Safe City Ch.158

Chapter 158: Group Attack Mode

To the mercenaries, this scene was no different from being swallowed whole by a mutated beast.

But from Cheng Qisheng’s perspective, she could see that inside each of the virus airships, the residents were also at a loss, flipping through the instruction manuals while communicating with one another over the channel.

“What do we do next?”

“Check the manual.”

“Turn on the lights. We need to turn on the lights. Press the light button.”

—Click!

Inside the enormous semicircular encirclement, which had previously been pitch-black, with barely enough light to see one’s own hand, brilliant white light suddenly shot in from all directions.

The light illuminated practically every nook and cranny. At that moment, everyone trapped inside the encirclement could practically see every strand of hair on their bodies glowing under the intense white light.

If Moon Silk had possessed a concept of heaven, the mercenaries probably would have thought they had ascended to heaven.

“The lights are way too bright. Turn them down a little. I can’t even see what they’re doing.”

“Check the direction of your own lights. Someone’s pointing theirs the wrong way. We don’t need to illuminate the outside.”

Amid the Blue Sea residents’ incessant chatter, the intense white light gradually dimmed until the brightness inside the encirclement was adjusted to roughly the same level as broad daylight.

As the developer of the virus airships, Lilith was also inside one of them.

She had actually tested all the airship’s functions long ago to make sure they were working properly. But testing was testing, while actual combat was another matter entirely.

Lilith held a long checklist in her hands, comparing it against the data as she marked off each item.

“I’m going to check the other airships. I’ll leave things here to you.”

The Blue Sea resident and Lilithian responsible for piloting this particular airship both gave her an “all good” gesture.

The virus airship had an official name: Type-One Airship.

As the Type One, its size was actually somewhat small compared with the local airships of Moon Silk.

Its external diameter was five meters, giving it an exterior area of roughly nineteen square meters. The interior was even smaller, with only thirteen square meters of usable space.

Therefore, the recommended capacity for a Type-One Airship was two people.

Of course, three or four people could fit inside if they really had to. They would just have to squeeze together.

This actually went against Lilith’s original vision for the airship’s design. She had initially wanted to build larger airships—the kind that could carry hundreds, or even thousands, of people at a time.

But given the current progress of her research, even with both magic power and conventional energy working together, plus all the modifications and additions she had made to the magic runes—tweaking one thing here, changing another there—something inexplicable had happened.

The large airships simply wouldn’t fly, while the small ones could.

Lilith had actually tried to figure out the underlying principle, but she genuinely couldn’t.

All she knew was that with the Type-One Airship, no matter which tiny section of its structure she removed, or even which minuscule magic rune she altered—even one used only for some insignificant little component—the airship would immediately stop working.

In that respect, it did conform to the teachings in the magic books.

They stated that if you were trying to create a magical construct, then as long as you succeeded, that was enough. Whatever you did, do not mess with it after it was finished.

Otherwise, you might not be able to put it back together.

Compared with the development of technology, where every step could be clearly traced—and even when the process wasn’t entirely clear, scientists could still find some underlying reasons to explain it (at least in most cases)—the research and development process in a magical world was much more complicated and far more obscure.

There were even magic runes on this airship that Lilith had designed herself. She had modified them from conventional magic runes. They were clearly less effective, yet they could be used on the airship, while the conventional runes couldn’t.

Why?

She had no idea.

Just as she had no idea why these airships only worked when designed in a circular shape. Squares, ovals, and triangles simply wouldn’t work.

In the end, all she knew was that the airship moved.

And it moved pretty fast.

The Type-One Airship had two doors. One was the entrance, while the other was a small door made from twisted metal.

Lilith stood in front of the small door and pressed the switch above it.

The small door made a sound. A layer of its originally smooth surface flipped open, revealing an eye that looked almost alive.

It was a magical eye created by countless tiny magic runes intertwined with one another.

To be honest, Lilith hadn’t originally intended to design it in the shape of an eye. Even by the aesthetic standards of a magical world, having an eye built into the door she walked through every day was admittedly a little too creepy.

But none of the other shapes she designed could achieve the desired result as smoothly as the magical eye. The magic runes engraved on it seemed to have a mind of their own. When placed on other shapes, they couldn’t even survive for a full day before losing their magical power.

In the end, Lilith could only bow to functionality.

Fine. An eye it was.

Besides, the Blue Sea residents seemed to rather like it.

The magical eye stared straight at Lilith. Most of its structure was magical in nature, but at its center was a surveillance camera. Numerous tiny pieces of metal inscribed with magic runes clung around it like the tiny blood vessels in an actual eye.

This was actually a security measure, intended to prevent intruders from simply destroying the camera and forcing their way inside.

At that moment, the center of the eye glowed faintly red, like the pupil of an actual eye. It moved up and down, scanning Lilith’s facial features.

“Identity confirmed: Resident Lilith.”

“Welcome, Lilith.”

“Please provide the access code.”

Lilith, whose mind was completely stuffed with magical formulas and magic-rune structures, froze for a second before finally digging the access code for this mission out of her memory.

“Uh… ‘Let’s do something big, 1889.’”

Come to think of it, she could understand the “Let’s do something big” part of the code, but what did 1889 mean?

Could it be that this password had already been used 1,889 times?

The magical eye flashed.

“Access code verified. Door opening.”

—Click!

The metal strips twisted around the small door spread apart like living vines, revealing a passage leading to the other Type-One Airships.

That was Lilith’s little stroke of ingenuity.

Since a Type-One Airship could only be made that size and she couldn’t modify it any further, Lilith came up with a way to give each Type-One Airship a “door” that allowed all the Type-One Airships to connect with one another.

If she couldn’t build a large airship, then connecting a bunch of small airships together would effectively turn them into one large airship during combat, wouldn’t it?

Every time Lilith thought about how she had come up with such a brilliant idea all by herself, she couldn’t help but praise herself enthusiastically in her heart.

If the Great God found out how clever she was, surely she would receive a blessing.

The moment she had that thought, Lilith felt the warm blessing of her God descend upon her.

She was instantly filled with happiness.

After the blessing ended a while later, Lilith first offered her thanks to the great deity before returning to work mode.

All right.

It was time for her to work together with the pilots and thoroughly test the viability of the “Group Attack Mode” in actual combat.

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