Necromancer, What the Hell Is Summoning a 055?

Though they had achieved a glorious victory, Cloudmist Territory's party had now been wiped out.

Chen Mo increasingly realized that their earlier, unstoppable progress through cities and territories had all rested on Peiwen's extraordinary command and personal abilities.

With Peiwen gone, the party fell apart immediately.

Chen Mo moved closer and pulled out the last Life's Eternal Song he hadn't sent away, offering it to the old man. Old Locke shook his head with a bitter smile and raised a trembling hand to make a gesture.

It was exactly the same gesture Peiwen had made to him in his final moments.

Please, take her away!

Go!

Chen Mo didn't like watching scenes of parting between the living and the dying, so he stepped outside first.

He didn't know what fate had originally awaited the party if he hadn't become involved.

Nor did he know why, after being carried along by some strange impulse, he had become Liushuang's "sole guardian."

Chen Mo knew perfectly well that the most rational choice was to turn and walk away, leaving this ill-fated, disaster-stricken party that had now been reduced to its leader alone.

Or he could simply hand over the little princess in exchange for safe passage.

Of course, he didn't know that, as "the crow of Firmament," he was also one of the enemy's primary targets.

Still, all he could do was let out a long sigh.

For the sake of the floating airship from Six-Leaf Camp and the Life's Eternal Song I sent home, I'll give it another try.

If it really doesn't work... I'll worry about that when it happens.

Given the Emerald Duchy's current sorry state, though, he seriously doubted whether the territory Peiwen had promised him still existed.

With another massive loss of personnel, he couldn't carry much anymore. The smart gimbal, the anti-materiel rifle, and most of the supplies would all have to be abandoned.

He quickly sorted through their belongings again, taking a few supplies, Skylark, two batteries, and light weapons. He gathered everything else together and planted a patch bomb on it.

Liushuang emerged from the ravaged little courtyard. In just a few days, she had lost three guardians who had been with her day and night and whom she had regarded as family. The girl's little face was pale as paper, her eyes vacant and bewildered, like an exquisite porcelain doll.

Only when she saw Chen Mo did her eyes redden again.

A thought came to Chen Mo for no reason: Can a girl never run out of tears?

The little princess reached out and handed Chen Mo a few things.

A Bluetooth earpiece.

"Auntie Linda told me I had to study my lessons properly from now on. I won't use this anymore, so I'm giving it back to you..."

There was also a thin booklet and a magical device.

"Grandpa Locke's spellbook and magical device. He said to give them to you..."

"Okay!"

Chen Mo dug Little White out from beneath the earthen wall. The little skeleton's leg bones had been crushed, and it had open fractures all over its body. Clearly, it couldn't walk anymore.

But Chen Mo took it along anyway.

Just like that scene at White Stone Outpost so many days ago, the young man, the little girl, and a skeleton faced the glow of the setting sun.

Behind them, smoke and dust billowed up after the remote-controlled bomb detonated.

"By the way, if you surrendered to House Gaoshi, could you be ransomed?"

Liushuang's steps faltered. Without raising her head, she slowly shook her little head, emphatically. "Father... told me. If... I'm going to fall into enemy hands, save the last sword stroke... for myself."

"All right, forget it, then."

"Let's hurry and run!"

Chapter 80: Liushuang, Let's Go!

South Pass Territory, on the southern frontier of the Emerald Duchy, consisted of a mix of hills and plains.

The mountain region before them, known as the Iron Thorn Forest, had no towering peaks. But its low hills rose and fell like waves, linked together in a long expanse of dark green that rolled across the land for dozens of kilometers.

Dense, primeval forest covered them, so thick that almost no daylight could penetrate.

Trees, vines, shrubs, and ferns formed layers from high to low. Fallen leaves accumulated over untold years covered the forest floor, giving off a damp, rotting smell.

Occasionally, an unknown bird chirped or a beast howled in the distance, only for the sound to be swallowed by the thick green curtain.

The commander of Gaoshi Territory's Fifth Knight Order sat on his reined-in horse at the edge of the forest, his brows nearly knotted together.

"Looking for people in a place like this, the marquis should have sent me at least another ten battalions of city guards. Otherwise, I'm afraid I'll spend the rest of my life stuck here!"

His adjutant replied carefully, "You jest, my lord. It's just a mountain forest and two wet-behind-the-ears brats. They're in the palm of your hand, turtles trapped in a jar."

"The marquis has ordered the militias of the various territories mobilized, but... assembling and deploying them may take another half month or so."

"Half a month? Half a month!"

The knight commander swung his fist violently. A tree beside him, its trunk as thick as the knight's waist at chest height, snapped in two. Its long crown crashed into the forest with a clatter of scraping branches, startling several birds whose nests had inexplicably been torn apart.

"They're taking cities and territory, earning merits, while I have to dig through the woods here, hunting mice! Heaven knows how long it'll take to catch them!"

"For all I know, once they've taken the city, they'll come over and get a legitimate share of this too, calling it helping a colleague!"

After pacing back and forth in agitation, the knight commander waved his hand forcefully. "Keep a close watch on all sides. Have the men going up the mountain shout a warning: if they don't come out and surrender within ten days, I'll set the mountain on fire!"

"If I can't claim the merit, no one else gets to snatch it!"

Venting aside, the Fifth Knight's arrangements were airtight.

The grand knight personally joined a group of professionals in the hard labor. They went back and forth, punching, kicking, chopping, and hacking until they had cleared away every troublesome obstacle at the foot of the mountain.

Once the sightlines were clear, they placed a sentry post every few hundred meters, ensuring that not even a squirrel could emerge from the mountains without the guards noticing.

Two well-equipped infantry companies, supported by the accompanying mages, guarded the key routes from the Iron Thorn Forest to the other mountain ranges and wetlands. That would prevent their quarry from slipping past the defenses and disappearing into another hiding place.

The elite cavalry were divided into four mobile companies and stationed separately along the two sides of the mountain region. As soon as a sentry post raised the alarm, the nearest cavalry unit could arrive within a dozen minutes at most.

On the plains, surely the two little children couldn't escape pursuit by cavalry and professionals.

Having blocked every possible escape route, Gaoshi's Fifth Knight divided the remaining men into two groups.

One group spread out along the ridge between two slopes, felling trees and cutting through grass to sever the mountain paths, effectively isolating that section of hills.

The other group began a slow, painstaking dragnet search of the mountains within the designated "island."

The soldiers formed a dense line, probing the waist-high grass and shrubs with their spears and checking every suspicious tree hollow and crevice in the rocks.

It was the crudest method, but also the most effective, minimizing the chances of missing anything.

In the other mountain areas awaiting searches, some professionals were sent to stomp around at random in the hope of getting lucky, while shouting the threat to burn down the forest over and over.

On the fifth day of the dragnet search, they finally got a result.

As Gaoshi Territory's warriors crossed a game trail through a patch of shrubs, they triggered a patch bomb, instantly killing one and injuring four.

The Fifth Knight was delighted rather than angry. He immediately gathered a large number of elites and personally led them toward the area.

Of course, the explosive device was a diversionary trap.

Chen Mo had wrapped the impact-triggered patch bomb in leaves, then used Skylark to fly level just above the treetops at night. He had carefully delivered the "improvised mine" to a patch of low shrubs three hills away, placing it in a bush beside a game trail.

Even if no one stepped on it, it would detonate on a timer. Its purpose was to draw the enemy's attention.

When the distant roar of the explosion reached him, Chen Mo was hiding in a hollow at the foot of a mountain five kilometers away. He poked a pair of high-powered binoculars above the dense canopy and carefully checked the mountains and the area beyond them once more.

His gaze finally swept over the distant, widely spaced sentry posts. Chen Mo let out a long breath and called softly, "Liushuang! Let's go!"

The little princess, who had been sitting expectantly on a branch beside him, pushed lightly against the trunk and wrapped both arms around Chen Mo's waist. Holding him like that, she jumped straight down from the canopy.

Embarrassingly, for most of their time in the mountains, it had been Liushuang, the little princess who had once lived in luxury, taking care of Chen Mo.

Liushuang cleared a path through the thorn-choked forest, dealt with the beasts roaming the mountains, and carried Chen Mo up into the trees to rest at night. She also had to carry most of their load, and even carried Chen Mo on her back when he sprained his ankle...

Perhaps because she was kept busy every day, the little princess gradually recovered her composure. Whenever they rested, though, she would always curl up beside Chen Mo without realizing it.

Sometimes, she would even let out a muffled cry or two in her sleep.

After all, she was only a girl who had suddenly lost those she depended on and been forced to grow up.

Fortunately, those days had finally come to an end.

"Hold on tight, we're off!"

"Mm!" The little princess nodded firmly, wrapping one arm around Chen Mo's waist while holding the light sniper rifle level with the other.

The little princess had spent plenty of time practicing her aim over the past few days.

With a high-powered scope on a gun, hitting a stationary target at a distance of a little over a kilometer was no great difficulty for a Starry warrior, as long as her hands were steady.

The gunshot seemed to be a signal. At the same moment, Chen Mo twisted the throttle.

With a low roar, an elegant, streamlined behemoth sprang forward, its wide tires scattering fallen leaves across the mountainside.

Jointly manufactured by Eastern Xia Northern Combat Vehicle Heavy Industries and the Eastern Xia Aerospace Group, the Flying Shuttle was an electric two-wheeled all-terrain vehicle.

To keep its weight as low as possible, its core components were made of aerospace-grade high-titanium alloy, its secondary components of magnesium-lithium alloy, and its auxiliary components of glass-fiber-reinforced plastic. The total weight of the vehicle and all its spare parts had been successfully kept to 109.8 kilograms.

Beyond that, it was packed with cutting-edge technology.

A premium shock-absorbing suspension configured for all-terrain off-road travel, with up to 350 millimeters of ground clearance;

A full set of high-traction components that could handle any sand, rocks, or mud... and could theoretically even take a sideways turn on an icy or snowy road with a friction coefficient of around 0.15.

It accelerated from zero to one hundred kilometers per hour in 2.2 seconds, had a top speed of 180 kilometers per hour, and used a centrally mounted electric drive array with a flywheel kinetic energy recovery system. Its range on a full charge was 610 kilometers.

It wasn't that the range couldn't be increased. The weight limit was simply too strict. Otherwise, Eastern Xia would have loved to boost it straight to ten thousand kilometers.

But that was all right. Besides an additional solar panel that could slowly replenish its power, the Flying Shuttle also came with a hydrogen-powered electric generator to prevent a power shortage in a special emergency.

Four externally mounted magnesium-based nanocomposite hydrogen storage tanks could each provide an emergency range of around 120 kilometers.

That range was enough for Chen Mo to travel all the way to the Northern Orc Great Plain.

A miniature hive system in the rear rack held eight Hornet micro-drones, each weighing 350 grams with its payload.

As for the vehicle's self-stabilization system, laser headlights, agile steering, and, oh right, it also had reverse gear and a reversing sensor...

All that was missing was a line engraved on the front: Baby, run!