Chapter 1036: Chapter 242: The Ascendance of the Ranged Corps (2)

Artillery basically doesn’t have that problem; a sniper cannon is just a cannon barrel with a fire-control radar slapped on.

This XT-130 Heavy High-Speed Vibranium Sniper Cannon can pour out over a hundred shells per minute, and those shells can keep landing with pinpoint precision in the exact same crater.

This is Burton’s latest product. Once it’s mounted on the Snow Leopard, you can hardly see what a Snow Leopard used to look like. Its whole body is wrapped in heavy armor, and thanks to the Golden Pansy Domain’s Trait, the Snow Leopard’s size is 50% bigger than normal. Fully armed to the teeth, it’s like a steel war tiger, with the Golden Pansy Clan’s crest and emblem engraved on the armor.

Even in close combat, this Snow Leopard can rip apart a ton of Giant Beasts under the blessing of its equipment. The main DPS, though, is that high-speed firepower suppression system on its back, which can fire 450×130 mm Vibranium fin-stabilized metal missiles at an initial speed of Mach 24, able to directly lock onto Giant Dragons that have activated their acceleration. Of course, Legendary Giant Dragons aren’t included in that range.

The acceleration of Legendary Giant Dragons is a bit absurd; it’s not something a single Snow Leopard carrying one cannon barrel can handle. At that point you already need to use forced-lock abilities.

But if this shell hits, even a Legendary Giant Dragon will feel awful, because the firing speed has been cut down almost a hundredfold—turning a gun barrel that could originally pour out ten thousand rounds per second into one that only spits 130 shells a second—in exchange for a massive boost to shell damage.

As a Legendary-level piece of gear, it steadily deals 4500 Physical Damage per shell, plus 900 Piercing Damage. If you switch to Divine Mercury shells, each shot also carries 300 Divine Damage, with double damage against Demons and Undead.

In the late game, True Damage and Divine Damage become the main sources of DPS.

Physical Damage plus 900 Piercing Damage per shot is very strong in same-tier fights; even against top-tier Tier Five Soldiers it has very decent output.

A single Terror Bull Minotaur only has twenty to thirty thousand HP. One hit from this, after defense reduction, will still do two to three thousand effective damage, directly shaving off a tenth of its health.

In other words, ten Snow Leopards focus-firing in one volley can instantly delete one Terror Bull Minotaur.

Even in a 1v1 precision snipe, you only need ten rounds to finish it.

In a main battle scale of two to three thousand people, one Snow Leopard like this is enough to serve as the artillery platform for a whole army, trading salvos with the enemy’s guns and providing fire support for its own side.

Whether for surrounding and killing a strong enemy or for AoE, it’s way more reliable than bullets.

The biggest problem with using bullets is that you can only infuse a small amount of Divine Mercury into each bullet. It’s a special alchemical item similar to Holy Water, produced within the Empire.

The price isn’t exactly cheap, but for the Golden Pansy Domain, ten Spirit Crystal Coins a catty is really nothing more than a drop in the bucket.

Caroline and the Lusen Chamber of Commerce bought a thousand tons in one go and then went wild stuffing it into shells.

You can think of it as an enhanced version of gunpowder; in theory this stuff should be measured in the millions of tons.

Of course its actual cost might be extremely low—maybe it’s literally some Divine Spirit’s foot-washing water. The Elf Goddess Lilith just loves doing that kind of thing, giving her foot-washing water to Knights to drink, making them insanely powerful.

So the biggest cost in producing this stuff is just finding some lake with plenty of water. Ten Spirit Crystal Coins a catty, and all ten Spirit Crystal Coins are profit; the cost is only 1 Realm Coin. Profit margin: 100000%.

Fortunately, Lin Rui never cares if others get a chance to make money; he only cares that he can grow stronger.

Put this stuff in bullets and each bullet might only have 1 point of Divine Damage.

Dumping ten thousand bullets out in one second looks like over ten thousand points of Divine Damage, which seems impressive.

But the problem is that powerful enemies all have Divine Shields, and each bullet hits that shield without breaking through.

So you can only turn it into shells: 300 Divine Damage each, 130 shells per second, which is also very impressive damage—at least it breaks defense. Even if each hit only does 30 effective damage, that’s still 3900 Divine Damage per second, which is already enough for a companion fire-support system.

Yurik doesn’t have all those merchant tricks; he just slapped a price tag of 2000 Spirit Crystal Coins per unit and intends to sell twenty thousand of them.

Lin Rui thought for a bit and decided to just buy out all the Snow Leopards in one go.

The territory’s Holy Hall Maid Guard can be trained directly, as long as they’re women.

Now the Heroic Spirit-level Holy Hall Maid Guard has gained a new Trait: [Divine Arrow Flight · Heroic Spirit Level Trait: The bow pierces leaves at a hundred paces; the arrow chases the sun across heaven and earth. The Divine Archer becomes the sovereign of the arrows, her shooting skills surpass the common run. Every 10 seconds, the Divine Archer’s next attack releases a powerful Divine Arrow, dealing an additional 250% burst damage and having a chance to add an extra silence effect, with the arrow wind surging so the target cannot use any active skills for 2 seconds. The Divine Archer can activate a second-stage "Shoot the Sun" form, sacrificing 50% Attack Speed to increase range by 100%, allowing her arrows to strike targets at much greater distances and adding 10% Divine Damage.]

The Holy Hall Maid Guard has a Trait where any attack within 1400 meters is guaranteed to hit; after doubling their range it becomes 2800 meters, and their DPS spikes up a tier.

And Galo still has two Strategic Treasures.

[Remote Deployment: Strategic Treasure: As distant as the stars, as effortless as drifting clouds. Remote strategy is a test and display of your strategic acumen, paving a road of victory for ten thousand miles. The Marshal’s Soldiers have their attack range doubled; enemy Soldiers who approach your ranged troops gain the[Deep Penetration]Trait: -5 Morale, effectiveness of Will effects -10%, and when attacked from any direction other than the front, they suffer +15% Critical Strike Rate and +20% damage.]

[Battle Prayer: Strategic Treasure: Battle Prayer turns faith into the power of victory. In battle, prayer shines down and the radiance of victory knows no bounds. Each time you receive a positive buff, gain one stack of[Protective Aura]: Divine Damage +10%, attacks ignore Block and Evasion and are guaranteed to hit, lasting 1 second.]

This gives the Holy Hall Maid Guard a guaranteed-hit range of 5600 meters.

meters!

That’s basically ten li.

A mortal army needs about ten minutes to run a five-kilometer cross-country.

Which means a mortal army has to run themselves half to death for ten minutes just to cross the Holy Hall Maid Guard’s kill zone.

To be fair, the main reason Lin Rui didn’t care much about ranged before was that their range was too short; the Aerial Cavalry hit their faces before they could even finish accelerating, leaving no room to output.

Now that he has an even stronger companion fire-support system, this ranged force can finally stand its ground.

Previously, one big limiting factor was that the Snow Leopards didn’t benefit from Marshal Galo’s buffs. But now, with Spirit Crystal Coins being used to constantly wipe Command Value, all those problems are solved.

So Zhongli bought twenty thousand Snow Leopards in one shot, planning to train another batch of ranged Soldiers.

But even with Lin Rui clearing out all of Yurik’s Snow Leopards in one go, that only nets him 20 million Spirit Crystal Coins—there’s still an astronomical shortfall.

This Divine Spirit really got a small taste of savage loss today.

He’s the "poor but aggressive" type; compared to other Divine Spirits, he doesn’t have that many resources, and he doesn’t really care.

When Lin Rui is doing deals measured in the tens of billions, and he’s still doing twenty-million-level deals, you can’t deny this comes down to each person’s choices.

But for a Divine Spirit, this really isn’t an issue, because unlike mortals they don’t think in terms of the gold standard.

Having money or not has very little impact on a Divine Spirit. Lin Rui needs massive investment to grow stronger, so wealth matters to him.

Yurik obviously doesn’t need that to grow stronger, so for him it doesn’t matter whether he has a lot of money or not.

He quickly took out another trade item.

[Special Soldier Recruitment Scroll: Valkyrie]!

Lin Rui rejected it on the spot without thinking. If it were some other Divine Spirit’s Heroic Spirit Hall Valkyries, he might at least think about it.

But Yurik’s Valkyries are basically used goods; he wants no part of that!

Prostitution is a serious crime in the Golden Pansy Domain.