Witch Punk 2840

Chapter 307 Encirclement
"!!!"

As soon as she turned around, Saniya's attention was attracted by the huge creature floating high in the sky.

"What the hell is that?!"

"Hey! Do you think that looks like... an upside-down jellyfish?"

The conversations of her companions kept coming into her ears. Saniya watched for a moment and felt more and more that what they said made sense.

It really looked like a giant jellyfish suspended upside down in the sky with a rip in its body.

Black liquid continuously flowed out from the broken body, turning into something like a gauze curtain, spreading out to both sides and then hanging down, covering the entire ether sea with a radius of nearly 100 miles.

It looks a bit like the "Silk Curtain" contract in the upper city... Saniya thought to herself.

However, the coverage of the "Silk Curtain" contract is definitely not that large, and it will not lead to the situation before our eyes - both the sky and the sea of ​​clouds seem to be dimmed. Instead, the inside of the jellyfish tentacles suspended in the dome emit a dazzling dark golden light.

Saniya squinted her eyes and observed for a while, and found that the light was actually flowing, just like blood, slowly flowing into the jellyfish's body, turning into black liquid in the broken body, and finally flowing out.

The companion flying beside him suddenly shouted again: "Captain Saniya, look ahead! That seems to be... whale breath?!"

She turned her eyes away from the jellyfish and looked forward. In the distance, dense black threads were rising straight up. Saniya's concept of whale breath came only from the descriptions of the crew members, and she had never seen it with her own eyes. From the trajectory of these threads, they were indeed exactly the same as whale breath, but... shouldn't whale breath be a beam of light? And these black threads in front of her didn't look like they would glow no matter how she looked at them.

Everything here is very strange. According to Article 11 of the Tactical Manual, when encountering an incomprehensible situation, the captain of the formation can choose to abort the mission and return immediately... But if these black "gauze curtains" are really the "Silk Curtain" contract, I'm afraid it won't be that easy for the formation to fly out...

Saniya tried to calm herself down. She thought for a few seconds and made a decision:
"Feng and Maple, you return to the direction of the Moby Dick and see if you can fly out of this area. The rest of you, follow me and climb!"

She finished the command in one breath, but found that the team members did not respond at all. Saniya was stunned for a moment, and tapped the "communication debt" with her finger again, only to find that it was invalid.

Even this can't be used... She didn't have time to think about it, and hurriedly moved to Feng and Maple's side, shouting to them and repeating the order. The twin girls nodded, broke away from the formation, and flew in the opposite direction. Saniya flew to the nearest team member and shouted:

"The communication debt has expired! Let everyone follow me to climb! Pass on my words!"

The other party nodded, then shook his head: "Don't bother, Captain Saniya, I have a loud voice, if you have any orders next, I will help you shout."

After saying that, the petite girl took a deep breath and shouted, "Captain's order: the communication debt has expired, everyone follow the captain to climb!"

The extremely penetrating voice broke through the blockade of thruster noise and instantly spread throughout the airspace within a radius of 100 meters. Soon, everyone raised their hands to indicate that they had received the order.

Because they were too close to each other, Saniya's ears were buzzing, but she didn't care about that. She climbed up first, and the loud-voiced girl followed closely beside her. Then, the others also followed the two of them to climb up.

"What's your name?" Saniya asked. She had seen the other person on the boat before, but didn't know his name.

"Captain, my name is Olicia."

"Olicia, thanks to you, follow me closely and don't let me get away from you."

"Yes! Captain!"

The "whale breath" in the distance was still rising, but its trajectory was no longer vertical, but tilted towards the direction of the Strike Witches, which meant that they were about to reach the top. According to the crew's experience, the speed of the whale breath was the slowest near the top of the trajectory, and it would accelerate rapidly after entering the falling stage.

The Strike Witches' tactics to deal with the Whale Breath are based on this - they climb at the same time as the Whale Breath, and try to intersect with the Whale Breath at the top of the trajectory arc. Since that is when the Whale Breath is the slowest, theoretically, that is also the easiest time to avoid them.

"Turn on the afterburner!" Saniya ordered.

"Turn on the afterburner!" Olicia repeated her order loudly.

Soon, the roar of the surrounding thrusters became louder and louder. The Strike Witches began to accelerate, while the speed of "Whale Breath" was slowing down. As one was gaining speed while the other was losing speed, when they were about to approach the top of the arc, the two sides finally reached the same altitude, and the distance between them was shortened from the initial 25 nautical miles to less than 10 nautical miles.

The thin black line had become wider. Saniya observed it carefully for a while and suddenly shouted, "No! That's not whale breath!"

As she shouted, the black beam of light broke apart and turned into sections of columns. Each section was only two to three meters long. A beam of "whale breath" split into hundreds of such columns.

The number of whale breaths also exceeded one hundred. In a flash, Saniya saw tens of thousands of columns unfolding in front of her eyes, like a big black net, rushing towards her.

"What, what is that?!" Olicia beside her screamed, obviously also shocked.

Thanks to her shout, Saniya woke up from her shock. It didn't matter what it was. What mattered was that everyone should take action immediately.

"Activate synchronized strengthening! Disband the formation and evade freely! Olicia! Olicia! Don't just stand there, shout!"

"Eh... ah, yes!" The girl finally reacted: "Captain's order: activate synchronous reinforcement, disband the formation, and evade freely!!"

The girl's shout was even louder than before, but Sania was prepared and covered her ears in advance. Olicia's voice carrier Sania's command penetrated the huge roar after the afterburner was turned on and successfully reached the ears of every team member, saving them from a brief moment of confusion.

The formation dispersed in a swarm. Saniya had obviously entered the "synchronous strengthening" state. She turned around and shouted, "Olicia, follow me! I'll need you to help me call them back later!"

"Yes, captain!" Saniya turned her gaze back to the front and tried to do a barrel roll to the right. Sure enough, the cylinder closest to her also deviated from the trajectory, which showed that those things had tracking capabilities. Fortunately, Saniya had treated them as whale breath before and at least guessed one thing right. They were now at the slowest stage, and although they were dense, it was not completely impossible to avoid them.

Those cylinders were already very close, close enough for Saniya to see their details - or rather, the lack of details. Those things were standard, smooth, pure black cylinders, and Saniya could not understand why such things could not only fly in the sky, but also have the ability to track targets.

But now is not the time to think about that.

"Follow me!"

She reminded Olicia, then twisted her body, swung her legs upward, and dived headfirst. Dozens of cylinders on the opposite side chased her downward, and a gap was opened in the originally evenly distributed large net, but it was not enough, so she added a few barrel rolls while diving, and those cylinders that didn't seem very smart really followed her and rolled along the spiral trajectory, but because they were too dense, more than a dozen of them soon collided with each other.

"Right now! Pull up!"

Saniya twisted her body again while shouting out the command. As the direction of the thruster nozzle changed, a huge sense of overweight pressed down on her, and the bones all over her body suddenly made a creaking sound. At the moment when she was closest to the limit, she even suspected that her body would be torn apart, but fortunately, the "synchronous reinforcement" played its due role, allowing her to survive the peak of acceleration intact. The original 70-degree dive trajectory was reversed into a "V" shape. She crossed with those cylinders that did not have time to change direction. The closest distance was no more than 10 meters. The cat witch's good dynamic vision allowed her to confirm again that those were indeed simple cylinders without any details, just like the models used in the studio for beginners to learn sketching.

As the turn was completed, the huge feeling of overweight finally began to subside. Saniya was just breathing a sigh of relief when suddenly an intermittent noise came from behind her. It was a familiar sound because she had experienced it before... It was the turbulence before the thrusters were about to shut down!

She quickly slowed down and turned back. As expected, she saw Olicia's bewildered expression. She stretched out her hand and shouted:
"Hold my hand!"

The other party was stunned for a moment, but quickly reacted and held her arm tightly.

"Increase the output of magic power!"

Saniya shouted again and started to speed up.

Olicia had reacted and immediately let more magic power flow into the thrusters through her tail. With Saniya's pull, her speed quickly returned to the critical speed of the ramjet mode, and the turbulent noise disappeared.

"I'm sorry..." She let go of Saniya's hand and said softly.

"It's okay. I stalled before, and it was Captain Nana who pulled me out." Saniya smiled and continued, "Let's go gather the others back to the team, and you help me shout..."

Before she could finish her words, a muffled sound came from another direction. She turned her head hurriedly and saw a team member collide head-on with a section of cylinder and roll down.

With the existence of "synchronous reinforcement", even a high-speed collision will most likely not be fatal, but the collision will reduce the speed, destroy the flight posture, and eventually cause the thrusters to shut down. In this team, there are very few players who can restart the thrusters after the shutdown.

Saniya immediately changed her flight posture to a dive again. Before Olicia could react, she only said one sentence: "You go gather the other team members! I'll go get her!"

Then, the girl suddenly accelerated and ran straight towards the tumbling figure.

Compared to free fall, a dive with afterburner on is obviously much faster. The distance between Saniya and the opponent was quickly shortened from 5-6 kilometers to less than 2000 meters. The tumbling figure was clearly visible in the field of vision. From the movements, the opponent seemed to be trying to restart the thrusters. As expected, after turning on the "synchronous reinforcement", they were unusually strong and would not lose their lives because of a collision.

Saniya secretly breathed a sigh of relief. According to the current speed, she would be able to catch up with the other person and pull him up in just a dozen seconds.

But at this moment...

An incomprehensible scene appeared before her eyes.

Those cylinders - those black cylinders that were not hitting any targets and were falling along parabolic trajectories... suddenly began to deform.

As if the hard and smooth appearance was fake, they quickly reshaped their bodies. In just a few seconds, a monster that Saniya had never seen before appeared before her eyes.

They have a pair of cylindrical hind limbs and a pair of blade-like forelimbs. Their body shape is similar to that of a human, and the proportions of their limbs and torso are also similar... They even have a head shaped like a human head, but without clear facial features.

Moth beast? Judging from its hideous and strange appearance, it is undoubtedly a moth beast.

But when she saw it for the first time, an idea involuntarily came to Saniya's mind -

Is this look like she is imitating Strike Witches?

Whether it's the humanoid torso, the half-head, or the more obvious - the pair of narrow cylindrical hind limbs, if we only look at the functionality, this shape of hind limbs has no use at all, but if it is imitating the ramjet thrusters on the legs of the Strike Witches, it seems to make sense...

But none of this matters.

Saniya put these bizarre thoughts behind her. The most important thing at the moment was to rescue her teammates.

But it was too late...

She was still a full kilometer away from her teammates, and the newly emerged moth beasts were obviously much closer. They almost immediately discovered the prey in front of them and swarmed over it in a blink of an eye.

The blade-like forelimbs slashed through the teammate's body, and "Synchronous Enhancement" once again worked. The girl rolled in the air and was not injured. But then, more slashes followed, and the teammate, who had no mobility, rolled around like a ball among more than a dozen moth beasts.

Saniya clearly saw the increasingly painful expressions on her teammates' faces, which was a sign that "Synchronous Strengthening" was about to reach its limit. Something had to be done... Her first reaction was to draw out the Lightning Spear, but then she realized that it was too late, and without the guidance of Master Xia Ye, it was even questionable whether the Lightning Spear could lock onto the target... She should use "Continuous Flame Explosion"... Yes, this was the right choice! She wanted to pronounce the name of the witch's contract "Continuous Flame Explosion", but because she was too nervous, she pronounced the first syllable wrong...

At this moment, she saw a blood mist rising and her companion's body was cut in half.

(End of this chapter)