Rat-tat-tat. Rat-tat-tat.
Bone-gold rounds poured from the firing port, suppressing the death-eaters on Great Vajra’s left flank — heads down, unable to return fire effectively.
The bone-gold rounds were substandard stock — Activity Values between 0.2H and 0.3H, already showing meaningful degradation in effectiveness against higher-evolved targets. Fortunately, sharkskin armor wasn’t particularly high-Activity either. Shen Cong had sensed the rat-catching unit’s sharkskin during the previous engagement: 0.5H to 0.8H range. The best sharkskin, apparently harvested from oversized Jin-Skin Dolphins, could withstand both boiling-radiation gun fluid and centipede bombs. What he was facing now was probably not the best grade.
He’d done the rough math on this problem during downtime — a quick attack-versus-defense assessment for the core weapon system, imprecise but useful as a personal guideline.
Evolved beast body versus bone-gold weapon:
When the target’s Activity Value exceeded the weapon’s by a factor of roughly ten, the weapon’s sharpening effect couldn’t penetrate. Around five times, significant kinetic force was needed to add to the sharpening to achieve penetration. Below five times, sharpening rapidly dissolved the target’s defensive Activity and tore through.
Rule of thumb: a 1H target needed at least a 0.2H weapon to break through.
The standard varied considerably by creature type — creatures with exoskeletons defended better than those without, soft-bodied creatures poorly compared to scaled or armored ones. Hard zones on any given creature defended better than soft zones. So the rule was a guideline for his own analysis, not a reliable constant. Real combat required finding the weak point.
Human jin people and iron people had very limited external defense — the Activity enhancement on biological tissue had natural ceilings. When Shen Cong had tested himself at 2H Activity Value, a 0.1H bone-gold weapon could barely penetrate below the skin into muscle. Anything above that threshold would injure him.
Bone-gold armor versus bone-gold weapon:
When the armor’s Activity Value exceeded the weapon’s by more than five times, the sharpening effect couldn’t touch the armor. Between two and five times, significant kinetic force combined with sharpening could eventually break through. At less than two times the difference, even moderate kinetic force — bow, crossbow, sling — combined with sharpening generally penetrated.
When the armor’s Activity Value fell below the weapon’s, it was simply outmatched.
The usual caveats applied: core material type and quantity varied the results. The Golden Jiao’s horn cores held 1.987H Activity Value, but soft-material Activity cores — the horns being essentially flexible tissue — didn’t translate that into cutting weapon effectiveness. Material hardness and structural integrity both mattered. And a weapon made from the natural tip of a core retained better penetrating capacity than one cut from the base — the outer surface of a core outperformed the interior.
This was why Shen Cong always manufactured arrowheads from natural protrusions rather than internal cuts.
Not that arrows were optimal anymore. As evolved creatures and evolved people continued to accelerate in movement speed, the relatively slow projectile velocity of crossbow bolts was becoming a limiting factor. Firearms could bridge the gap, but bone-gold ammunition required manufacturing infrastructure he didn’t have — he’d need to reach a major settlement and trade for resupply.
Hence the bouncing stilts. The tactical trend was shifting from ranged toward close-range, and his equipment design had to shift with it.
Adapt to the situation. No permanent rules.
One magazine expended. Two unlucky death-eaters down and writhing; the rest unharmed. Results unsatisfactory.
He switched to autopilot at low speed, set down the assault rifle, and picked up the sling. 0.5H-grade pellets loaded.
Slings were the closest ranged weapon he had to firearms in terms of velocity — slightly slower, but considerably faster than crossbows. The pellets were small; tearing effect was limited.
Crack.
A pellet caught a death-eater squarely in the face. The man folded and didn’t get up.
Shen Cong’s sling accuracy hadn’t declined. Precise to target within twenty meters when he’d started; now fifty meters was point-and-hit, a hundred meters produced under five centimeters of error, and even at two hundred meters he could hold within twenty centimeters.
When the death-eaters saw a comrade go down to a sling, all of them raised the neck sections of their sharkskin up over their lower faces, leaving only their eyes exposed.
Crack.
Another pellet. One of them shifted his head fractionally — the pellet hit sharkskin instead of face. The armor cracked but held, the man clutching his face and swearing. Not seriously injured. The sharkskin had absorbed most of the force.
“There’s only one of them shooting back! Everyone — rush!”
Someone had been watching and counting. The word spread.
“Stop wasting centipede bombs! Shoot out the tires!”
And with that, every death-eater in range produced a bow, crossbow, or sling and redirected fire at Great Vajra’s wheels. Accuracy wasn’t exceptional individually, but there were enough of them, and the tires were large targets. Hits started accumulating quickly.
“Skirts.”
Shen Cong hit a control on the central console.
Along the outer undercarriage beneath each of Great Vajra’s six tires, rubber panels dropped down and enclosed the wheel assemblies.
He’d designed these specifically against tire-targeting attacks — a mudflap-style skirt system. The full extended undercarriage armor existed for static protection, but it couldn’t be deployed while moving. The skirts were the mobile alternative: soft, flexible, not obstructing the drive, providing meaningful deflection.
Thwack. Thwack. Thwack.
Core weapons hitting the soft rubber skirts — the flexibility absorbed the impact, Activity reinforcement handled the rest. Against a vehicle approaching 3H Activity Value, this group of death-eaters was small fish trying to pull a tiger’s whiskers.
With tire vulnerability addressed, he could counterattack at leisure.
The sling wasn’t cutting through sharkskin reliably. He switched to the heavy crossbow and loaded a 0.6H bolt. That would penetrate.
Snap.
The bolt crossed the distance. A death-eater who didn’t move fast enough took it through the chest and went down and stayed down.
Snap.
Second bolt. Another death-eater took it in the head.
One of the survivors stared at the two bodies, then reached into his jacket and pulled out a round wooden tube about the length of a staff. He bellowed at the sky:
“WITNESS ME!”
The others stared.
“Bonehead’s gone crazy — that’s a six-hundred-and-sixty-eight crystal piece, and he’s burning it!”
“WITNESS YOU!”
“BONEHEAD, DO IT!”
“BLOW UP THE THEATER COMMAND’S DOG!”
The rest of them had somehow found this entertaining enough to cheer.
“HAHAHAHA!” The man threw his head back, laughing, then leveled one end of the wooden tube at Great Vajra and twisted the other end hard with both hands.
CRACK.
A glowing projectile punched out of the tube’s front end and crossed the distance in an eyeblink. It hit the vehicle’s side.
Then the explosion.
A significant section of Great Vajra’s side wall caved inward. The outer photovoltaic panels on that face — glass shattering in a broad swath — cascaded to the ground in a rain of fragments.
(End of Chapter 230)