[TN: Two chapters for missing Friday]
In mobile combat, every performance metric of a vehicle matters, especially in a wide-open, single-variable environment like this.
If you entered this stretch of the race thinking you could make it all the way through, then you were either a complete idiot… or you had absolute confidence.
Of course, there were also freaks like Midnight Drop Dead—people who believed nothing mattered, who were here purely to "have fun," standing in the bed of a truck firing missiles they couldn't even handle. If they burned to death, they burned to death.
It was hard to imagine what they'd gone through before this—what kind of life lets you maintain that delicate state of rational suicide.
But not everyone was like them.
After watching the Mackinaw eat an anti-tank missile without even flinching, anyone who could run completely gave up on the idea of fighting in the Badlands.
Anyone who couldn't run clenched their teeth—
As long as someone else was slower, they could survive into the next segment of the course.
"Me! Me! Give me a window!"
V was hugging her Nekomata sniper rifle, the barrel braced at the side window—only for the armor plate to block it. The stock bounced with the vehicle's jolts, slamming into Leo's face over and over.
"You—" Leo barely got the word out before the stock cracked him again. His head rang, and he leaned right up to V's ear, sucking in a breath—
"I'M SAYING YOU CAN TALK TO LEGEND—TO THE TRUCK—DIRECTLY! DON'T TALK TO ME! I'M FUCKING BUSY!"
This time he was practically pressed against her ear, finally overpowering the roar of the engine and the hammering of bullets on armor.
After yelling, Leo popped his belt with the help of the octo-arms and climbed out of the cabin toward the cargo bay—
"Why are you yelling so loud?!" V snapped back, slapping the center console. She almost tucked the rifle under her arm. "Big Wheat! Give me a window!"
Legend felt… weird about it.
Little Octopus was little, sure. But this Mackinaw? "Big" wasn't exactly wrong.
Legend's central control was an AI built by an AI—trained by Little Octopus—so it wasn't like Leo's first encounter with it, when it didn't even understand what a "name" was.
Maybe Little Octopus had baked the feeling of receiving a name into its code, because Big Wheat suddenly boomed at full volume:
"WINDOW OPEN!"
An armor plate outside the window rose slowly under electromagnetic force, leaving an opening that was exactly the right size for shooting.
The vehicle was fully sealed, but Thornton's panoramic "crystal ball" tech let them observe the outside world seamlessly. And the two small drones overhead were the best spotters imaginable.
Wind speed. Relative speed. Road condition. Elevation changes.
All of it flooded the database.
V, however, was a shooter who ran purely on instinct.
BANG!
A bullet with a faint bluish arc punched out in the red sunlight. On the highway, a merc who had been bracing his own sniper rifle at the window suddenly found he could only hear out of his right ear.
The shot struck the window edge—shrapnel blasted loose by the impact smashed straight into his ear.
A Sandevistan was enough for him to see the gap between them:
He had fired too, just a moment ago—but judging by his trajectory, his round had dropped into the dust plume behind the Legendary Mackinaw.
BOOOOM—
The thunder came from the sky. Every racer turned toward the Badlands beyond the road.
The sun was setting. The wind picked up. A low, ominous howl rode in behind that sudden blast—
In 2076, the world had been wrecked by nuclear war and industrial pollution on a global scale. North America, after years of conflict, was nearly barren.
Storms came without warning and vanished just as suddenly. The racers didn't know whether to laugh or cry:
There were still 80 kilometers to go before the highway ended and the entrance route into the city began.
A long 80 kilometers—
Now made even longer by the storm that was about to arrive.
But maybe it was also their chance to escape the Legendary Mackinaw?
"HA—BIG—BOOBS!" Big Wheat shouted again, making the three of them flinch hard.
Leo was pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with Jackie, the tool-tips of two octo-arms inserted into the autocannon's mount.
Because, to be fair—one of those snipers had been really good.
Jackie's first miss was on him, sure, but the sniper's shot had slapped straight into the autocannon's light armor cladding.
That was the thinnest, most vulnerable point in the whole system. Neko's round hadn't destroyed the gun, but it had knocked the stabilizing gyros and traverse system out of alignment.
They needed a field correction—from the outside.
BANG!
The octo-arms snapped back. The gun mount thumped with a heavy metallic shock.
"Mano!" Jackie yelled from his operator chair. "The sand's too thick!"
In just a few seconds, visibility collapsed to under fifty meters. Hidden stretches of highway flashed with bursts of fire on and off.
That was awkward.
Because thanks to Legendary Mackinaw's mobility, they could choose at any moment whether to run the asphalt or the open Badlands at high speed. Fight or evade—either way, they had freedom.
That freedom was exactly why everyone, after seeing its defensive performance, had abandoned the idea of teaming up to take it down out here:
A fast, flexible heavy armored vehicle with a massive operating range wasn't something they could even pretend to "trade" with.
But now things were different.
They had to stay close.
Leo slid back into the driver's seat. "Good. Don't forget—we're the heavy truck. Recall the drones. Use onboard sensors. Turn on recording. Switch to special driving mode."
"Mode switch complete."
Whether it was a trick of perception or not, Jackie and V immediately felt the vehicle's vibration drop.
The main reason was that engine output had been cut sharply.
The Vulture engine was insanely powerful, but it also needed a huge volume of intake. Special driving mode increased filtration complexity first, which restricted airflow. Shutting down part of the combustion chambers was necessary.
With output reduced, speed dropped. The truck climbed back onto the highway.
Now the only thing that could really shove the ten-ton beast around was the sandstorm—
And clearly, the storm wasn't strong enough yet to move them.
But the storm also slashed the vehicle's sensing range, interfered with network transmission, and the high-speed friction of dust made the particles easier to charge—
Which made the armor plates' electromagnetic lock system less agile.
The Badlands became a yellow ocean. The deadly competitors vanished into the brown haze. That feeling of overwhelming dominance was replaced by sharp, instinctive caution toward the unknown.
The whole world shrank into swirling sand.
"What now?" V set the rifle down in the aisle.
"Now—"
BOOM!
Leo didn't even finish the sentence.
A massive blast erupted ahead. Less than ten meters away, a burning vehicle suddenly appeared out of the dust, rolling end-over-end toward them!
"GRAB ON!!!" Big Wheat roared, loud enough to rattle their skulls.
V reacted instantly—she grabbed Leo.
BANG!
The impact slammed the truck. Leo's head nearly kissed the windshield armor.
"Now," Leo exhaled, relieved to avoid a direct skull-crack, "we drive on instinct."
BOOM!
Almost point-blank, a vehicle beside Legend exploded into scrap metal—skidding off the road in a shower of sparks.
The probability of catastrophic damage just spiked.
Leo noticed something immediately: both destroyed vehicles had the same signature—violent chassis deformation, then fire.
Mines.
Before the three of them could even react—
BANG!
Legend rammed up onto another vehicle's rear bumper.
At that absurdly close distance, the trio could see through the HUD's small window: two lunatics actually jumped out of the back of the car.
And the sensors caught something hilarious—
Those two maniacs looked just as shocked.
They were only trying to bail out—
They had no idea they'd done it right in front of the most vicious monster on the course.
"Jackie—!"
BOOM!
Leo's shout was cut off as both vehicles suddenly leapt into the air.
They'd hit a mine.