When the minute was up, thirty-five vehicles remained where they were. Nearly a third of the people had chosen to retreat.
"Follow me." With those two words, Nagano Souya activated the mech.
The White Tiger mech had concealed wheels installed in its feet, as well as jet air cushions. Even without using its main thrusters, it could easily reach speeds of one hundred kilometers per hour on flat terrain. To reach one hundred and forty kilometers per hour, it only needed to maintain a relatively aerodynamic posture while two to four auxiliary thrusters provided partial thrust at minimum output.
But to the hunters and mercenaries, one hundred and forty kilometers per hour was hardly the limit for their vehicles—with the performance of their modified cars, they could generally exceed two hundred... At that speed, whether a vehicle overturned was no longer determined by skill, but by the luck of its passengers.
If they ran over a slightly larger rock, the entire vehicle would immediately lose control and go flying... If the passengers inside were not infected with high-level physical enhancement memes, the odds of surviving a rollover at that speed were basically zero.
Nagano Souya seemed to have considered this as well. He directly increased the output of the air-cushion jets beneath the mech's feet, and with the energy shield covering its surface, every rock and clod of dirt in White Tiger's path was crushed into a perfectly flat road.
"So this is the territory of the flesh-eating ants..." The accountant driving the heavy truck looked at the cracked, parched ground around him, forcibly suppressing the tension in his heart.
The ground was riddled with holes that looked as though they had been poked with chopsticks. Whenever the wheels rolled over those holes, faint rustling sounds came from within.
At