This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 316: Not Penetrating Enough? Make Up For It With Equivalent!

Chapter 316: Chapter 316: Not Penetrating Enough? Make Up For It With Equivalent!

"Damn! These bandits sure run fast!"

Debt Giant Eye pulled his bayonet from the corpse of a Looter and, standing on top of the trench, looked towards the slope below.

On the hillside, dozens of bodies lay askew, alongside rifles and shovels discarded by the fleeing Looters.

This place was the high ground on the north side of the Pine Forest and also the position of the Bear Tooth thousand team.

Just minutes ago, like usual, the Death Legion had rained mortars on the Looters who were hiding and digging holes there.

The Looters, harassed by the New Alliance’s mortars all day long, had grown accustomed to lounging in their half-finished trenches, waiting for the bombardment to cease before resuming their digging.

However, what they didn’t expect was that this time, when they lifted their heads, they would be met with gleaming bayonets.

The Looters, busy with their fortifications, never dreamed that the New Alliance, with so few men, would dare to counter-attack their positions!

Even more surprising to them, as soon as the opposing mortars stopped, those men immediately charged up.

In short, by the time they snapped out of it, it was too late.

Charging calls and battle cries almost simultaneously followed the still-smoking bomb craters and rushed onto their faces.

And at this time, many of the Looters still held shovels in their hands; the rifles dropped on the ground had not even been loaded.

Work Site Lad and Brick were the first to jump into the trenches, firing their automatic rifles in a burst of relentless gunfire that stirred a whirlwind of blood in the confined space.

The Looters sent to dig were merely third-line forces of the tribes.

Though they had followed Bear Tooth from the north of River Valley Province, slaughtering their way to the south, they usually chased after others.

They had never seen such fierce fighting!

Especially when they saw the Centurion, an Awakener, get stabbed by several bayonets on the spot like a sieve, the morale of the remaining two hundred or so men instantly collapsed. They couldn’t muster the courage to resist and, one after another, cursed for not having been born with an extra pair of legs, and fled in panic toward the forest below the mountain.

In less than ten minutes, the battle was over.

"Kakarot" lifted his binoculars and glanced to the north, where the routed Looters had entered the forest on the northern side of the high ground.

"...The reinforcement will probably come in a bit. According to the air force’s intelligence, Bear Tooth seems to be stationed about five kilometers away, in the mountain hollow to the north," said Debt Giant Eye with a grin.

"Do they still have a thousand men?"

"I don’t know. These Looters have weird formations. A team of ten might have twenty people, and a thousand team might not exactly be a thousand."

Work Site Lad and Brick looked to Edge Shoveling at their side.

"Boss, what do you think?"

Edge Shoveling said with a smile, "What’s there to think about? Bury the dynamite!"

"The brothers in the Burning Corps want to blow up all of these beasts’ latrines! We can’t fail to live up to the high expectations of our allies."

Saying this, he suddenly remembered something and quickly added, "Right, collect all the rifles, shovels, the carts they used for hauling soil, and even the bags they used for carrying dirt, and take them all back. We’re confiscating everything!"

Hearing this, everyone’s faces revealed a sinister smile.

"Alright!"

After burying the TNT in the Looters’ trenches, old Edge quickly led his men back to the southern mountaintop, entering the anti-cannon hole without a further word, before the enemy reinforcements could arrive.

After waiting for a full hour, the opposing artillery finally made a belated entrance and showered their position with several rounds of 100mm cannons.

By the time the shells landed on the players’ positions, aside from a few who were still taking turns on watch, the other players had already logged off and were lying down.

Some had even finished their dinner in real life.

The Looters who had previously abandoned their positions to flee came back to the high ground, emboldened by the cannonades and threatened by Bear Tooth.

Yet to their dumbfounded surprise, not only had the people from the New Alliance taken away their discarded weapons and ammunition, but they had also dragged off the shovels, carts, and even the bags for carrying soil.

The entire position had been stripped bare, and the corpses had been piled up, doused with fuel, and burned, leaving not a single trace behind for them.

Who was the real looter after all?!

Lacking tools, they could only wait for supplies to be delivered from the rear while stubbornly sourcing materials on the spot, or simply resorting to digging with their hands.

And when the Looters returned to the trenches, as a series of explosions rang out, their nightmare truly began...

...

North of City of Dawn.

In the weapons testing ground.

A scrapped Conqueror No. 10 tank was now stationary at the center of the open space.

The twisted steel was deformed, only three pairs of road wheels remained, with a huge hole blown out on the bottom plate, leaving the tank’s body pitch-black.

Previously, the Black Snake thousand team had driven this tank to "North Suburb" to cause trouble but had been destroyed on the spot by a "crawler" four-legged robot carrying explosives that blew up its ammo rack and fuel tank.

Afterward, the tank was dragged into the industrial area for repeated disassembly and study, squeezed dry of its last bit of value, and then thrown into the weapon testing grounds as a target.

At this moment, Chu Guang stood with Vanus at the edge of the target range, inspecting the latest anti-armor weapons developed by Goblin Technology.

According to battle reports from the front, the Looters had begun to wise up and were contemplating retrofitting light trucks into anti-aircraft cards.

Although Goblin Corps’ air force had already blown up the Looters’ factories with the help of the Burning Corps, Chu Guang did not believe they would put all their eggs in one basket.

The Looters would definitely be more cautious in the future.

`They even decided to move the factory from the surface to underground.

The Looters had clearly realized that without reliable air defense weapons, their tanks would be nothing more than live targets once they reached the front lines.

And without the protection of armor units, they would have to suffer manifold casualties to wrestle Qingstone County back from the hands of the New Alliance.

Before the Ya Clan’s tanks could be dispatched to the front lines, the New Alliance needed more effective anti-armor measures to deal with the ever-changing battlefield.

"Equipment Number One begins testing."

"Roger!"

Upon hearing the Manager’s order, Mosquito waved his hand, and a player with the ID Kill God immediately jogged to the edge of the target range.

Squatting behind a shooting parapet made of sandbags, Kill God skillfully took out a recoilless gun tube from a box and completed the setup by unfolding the tripod.

Load, aim, safety off...

The entire sequence of movements was smooth and uninterrupted, performed in one breath.

With a loud bang, a cloud of smoke and the armor-piercing projectile shot out of the launch tube, dragging a tail of smoke towards the tank a hundred meters away.

The instant the projectile hit, the left side of the tank burst into sparks and thick smoke.

"Hit effective!"

Waiting nearby, Soul Chaser first shouted out loud and then immediately ran forward to check, followed by an excited cry.

"Pierced it! It’s pierced through!"

Other lifestyle occupation players who were watching couldn’t help but shout out in excitement.

"Awesome!!"

"666!"

"This is just too brutal!"

Many of these players were newbies who had only joined in the Beta version and were recruited into Goblin Technology because of Mosquito Brother’s boasting on the Forum.

They had always heard Mosquito bragging, and now they were finally witnessing it with their own eyes.

Of course, there were also veteran players who were unimpressed.

"What’s the big deal about blowing up a piece of junk?"

"This tank looks like it’s about T72 level."

"That’s an exaggeration, at best it’s at the level of the peak of World War II, I didn’t even see reactive armor, an RPG could penetrate it in a minute."

"Nonsense, does a Tiger have this defense? That’s obviously composite armor, okay!"

Two newbie players started arguing about the tank’s capabilities.

But this was just a minor episode.

Chu Guang, standing on the side, looked at the wreckage of the Conqueror No. 10 nearby, his face bearing a satisfied smile.

However, out of respect for his own dignified persona, his smile was not very obvious when many people were around.

Only one person had a heavy expression on his face in the whole shooting range.

That was Vanus.

Once a Centurion in the army, he knew better than anyone else the true strength of the Conqueror No. 10 tank.

He shook his head and poured cold water on the situation.

"It’s useless."

"This is the twelfth experiment."

"Even if it penetrated, it doesn’t prove anything."

Even though he couldn’t understand what those people were shouting, their expressions of ecstasy didn’t need to be understood. He could guess with his toes what those people were happy about.

A scrapped tank.

It took twelve shots to penetrate, and it was the side armor that was pierced.

If the infantry and vehicle-mounted machine guns around the tank were not mere decorations, such an opportunity to fire would never be possible on an actual battlefield.

Mosquito clearly realized this problem, too.

After the excitement passed, he scratched his head in bewilderment.

"It doesn’t make sense..."

"This armor is too tough!"

On par with the T72?

But the T72 wasn’t this tough.

Before the improved model, the side armor was about 80mm thick.

Moreover, they were using hollow-charge armor-piercing bullets.

Without NERA, ERA, or slat armor on the side, not just the old T72, but also the M1 and Leopard 2 would have to back off, especially the Leopard 2 with its ammunition racks inside the hull—if a pencil-sized hole was punctured on the front left, bad luck could mean getting your head blown off.

To increase penetration, Mosquito even sacrificed effective range by increasing the weight of the warhead in the Mark III projectile by a whopping 1.5 times while maintaining the same propellant, resulting in the range being a pitiful 150m. However, the maximum vertical penetration had reached an astonishing 400mm!

Looking at the side armor of the Conqueror No. 10 tank, it couldn’t possibly be that thick, nor did it have reactive armor on the outside.

Mosquito, after much thought, could only come up with two possibilities.

`Definitely a bug!

Anyway, it couldn’t possibly be my own fault!

Listening to Mosquito’s mumbling and grumbling, Chu Guang relayed his confusion to Vanus standing beside him.

After hearing Mosquito’s perplexity, the latter succinctly provided an answer.

"...The main battle tanks of the Army are Conqueror No.5 Light Tanks, which deal with common mutant creatures or survivor settlements, and usually don’t have very thick armor. The Conqueror No.10 Heavy Tank, on the other hand, was designed from the outset to counter entities like the Grand Canyon and corporations with a certain industrial capacity as hypothetical enemies."

"Composite armor, positive pressure NBC protection system, low reliance on electronic components, sustained combat performance... These were the focal points of the design."

"Especially the armor; the body armor of the Conqueror No. 10 has a layer of special ceramic and fiber between two layers of homogeneous steel, which is also protected by a lightweight, high-temperature resistant porous material on the surface. A typical armor-piercing bullet’s metal jet, after penetrating the first layer of homogeneous steel, will spread along the surface of the second layer in the inner cladding, causing the jet to quickly lose focus."

"Simply discussing the thickness of the armor is meaningless, as the metal jet from an armor-piercing bullet can’t breach the second layer. If you’re dealing with an undamaged original Conqueror No. 10, ten shots of armor-piercing bullets might not do the trick. You might as well go for hard-core armor-piercing, which might have a better chance of penetration."

As is well known, once a metal jet loses focus, it’s like attaching a showerhead to the nozzle of a water gun—the armor-piercing ability plummets to zero.

Defeating the opponent with a sufficient number and relatively cheap cost has always been the Army’s strategic thinking. The existence of the Conqueror No. 10 tank isn’t to surpass the Grand Canyon’s armor in performance but to increase the enemy’s destruction cost.

If any infantry could take down a tank with a shot from a recoilless gun, the concept of an armored torrent would become meaningless.

Being able to breach on the twelfth shot was largely because the tank had already been used as a target here countless times.

It could well be that the metal jet from the armor-piercing bullets had filled up the "guiding gaps" on the surface of the cladding!

Chu Guang wasn’t discouraged by Vanus’s answer, and simply smiled faintly.

"No problem, if we can’t handle Conqueror No. 10, bullying the light and medium vehicles is still no issue. Besides, if the armor-piercing bullet strategy doesn’t work, we have other methods."

Vanus curiously asked.

"Oh? Like what?"

Chu Guang looked towards Mosquito.

"Let’s start testing the second equipment."

Seeing that the Manager was talking to him, Mosquito quickly nodded.

"Right away!"

It was within reason that the customer wasn’t satisfied with the power of Equipment No. 1; he himself wasn’t very satisfied with it either.

But that didn’t matter.

He had designed two countermeasures for Conqueror No. 10, using bigger, more penetrating consecutive armor-piercing bombs was just one of them.

If that didn’t work, then explode it!

The range’s tank wreckage couldn’t withstand a second round, so Mosquito took Chu Guang and Vanus to the testing ground for Weapon No. 2.

Bare land held a reinforced concrete fortification, imitating the shape of a tank with a simulated structure of the body and road wheels.

Vanus didn’t say anything after seeing this.

However, when his gaze fell on the aluminum alloy support behind the shooting shelter, and the six-rotor drone mounted on the support, he was stunned.

"This is..."

Before Chu Guang could speak, Mosquito, standing beside him, started explaining excitedly.

"This is the second equipment ’Spring Knife’ suicidal drone, created by Goblin Technology specifically to counter tanks—though I prefer to call it the ’Flying Anti-everything IED’!"

Vanus looked puzzled.

Even after reading the simultaneous translation on VM, he didn’t understand what the guy was talking about.

But Mosquito wasn’t really speaking for his benefit.

The only one with authority to make decisions and place orders for weaponry was the Manager standing next to him.

All he needed was to keep him happy!

"...The six-rotor structure ensures its maneuverability! Powered by solid hydrogen batteries for long endurance! Thanks to its aerodynamic design, it can fold its rotors after locking onto a target and glide without power! We’ve improved the drone’s motor output, which can even carry a maximum load of 15 kilograms!"

"A 15-kilogram payload! Hehe, if it’s all used to carry mixed explosives, its blast power can even rival two consecutive 155mm!"

"We’ve designed two types of warheads for the Spring Knife, which can be mounted on the top of the drone or hung underneath for a diving attack. Since the rotors can be folded, our Spring Knife can not only take off and land on flat ground but also be launched by catapult or airdropped."

"To sum it up in one sentence, this thing can counter both armor and infantry, and it’s super useful!"

The drone was roughly like an enlarged version of the Y-1 Firefly, the motors produced by the List factory, carbon-nanotube design by the scientific research team, and the control program a masterpiece of Xiao Qi.

As for Goblin Technology’s accomplishments, they mainly lay in the aerodynamic design and warhead design.

Compared to the portable drones that could fit in a backpack, this "Spring Knife" looked more like the agricultural drones commonly seen in farming.

Finally finishing the translation on VM, Vanus looked at Chu Guang with a strange expression.

"So... this thing is essentially a drone strapped with a remote-controlled bomb?"

Chu Guang was quite pleased with the design and chuckled.

"Is there a problem?"

After a moment of silence, Vanus gave an uncertain answer.

"Not necessarily, only the requirements are extremely stringent."

"How stringent?"

Vanus replied solemnly.

"Only in specific situations can the explosive force be concentrated on the armor. If you just drop the bomb... a 10-kilogram warhead probably won’t be enough."

The shockwave from a typical explosive diffuses in all directions, and to achieve armor penetration, the kinetic energy produced by the explosion must be transmitted to the armor surface as much as possible.

And the contact area needs to be as small as possible.

If you just throw the bomb on top, ten kilograms of dynamite might only scrape off a bit of paint, unless it’s a metallic hydrogen-type beast with a detonation velocity of 24,000 meters per second.

As for the "Solid Hydrogen" independently produced by the New Alliance?

It’s far less powerful.

Chu Guang didn’t mind Vanus’s skepticism, he just smiled happily.

"So, as long as specific conditions are met, a ten-kilogram warhead can also incapacitate the Conqueror No. 10, right?"

Vanus nodded.

"The only weak point of the Conqueror No. 10 is its undercarriage, which is the thinnest part of the tank’s armor. However, you can’t expect to be so lucky every time to disrupt the tracks while the surrounding infantry aren’t paying attention and stuff the explosive under the chassis."

Chu Guang didn’t speak but waved his hand to signal that Mosquito could start.

Seeing the Manager’s gesture, Mosquito immediately ran excitedly to the launcher and shooed away Kill God, who was preparing to operate it for him.

How could he let someone else have the chance to show off in front of the faction leader NPC?

"Move aside, let me do it!"

Kill God immediately became unhappy.

"Damn it! Didn’t we agree that I would do the testing?"

Mosquito shamelessly continued.

"I told you to test the armor-piercing bullet, not the spring knife. Listen to me, brother, this equipment is difficult to operate, I’m afraid you won’t be able to handle it. Let me do it!"

"@#%￥!"

This isn’t a fixed-wing, there’s no difficulty to operate!

Kill God cursed and walked away.

Having shooed away the little brother standing next to the launcher, Mosquito directly connected the six-rotor drone using VM, synchronizing the camera’s view onto the screen.

Target locked!

Flight path set!

Launch!

With the press of a button, the drone on the launcher shot out like an arrow released from a bow, bouncing off the launcher.

The propellers roared, everyone watched as the drone raced along the ground, flying out hundreds of meters in an instant, diving straight under the crotch of the concrete tank.

With a loud boom, the explosion sent flames skyward, and a thick plume of smoke shot up twenty to thirty meters high, the force of the blast actually lifted the concrete assault vehicle off the ground and tore it to pieces!

As the dust settled,

Only a crater about ten meters wide was left on the ground, with concrete debris scattered all around.

Even the steel reinforcement within the concrete was blasted to bits, not a single whole piece to be found.

The onlookers all dodged the falling soil and stone.

Vanus, standing next to Chu Guang, was stunned motionless, completely baffled.

A drone carrying a remote-controlled bomb to sneak under a tank’s crotch?

You can do that?

No matter how you look at it, the cost of drones and remote-controlled bombs is much cheaper than anti-tank missiles.

"Beautiful!"

Chu Guang, clenching his fists, couldn’t help but shout in approval.

Although the target was made of concrete, such tremendous power would make it nearly impossible for a real tank to emerge intact from the explosion’s thick smoke.

Looking toward Mosquito walking this way, Chu Guang cleared his throat and said in a serious tone,

"I’m very satisfied with option number two. It would be better if it had even stronger mobility!"

"I plan to purchase a hundred units, to be completed within a month. Can you do it?"

Upon hearing this, Mosquito immediately patted his chest, guaranteeing,

"Don’t worry, respected Manager, Goblin Technology never disappoints its clients!"

Chu Guang looked at Vanus, his smile tinged with a hint of showing off.

"How about that? Is the power sufficient?"

Vanus’s Adam’s apple bobbed, his eyes wide as he nodded,

"...Perhaps? If your drones can fly over without getting shot down."

The thing’s power is great, but after all, it can’t match the speed of missiles and artillery shells, and the noise of the propellers is a big issue.

However, in terms of sheer power, even he could find no fault.

After all, if he were in a tank, he certainly wouldn’t want to get hit by one of these under his butt.

After all, even if the tank could withstand it, the people inside couldn’t!

Chu Guang looked at the concrete rubble not far away, his face beaming with pleasure.

"Don’t worry about that problem. By the end of the month, we should have at least a hundred spring knives, and our enemies have at most twenty to thirty tanks."

"Even if we exchange ten drones for one of their tanks."

"It’s definitely us who come out on top!"

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