Chapter Sixty-Six: The Border Where Ammunition and Food Are Exhausted

In truth, had it not been for a moment’s carelessness that led to most of their group being shot down by a turret-class demon, and then forced to remain in place, rapidly depleting their energy, the assault team would have already come and gone with ease, returning to the base. These soldier-class and officer-class demons were no match for the onslaught of the mechanical girls. What’s more, most of this squad consisted of high-speed models, specialists in rapid movement. Often, by the time the demons managed to surround them, the mechanical girls had already flown hundreds of meters away.

Yet, this did not mean the demons posed no threat to the mechanical girls; the primary issue was energy. If they had limitless reserves, the mechanical girls could fight endlessly and eventually exterminate the demons. But in reality, their energy storage was finite. Surrounded by demons with their energy running low, destruction became inevitable.

At that point, even Zhuang Xiaosi would have had no chance of escape. Though now her unmatched speed cut through the demons like reaping grass, this was only possible thanks to the dozen or so energy supplements delivered by Zhuang Xiaoyuan. But after advancing just a hundred meters, one of those supplements had already been depleted.

As Zhuang Xiaoyuan and her companions advanced through the demon horde toward the base, their pace gradually slackened. It wasn’t that Zhuang Xiaosi’s path-clearing slowed, nor that Zhuang Xiaoyuan could no longer maintain the corridor, but that the mechanical girls behind them were running out of energy and could no longer sustain prolonged high-speed movement.

Perhaps handing Zhuang Xiaosi’s energy supplements to the others could restore their speed for a while, but it would be futile. Without her high-speed cutting to clear the way, their overall pace would drop. Moreover, a dozen supplements were nowhere near enough to sustain the group for long; at best, it would buy only a brief reprieve. With so many assault team members, a handful of energy supplements simply wouldn’t suffice.

Thus, maintaining their formation—Zhuang Xiaosi at the fore, Zhuang Xiaoyuan slightly ahead, the others bringing up the rear—they pressed on toward the base.

“Ah, things are getting troublesome,” Zhuang Xiaoyuan muttered, casually tossing her Gatling gun into her personal armory. Its heavy rounds were spent, the weapon interface showing zero ammunition.

After discarding the Gatling, she didn’t close her armory but instead reached in and withdrew two smaller, symmetrical twin-barrel Gatling guns.

“The rattle of machine guns—now that’s a man’s romance,” she mused, offering herself the perfect excuse for relying on rapid-fire, bullet-spraying weapons, given her middling accuracy with hot weapons. With one "Flame War God" in each hand, she continued her metallic storm.

At that moment, Zhuang Xiaoyuan felt a pang of regret. Had she loaded some powerful throwable weapons—atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, neutron bombs, nuclear missiles—one toss would have obliterated swathes of demons, sparing them this slow and arduous advance.

Her mind full of scattered thoughts, the twin Flame War Gods in her hands spit dazzling tongues of fire. Their rate of fire surpassed even the heavy Gatling she’d just discarded, intensifying the power of her metallic tempest.

A fierce wind pressure formed around her, causing Zhuang Xiaoyuan to tilt slightly. But after so many battles, she had mastered stability in flight; she quickly regained her balance, the metallic storm before her undisturbed.

“How’s it going, holding up?” Without turning her head, Zhuang Xiaoyuan kept the Flame War Gods blazing, addressing the source of the wind pressure.

“No trouble, except all my backup energy is gone.” The speaker, unmistakably Zhuang Xiaosi, who had just been clearing the way, was now at her side, opening her backup energy conversion device and discarding spent supplements one by one.

“As expected, things are getting troublesome. How far from the base now?” She sighed, manipulating stray demons with her thoughts, vaporizing them with a few blasts from her Dragoon floating turrets.

The lasers from the Dragoon turrets seemed dimmer than before, their power waning. Zhuang Xiaoyuan’s own energy reserves had been depleted by half; besides flight, she had to sustain the floating turrets’ consumption.

Originally, the turrets had their own power source, but that had run out along the way. Since then, they’d been fueled by Zhuang Xiaoyuan herself. Now, each laser blast drained her own energy, and the turrets’ attacks had grown more cautious.

She had once believed they could burst back to the base in one go. Now, their advance would slow to a crawl. Though her firepower could barely open a path, it could never match the ease and breadth of Zhuang Xiaosi’s cutting.

“Three thousand eight hundred forty-five point seventy-three meters remain. We’re within communication range—I’ve contacted the backup units for support. The reply: support teams are compressing the demons’ incursion, shortening our retreat distance.”

Though all backup energy was gone, and she could no longer perform her Lightning Dance, even at normal speed Zhuang Xiaosi possessed formidable combat strength. The beam-cutting blades on her wings were retracted; the beam saber in her hands danced swiftly, dispatching demons charging from the flank.

“Three thousand, nearly four thousand meters. At this pace, it’ll take at least ten minutes. They can’t hold out that long,” Zhuang Xiaoyuan observed. Glancing back, she saw that aside from a few on the periphery, most mechanical girls’ bodies had grown noticeably stiff. They were minimizing their movements, conserving energy.

“…If we could soar into the skies and advance without obstacles, a burst of speed might be enough to reach the base defenses before our energy is completely spent,” Zhuang Xiaosi noted, aware of the team’s dire state. Any further delay, and they’d be swallowed by the endless tide of demons.

“But if we climb high, we’ll enter the turret-class demons’ line of sight—we might die faster. Wait, Xiaosi, you just said if we burst forward, they could reach the defenses? Most are near their limit; do they have enough energy for such a burst?” She dismissed the idea of ascending, but Zhuang Xiaosi’s mention of a surge without obstacles sparked a new idea in Zhuang Xiaoyuan’s mind…