The King of Black Fog

[Trigger Side Mission: Defeat the Myth]

[Mission Content: Destroy the Imperial Mecha "Judgement"]

[Note: In this world, there's always been a myth that Imperial Mechas are invincible. Prove to them—the myth of the invincibility of the Imperial Mechas isn't just in this world! (Run, if you can escape.)]

"Bang!"

The white Mecha hesitated not a bit as it fired a penetrating bullet at "Judgement's" head, and with a humming power furnace, it quickly rose up.

"Go!" Turquoise Pool shouted as she soared towards the sky.

Li Qianxia's eyes narrowed as her red Mecha twisted its body, flying low, then accelerated in an instant and vanished into the horizon with a boom.

"Don't go up!" Princess Beia Triss clung tightly to the back of the pilot's seat and shouted loudly.

"Why?" Li Qianxia asked instinctively.

Beia Triss didn't have time to ask them why they didn't even know this kind of question.

"Get down quick!" she urgently reminded.

Without asking further, Turquoise Pool and Li Qianxia immediately dived, skimming the ground, the forests, the hillsides, the earth—they created ripples with the blast of air.

"Boom!"

"Judgement," hovering above the canyon, went from stationary to breaking the sound barrier in less than a second, and the white sonic barrier spread out around its body like a magnificent white gown.

Turquoise Pool glanced at the monitor and sighed in relief, then declared with a steady, graceful voice, "The opponent's speed is only a little faster than ours, we can handle them for a bit!"

"Because the power reactor of the Imperial Mecha is a fragment of Cangqiong, the farther it is from the indestructible sky, the weaker its power becomes," explained Beia Triss.

"You're saying it's in its weakest state right now?" Li Qianxia could hardly believe it.

"Yes," Beia Triss affirmed with a nod on the monitor, "but it's still best not to think of resisting. If you're going to run, keep running, and you might just survive."

Yang Qinglan assessed the princess.

She looked very glamorous, her golden hair so radiant that it made one wonder if there were specks of stars around her.

In terms of personality, she wasn't as weak as she had first imagined, knowing that even if they abandoned her, they would be silenced, which made her expression more determined.

Indifferent about her own life, yet concerned about others, huh?

"What was that move just now?" asked Turquoise Pool.

"Judgement," answered Beia Triss, "Every Imperial Mecha has its own Cangqiong Gift, whose most powerful strike can destroy a mountain... Sidney was destroyed that way."

"Sidney?" Li Qianxia repeated, puzzled.

Is it a mountain? Or something else?

Being able to destroy a mountain in one strike doesn't necessarily mean it really destroyed a mountain, like a city?

"You don't know?" Beia Triss's delicate lips parted slightly, her expression of surprise resembling someone who didn't know a toilet was meant for sitting on, trying to use it for drinking water or washing their face.

"Cough, this is a secret of the Empress's Knight Order." Li Qianxia mimicked her brother in the first half and Yang Qinglan in the second.

...The Empress's Knight Order had no such secrets.

"It seems you are the type who doesn't watch battle reports, doesn't care about the outside world, and focuses solely on training," Beia Triss found a reason for Li Qianxia herself.

"Does Cangqiong Gift have a charging time? If so, how often?" Yang Qinglan interrupted this exchange of information which was of no use even if known.

"Yes, depending on how far the Imperial Mecha is from the sky, the charging time varies. Given 'Judgement's' current altitude, it needs at least two hours," Beia Triss replied.

"Two hours... Qian Xia, turn back," Turquoise Pool made a quick decision.

"Understood!"

White and red mechas traced dual arcs through the air, charging back toward the Imperial Mecha.

"What are you doing?!" Beia Triss's voice was even somewhat shrill.

Li Qianxia and Turquoise Pool ignored her, and Yang Qinglan didn't speak either, focusing on the optical display of the Imperial Mecha.

The three giant mechas, like rolling boulders, crushed the air and kicked up a storm of wind pressure, swiftly closing in.

The terrifying airwaves, similar to a tsunami, blasted to both sides, bending the trees like straw.

After casually releasing ten smoke grenades, Turquoise Pool commanded, "Don't compete in mecha performance, compete in skill, get closer!"

"Understood!" Li Qianxia was fired up.

Boom! The three mechas plunged into the rapidly dispersing smoke.

"Optical sensing disabled"

"Infrared sensing disabled"

"What in the world are you trying to do?" Beia Triss could not comprehend, "No matter how hard you try, you can't possibly defeat the Imperial Mecha!"

"Radar detection disabled"

"Enemy-lock mode disabled"

Red warning boxes were densely packed on one side of the screen, but Li Qianxia and Turquoise Pool did not panic; they felt even more at ease.

They possessed a sharp intuition incomparable even to any high-tech sensor, born from combat experience and their physical conditioning.

The red mecha reached behind its back and pulled out a crimson lance.

The white mecha drew the longsword from its waist.

Hum——

The lance vibrated at high speeds, and the longsword was wrapped in high-temperature lasers.

Boom!

The airwave formed by the mecha collision grew even hotter.

Even though nothing was visible ahead, the red and white mechas suddenly separated, and the next moment, Judgement surged forward like a giant shark emerging from the dark deep sea.

Both the red and white mechas stood twenty meters tall, nearly matching the sixty meters of Judgement, but as they brushed past each other, it felt like an elephant charging at rabbits.

The two rabbits, one red and one white, dodged the elephant's charge while simultaneously extending their weapons, sliding them along the elephant's body.

"Sizzle——"

The sound was sharp and piercing, unbearable even for Yang Qinglan, Li Qianxia, and Turquoise Pool inside the cockpit.

Beia Triss was covering her ears, seemingly shouting something loudly.

"Boom!" Finally, the only sound left was the crashing of mecha bodies against the air.

"Good, keep going!" Turquoise Pool said.

"No problem!" Li Qianxia's fighting spirit soared even higher.

The two adjusted their direction, aiming for the dangerously intuitive spots deep within the smoke, and charged once more.

The right foot pedal was pressed down slowly yet firmly, the power furnace humming, pumping more vitality into the mecha like a heartbeat.

Through the neural link system, Li Qianxia felt a surge of strength coursing through her body.

Boom!

The surroundings became quiet, as the two mechas broke the sound barrier, leaving the noise behind them.

Unmatched speed brought unparalleled strength; the red and white bodies, trailing red and white streams of light, collided like meteors.

But in the next instant, as intuition merged with the mecha, they sharply sensed a huge sense of foreboding, like a bucket of cold water being poured over them.

Their bodies shivered from the cold.

"Dodge!"

"Danger!"

Both shouted simultaneously.

A blindingly bright light burst through the smoke, emitting a thunderous, muffled sound, resembling the destruction of a creature inside a white cocoon.

Enveloped in the smoke above the forest, the two mechas dragged strands of smoke and collided against the distant mountain wall like shells.

The earth and heavens shook; rocks fell like heavy rain from the mountain.

"Mecha damaged"

"Main weapon power output reduced by twenty-six percent"

"Secondary Weapon-Fire God Machine Gun—half damaged"

The power furnace and shock absorbers wailed.

Beyond this—

"It hurts so much!" Li Qianxia closed her eyes tightly, her whole body twitching and trembling.

Through neural connection, pilots could control their mechas as easily as their own bodies, and likewise, they would endure the same damage as their mechas—if not, their sense of danger would be much weaker.

Even the cockpit, which was unaffected by high speed, quaked intensely under the fierce collision.

Beia Triss's face was pale; she braced herself against the seat's back, fixing her body, cradling her right hand with her left as if she had bumped it somewhere.

"Did you see their move?" Turquoise Pool gasped for air, slightly recovering from the intense pain.

"No—" Li Qianxia opened her left eye, while her right eye remained tightly shut due to the pain.

"I didn't catch it either." Yang Qinglan was the most relaxed among the four, unaffected by the mecha, handling the vibrations in the cockpit quite easily.

"What are you doing?" Beia Triss's voice was weak, urgent, and puzzled, "Daring to use interference smoke and fight the Imperial Mecha, you are the first to come out alive!"

The first to come out alive...

And here they thought being defeated was shameful enough; was this their ceiling?

"Enemy Mecha Detected"

"Analyzing....Judgement"

Leaving the interference smoke, the sensors quickly resumed operation, a holographic screen popped up, automatically zooming into a frame.

A turquoise Imperial Mecha slowly emerged from the smoke, godlike, flying towards two insects with a standing posture amid ripples.

"No damage at all?" Yang Qinglan muttered, his expression grave.

The combined strike of the red and white mechas hadn't inflicted any damage on the Imperial Mecha, not even a scratch.

"Imperial Mecha... be careful!" Beia Triss had been turning to look at the monitor inside the cockpit when she suddenly cried out.

Judgement lifted its right hand, the palm rapidly turning red.

To the naked eye, it looked like a red ball; through the magnified screen, it resembled a small pulsating sun.

Not only Li Qianxia and Turquoise Pool, who could sense danger through the mecha, but even Yang Qinglan, in the safest place—the cockpit—had an ominous premonition.

Flight? No, the range of this attack was too large.

The enormous wings of the red and white mechas instantly folded together, forming a shield in front.

Silently, a red light wave swept across, and one tree after another, one patch after another, turned black.

Then, the burst of a shock wave produced a tremendous sound, crushing everything.

The already charred black trees were scattered like mist by the shock wave, disappearing without a trace.

Everything, except for those two shields and the mountain behind them, seemed as if they never existed, instantly turned black and were blown away by the shock wave.

"High temperature! High temperature!"

"Lower right wrist broken—cannot control"

Relatively, the white mecha, less resistant to high temperatures, directly malfunctioned.

Judgement, as if it had done nothing at all, still flew slowly, crossing the forest turned into hell.

It treasured its bullets, shooting one shot at a time, teasing the two mechas like playing with two crickets, occasionally harassing them to provoke and amuse itself.

Powerful shock waves continued to hit the increasingly red shields, the bodies gradually sinking into the mountain.

Inside the cockpit, Li Qianxia and Turquoise Pool were drenched in sweat, gritting their teeth against the impact.

Yang Qinglan stared at the small screen, where the lush forest had turned into bare sand dunes, and the black ash in the sky fell like black snow.

A scene of apocalypse.

"Damn it!" Turquoise Pool's sweat dripped down her collar, "Qian Xia, once it gets close, get ready to detach!"

"Understood!" Li Qianxia's hands had gone numb, she was barely supporting herself with stiffness from the numbness.

The Imperial Mecha was so strong; how had the Duchy fought it for so long? Yang Qinglan couldn't help but wonder.

Unless the Duchy also had mechas of the same level.

Li Qianxia watched the slowly approaching Judgement, feeling like a ragdoll being punched repeatedly without the ability to fight back.

"Isn't anyone coming to save us? Where's the reinforcement!" she couldn't help but shout.

Boom!

An object swiftly flew overhead, its speed as fast as lightning, the airflow causing more rocks to fall, hitting the two mechas.

"Detected Human...Zhou Weisi, Guard Soldier"

The screen zoomed in on a handsome and charming figure—Li Changzhou.

Li Qianxia opened the external communication as quickly as the system could respond.

"Brother, help me!" A vibrant, joyful, hopeful female voice echoed in the apocalyptic scene.

Li Changzhou looked over, his face also showing a smile of sudden relief and bright prospects.

"You save me first!" he hurriedly shouted.

"What, what?"

"Enemy Mecha Rapidly Approaching"

"Enemy Mecha Rapidly Approaching"

"Target Locked... Analyzing... Imperial Mecha-Red Lotus"

Bang!

A gust of wind swept from overhead—a colossal red mecha, blocking the sunlight over the red and white mechas' heads.

"Another one?!"