Chapter 701 - 672: Upright Hanged Man (Part 3)

Stark Tower.

Boom!

The hot melt cannon burned through one explosion-proof door after another, and Lille’s mechanical body opened up a path dripping with molten steel like a laser drilling machine—

In another world, the missile is about to reach its apex!

Upon reaching the apex, Lille’s plan enters a critical moment:

Using the remaining nuclear-powered airship propulsion system to replenish the fuel chamber with weapon-grade uranium, allowing the missile to reach the intended altitude is not difficult.

But after that, the missile will begin to descend, entering the gliding phase, during which gravitational potential energy will convert into kinetic energy.

Usually, missiles require very stringent aerodynamic designs to avoid air resistance as much as possible, ensuring the missile can reach hypersonic speeds.

At the same time, such designs should also accommodate the missile’s re-entry into the atmosphere, making it appear to skip like a stone to increase strike flexibility, resulting in a certain degree of evasion from interception systems.

This aerodynamic design underwent extensive experiments in Lille’s world to arrive at a mature design, which this warhead clearly lacks—

But fundamentally, this hand-thrown ballistic missile destined to hit the Kujira has a huge advantage:

The performance of Chroni Titanium is excellent, whether in pressure resistance or heat resistance, it’s top-tier.

The heat buildup during flight mainly occurs on the warhead, but without a design, the blindly pursued speed shape will inevitably lead to uneven heating and stress in some areas, affecting system stability.

However, Lille almost doesn’t need to worry about this issue, because even in the most extreme situations, this material is almost impossible to damage during flight.

And powered by a super high-power nuclear reactor engine, there is much to be done after discarding the propulsion system:

Located within the Chroni Titanium, the biomaterials used for generating bioelectrostatic will be filled with electric current!

Powerful bioelectrostatic will generate a strong electric field during high-speed flight, which wouldn’t normally produce much force in ordinary air.

But under extremely fast speeds, gas molecules in the air will ionize, forming a plasma sheath on the missile’s surface—

By controlling the electric field to manage these plasma groups, it’s akin to controlling the air, forming a quasi-cushion around the missile that balances external forces, thereby reducing friction.

Simultaneously, the local plasma flow direction combined with adjustable winglets can entirely produce asymmetric lift and pressure distribution, achieving the maneuverability Lille desires to the highest degree...

In other words, this weapon merely borrowed from the ballistic weapon design ideas Lille is familiar with but used an entirely new technology to achieve its effects!

The only problem is that such precision and complexity of control, where two super AIs are significantly faster than humans in collecting data, modeling, adjusting models, and direct control, require enough servers for computation.

On the missile are only Hellhound, Little Flathead, and the Si Anweisitan system Lille has always used. These three chips are among the world’s best and all designed to accommodate AI—

Mounting one AI is more than sufficient, but this task requires the cooperation of two AIs:

This world does not have such hypersonic missiles, so the Munemasa AI understands Lille’s design concepts and can autonomously gather data, optimize, and adjust equipment according to Lille’s guidance.

But Lille must provide instruction and connection at the same speed, as it is ultimately an AI, and its development efficiency for unprecedented weapons would significantly decrease without Lille’s guidance.

Lille will only occupy a small part of the missile system, and its calculations will be completed in another world.

Relying on the servers of Stark Tower—

And the time flow difference between the two worlds is precisely ten minutes passing here while three minutes pass there.

Little Octopus is determined because it knows it must execute Lille’s instructions alone... this is not just for victory!

[Munemasa: Descent imminent!]

Click...

Mechanical footfalls echoed as Lille stepped into the laboratory.

[Jarvis: The greatest traitor to peace, the biggest traitor of Mei Country, you have trespassed into Mr. Tony Stark’s private domain, but...]

Bam!

The pressure-laden body immediately seized the tablet, a dagger crackling with electricity stabbed out from the octopus arms behind...

[Jarvis: Please listen to me, Mr. Stark is now...]

Unfortunately, this AI’s prepared words were aimed at the wrong person!

Puchi!

The dagger pierced the terminal, and Little Octopus began taking over the servers in the entire underground lab!

It will not listen to anything!

...

[Little Octopus: Big brother, it’s connected!]

Whoosh—

The engine performing the launch propulsion immediately detached, and the missile successfully reached high altitude according to plan!

...

The Kujira Carrier, the plane is about to take off.

What is that?

Arasaka Saburo stared in puzzlement at the missile breaking through the atmosphere.

A missile?

Does the missile need to fly straight up that high?

A rocket? Are they trying to escape? But where could Dog Town get a rocket capable of reaching the Moon?

However, out of caution, Arasaka Saburo still made a very conservative decision:

Originally, he wanted to immediately allocate available resources to dispatch fighter jets, blowing Dog Town and Taiping State to smithereens. However, he had already ordered two fighter jets to take off and intercept and destroy what was in the sky.

Arasaka’s fighter jets pierced through the clouds, passing over the Moon.

[Arasaka Pilot #0032: The target is decelerating, it’s... descending?]

The carrier is a full 200 kilometers away from Dog Town.

The fighter jets are still far from the missile, but their sensors and analyzers indicate that thing could first, possibly be a missile.

Secondly... this missile has already lost power, and its altitude is starting to drop.

People often have a fear of the unknown, even Arasaka Saburo is no exception. In fact, one could say that people like him detest the unknown even more.

What on earth did Burger King launch?

Soon he would find out.

[Arasaka Pilot #0034: The target is starting to descend, confirmed, or more like... gliding? That thing has broken the sound barrier...]

[Arasaka Pilot #0032: The target has broken the sound barrier, confirmed... target speed reaching Mach 2... something’s wrong!]

Something is terribly wrong!

After the missile reached its highest point and started descending, it only needed a few dozen seconds to accelerate to supersonic speeds in the thin atmosphere—

Under continuous optimizations and adjustments by Munemasa, the missile’s aerodynamic electromagnetic cushion increasingly fit Lille’s needs...

As the missile descended for 10 seconds, in the fighter pilots’ sensor data, it appeared just like a falling iron shell.

But after descending for 20 seconds, its constantly rising speed made them feel a bit uneasy...

After 40 seconds of descent, the missile suddenly broke the sound barrier!

The missile tore through the atmosphere, a sonic boom exploding across the sky, the air behind it rent apart, forming a distinct sonic boom cloud!

Even an idiot would realize: this is a kind of weapon!

After 60 seconds of descent, it had already surpassed Mach 2 under standard atmospheric pressure, with a clear diving trajectory...

The target is the Kujira!

Arasaka’s interception system began operating at high speed, the fighter pilots’ brains heating up, heartbeats racing, breathing quickened—

They weren’t going to annihilate a desperate renegade, but rather facing an unknown weapon!

The fighter jets accelerated with all their might, while the missile’s speed was increasingly fast!

seconds, Mach 3; 78 seconds; Mach 4; 86 seconds, Mach 5...

Before entering the atmosphere, its speed had already reached Mach 8!

The fighter jets too trailed a massive sonic boom cloud in the air, the Kujira Carrier’s ballistic prediction system relaying data entirely to the fighter jets—

Two planes locked onto the target, pulling up to fire several missiles towards it...

At the same time, calculations on the ground-based Kujira Carrier were completed:

Rapid-fire cannons continuously spewed long orange tongues of flame towards the sky, interception missiles shot out like sharp swords, the sky dazzling under the crisscrossing missile trails and air defense firepower, the symphony of flames and metal like an apocalyptic stage!

Arasaka Saburo tapped the armrest beside him:

He acknowledged that indeed, this was a shocking, terror-driven mastermind skilled at conjuring bizarre and ingenious ideas.

But how do you use ingenuity to defeat a colossus far greater than yourself?

Yet what he did not know was that this was the primary weapon Lille used to destroy the previous world!

This wasn’t an individual’s sudden brainstorm, but the ultimate weapon developed for a myriad of reasons by an entire world!

The whistling ballistic missile suddenly emitted a dazzling light!

The ballistic missile jumped in the atmosphere!

The intense maneuvers made the plasma sheath on its surface shine even more, the tail airflow becoming extremely erratic...

This thing now looked like a mischievous shooting star!

Bang—

Countless interceptions all missed!

Fighter pilots watched as the thing ’jumped’ in the atmosphere, completely evading all interceptions, even...

Even brushing past countless interception ammunition and their planes!

Boom!

A violent sonic boom exploded in the air, compared to the ongoing deep rumble, this discordant sound seemed to strike Arasaka Saburo’s heart!

An unknown kind of weapon was coming at him at Mach 8!

His mind suddenly became clear:

What would happen if it carried a nuclear bomb?