Chapter 284: Super Dreadnought Rock Excavator
The Super Dreadnought Rock Excavator, also known as the Cobra Excavator, is named for its appearance—a colossal cobra. Its function is that of an ultra-large digging machine.
Players can encounter this mechanical monster in the deepest part of the second stage, "Pyramid," in "Metal Slug 2" and its enhanced version, "Metal Slug X."
Due to its immense size, players can only see its wide-open mouth constantly devouring upwards in the game, never its entire body.
To some extent, it's more accurate to call it a tunnel boring machine than an excavator.
The internal structure of its wide-open mouth is very similar to a tunnel boring machine, making it more proficient at boring holes than at excavating. However, due to its design, it's actually better at devouring and destroying tower-shaped structures than simply digging holes.
Many players, like Cheng Tian, probably have a very deep impression of this mechanical BOSS because its BOSS battle involves a scene that feels more oppressive than many other major BOSSes.
The Peregrine Falcon Squad, controlled by the player, can only continuously jump and climb upwards on a tower-shaped pillar, while the Super Dreadnought Rock Excavator, with its mouth wide open, constantly lunges up the tower. One mistimed jump means death in the terrifying mechanical maw.
The Mechanical Great Serpent is a special vehicle that is rarely seen in the entire gaming world, specializing in "destroying tower-shaped structures."
And at this very moment, the unit devouring the Black Tower is a Super Dreadnought Rock Excavator, further increased in size!
Each layer of the Black Tower is essentially a compressed space interfered with by the Root of Magic. The size of the tower body is far less vast than its internal space, and Cheng Tian's Super Dreadnought Rock Excavator is designed to swallow the tower body whole!
The Mechanical Great Serpent in the original work also had the name "Nero." Cheng Tian quite liked this name, so he adopted it.
The blueprints for this machine were naturally reverse-engineered by Billy Gates after acquiring the wreckage destroyed by the Peregrine Falcon Squad inside the pyramid. However, due to its extremely limited application scenarios, high manufacturing costs, and material requirements, it had no manufacturing value whatsoever in the current wartime state. Therefore, the Gates Corporation neither possessed nor planned to put this Mechanical Great Serpent on the market.
At most, they would just put the blueprints up to see if any sucker would be willing to buy them.
As a result, Cheng Tian, leveraging the Black Pearl's creation authority from Ys Origin, managed to hand-craft one.
Of course, because it was a clever workaround, the ownership of this item is tied to the existence of the Black Pearl, making it a "limited story item."
Moreover, the most important point is that even though the Twin Goddesses had almost perfectly recreated all the combat skills of this "Nero" with the Black Pearl, one thing prevented this engineering vehicle from being truly controlled and driven.
That was the lack of a corresponding energy source.
Theoretically, with enough Cleria Ore, such a behemoth could indeed be driven. But the problem was that the Cleria Ore veins had been sealed by the Twin Goddesses, making it impossible to extract any casually in the short term. And the pitiful amount of ore "exploited" from players simply couldn't support such a colossus, only enough to be laid out in a "vein-like" manner across the entire machine body as per Cheng Tian's request.
And so... *clack clack clack clack clack clack clack clack*~~~
In the cockpit of the flaming Cobra Nero, Cheng Mouren, utterly devoid of flesh, his pure white upper and lower jaws rapidly clashing under the flames as if laughing, while the mechanical serpent's mouth, frantically gnawing at the Black Tower's outer wall, continuously spewed the same flames—
Ghost Rider form! Hellfire enchantment! Vehicle hellification!
The Super Dreadnought Rock Excavator "Great Serpent Nero" had already been infused with life through the Hellfire enchantment, becoming a tower-devouring giant, a Hellish Great Serpent, wandering between life and death!
The flames erupting from the Great Serpent's entire body were genuine Hellfire mixed with angelic power, and Cheng Tian's magic directly replaced the energy required to drive the Great Serpent.
Of course, with Cheng Tian's current spiritual attributes, which haven't even surpassed their extreme value, it's simply unrealistic to drive this terrifying behemoth for long... But Cheng Tian has a large reserve of soul fragments!
The Hellish Great Serpent, which had already devoured more than half of the Black Tower's first layer, caused Cheng Tian's mana bar to plummet like a leaky faucet with every opening and closing of its mouth and every upward lunge. But at the same time, in a deliberately cleared item slot of Cheng Tian's, an seemingly endless supply of azure potions appeared.
These were mana recovery potions directly exchanged from the Goddess using soul fragments under the Tower Defense Clash rules.
Each recovery was around 50 points, theoretically requiring 8 bottles to fully restore Cheng Tian's mana... but it had no cooldown!
Cheng Tian's mana bar was leaking frantically, but the mana recovery potions with no cooldown were also pouring in frantically.
At the same time, the existence of Bazett, Saul, and a host of projections continued to earn Cheng Tian soul fragments.
He could hold on! He could absolutely hold on! As long as he took down the Black Tower first, it would be a victory!
Boom!
The sudden violent tremor from the machine's body made Cheng Tian's hollow eye sockets involuntarily look out of the cockpit, and he immediately saw Dares, whose panic and anger mixed, began to condense his magic filled with human negative emotions, creating a large number of magic missiles that started to bombard the Hellish Great Serpent devouring the tower.
Bearing the "Root of Magic," Dares understood the fundamental composition of the Black Tower better than anyone. But the behemoth before him was actually able to devour and cause almost irreversible damage to the Black Tower in a true sense. What this meant was already clear—
This Hellish Great Serpent, covered in flames, must have used a large amount of pure Cleria Ore!
Destroy it! He must use all his strength to destroy it!
Dares' judgment was not wrong; Cleria Ore indeed provided the most crucial "armor-breaking" effect for destroying creations of the Root of Magic. But two factors further amplified this effect.
One was the Hellish Great Serpent's own attribute of "+200% efficiency in destroying tower-shaped buildings."
And the other was the "911" title Cheng Tian was currently wearing.
Because the Twin Goddesses had built the White Tower entirely to the specifications of the Black Tower, when the White Tower and Black Tower were in the same area, it automatically acquired the "Twin" attribute.
With the Twin attribute, and being a tower-shaped structure, how would it be treated?
Facing Dares' magic missile attacks, Cheng Tian, inside our BOSS Hellish Great Serpent, responded by summoning a large number of golden punitive feather arrows from afar, using their low damage, high frequency, and superior mechanism to clash with the magic missiles, while the main body, under Cheng Tian's control, accelerated its devouring of the Black Tower.
The Great Serpent lunged upwards again, and its mechanical maw, fused with Cleria Ore, opened and closed once more.
And the moment the Hellish Great Serpent's mouth completely devoured the first layer of the Black Tower, Dares felt as if he had been struck by a heavy blow. Simultaneously, all remaining monster units belonging to the "Crying Domain" across the entire battlefield instantly exploded at that moment, transforming into a sky full of soul fragments!
[Black Tower First Layer, Crying Domain, shattered.
All wind-element monsters of the Crying Domain will no longer respawn.]
There are still five layers until the Black Tower is completely devoured!