Chapter 108: Blow It Up!
“Blow it up with all you’ve got! I’ll take full responsibility! What are you afraid of, collateral damage? Do you think the Governor’s power could be harmed by you lot? That giant wind wall, and that massive… whatever it is, bear or something, it’s right there! And you’re telling me you can’t hit it? Bomb it! I said, bomb it!”
Just as Gu Hang thought, Pobov was indeed hopping mad and cursing furiously.
The reason he was hopping mad was because a piece of debris, the size of a fist, had just struck his shinbone. It didn’t break, but he couldn’t put any strength on it.
Still, he remained furious and restless.
Not being able to help, not being able to fight—this was what enraged him the most.
Ever since the ambush in the mutant forest, Pobov had considered it his own disgrace that the Governor himself had to personally step onto the battlefield and face the enemy.
The Governor had come from beyond the stars, bringing steel, machines, and weapons. And they, as warriors and soldiers, should be the ones eliminating all threats for him, not making him play both mother and father.
Overseeing development, managing battles—that was one thing. But the Governor even had to take the field himself; what were they even here for?
At this moment, he had to do something.
He was angry, fierce, and perhaps even a bit reckless. But he also had the cunning and cleverness unique to the wastelanders. Even though his plans might seem reckless, when it came down to action, he wouldn’t charge in blindly without a plan.
Pobov didn’t understand much about psionics, dark magic, or sacrificial rituals.
But he held one belief: there was nothing in this world that couldn’t be blown to bits. If there was, it just meant the caliber wasn’t big enough.
Back then, his battalion only had 60mm mortars; now they had 155mm howitzers. Whether or not it would be effective, just blast it with a round first!
This was the origin of the shelling that Gu Hang heard.
Pobov only had five heavy guns in total, with a few mortars thrown in to make up the numbers.
But it proved highly effective!
The bolters wielded by the Star Warriors were supposed to have diamond-tipped rounds, secondary acceleration, and proximity detonation capabilities, making them supremely powerful… but there were limits to that power due to caliber.
A 155mm howitzer, on the other hand, was another matter. Just the shell itself stood 0.8 meters tall and weighed nearly 50 kilograms. Experiencing one of these explosions up close was a truly overwhelming sight.
Two shells exploded directly onto the Fury Owl’s avatar.
The creature, who had just swatted away a Star Warrior and was preparing to continue crushing the Phoenix, was blown apart, leaving two massive holes in its form. Though its body was made of condensed psionic energy, nearly half of it was obliterated in an instant.
Although much of that energy was trying to reassemble, attempting to heal the body, this significantly weakened its strength.
Meanwhile, three other shells hit the 360-degree wind wall.
Already destabilized by the hole Gu Hang had made, along with the relentless strikes from the Gravity Staff and the Sacred Golden Halberd, the wind wall could no longer withstand the onslaught and shattered.
The kill radius of the 155mm howitzer could span dozens of meters. If it hit the ground, it would create a crater five meters wide.
Clearly, Gu Hang and his team were within this blast radius. From that perspective, Pobov’s claim of not worrying about collateral damage was utterly ridiculous.
Actually, Gu Hang, along with the two other Phoenix soldiers and the remaining seven battle nuns, were relatively safer since they were further from the core. Martins, Rizo, and Gretel, however, had been close to the wind wall, using powerful melee weapons, so they were closer to the blast’s core.
Yet, ironically, the wind wall ended up protecting them.
The shattered wind wall absorbed most of the shock wave, and the shrapnel that did scatter had lost much of its force. The three closest to the explosion, protected by power armor, suffered no serious harm. They lay flat on the ground in a plank-like position, dodging much of the shrapnel and shock wave.
At the very least, after the blast, the three of them were able to stand up without any major injuries.
Since they were unharmed, Trico inside wouldn’t be either. For a psionic of his level, his surrounding storm shield would, until his psionic power waned, be no weaker than power armor.
However, he didn’t escape without a disheveled look.
But the real problem for him was that the wind wall had broken.
Clearly, although the wind wall was Trico’s work, it was likely something he had spent a long time preparing, drawing on other powers that didn’t belong to him. Otherwise, no matter how powerful he was as a psionic, he couldn’t sustain such a strong defense for this long against such powerful attacks.
This meant that after the wind wall was destroyed, there was no chance of him rebuilding it unless he had half a month to prepare.
Now, with the obstruction finally gone, the Phoenix soldiers and battle nuns could advance to exact revenge.
Trico struggled on.
He launched a bolt of lightning at Martins, who was charging toward him the fastest.
But this time, the battle-hardened battalion leader, now prepared, wasn’t as easily hit as the nun had been earlier. Through the smoke and dim visibility, he accurately read Trico’s intent and dodged just before the lightning spell was unleashed.
The lightning missed, and Martins closed in, slashing his chainsword against the storm shield.
The shield didn’t break immediately, but the chainsword had a powerful feature: beyond the initial slash, as long as the wielder kept applying pressure, the rotating chains would continue their brutal cutting.
This was a force capable of slicing through heavy armor!
In just a second, the storm shield flickered wildly, showing signs of breaking.
In desperation, Trico launched another lightning strike.
He knew it was pointless to merely reinforce his shield with psionic energy. As long as Martins was alive, he had no chance of survival in close combat.
However, this lightning spell, though it hit, didn’t hinder Martins’ actions at all.
Martins had anticipated the High Priest’s intent. Though he couldn’t dodge it completely, he adjusted his stance so that the lightning hit squarely on his shoulder guard.
Among Star Warriors, the shoulder guard was the sturdiest part of their armor. In their combat techniques, they often used it as a shield to absorb heavy attacks.
The lightning that could kill a battle nun couldn’t penetrate Martins’ shoulder guard.
At that moment, Rizo arrived.
Swinging his priest’s staff with all his might, he shattered the already weakened storm shield, and with the staff’s gravitational field activated, struck down upon Trico.
For a psionic, physical resilience was far weaker. Under the effect of the gravitational field, Trico’s body was almost completely crushed.
Arriving just after him, Gretel thrust her Sacred Golden Halberd through the old man’s head.
With her years of experience fighting such enemies, she knew that destroying the body didn’t always kill a psionic. For some, the brain was the core, and some could even transcend the physical form, living in a state of energy—just like the lightning figure they had encountered earlier.
As the Sacred Golden Halberd pierced Trico’s head, a holy flame ignited, consuming his wicked face completely.
Gretel sniffed the air; this powerful psionic was truly dead.
Yet, the matter was far from resolved.
Gu Hang immediately sent a message to Pobov in the rear:
“No need for a second round of bombing. Almost blew me to pieces.”
Hearing this, Pobov froze.
But Gu Hang’s next words made him relax: “But, good job.”
A grin reappeared on Pobov’s face.
“See? I told you to be ruthless!”
Wait—was the Governor’s “good job” a compliment? Or was it sarcasm? As in, “You almost blew me to pieces, ‘nice job’”?
Gu Hang, however, had no time to worry about Pobov’s thoughts.
He lifted his gaze toward the Fury Owl’s avatar, which was slowly reconstituting amid the ceaseless storm.
This confirmed his earlier suspicion: killing Trico was not the key.
Or rather, they had killed him too late.
By the time they had arrived, the ritual had already reached its final stage. From a certain perspective, Trico’s actions in the latter stage meant he hadn’t cared about his own survival. For such a fanatical believer, he had fulfilled his mission, and afterward, it was merely a matter of letting loose in his final moments, hoping to wreak as much havoc as he could.
However, the mess he left behind was now Gu Hang’s biggest headache.
The storm had to end.
A prolonged typhoon with torrential rains and frequent lightning… it would devastate Revival City.
Even the current intensity of the storm was practically a natural disaster. Not to mention, the storm was growing stronger, and the lightning strikes more frequent. In this short time, Gu Hang had already observed several trees around them being struck by lightning.
He couldn’t even imagine the state of the city.
He didn’t know the limit of this storm’s growth, but he didn’t want to find out.
The regenerating beast needed to be dealt with, as did the completed ritual that sacrificed the city to the storm.
The Governor maintained a composed expression, observing the surrounding psionic dynamics, hoping to find a solution.
He also looked to Gretel and Rizo for assistance, hoping that these two, with their greater experience in such matters, might have a way.