86: Chapter 86 What?! The Guardians of Light can fly planes too!

In the end, Chu Xinghe brought those ten Light Guardians along.

It wasn't that he had much confidence in these bare summoned beasts, but rather that he had made a very realistic calculation:

First, the Lin Xiao Fighter Jets' position in the fleet was basically equivalent to disposable napkins—cheap, plentiful, and always available.

Even if these ten Light Guardians crashed as soon as they left, it would just be another line saying "training aircraft loss" on the battle damage report; even Major General Zhao Yu wouldn't spare it a second glance.

Second, although his junior Li Yuan only had a B-rank talent, the absurdity of his "babies" was obvious to everyone in North Star.

They could use light shields to tank Elia's Moonlight Condensing Ice, use light swords to cleave through alloy training pillars, and even cooperate with researchers from the Weapons Research Institute for experiments... You're telling me they can fly planes?

Chu Xinghe rubbed his chin and thought for a moment.

It didn't seem entirely impossible?

Third, and most importantly—

"Since they're already here."

Chu Xinghe summarized the current situation over the communication channel.

"Anyway, ten more starfighters out there is better than ten fewer. Whether they hit anything is another story, but at least they can help draw some fire from the Zerg Swarm—I say, bugs, look over here! Freshly baked sitting ducks! Don't miss out as you pass by!"

Luo Lan rolled her eyes in the adjacent starfighter. "Senior Brother, your pre-battle mobilization sounds like hawking at a vegetable market."

"As long as it's effective." Chu Xinghe pushed the control stick. "Let's go, rookies—oh wait, the only rookie is you. Let's go, Luo Lan, and those ten... uh, Mister Lights?"

The engine indicator lights of the ten Lin Xiao Fighter Jets piloted by the Light Guardians lit up in perfect unison.

Blue-white light circulated within the cockpits, illuminating those faceless visages composed of pure light elements. They sat in the pilot seats with postures so standard they looked like they were copied from a flight manual, their light-forged fingers resting on the control sticks.

No response.

No nodding.

Not even a hint of eye contact.

They simply hovered quietly on the launch rails, waiting for instructions.

Chu Xinghe suddenly felt a bit creeped out.

"Li Yuan," he switched to a private channel, "are these babies of yours... always this quiet?"

Li Yuan's matter-of-fact voice came from the other end. "Isn't being quiet a good thing? Do you want them chatting with you while they fly?"

"...That won't be necessary."

"Don't worry, Senior Brother Chu." Li Yuan's voice carried the confidence of a parent who knows their child best. "They are very good."

Chu Xinghe looked at those ten starfighters that were as quiet as tombstones, then thought about the definition of the word "good," and decided not to dwell on it further.

"Fine." He took a deep breath. "All units attention, stay close to my formation. Maintain a delta formation after exiting the bay. The target area is the Zerg Swarm's left wing—that's where the density of Tyranid Warriors is highest; our mission is point-to-point elimination. As for the Mutalisks and Corruptors..."

He paused, looking at the ten Light Guardian starfighters.

"You guys do as you see fit. Just don't crash into a Leviathan."

The orders were issued.

The isolation doors of the launch tunnel slowly opened, revealing the burning starry sky outside.

Chu Xinghe was the first to charge out.

Luo Lan followed closely behind.

Then came the ten starfighters piloted by the Light Guardians—they started their engines almost simultaneously, sliding out of the tunnel with perfectly consistent acceleration, performing a sharp side roll in mid-air to adjust their posture before precisely slotting into the reserved positions in the formation.

Ten units.

Moving as if they were a single person.

Chu Xinghe raised an eyebrow in his cockpit.

"Whoa."

This was getting interesting.

---

The moment they entered the battlefield, the communication channel was flooded with various voices.

"Port thirty degrees! Mutalisk swarm! Count is two hundred!"

"Copy, Units 3 and 4, crossfire with me—fire!"

"Watch out below! Hydralisk breath! Shield energy down by 7%!"

"Evade! Pull up! Pull up!"

"Damn, these bugs never end..."

"No kidding, their Mothership is laying eggs back there. You think this is a game where you clear one wave and it's over?"

Chu Xinghe and Luo Lan's formation cut into the Zerg Swarm's left wing like two scalpels. Their target was clear: Tyranid Warriors.

Those were high-tier Zerg units with sizes comparable to small warships, looking like a crude amalgamation of a crab, a scorpion, and a meat grinder—

Thick biological carapaces, four pairs of sharp bone limbs, and a tail capable of firing high-energy particle beams.

Each Tyranid Warrior was guarded by dozens of Mutalisks and hundreds of Zerglings, like mobile miniature fortresses.

Against these things, the machine guns of ordinary starfighters were no different from tickling.

They needed heavy firepower.

"Luo Lan, mark target three," Chu Xinghe's voice was calm. "I'll draw its attention; you flank it and hit the joints."

"Understood."

The two starfighters traced two elegant arcs in the sky, performing a dance of death. Chu Xinghe's starfighter dove, the rapid-fire particle cannon under its fuselage spitting out a searing barrage that struck the Tyranid Warrior's frontal carapace, splashing a series of sickly green biological sparks.

The Tyranid Warrior was enraged.

Its massive body twisted, its tail rose, and a high-energy particle beam began to charge—a ghostly blue light gathered at the tip of its tail.

Now.

Luo Lan's starfighter cut in from a lateral blind spot, and the twin plasma cannon pods under her wings fired simultaneously. Two plasma spheres over ten meters in diameter whistled out, precisely hitting the joints of the Tyranid Warrior's back carapace.

"Boom—!!"

The biological carapace melted and ruptured under the impact of the high-temperature plasma, exposing the soft tissue inside. The Tyranid Warrior let out a silent neural shriek, its body twitching violently.

"Finish it," Chu Xinghe said flatly.

A third starfighter—it was unclear which squadron the pilot belonged to—streaked overhead, dropping a high-explosive missile.

The fire from the explosion swallowed the Tyranid Warrior's upper body.

Target cleared.

"Next." Chu Xinghe didn't even look at the falling wreckage, pushing his control stick to charge toward the second Tyranid Warrior.

The entire formation moved like a precision killing machine, steadily advancing through the Zerg Swarm.

Meanwhile...

The ten starfighters piloted by the Light Guardians silently broke away from the main formation after entering the battlefield.

They didn't touch the Tyranid Warriors.

Nor did they engage those massive, heavily armed Corruptors.

Their objective was very specific.

Mutalisks.

And the occasional Bone-eating Skate passing by.

"These guys..." Luo Lan glanced at her radar during a lull in the fighting, her expression a bit strange. "Are they really only hunting Mutalisks?"

On the radar screen, the ten green dots representing the Light Guardian starfighters were weaving frantically through the outskirts of the Zerg Swarm.

Their flight paths were completely irregular, sometimes diving, sometimes rolling, and sometimes making sharp turns that were nearly right angles—

Human pilots needed to consider G-force, but summoned babies did not.

They simply flew their starfighters and dove headfirst into the densest area of Mutalisks.

And then—

It began.

The first Light Guardian starfighter performed a side-slip, dodging the acid projectiles spat out by three Mutalisks, while the light rapid-fire particle cannons under its nose fired simultaneously.

"Pew pew pew—"

Fired at point-blank range with no time to react, the three particle beams directly hit the heads of the three Mutalisks.

The Mutalisks' bodies simply stiffened before they drifted limply in the vacuum like puppets with their strings cut.

Their carapaces were intact; there was only a scorched perforation through their heads.

Immediately after, another starfighter piloted by a Light Guardian knocked aside a Mutalisk's corpse, using it as momentary cover to shoot down the next one.

Watching this group of Light Guardian starfighters darting back and forth among the swarms of Mutalisk remains, using them as cover while beams of light shot out in all directions, their killing efficiency was extraordinarily high.

"Holy crap..." Luo Lan couldn't help but marvel over the channel, "Li Yuan's babies don't have some kind of corpse-mutilation fetish, do they?"

"Don't worry about them!" Chu Xinghe reminded her, "I didn't expect these babies' piloting skills to be this good!"

Indeed.

The Light Guardians' piloting skills could no longer be described as merely "good."

It was something that transcended the realm of "skill"—their control over the starfighters' performance reached physical limits, every maneuver was precise to the millimeter, and every shot was like the optimal solution from a supercomputer's ballistic simulation. Even more absurdly, the coordination between the ten starfighters was as if they shared a single brain.

No communication.

No gestures.

Not even eye contact.

But they could tacitly form a kill-net: one starfighter would draw fire while two others provided crossfire to finish the target; if an acid barrage appeared ahead, the flank starfighters would intercept it early with machine guns; if a Mutalisk tried to ambush from behind, there was always a starfighter that would "just happen" to complete a turn and blow it up with its tail cannon.

Smooth as silk.

Pleasing to the eye.

And bone-chilling.

Chu Xinghe glanced at the data panel again during a break in the battle.

In just this short while, those ten Light Guardian starfighters had accumulated a total of... three hundred and twenty-seven Mutalisks and forty-one Bone-eating Skates.

Losses: Zero.

"Li Yuan," Chu Xinghe switched to a private channel, his tone complex, "which flight school did these babies of yours attend for their advanced studies?"

There was a two-second silence on the other end.

Then Li Yuan's innocent voice came through: "Huh? They should be... naturally gifted?"

Chu Xinghe: "...Fine."

He decided not to ask any further.

There are some things where the less you know, the better you sleep.

However, seeing the Light Guardians darting back and forth among the insect corpses, Li Yuan's eyes were also glowing.

As if he had the same necrophilia!