After the airborne heavy Powered Armor corps, guided by the exploration team and supported by Armored Airships, seized a series of High Grounds and strategic locations within the Mist Hidden Forbidden Zone and cleared out the vast majority of monsters, undead creatures, and predatory Spirit-infused Plants, even larger mechanized forces appeared before Meng Chao through attack corridors blasted open by relentless bombardment.
First came a deafening roar like ten thousand galloping horses.
Then came plumes of multicolored smoke released by incompletely burned crystal stones, like the steaming breath blasted from the nostrils of enraged steel behemoths.
Right afterward, towering trees dozens of meters high and so thick that three to five people could barely encircle them began falling in waves like ripened wheat.
The fallen giant trees, along with the snakes, insects, rats, and ants still lurking in their crowns and trunks, were crushed to pieces beneath the heavy tracks without the slightest suspense.
Armored bulldozers, road rollers, and fully automated harvesters converged into an Iron Torrent, representing Earth's will as it conquered this mysterious foreign land.
The bulldozers pushed aside trees burned to charcoal, monster carcasses, and shattered rocks blasted up from underground.
The road rollers compacted the soft humus and mire into solid paths wide enough for an army to pass through.
The harvesters cut down the tangled dead vines and branches lining both sides of the roads, leaving the small monsters hiding in the treetops nowhere to hide. They further widened the corridors, even merging several attack routes into one.
Every war machine was covered in three layers of composite armor, fitted with an extra layer of Reactive Armor, and mounted with three or four fully automatic Heavy Machine Guns.
Even if monsters concealed in the mire tried to put up a cornered resistance, the greatest result