99: Chapter 99 Harpoon Hit Repairs Weld! Lv.3 Fortress Opens a Hole

The Harpoon trailed a plume of steam in the twilight, plunging straight into the center of that repaired armor plate.

A distance of one hundred and fifty meters.

A flight time of zero point six seconds.

The barb hit its mark.

The sound of metal clashing rang out from the wall.

The Harpoon's solid steel tip pierced the weld seam between the repaired armor plate and the original armor.

Embedding depth.

It could penetrate.

The hardness of the repair weld was less than half that of the original armor.

The barb caught.

The delay fuse began its countdown.

Three.

Two.

One.

Boom!

An internal explosion.

Fire and thick smoke erupted from the middle section of the wall.

The repaired armor plate was forced open from the inside. A solid steel plate, three meters wide and two meters high, was violently pushed out by the powerful impact, tilting outward at a forty-five-degree angle and exposing the load-bearing structure inside the wall.

Two structural ribs snapped.

A gap, one point five meters wide and one point two meters high, appeared in the middle of the left side of the lv.3 fortress's wall.

It wasn't huge.

But it was enough.

"Nice!"

Lin Wan let out a soft exclamation from the Planting Area.

Lu Chen did not slow down.

The Polaris swept past the left wall of the lv.3 fortress at a distance of one hundred and fifty meters, its speed still maintained at eighty-five kilometers per hour.

He didn't charge into that gap.

The Polaris's eleven-meter-wide body couldn't fit through a one-and-a-half-meter-wide hole.

But he could shove something inside.

The Mechanical Arm.

The left Mechanical Arm shot out within its eight-meter radius.

The metal claw passed through that gap.

It reached inside.

The claw felt a steam line inside the wall.

Full hydraulic power.

Creeeak!

The steam line was torn apart.

High-temperature steam gushed into the wall's interior from the rupture.

A sharp hiss echoed from inside the fortress.

It was the sound of a steam line leaking.

Lu Chen's Mechanical Arm completed the grab and pull within a second, then immediately retracted.

The Polaris swept past the left side of the lv.3 fortress, maintaining its speed as it charged toward the rear of the fortress.

Commander Tieji's voice came through the communicator.

"You tore my steam line?"

There was no longer any mercy in Commander Tieji's voice.

Lu Chen heard the change.

Commander Tieji's tone held a gloominess born of being offended.

"The number three heating line on the left side is broken," Commander Tieji's speech slowed by half a beat. "Do you know what that line is for?"

"Heating."

"Correct. You've cut off the heating to my left-side cabins."

Commander Tieji paused.

"In an external environment of minus fifty degrees, twenty-three people will have to persist in combat without heating."

"Then you should be thanking me, shouldn't you?" Lu Chen's speaking rate was no different than if he were discussing the weather. "How much cooler it is to fight in the summer without the heat on."

The other end of the communicator went silent for two seconds.

"Boy, you have provoked me."

"Are you a good shot when you're angry?"

Commander Tieji did not answer.

His answer was an order.

The fortress's sixteen 105mm and four 150mm guns simultaneously turned their muzzles, all aiming toward the direction where the Polaris had disappeared.

Lu Chen had already circled to the direct rear of the fortress.

The rear.

Exhaust system.

Engine bay.

The rear wall of the lv.3 fortress was thinner than the front and sides.

Because in normal combat, no one would attack a lv.3 from behind.

The rear of a lv.3 was protected by its escorting vehicle group.

But Commander Tieji had no escorting vehicle group today.

The Ice-Rift Swarm was wiped out.

The Icebreaker Swarm was wiped out.

Commander Tieji only had the fortress itself.

The Polaris turned around three hundred meters directly behind the fortress.

Face to face.

He saw the structure of the fortress's rear.

Four sets of large exhaust ports were venting steam and exhaust gases.

The area around the exhaust ports was covered in thin-walled armor.

Thin-walled.

At least half as thin as the front wall.

He issued the command to load fragmentation grenades.

"System, load the fifth round of fragmentation grenades."

[Consumed 50 Truth Points. fragmentation grenades: 12 units pre-loaded for the fifth round. Current balance: 700 points.]

Twelve fragmentation rounds were aimed at the exhaust port area of the rear wall.

He pulled the trigger.

Thump, thump, thump, thump, thump, thump!

The fragmentation grenades detonated above the rear wall.

Metal fragments peppered the thin-walled armor of the exhaust ports.

This time, it wasn't just about blinding.

The thin-walled armor couldn't withstand the close-range saturation of fragmentation rounds.

The protective covers of two exhaust ports were pierced by fragments.

The exhaust ports were exposed.

Lu Chen rotated the Heavy Machine Gun turret to the front.

The Automatic Target-Locking Auxiliary System locked the crosshairs onto the exposed exhaust ports.

A three-hundred-round burst.

Ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch-ch!

Three hundred rounds poured into the holes of the exhaust ports within six seconds.

The bullets ricocheted and shattered inside the engine exhaust pipes. The sound of metal clashing emanated from inside the fortress, as dense as someone throwing three hundred steel balls into an iron bucket.

Black smoke billowed from the exhaust ports.

The sound of the engine changed.

The originally low, steady roar turned into intermittent gasps.

The exhaust lines were blocked.

The engine exhaust couldn't get out, backpressure soared, and power output plummeted.

The fortress's speed began to drop from fifteen kilometers per hour.

Twelve.

Ten.

Eight.

"Commander Tieji, your engine is coughing."

The sound of Commander Tieji slamming the table hard came through the communicator.

"All guns, turn to the rear! Turn that little car into scrap metal for me!"

The turrets on the fortress walls began to rotate backward.

But the turret rotation speed of a lv.3 fortress was far inferior to that of a Lv.2 vehicle.

The larger the platform and the more complex the mechanical structure, the slower the rotation.

Turning from the direct front to the direct rear took more than fifteen seconds.

The Polaris would not give it fifteen seconds.

Lu Chen slammed the supercharger to the floor.

Eighty-five kilometers per hour.

He charged from the rear toward the right side of the fortress.

Cycled half a lap.

Returned to the left side.

Returned to the position of that gap.

The fortress's turrets rotated, chasing the Polaris's movement trajectory.

Always half a beat slow.

The Polaris's speed was eighty-five kilometers.

The fortress's turret rotation speed couldn't keep up.

Before the muzzles could catch the Polaris, Lu Chen had already circled from the right side to the left.

The one-and-a-half-meter-wide gap appeared in his vision again.

Steam was still gushing out from the broken line.

The second Harpoon.

Lu Chen placed the crosshairs on the edge of the gap at a distance of one hundred and fifty meters.

Not hitting the center.

Hitting the edge.

To widen the opening.

His index finger pressed down.

Bang!

The Harpoon hit the edge of the original armor on the right side of the gap.

Embedded.

Delay fuse.

Three seconds.

Boom!

The internal explosion expanded the gap from one point five meters to three meters.

Two load-bearing ribs were blown apart.

The overall structure of the wall showed a noticeable sagging at this location.

"City Lord! The hole got bigger!" Lin Wan's voice came from the Planting Area.

"One more time."