Chapter 362: Thunder King Qiao Ting!
Translator: ryuxenji Editor: H2dH2mr
Ling Lan carefully controlled her body temperature. At this time, she was quite grateful that her innate talent was Ice Affinity, allowing her to make her body temperature match the temperature of the surroundings or even lower. If she had not had this ability, her only option right now would have been to retreat out of the tunnel immediately.
"Eh?" A surprised cry suddenly rang out from behind the metal door. This gave Ling Lan a fright as she thought she had been discovered.
This surprised cry was even louder than the voices of conversation prior to this. Ling Lan knew that the other must have been using the speakers of the mecha so that all the other mecha masters could hear him. This was the reality without the presence of cheat code Little Four — members from different battle clans could not use the clan-specific comms channel to communicate. This proved that these people were not all from the same battle clan.
"Regiment Commander, what's wrong?" Hearing this startled cry, everyone inside the room reflexively paused, and someone soon spoke up to ask.
"I found that there is quite a crowd now in the advanced mecha section at the front of the storehouse. Quite a few mecha have already been activated," their regiment commander replied. It looked like after he successfully activated the ace mecha, he had discovered the situation in the mecha storehouse under the sensor prompting of the mecha A.I..
"Actually having the same idea as us? Looks like quite a few people have come to the same conclusion as you, Regiment Commander, not optimistic about the outcome of this battle," someone suddenly exclaimed.
"The military academy is a lair of crouching tigers and hidden dragons 1 — for someone to think the same as me is not unusual," responded the regiment commander dispassionately. This injected explanation from the side dampened his curiosity quite a bit. Moreover, those others were only within the mecha storehouse area and had only gotten as far as the advanced mecha section at most. It could be imagined that these people were not very high level in terms of mecha operation. If they were already at the level of special-class operator, they should have managed to make their way to this area.
With this thought, the regiment commander tossed his discovery of these people to the back of his mind. He paused and then asked those present, "Are you all ready? If everything is ready, I'll activate the launch port tunnel now."
"Regiment Commander, I'm OK!"
"Regiment Commander, I'm ready."
"Regiment Commander, everything is good to go."
Soon, there was a messy chorus of responses. Seeing everyone give the OK, the regiment commander activated the launch port.
Ling Lan sensed that the regiment commander's attention was no longer on the outside, so she silently asked Little Four whether he could project the situation inside to her. Little Four told her it was no problem — Ling Lan's current level of spiritual power was enough to support this distance of long-range infiltration. Not long after, a video feed of the situation inside was displayed in Ling Lan's mind-space.
Inside the metal doors, it was still an extremely vast mecha storehouse. To both sides of the doors were many neat rows of black mecha. Although there were some minor alterations in particular spots on these mecha, overall, they were largely the same. Each mecha gave off a strong sense of fearsome power.
Ling Lan did a rough count. Each side had about 80 mecha, so there were about 160 mecha total. It could be guaranteed that in the entire academy, there were actually not that many students who had already achieved special-class operator status. Based on a distribution of one person per mecha, there would at most be 160 people or so. Besides, the military academy would of course prepare a few extra just in case. Otherwise, if someone suddenly advanced to special-class operator status, without a special-class mecha to match, the title of First Men's Military Academy would truly become a joke.
Ling Lan was now well aware that this type of black mecha that differed from the standard Federation mecha was actually the Federation's special-class mecha. At special class, mecha would begin to display signs of personalisation. This was because at this stage, the skills and techniques of operators would shift from the original regulated movements into their own personalised style of operation. However, at this point, their style would not be properly developed yet. As regular advanced mecha could only accept standard commands, they could not satisfy the demands of an operator's personalised operation style. Yet an ace mecha provided too much freedom in its controls that a special-class operator who had just stepped into the world of personalised operation would not be able to handle it well.
Under these circumstances, in order for these exceptional control seedlings to smoothly break through and advance to ace mecha master status, after much dedicated research and design by several generations of mecha engineers, the Federation finally created this sort of special-class mecha to bridge the gap between advanced mecha and ace mecha. Thus, special-class mecha were not completely outside the scope of standardised mecha, but at the same time, they also possessed some individualistic characteristics like ace mecha.
Back during the assassination attempt on Ling Lan when she was six, that team of black mecha which had appeared to help her was in fact a Federation mecha battle clan of special-class operators. However, up till now, Ling Lan still had not been able to find out who it was exactly who had helped her.
Ling Lan saw these tall and mighty mecha, and she understood why this secret storehouse needed to be installed with a launch tunnel of its own. The passage she had entered to get here did not have enough height or room to let these mecha walk out.
Of course, what made Ling Lan drool with want was not these mecha; right across from the metal doors stood a row of just five mecha. Each of these mecha looked different, possessing clearly unique characteristics of its own. One of these mecha had already been activated at present and had been piloted out of its original fixed secured dock.
Ling Lan saw a long-range laser gun, which was about two-thirds the mecha's height, slung across the mecha's back, as well as a standard beam gun equipped on the mecha, and she knew that this mecha was primarily a long-range attack type.
That aside, the launch port the other had mentioned was to the right-hand side of the metal doors. There was a circular tunnel there with enough space inside to accommodate four mecha. Right now, the access door to the tunnel had been opened. A special-class mecha at the forefront walked through it and the access door was quickly shut. When the three warning lights over the door all turned green, a deep, dull sound could be heard ...
"Boom!" Ling Lan felt a strong shockwave rush over her where she stood. Immediately afterwards, the mecha inside the launch port was launched high up into the air by a large force, springing up several dozens of metres in one shot. In the instant it was launched into the air, the mecha's engines began to roar. Borrowing the force from the launch and the power of its thrusters, the mecha instantly shot out from the launch port tunnel to fly above the military academy ...
It looked like the people of Leiting were already familiar with this type of launch system. They walked into the port one by one to be launched into the skies. The final one to enter the port was the regiment commander controlling the ace mecha. Recalling the rumours she had heard a while back, Ling Lan could already confirm that this regiment commander must be the Thunder King Qiao Ting who had successfully advanced to become an ace operator.
For some reason, after Qiao Ting had entered the tunnel, right when the automatic doors were about to close, the head of his mecha abruptly turned to look in the direction of the metal doors. This unexpected action startled Ling Lan — had the other sensed her?
Very soon, the automatic doors slid shut and she could no longer see the silhouette of the mecha. As expected, a few seconds later, Qiao Ting was launched out of the port like the other special-class operators. Only then did Ling Lan relax.
Still, just to be sure, Ling Lan quietly waited for about a minute before approaching the metal door. Little Four checked and found that the electrical systems of this metal door had not been tampered with. Perhaps after reaching this point, the other party had been afraid that the launch port inside the room would be affected if they destroyed the systems here. Thus, they had chosen to enter normally without applying brute force.
As long as the systems were working normally, Ling Lan could just walk in easy as a breeze with the help of the cheat code Little Four. As she passed by the special-class mecha, she found herself feeling somewhat regretful that none of the New Cadet Regiment members had reached the level of special-class operator. She suddenly thought of that special-class operator friend of the leopard — if he joined her team, then he would have been able to come operate these mecha.
Ling Lan's aim right now was naturally not the special-class mecha; her objective was those few ace mecha. Being able to operate an ace mecha in real life was something Ling Lan had been dreaming of. Back then on planet Demonbeast, the mecha Ling Lan had been operating was actually not an ace mecha but a special-class mecha.
In the military, special-class mecha were lumped together under the term ace mecha, with only the words 'secondary' or 'substitute' added to the title. Those three 'ace' mecha she had finished off then had also only been special-class operators of Twilight. After a period of baptism in war, special-class operators would gradually form and perfect their individual operation style and techniques, which would allow them to officially ascend to ace operator status. This was why they were called 'substitute aces' by the ground forces.
It should be said that Ling Lan was very lucky that she had not truly encountered true ace operators back then. Otherwise, with her barely formed operation style, even if she had only been up against one battle-experienced ace operator, she would have been hard-pressed to win, not to mention that she had been up against three mecha operators back then.
Since Qiao Ting had taken one of the ace mecha, there were only four mecha remaining. Still, Ling Lan was transfixed by them, staring at them with abnormal excitement.
Aside from appearing humanoid like the other mecha, the leftmost mecha had two wings sprouting from its back at a diagonal angle. Based on Ling Lan's knowledge, this should be a transformer-type mecha. In other words, it would become a humanoid mecha at close range, and transform into a flying mecha when attacking at long range. It could be considered one of the more balanced mecha.
This mecha's specialty was speed. None of the other ace mecha here would be able to match it in terms of speed; even its close-range combat manoeuvres would be based on speed. However, what would showcase its speed best was when it transformed into its aviation mode. At that time, putting its entire power into it, at top speed, it would be able to draw away or pull in close in an instant.
This would guarantee that an enemy would be unable to ditch it regardless if they were close-range mecha or long-range mecha. At the same time, this speed was also a means of protection. Whenever its operator found themselves on the losing end, they would be able to pull away swiftly and escape from the opponent's attack range. If a common mecha were to meet this type of mecha in battle, it would be destroyed by it without having any chance to counterattack at all. As for its long-range capabilities, other than that long-range humanoid mecha Qiao Ting had piloted away, only the bestial mecha known as the might have some advantage against it.
The second mecha in the line-up was precisely the mecha that was just mentioned previously. It was the mecha that might overpower the transformer ace mecha by a head in terms of long-range attacks — the bestial ace mecha <King of Ground Combat