2117 A Close Battle On All Sides

This time, the flagship couldn’t no longer withstand the attack. The hull exploded with smoke and fire as the ship fell at an angle.

One after another, fighter planes and escape ships broke away. Some headed for Earth, and some returned to Thanos’s fleet in space.

Seeing this, many members of Earth’s allied forces, including the Avengers and the Justice League, were astounded. They cursed inwardly. The Helicarrier was already this powerful? It could actually blow up a large battleship in just two attacks?

Luke, on the other hand, took the time to check on Skye. Both her hands were trembling, and she used Life 1 on herself.

After thinking for a moment, he didn’t stop her from overworking herself.

Like Jennifer, Skye had been at a desk job for a long time, and was treated well; she needed some battle achievements under her belt to quell any possible grumbles.

Injecting her VIbration into the vibranium energy storage device on their ships was the least she could do.

Using the properties of vibranium to store Skye’s ability for a short period of time before the vibration pulse cannon was fired was the reason why the flagship’s protective shield was instantly broken.

The protective shields on Thanos’s elite battleships could actually withstand all kinds of energy attacks, including a lot of superpowers, but Skye’s Vibration wasn’t one of them.

Luke had already studied this ability exhaustively.

Without a corresponding ‘restraint’ ability, most opponents weren’t immune to this sort of shock wave attack, and might even receive ‘critical hits.’

It was like a story from a long time ago: A bridge, which would have taken a lot of effort to blow up, collapsed when troops crossed it.

A high-level Vibration ability that was skillfully used could make the enemy shake themselves apart.

If Thanos had another chance later, he might be able to find a way to deal with this sort of shock wave attack, but he wouldn’t immediately sense it today.

After all, Luke had specially used the vibration pulse cannon in order to hide Skye’s ability.

Even Blink, who was transporting Skye among their ships, just thought that she was the ‘maintenance engineer’ for the pulse cannon.

Blink had no idea at all.

Skye usually turned the nanoarmor into a pair of black-rimmed glasses to give herself the appearance of a smart student.

She then used her knowledge of quantum mechanics, which was comparable with a doctorate in physics, to fool Blink.

The only troublesome thing was that the vibranium could only store energy for a short period of time.

The effects would drop from 100% to 90% in five hours. After that, the Vibration ability would drain off continuously before reaching zero in ten hours.

Furthermore, Skye was only human, and could only release her ability for a short period of time.

It was impossible for her to recharge infinitely and blow up Thanos’s fleet with a random barrage.

Thus, taking down some of Thanos’s battleships in the early stages was a good choice to reduce the pressure during the final attack.

This was also in line with the strategy which Luke and the others had come up with.

Thanos had only brought 50 donut ships with him, but they were one or two tiers higher than Earth’s battleships.

It was like how a fourth-generation fighter plane on Earth could easily crush a second- or third-generation fighter plane.

What Skye was doing was to ‘temporarily’ boost their weapons up to the same level.

Only then would Earth’s battleships be qualified to exchange blows with Thanos’s battleships.

If these three Helicarriers were the three from D.C. back then, they wouldn’t even get the chance to break through the flagship’s protective shield, and would have been doomed to lose.

That was also why Luke and T’Challa hadn’t asked the European and American governments for help.

Without the alien tech modifications and improvements provided by Luke, even if the European and American governments took out all their fighter planes and Helicarriers for a battle like this, they would only be here to set off fireworks.

With Thanos’s fleet shielding the battlefield from above, they couldn’t even use guided missiles to provide firepower support.

That made sense. If guided missiles could lock onto these battleships, then when Thanos had attacked Xandar, the Nova Corps would only have needed to throw missiles at him to survive; how could they fall so quickly?

As for providing technology to the European and American governments, dream on.

Following the Sokovia Accords, the Avengers, the Justice League, and New SHIELD all became ‘unlawful organizations.’ Any members who were caught had to be ‘handed over to the country.’

There was no way Luke would give them the tech and let them turn around immediately after the battle to use the tech to become more efficient at catching Luke and the others.

If the governments were allowed to participate in the battle, they would brazenly and forcefully steal prestige and benefits for themselves.

Wakanda had been chosen as the battlefield to make it easy to clean up the aftermath.

If the battle took place in America and Thanos was defeated there, the American government would pop out to fight for the gains.

In the name of a ‘comrade-in-arms,’ they would definitely take a lot of advantage.

To put it simply, apart from being better at dragging people down, stealing credit, and settling accounts later, the European and American governments actually couldn’t offer any sort of assistance in this sort of galactic battle.

Luke wasn’t an idiot. How could he bring along such ‘losers’?

The situation on the battlefield was quick to prove this point.

After that, the three modified Helicarriers fell into a ‘weaker’ position as they fought the remaining three medium-sized battleships in the sky.

Anyone with discerning eyes could tell that the modified Helicarriers were at a disadvantage.

The enemy’s protective shields basically weren’t damaged at all, while the protective shields around the three carriers were clearly much weaker. They relied on their enormous bulk to put up a bare resistance, and would be completely destroyed in half an hour at most.

However, Thanos’s alien troop and ground troops had already been beaten back by the superheroes and reserve members.

The remaining five superpowered alien soldiers had already started to do their best to avoid Big Dipper.

In a situation like this, Knight couldn’t be stopped at all.

After using up the 20,000 energy shells in the Gatling guns, he replaced them with two new Gatling guns and slaughtered the ground troops.

Knight could kill an ordinary foot soldier in less than two shots, and the four-armed monsters could no longer be used as cannon fodder.

The heavy infantry which followed right after the four-armed monsters became the new main characters.

This was a huge headache for Corvus Glaive.

The four-armed monsters were bred with biotechnology. As long as there were enough resources, they could be produced nonstop.

All the common sense they needed was engraved into their extremely simple brains during the breeding process, and consisted of nothing more than listening to orders to attack, stand by, retreat, and kill, kill, kill.

It wasn’t wrong to describe these four-armed monsters as robot soldiers.

Thus, large numbers dying in every battle didn’t affect Thanos’s army at all; production capacity could just be increased later.

But the heavy infantry was different.

They were actual aliens who needed to grow and learn a certain amount of knowledge before they could receive more complicated battlefield instructions and use all sorts of weapons in a galactic battle.

Those with outstanding talent and abilities would be promoted to driving ground vehicles and piloting small fliers.

Even if Thanos could directly capture and ‘enlist’ certain suitable alien races, it still took two to three years for a new recruit to be trained to become a qualified heavy infantry soldier.

These standard troops weren’t like the cannon fodder four-armed monsters, which were locked up and just needed to be fed every day. Of course, their numbers couldn’t compare with that of the four-armed monsters.

At that moment, Luke was slaughtering the heavy infantry, and Thanos’s army became much less intimidating to Wakanda.