Chapter 154: Slaughtering Peasants

Through successive rounds of scavenging and plundering, Luke’s War Lord and the four modified Tempests were steadily restoring their combat capabilities.

By this time, the appearances of both the War Lord and the modified Tempests had changed drastically.

Luke had dismantled the weaponry from the captured Chitauri shuttles, installing every usable piece directly onto his mechs. As the number of enemies they eliminated grew, the variety of available replacement parts became increasingly rich.

Although the two technological systems were vastly different, making the acquired components somewhat difficult to process, Luke operated under the mindset that if Tony Stark could pull it off, so could he. Backing himself into a corner with frantic brainstorming, he actually managed to concoct a functioning system.

An integrated system combining Empyrean technology from Dungeon and Fighter, Earth technology, and Chitauri technology!

This was the current state of the G-0 War Lord and the four Tempest units: hybrid mechs integrated from three distinct technological frameworks!

Consequently, the outward appearance of the mechs had naturally undergone significant changes, taking on a rather rugged aesthetic.

Building upon the ornate baseline of the Ryuujinmaru, the War Lord was unsparingly loaded with a massive payload of ranged weaponry. A dense array of various Chitauri laser cannons and pulse cannons was mounted across its chest, back, shoulders, arms, both legs, and... right between its legs.

In short, wherever a mounting point could be cleared, Luke held nothing back.

As a side note, the weapon located between its legs served as the main cannon.

Even if the four modified Tempests weren’t quite as exaggerated as his, they were nearly on the same level, their entire bodies heavily laden with diverse Chitauri armaments.

At a time like this, aesthetic considerations flew out the window; sheer firepower was all that mattered.

Luke could already foresee that the Chitauri would soon launch a massive manhunt to eliminate them. The scale of the commotions he was causing kept growing; no matter how high the Chitauri's tolerance might be, they could no longer turn a blind eye to his ongoing farming of their assets.

Right now, Luke was hiding alongside the four Tempests, observing the situation from the shadows.

Ahead of them lay a dense, asteroid-filled mining sector. Chitauri mining drones bustled about within the zone, swarming around massive space rocks to ceaselessly excavate them. Afterward, they transported the mined ores to nearby docked transport ships.

Mining operations centered around a single transport ship just like this one could be seen scattered almost everywhere throughout this boundless asteroid belt, stretching as far as the eye could see. Countless densely packed mining drones swarmed the belt, perfectly coordinated and operating at extraordinary efficiency.

Before long, one transport ship would fly away fully loaded, immediately followed by another arriving to take its place.

One could only imagine how vast the mineral resources provided to the Chitauri were, maintained by such highly efficient, unmanned, and fully automated mining fleets.

This was what a truly cosmic-scale civilization should look like.

Unfortunately for them, they had just happened to run into Luke.

When dealing with such unattended, utterly defenseless logistical units, Luke found himself even more excited than he had been during his ambush against the Chitauri search parties.

Perhaps this was simply the seed of mischief lurking in everyone's heart.

Guerrilla sabotage in the shadows often caused certain individuals' pulses to race much faster than an upright, head-on confrontation...

"Whoever first invented the strategy of farming the opposing side's resource units must have been a profoundly sneaky bastard," Luke chuckled softly. "Still, I love it!"

Led by the War Lord, the four Tempests charged into the mining sector like wolves descending upon a flock of sheep, opening fire without the slightest restraint!

Countless Chitauri mining drones were destroyed in the blink of an eye, flashes of explosive light illuminating the asteroid belt continuously. Without a shred of politeness, Luke used his crotch-mounted main cannon to pick off the transport ships one by one, sparing not a single one!

Luke had no other motive; he was simply here to wreak havoc!

With zero possibility of reconciliation between their hostile stances, he had to seize every opportunity to strike the enemy. Naturally, Luke relished hitting targets like the mining fleets, which severely crippled the enemy's logistical operations.

The Chitauri mining drones possessed high levels of artificial intelligence. After taking fire in the initial wave, they reacted instantly, scattering and fleeing in every direction...

"Pursue them! Take down as many as we can," Luke commanded with a chuckle over the comms.

The War Lord and the four Tempests pursued them relentlessly.

Along the way, they blasted away hundreds more mining drones and dozens of transport ships. The fully loaded ores aboard those transports scattered into the vacuum of space amidst the explosions, resulting in total resource losses.

Countless mining drones swarmed out of the mining sector and ultimately escaped into the distant deep space.

Luke did not pursue them further; he had no desire to leave the asteroid belt just yet. Garen without his brush was just a walking chunk of meat, and outside this zone, plenty of Chitauri uncles were eagerly waiting with open arms.

Still, Luke had underestimated the immense importance of this mining sector to the Chitauri.

This region was rich in a rare mineral vital to the Chitauri technological framework. Their two currently heavily damaged motherships required vast quantities of this exact resource for repairs, making the significance of this mining zone exceptionally pronounced.

The spectacle of one large and four small mechs wreaking havoc upon the mining drones was quickly transmitted back to base. Enraged by the defiance, the Chitauri commander immediately dispatched a military force to encircle and annihilate them.

When Luke noticed the radar populate with a dense cluster of blips accompanied by one massive signal, he knew the Chitauri had finally been pushed to their breaking point.

"They even sent a Leviathan, but only brought a single one? Are they looking down on me?" Luke snorted, feeling a slight sense of disappointment.

The Leviathan was his primary target, but since the enemy had only deployed one alongside a considerable number of Chitauri foot soldiers, Luke remained confident that he and the four Tempests could swallow the force whole in a single bite.

Who were the most endearing people in the universe?

Naturally, those who came rolling in to deliver express packages of supplies...

Nowadays, whenever resources, parts, or reinforcements were concerned, Luke welcomed all visitors with open arms.

He had already figured it out: in the short term, returning to Earth was entirely out of the question. Given Chitauri technology, they required the Tesseract to open a portal back to Earth from here, which gave him a clear idea of the sheer distance involved.

Therefore, his first priority was simply figuring out how to survive here—right inside the enemy's home turf.

As for whether he would eventually seek out Asgard to borrow the Bifrost back to Earth or devise some other method later, those were not things he needed to worry about right now.

The Chitauri extermination force marched heavily into the asteroid belt, finally resolving to scale the mountain and wipe out the bandits.

Through their recent skirmishes, the Chitauri had figured out Luke’s tactical patterns. The guerrilla tactics he employed—striking once and immediately relocating—gave the Chitauri search parties endless headaches.

Since their target was as slippery as an eel, they had no choice but to adopt a carpet-search strategy. The Chitauri extermination force spread out across a massive area, vowing not to leave a single habitable asteroid unchecked until they dragged Luke out into the light.

Where the Chitauri miscalculated was in severely underestimating the formidable power of individual targets.

According to their intelligence briefings, the culprits behind the repeated incidents were merely a handful of scattered Earthlings who relied entirely on sneak attacks, employing tactics that were exceedingly cheap and underhanded.

Consequently, the Chitauri deduced that these must simply be a few stranded Earth soldiers who had accidentally stumbled through the spatial gateway.

This was precisely why, upon learning that their transport fleets had been ambushed, the Chitauri had remained indifferent for so long, dispatching only scattered minor squads to hunt Luke down...