Eel? Are they the creatures that the Pioneer Icebreaker encountered before? Where did they come from?" After hearing the name "Deep Sea Giant Eel", Yeager did not relax his vigilance - although this The single combat power of this creature is not strong compared to "Zokok Kai", but with such a large number, the threat level is still quite high.

The last time these creatures appeared in human sight, they almost sank the Pioneer.

"Judging from the outline of the creature scanned by Yagunaktor, it should be a deep-sea giant eel." Layton responded, "These things seem to have come out from under the submarine pyramid."

Undersea Pyramid...is there really something wrong with this place?

"The nearest giant deep-sea eel is only a hundred meters away from you, prepare to engage the enemy!" Layton shouted on the communication channel.

"The explosive harpoons No. 14, 17, 18, and 22 are ready." Yeager said as he turned on the weapon's safety. "As soon as the target enters the visual range, launch it immediately!"

The maximum combat lighting range of the searchlight equipped with "Zokok Kai" in this sea area is thirty meters away. At the speed of the giant eel in the deep sea, the distance of thirty meters is only the blink of an eye.

The attack window left for Yeager and Wilson was only the blink of an eye.

The maximum combat lighting range of the searchlight does not refer to the ultimate lighting range - when the lights are gathered into a beam, the searchlight beam can penetrate a body of water of about a hundred meters, but the concentrated beam of light is difficult to capture high-speed moving targets. . Calculated based on the distribution and number of searchlights on "Zokok Kai", if you want to illuminate the surrounding waters without blind spots, the illumination angle of each searchlight needs to be adjusted to at least 35 degrees. Under this diffusion, the light can only penetrate the sea water thirty meters away at most.

(The illumination angle should actually be expressed in terms of solid angle, which involves the knowledge of sphericity and squareness. It may be difficult for readers who are not majoring in optics to understand. It took me more than an hour to figure it out when I checked the information. The relationship and calculation method between these units, so let’s simplify it here. By default, the light of the searchlight is a right cone, and the angle of the vertex of the cross-sectional plane is the illumination angle.)

Yeager had already held his breath, his thumb on the launch button, ready to press it at any time.

Although the explosive harpoon is a "launched" weapon, it should actually be classified as a melee weapon. Under the water pressure and density at this depth, the effective killing distance is about fifty meters. Considering the defense of the deep-sea giant eel Ability, this distance has to be reduced by half, which is almost the same as the visual distance of Yeager and the others.

For the size of "Zokok Kai" and the giant deep-sea eel, this distance is considered a close combat distance.

However, the main lethality of the explosive harpoon is not due to puncture, but the explosion caused by the puncture in the target's body - the vast majority of indigenous creatures on Alpha Planet have far lower defenses within their bodies than on their surface. , even for deep-sea creatures living under terrifying water pressure, the killing effect caused by explosions inside the body is definitely better than explosions outside the body.

"Coming!" A high-speed black shadow suddenly crashed into the edge of the illuminated water, and Yeager pressed the red launch button without hesitation.

Accompanied by the dull explosion in the launch tube, four explosive harpoons dragged a long string of bubbles out and shot straight towards the black shadow.

Relying on his extraordinary dynamic vision and rich combat experience, the moment the four explosive harpoons came out of their chambers, his brain had already automatically calculated the ballistic trajectory, and overlaid this ballistic trajectory with the target's movement trajectory. After that, the final result was drawn - two missed and two succeeded.

There was basically no difference from the expected situation. Yeager fired four explosive harpoons in one go to ensure the hit rate as much as possible. As long as one explosive harpoon could hit the target, it would be considered a success.

If two can hit, that's double insurance.

But what happened in the next moment was completely beyond Yeger's expectations.

The two explosive harpoons did hit the target, but they did not pierce the target's body - the moment they came into contact with the target's body, the sharp explosive harpoons were ejected, and the tip of the harpoon even The intense friction with the target's body surface turned into a bright red color like molten iron.

It wasn't until the tail of this "deep sea giant eel" hit the outer armor of "Zokok Kai" hard that Yeager could see the opponent's appearance clearly.

The deep-sea giant eel is completely black and has no scales. Although there is a mucous membrane on the surface of the body, the skin under the mucosa is extremely tough and can withstand direct fire from a 25-mm caliber machine gun at zero distance... The same is true for the deep-sea giant eel Yeger saw. It's black, but in this black, it has a bit more metallic texture.

Suffering such a heavy blow, the outer armor plate directly in front of "Zokok Kai" was directly torn, and a huge dent appeared in the buffer armor inside. The entire machine body was directly lifted up under the action of huge force. , floating diagonally upward.

"Land! Land quickly!" Layton said urgently in the communication channel, "Zokok Kai's mobility is not as good as these deep-sea giant eels. Only by grabbing the ground can we have a chance to fight back!"

It is difficult to find a stable support point and leverage point when suspended in the sea water. If it is hit or beaten one after another, the entire machine body will most likely continue to roll in the sea water. In this way, the battle will be plunged into In an extremely passive state.

"I know, I'm adjusting my posture. I know I can't get entangled with these things in the water." Yeager said quickly. He was holding the joystick in one hand and swiping wildly on the touch screen with the other hand to move the machine body. The angles of the jets above were all corrected, and then they were ejected at maximum power at the same time, forcefully "pressing" the lifted body onto the seabed again.

The moment "Zokok Kai"'s legs touched the ground, twelve three-meter-long anchors were driven into the ground at the same time, firmly fixing the machine body to the ground.

Although doing this will cause the body to be unable to buffer external forces when it is attacked, it is still better than being whipped into a rolling ball by these giant deep-sea eels.

From being unfamiliar with it at the beginning, Yeager has gradually become familiar with the feeling of controlling the body underwater in just a few minutes. This feeling is like being in space, except that the vacuum outside is blocked. It's just replaced by high-density seawater.

As a senior pilot, Yeager had about 1,500 hours of flying time in the cosmic environment. After incorporating his experience during that time, he began to feel more comfortable.

But for the next battle, this little experience was far from enough - "Zokok Kai" had just gained a foothold on the seabed, when two more giant deep-sea eels attacked, and the alternating blows from left to right completely destroyed the machine. The left arm and the right quarter of the external armor. If the cockpit had not adopted a suspended structure, it is estimated that Yeager and Wilson would have been shocked to death by this time.

"What's going on? Yeager? Why don't you fight back?" All Layton could see was the "line picture" presented by Yagunaktor's environmental scanning equipment, and he could not see the actual underwater scene. , in his opinion, except for launching four explosive harpoons at the beginning, "Zokok Kai" has always been in a passive situation of being beaten without fighting back.

"Leiton! These deep-sea giant eels... don't seem to be ordinary deep-sea giant eels!" Yeager raised his shield with the only remaining mechanical arm of the machine, blocking the close attack of the fourth deep-sea giant eel - blocking It was blocked, but the machine body still retreated more than ten meters. Four of the twelve anchors were broken, and the remaining eight plowed eight deep ravines on the ground.

The outer armor of the fuselage has been severely deformed, and there are signs of tearing in many temporarily welded places. The large number of bubbles emerging from various gaps indicate that Zokok's outer structure has been extremely severely damaged. Many parts All have lost their airtightness.

Yeager, who was sitting in the cockpit, could even hear the inner shell of the aircraft body groaning under load. Depressions the size of coins to fists, pressed out by water pressure, constantly appeared on the surface of the aircraft body, like the moon. It is like a densely packed crater with circles within circles.

"Explosive harpoons cannot pierce their skin!" Yeager continued, "Not even at extremely close range! The surface of these deep-sea giant eels has a strange metallic texture, or it may be a brand new subspecies , or some unknown mutation has occurred.”

"The body surface has a metallic texture?" Leiton was stunned for a moment, and someone immediately said: "There are many indigenous creatures on Alpha Planet that absorb metal elements from food or minerals, and enrich these metal elements into Parts such as teeth, horns or claws are used to strengthen the attack power of these places. There are also creatures that move metal elements into the cuticle on the body surface to enhance their own defense... These deep-sea giant eels live Among the ruins of the underwater city, they probably absorbed a large amount of metal elements from the remains of the Alpha civilization, so they became like this!"

The speaker is a young reserve hunter who is also the orphan left behind by Hound's fallen subordinates. Before joining the God Hunting Group, this young man had just graduated from the biology department of a well-known college and was one of the few children most seen by the hounds.

"The exploding harpoon can penetrate even a twenty-millimeter steel plate... The skin that can block the exploding harpoon, the metal eaten by these deep-sea giant eels, is it not nino alloy?" Leighton murmured, "If it is true As for Nino Alloy, wouldn’t the weapons equipped with this ‘Zokok Kai’ be a joke in front of them?”

"I don't know if it's Nino alloy! Anyway, explosive harpoons are ineffective against them! The only trump card in our hand is the 'Tusk Type IV' torpedo! I have no better choice!" Yeager He roared, turning to look at Wilson who was still calm, "What's the condition of the machine? Can it withstand a torpedo that explodes at close range?"

Wilson just shook his head silently: "I can't bear it... Even if the giant deep-sea eels stop attacking now, this machine can only last ten to fifteen minutes at most. The shock wave of the torpedo explosion will further accelerate the disintegration of the machine... "

"But doing nothing is equivalent to waiting for death!" Yeger said bitterly, "If I had a choice, I would choose to die with these beasts!"

"I have no objection. You have the right to launch torpedoes." Wilson said calmly.

His cybernetic eye was flashing with high-frequency, dense light, as if he was performing precise and massive calculations.

"Wait! Yeager, wait!" Hearing that the machine body might disintegrate at any time, Layton couldn't help but stop him, "Don't rush to die with those monsters yet! Release the foot anchors, adjust the direction of the thruster nozzle, and then Launch torpedoes in the distance, try to use the aftermath of the shock wave to get rid of these giant deep-sea eels, and then move towards Yagunaktor!"

"No, it's too late!" Yeger shook his head repeatedly. On another screen, you can see a dozen deep-sea giant eels rushing less than a hundred meters away from the mecha. The speed of these deep-sea creatures in the water is far faster than " "Zokok Kai" was even faster than the torpedoes launched. They had no chance to escape!

That would be worse - take advantage of these deep-sea giant eels to gather together, directly detonate the torpedoes at a close distance, and pull as many as possible to support them!

Although Yeger felt a great loss for exchanging his own life for the lives of these beasts, this was the limit of what he could do.

"Hans..." Yegel muttered the name of his partner silently, "If you are watching, please protect me... I don't ask for life, I just ask... to kill a few more..."

Yeager resolutely pressed the torpedo launch button.

All torpedoes have a detonation time of 0.5 seconds, which means they will explode as soon as they leave the launch port.

"Zokok Kai" and Yeager, who were at the center of the explosion, had no chance of surviving.

But at this critical moment, a giant deep-sea eel seemed to be aware of Yeager's intention to die together. Instead of hitting "Zokok Kai" with his body, he put his head against the machine. Right above A.

The next second, the screen in front of Yeger went black, and naturally not a single torpedo was launched.

"Damn it, I forgot that these things also discharge high-voltage electricity!" Yeager stepped on the pedals with some annoyance, but the machine did not respond at all - the previous attack had destroyed the "Zokok Kai" Insulating protective layer, this deep-sea giant eel just gave an electric shock, causing the control system of "Zokok Kai" to shut down.

"The main control computer has overload protection and should not be burned out, but it will take at least thirty seconds to automatically restart." Wilson said to Yeager.