166: Claustigern

High in the stratosphere of the F-81-03A planet in the F-81 Star System, a streak of red and white light was tearing through the sea of clouds with an incredibly violent posture.

For Ilya, who was currently controlling this bionic body via a quantum neural link, this was an unprecedented experience.

She had originally been a genius brain that only stared at data and holographic screens, an observer trapped in a weak, mortal body.

But here, ten thousand meters above, she was the wind, the thunder, the master of this sky.

"The atmosphere is a fluid, and it is also resistance, but in the face of absolute power, it is the ladder to freedom."

Ilya recited silently in her heart.

She did not activate the full power of the anti-gravity engines, gliding through the air relying only on this steel frame.

At first, the speed was maintained at subsonic levels. She could clearly feel the airflow sliding over the surface of her streamlined combat suit. That sensation of real resistance feedback was converted into neural signals via sensors, making her feel as if she had turned into a flying bird.

"Accelerate."

With a thought, the output power of the miniature dark matter reactor inside her body was fine-tuned.

Boom!

A dull sonic boom exploded behind her, and a white sonic boom cloud instantly burst open at her waist.

Breaking the sound barrier.

The world became quiet in that instant, because the sound had already been left behind her.

"Mach 1.5... Wave drag is beginning to increase significantly, the aerodynamic center is shifting backward." Ilya calmly analyzed every piece of data fed back by her body. Some of this data could be directly perceived by her simulated nerves, while others were displayed in her field of vision. This thrill of personally verifying aerodynamic principles fascinated her.

"But this is not enough, far from enough."

"Continue accelerating!"

The speed number in the upper left of her vision began to jump wildly.

Mach 1... Mach 3... Mach 5!

The scenery around her began to undergo strange changes. The air was no longer a transparent medium; under the compression of extremely high speed, the air molecules in front of Ilya's head were violently compressed and rubbed, causing the temperature to rise sharply.

A ball of scorching plasma began to form around Ilya's body. It was a red firelight, and she, wrapped within it, looked like a fiery meteor crashing through the atmosphere.

"Blackout effect." Ilya looked at the instantaneous communication interference warning that appeared in the corner of her vision, a smile curling at the corner of her mouth. "The plasma sheath shields electromagnetic waves, but in the face of quantum communication, this shielding is meaningless."

She reached out, her fingertips grazing the layer of high-temperature plasma enveloping her. The sensors at her fingertips told her that the external temperature had already exceeded 2000 degrees Celsius.

"Is this the pressure a spaceship endures when re-entering the atmosphere? I could only look at data before, but now I can experience it personally."

This was the romance of physics. All the formulas, all the theories, were transformed into the ultimate sensory stimulation at this moment.

She no longer needed to calculate the Reynolds number, nor did she need to simulate boundary layer separation, because she herself was the center of all these physical phenomena.

"The flight test data has been collected enough."

Ilya performed a sudden stop in the air that violated the laws of inertia; the immense G-force had absolutely no effect on this machine body.

She hovered in mid-air, her red eyes looking through the clouds, locking onto that huge canyon surrounded by mountains on the ground.

There, a massive biological heat source reaction was as conspicuous as a bonfire in the dark night.

"Found you, big lizard."

Ilya adjusted her posture, head down, and dove toward that canyon.

...

Kalamo Canyon, an area within tens of kilometers here was a forbidden zone for most creatures.

Klaus Difan was a newly adult Red Dragon. Although in the long life cycle of the dragon race it was still just a young dragon that had recently left the nest, its massive body, over twenty-five meters in length and with a wingspan approaching thirty meters, was enough for it to look down upon this wasteland.

At this moment, it was lying in front of its nest, which was covered with gold coins and glowing gemstones, enjoying the warm afternoon sun.

For a Red Dragon, there was nothing more pleasant than taking a nap on a pile of treasure.

However, this pleasant time was completely ended in the next second.

Without any warning, a terrifying wind pressure descended from the sky.

BOOM!!!

An earth-shattering roar exploded in the center of the canyon.

Klaus Difan was jolted, its entire body bouncing. It opened those huge golden slit pupils in terror, only to see that on the open ground in front of its nest, the originally flat rocky ground had been smashed into a huge crater with a diameter of several tens of meters.

Dust filled the air, gravel flew, and a scorching wave of air mixed with the lingering heat of plasma rushed toward its face.

"ROAR!!!"

The annoyance of being woken up, combined with the anger of having its territory violated, made Klaus Difan let out a deafening roar.

It stood up abruptly, its huge leathery wings spreading open, blocking the sunlight, its crimson scales flashing with a dangerous light amidst the dust.

"Who is it? Who dares to disturb the afternoon nap of the great Klaus Difan!"

It roared in the majestic Dragon language, and the depths of its throat were already beginning to brew scorching dragon breath.

The dust gradually dispersed.

Klaus Difan widened its eyes. It had originally expected to see another giant dragon coming to seize territory or some blind giant-race powerhouse.

But what appeared in the center of the crater was actually just a... little thing?

It was a human female that looked smaller than its teeth, with silver hair, wearing a strange tight-fitting suit, and was nonchalantly floating up slowly from the bottom of the crater, brushing the dust off her body.

"Human?"

Klaus Difan was stunned for a moment, then immediately felt a sense of humiliated anger.

A mere human actually caused such a huge commotion? And still dared to stand in front of the great Red Dragon without running away?

"Death-seeking bug!"

The Red Dragon's massive head thrust out suddenly, its blood-red maw opened, sharp fangs like intersecting swords, carrying a foul-smelling hot wind, as it bit down toward the little person floating in mid-air.

It wanted to swallow this little thing that disturbed its beautiful dream in one bite, without even needing to chew!

Facing this huge dragon head pressing down like a small mountain, inside Ilya's bionic body, the fear instinct towards giant objects originally belonging to human genes instantly activated, making her subconsciously want to retreat.

After all, in the cognition of any normal human, facing a Tyrannosaurus-level monster with its mouth wide open, fear was a matter of course.

But the next second, the calm prompt from the Navigator and the endless energy feedback from the dark matter reactor inside her body made her instantly sober.

"I am a superman now!"

Suddenly, there was a sense of eagerness to try.

She did not dodge.

At the moment the big mouth was about to close, Ilya's right hand, which was insignificant compared to the dragon head, clenched into a fist. The seemingly soft, boneless little fist carried unreasonable kinetic energy as she swung it fiercely toward the dragon's nose.

Thud!

A dull, extreme sound of physical impact resounded through the canyon.

Time seemed to freeze at this moment.

Then Klaus Difan's massive head was as if struck by an invisible cannonball, suddenly tilting to one side. That immense force carried its neck and even its entire upper body, shifting it several meters to the side, slamming heavily into the rock wall beside it.

Gravel tumbled, and the Red Dragon wailed.

"Awooo?!"

Klaus Difan was stunned. It felt as if its nose had slammed into a mountain, and the intense pain made its tears almost burst out.

Before it could react to what had happened, that small silver figure moved again.

Ilya slightly bent her legs, then kicked off the ground fiercely.

Bang!

The ground cracked again, and she shot up vertically like a cannonball, instantly jumping to a height of over ten meters, arriving directly in front of the Red Dragon's just-raised forehead.

"Off you go!"

Ilya shouted delicately. This time she still did not use full strength, but she still used the force of several hundred tons.

That small fist, which looked like a mosquito in the Red Dragon's eyes, fell again, smashing solidly onto the brow bone between its eyes.

Clang—

This punch actually produced the sound of metal clashing.

Klaus Difan only felt a buzzing in its brain, golden stars dancing before its eyes, and the whole world spinning.

Its massive body couldn't help but fall backward, crashing to the ground, shaking the canyon again.

"This... this is impossible..."

The Red Dragon shook its dizzy head, struggling to prop up its upper body. Its originally majestic slit pupils were now filled with terror and confusion.

It looked at the silver-haired human standing not far in front of it, its brain full of question marks.

This is a human?

When did humans evolve into this kind of monster? Even those legendary dragon-slaying warriors had to rely on magic, swords, and team coordination just to scratch its feet; where was there ever this kind of thing where someone comes up and beats a dragon until it's dazed with two punches?

"What on earth are you?"

Klaus Difan subconsciously took a few steps back, while spitting out some syllables that sounded like cursing.

"Hmm? You can speak?" Ilya's translator captured those syllables and translated them.

"You're the thing! Your whole family is a thing!"

Klaus Difan, while cursing to bolster its courage, quickly increased the distance from Ilya. Its not-too-stupid brain quickly made a judgment: it couldn't win in melee combat; this little thing's strength was ridiculously high.

Since physical attacks don't work, then use magic!

"Humble reptile! Taste the wrath of the dragon race!"

Klaus Difan took a deep breath, its chest swelling high, the biological reactor inside its body running at full power, and a dazzling red light lit up in the depths of its throat.

"ROAR—"

A cone of dragon breath with a temperature reaching thousands of degrees Celsius gushed out like breached magma, instantly completely submerging the location where Ilya was.

The scorching flames raged in the canyon, burning the surrounding rocks into a glass-like state, and the air twisted violently due to the high temperature.

Klaus Difan continued to breathe for a full ten seconds, until it felt its throat go a bit dry and the fuel in its lungs was about to run out before it stopped.

"Hmph, dead, right? Turned to ash, right?"

It panted, looking triumphantly at the sea of fire that was still burning. In its cognition, no creature could survive under such sustained high-temperature dragon breath; even steel would be melted into molten iron.

However, as the flames gradually dispersed and the dust settled.

Klaus Difan's huge jaw completely dropped in shock.

In the center of that scorched land, that silver-haired figure was still floating quietly half a meter above the ground.

She didn't even change her posture.

Let alone being burned to ash, that seemingly thin tight-fitting suit on her didn't even have a thread scorched, and that long silver hair remained smooth and beautiful, gently fluttering in the breeze.

A few centimeters around her body, a layer of faint transparent film was slowly dissipating; that was the personal shield of this bionic robot.

Ilya reached out her hand, gently patting the non-existent dust on her shoulder, then raised her head, looking calmly with those crimson eyes at the dumbfounded Red Dragon.

"Is that it?"

She tilted her head, her tone carrying a trace of disappointment, and the voice converted through the built-in translator was full of mockery.

"I thought there would be some high-energy particle beam or plasma jet, but it turns out it's just a high-temperature methane mixture with a little accelerant? The temperature is only 1500 degrees? Even without the shield, it wouldn't even soften my outer coating."

Klaus Difan's body froze.

Its worldview as a dragon collapsed completely at this moment; it couldn't win in strength, and it couldn't kill her with dragon breath.

What the hell is there to fight with!

Although this newly adult Red Dragon had a violent temper, it was not stupid.

On the contrary, as a long-lived species, the dragon race has extremely flexible moral bottom lines and survival wisdom.

After confirming that this little thing in front of it was absolutely unbeatable, Klaus Difan's brain completed a role transition from "rampaging behemoth" to "docile pet" in less than 0.1 seconds.

It looked at Ilya's eyes, which seemed to be starting to charge up, and that little fist that was slowly clenching.

Thump!

Without any hesitation.

This massive mountain of flesh landed on all fours with unprecedented agility, then its entire body lay prone on the ground, its huge head pressed tightly against the ground, even fawningly rubbing its nose against the dust on the ground.

That pair of wings that once blotted out the sky also tucked obediently on its back, its tail curled up cautiously, looking exactly like a large red dog that had made a mistake and was begging for mercy.

"Surrender! I surrender!"

Klaus Difan shouted loudly in fawning Dragon language.

"Don't hit me! Let's talk it out!"

"I have an eight-thousand-year-old mother above, and a dragon egg that hasn't hatched below; just now I was just joking with you! Really! This is just a unique way for the dragon race to say hello!"

"Look at your mighty figure, this powerful strength, you must be some deity descended to earth, right?"

"As long as you don't kill me, I am willing to offer all my treasures! Oh no, half... one-third!"

Looking at this Red Dragon in front of her that instantly groveled and had no integrity whatsoever, Ilya was stunned.

Her raised fist stopped in mid-air, and for a moment she didn't know whether she should smash it down.

"This... this is the legendary Red Dragon?"

She complained to the Navigator in the communication channel.

"How does it feel even more cowardly than the husky I used to raise at home?"

Ilya helplessly put down her hand, slowly floating down to the front of the Red Dragon's big head, crossing her arms, and looking down at that huge dragon eye that was stealing glances at her.

"Since you are so sensible, I will spare your life."

"However..."

She pointed at the mountain of treasure behind the Red Dragon, and then pointed at the Red Dragon itself.

"From now on, you, and your treasure, are all requisitioned by me."

"We are going to conduct an in-depth... academic research."

Klaus Difan looked at that demonic smile, and although it didn't know what "academic research" was, it instinctively shivered.

But in order to survive, it still nodded desperately.

"No problem! You are the boss! You can study whatever posture you want!"