"Lin!"
The attack was too sudden.
Seeing his wingman shot down by the Honkai Beast, the pilot of the other F-18, with no ti to scrutinize the details, pushed his engines to full throttle and rapidly charged towards Lu Xing!
The two jets were not from the Australian native forces. Instead, they hailed from the US military, a temporary "1st Fleet" ford by drawing ard forces from the 3rd and 7th Fleets. This mixed fleet was responsible for patrolling and annihilating threats across the Australian continent and its adjacent waters.
In other words, it was a "Specialized Fleet" designed specifically to deal with Honkai Beasts.
Due to their own ard forces being stretched thin, the 1st Fleet, at the request of the Australian governnt, had also "incidentally" taken on the responsibility of patrolling the urban clusters along the continent's east coast.
The F-18s that had initiated the attack on Lu Xing were originally on a routine reconnaissance mission. After receiving a support request from the Australian Army, being the closest units, they had co over, "working overti," to deal with a "single" humanoid Honkai Beast.
Unfortunately, they were too late. The Australian native unit that had sent the support request had already been completely wiped out.
The only piece of news that could be considered good was that their trip hadn't been a complete waste of aviation fuel—at the cost of four air-to-ground missiles and four bombs, the two jets had successfully dispatched the culprit responsible for annihilating the army unit.
However…
The two pilots had celebrated too soon.
The intelligence provided to them by the Australian military contained a massive flaw (error)—the attacking Honkai Beast wasn't alone. The one they had taken down had an accomplice, one that was exceptionally effective against air forces!
"Rat-tat-tat-tat!" xN
The chain gun swept a series of bright yellow flas across the sky.
The F-18 pilot was not facing a Ranger-class Honkai Beast for the first ti—though it was his first ti seeing one that was entirely pitch black. While the opponent's body blended seamlessly with the night, the purple glow emanating from its rear, like an engine's exhaust nozzle, was exceptionally conspicuous.
Ranger-class Honkai Beasts were extrely agile, but their defenses weren't necessarily that strong. Forget air-to-air missiles; even a few hits from the chain gun would be enough to shatter them into pieces.
The F-18 didn't have much ordnance left. The two bombs and two air-to-ground missiles it still carried were high-yield types, and these already occupied most of its payload capacity. The air-to-air missiles he had remaining…
Only two left. There was no room for error!
The pursuit lasted for over three minutes.
Tail-chase maneuvers, horizontal turns, continuous rolls… The F-18 pilot grew more alard the longer he chased. He saw this Ranger-class Honkai Beast perform aerial acrobatics that usually, only human pilots would show off.
He felt as if the creature he was pursuing… was a scaled-down F-18!
"Click."
The red button on the control stick finally offered no response.
Although the pilot had done his best to minimize firing during non-essential situations, unfortunately, the F-18's chain gun ammunition reserves were still instantly depleted when he once again gained a tailing advantage—
If it had been a human-made fighter jet, with the advantage gained in this "dogfight," he could have definitively sent the opponent to hell.
Unfortunately, it wasn't.
Lu Xing's series of maneuvers just now, aside from the factor of him re-acclimating to his "Ranger-class" body, were also aid at depleting the opponent's ammunition as much as possible.
When dealing with agile aerial targets, Lu Xing hadn't, from the very start of the battle, directly revealed his ability to achieve super-vector acceleration changes by altering his jet propulsion angle.
It was all for…
This very mont!
"BOOM!!"
Afterburner thrust, Delta Maneuver!
In but an instant, "Big Universe" had vanished from the F-18's lock—
"Honkai energy proximity detected!"
"Honkai energy proximity detected!"
The F-18 was equipped with an experintal model of Honkai energy detection radar. This type of device could provide a warning when the fighter jet was locked onto by "long-range Honkai weapons"—the principle was essentially the sa as being locked by an air-to-air missile.
"What!?"
From a position 30 degrees to his rear, completely obscured from view, slender and elegant crystal lances erupted from both sides of Big Universe's wings!
"Swoosh!"
A miss!
The [Honkai Lance Projection], which should have been impossible to evade, grazed past the F-18, less than twenty ters away!
But in the blink of an eye, Lu Xing had once again surged in front of the F-18—
"High angle-of-attack maneuver!"
Although not as exaggerated as the pitch angle of a Pugachev's Cobra maneuver, executing such an operation in a real dogfight was already the limit of what an F-18 could achieve!
The F-18, having regained a favorable firing position, no longer had its chain gun available.
So…
"SWOOSH!!"
AIM-120D air-to-air missiles—a two-shot salvo, holding nothing back!
Air-to-air missiles. Faster, more agile in turning.
The problem was, their warhead payload wasn't actually that large—enough to shoot down a fighter jet, perhaps, but not necessarily enough to do much to Lu Xing.
This held true even for modified versions designed to counter flying Honkai Beasts.
However.
Lu Xing wasn't particularly keen on experiencing the taste of a Thousand Years of Death—these things, no matter how he looked at them, seed to be chasing his little tail. If they were to explode behind him…
"This ends now."
"Swoosh."
A considerable amount of Honkai energy converged around him. Dust particles in the atmosphere combined and condensed with the Honkai energy, and dozens of miniature [Ballistas], each only the size of a ping-pong ball, scattered outwards like a celestial maiden scattering flowers!
Honkai-version chaff counterasures. Care to get acquainted?
"BOOM!!"
The F-18's final struggle turned into fireworks in the sky.
In order to observe the outco of the battle, the opponent hadn't imdiately piloted his aircraft away from the scene; but by the ti the flas exploded in the air, wanting to leave…
It was already impossible.
"BOOM!!!"
The chase in the final half-minute concluded with the "two aircraft" colliding—the F-18, having lost all its armants, no longer possessed any ans to threaten Lu Xing.
And attempting to accelerate to supersonic cruise speed during a "dogfight"… that duration would be more than enough ti for the opponent to treat him as a live target and tear him to shreds in the air.
At the very, very end, the pilot chose not to continue fleeing. Instead, he controlled the F-18 and ramd straight towards Lu Xing—
Together with the fighter jet and the pilot, they were dismantled into countless scattered pieces of tal, leaving behind a brief, hurried rain of parts on the ground below.
"Phew."
Up to this point, the battle, which had spanned the entire city, fought from the ground to the sky, had finally, completely, drawn to a close.
"It's over, right?"
"Should be…"
Hovering above a sowhat dilapidated rooftop, Lu Xing transford from his Big Universe form back into the appearance of the Knight Captain. The two form transformations had consud a significant amount of his Honkai energy, and coupled with the preceding intense battle… well, it hadn't actually been that intense. Compared to a life-or-death struggle, this battle felt more like an examination he had conducted on his own various abilities. His remaining Honkai energy reserves were probably only around 15%.
Even if more human forces were to join the fray, he wouldn't be able to continue engaging them. "Nigerundayo" is never shaful. Lu Xing now urgently needed to bask once more in the radiance of Honkai energy.
However…
From the direction the F-18s had co from earlier, twenty-four points of light were gradually brightening in the night sky.
"Still more!?"
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