After crossing the cage mountain, the three of them turned to the west, all the way towards the Desperate Mountain Range.

In less than half an hour, Maisie was the first to be defeated.

At an altitude of 1,500 meters, the Phoenix easily flew at a speed of 400 kilometers per hour with two engines. And although Maisie's Petrel form can also reach this speed, it can only hold on for a short time, and in the face of the tireless new fourteen-cylinder engine, it is only a matter of time before it is thrown off.

"How's it going?" said Tilly.

「...... I—I can still fly...... Chirp!" Maisie was already out of breath.

"You've done your best, let me do it. 」

The lightning took the unyielding partner into his arms and took over the second stage of the competition.

A man and a machine launched a new chase in the gray sky.

The landscape shrank and shrunk, and the mountains separating the human kingdom gradually became a sinuous line of ink, and Tilly could see the red mist flowing from the direction of the continental spine in the distance above Eternal Winter and the wolf's heart, like a cloudy barrier. The land in the barrier has undoubtedly been filled with scarlet, but if you can soar into the sky, you will be able to see the world as it really is.

"Is this your limit?" Lightning's voice rang out, "I'm flying far faster than that!"

In terms of flight speed alone, the opponent's ability is indeed unmatched, even the Lord of the Sky Dome with the power of teleportation has suffered in her hands.

But for Tilly, winning or losing is not the most important thing.

It's a pleasure to drive this large, nimble machine and push its performance to the limit.

She withdrew her gaze, smiled, pulled up the nose, and flew towards higher airspace.

The lightning also followed, and always remained about a hundred meters in front of the plane.

According to the introduction in the instruction manual, the Phoenix has been optimized by the technology of the dream world, and the key parts are also processed by Anna herself, which has the basic qualities that far surpass the Tianhuo - the top speed of level flight can reach 550 kilometers per hour, the maximum range is more than 1,500 kilometers, and the double-row star engine also adds a turbine system, so that its performance will not be greatly attenuated when flying in the airspace of more than 3,000 meters, which is something that the production model cannot do.

But that's not the Phoenix's biggest feature.

Its mechic structure has been strengthened by the combination of Candleflame and Doris, and its strength and durability can be said to be above the material itself, and it can be regarded as the first aircraft to combine industrial technology and magic.

Tilly knew that the propeller was most efficient at low speeds, and as the speed increased, its propulsion efficiency would decrease rapidly, so it was almost impossible to touch the back of the lightning with its own power alone.

She had to rely on the help of other forces.

After pulling up to the top of the clouds in one go, Tilly jerked up the throttle to the maximum and pressed down the joystick.

The engine suddenly let out a high-pitched roar!

The Phoenix made a sharp turn and went into a dive.

In order to keep herself in the forefront, the lightning also adjusted the direction and fell rapidly, just to avoid mutual influence, she pulled the horizontal distance to about a kilometer, and the vertical direction was still the same 100 meters - at this altitude and speed, the "light film" of the same magic was already very obvious, and the shining ripples formed a protective layer around her, in case she was affected by the cold wind and low pressure.

There is no doubt that lightning in a state consumes mana much faster than it does in normal flight.

Even when testing the ability, Roland mentioned that the reason why lightning cannot fly at supersonic speed for a long time is probably not that the flight itself requires too much mana, but that the consumption of mana in the same tone of the body in a very short environment is greatly increased.

As a result, she rarely enters the speed of sound when patrolling in peacetime.

It is very dangerous for witches to drain their mana at will.

Of course, Tilly wasn't feeling good at the moment, the thin air in the air made it hard for her to breathe, and the full speed of the engine and the wind in her face made the noise and tremors in the cabin rise sharply, and she had to rely on her body to hold on without the protection of the magic tone.

According to the airspeed counter, the Phoenix is approaching a speed of 800 kilometers per hour.

That's significantly more than the upper limit of its top speed.

Lightning was still steady in front of the nose, but he didn't have time to talk to her with the Listening Sigil.

That's right, it's gravity that Tilly is borrowing.

When she was flying a biplane before, she found that when she converted the accumulated altitude into speed in one go, she could easily push the limits of the airplane.

However, the risk of this excessive speed cannot be ignored, and it will not be able to be pulled up again, or it will disintegrate directly in the air.

If it weren't for her ability to sense that tipping point, she would never have dared to use a dive to speed up during a test flight.

But even then, the chances of catching up with lightning are slim.

She remembered Roland saying that piston planes had to pay a great price to exceed the speed of sound due to the propeller principle, in other words, the gains outweighed the losses, so that jet engines quickly replaced propellers. Lightning, however, can break through the sound barrier at any time, and the gap between the two is not on the same level.

So she needs help from something else.

With the rapid drop in altitude, the dense dark clouds entrenched in the airspace of 2,500 meters collided with the two of them like the earth.

The Phoenix roared into the dark clouds, splashing a "pillar of fog" on the clouds!

By this time, the plane was traveling at more than 900 kilometers per hour, and the tremors began to spread from the body to the wings, and she could feel the surface of the wings cut through the viscous air in front of her like a blade, and this high-speed friction made the air no longer an ethereal thing, but like a thick wall.

The lightning vanished from view.

Tilly knew the opportunity had come.

She focused all on the maneuvering of the plane—the propeller provided almost as much thrust as drag at this speed, and the average person should be thinking about how to pull the plane back up rather than make it dive faster. Only Tilly was able to maintain precise control in such a violent tremor and use rudder adjustments to increase speed even further.

Although the acceleration was not large, it was enough to close the distance to the frontrunner.

When the Phoenix's own limit approached, she rushed out of the clouds!

The vast expanse of the earth rejoins the eye.

At the same time, lightning appeared - she was now on the same level as the new aircraft compared to the previous steady 100-meter lead. The latter, who came to his senses, instantly entered the speed of sound, but quickly slowed down and turned closer to the cockpit of the plane.

"It's worthy of Her Royal Highness the eldest princess," Lightning's expression didn't show much frustration, but more admiration, "I can actually take the clouds into account." 」

"If it were any thinner, I wouldn't be able to catch up with you. Tilly replied with a smile as she flattened the fuselage.

From the outset, her plan was to use a natural dive to get the lightning to adapt to a steady acceleration, and finally overtake it under the dark clouds - albeit only for a split second, but the Phoenix did close the gap.

"Wait, where are we flying here?" Maisie poked her head out of Lightning's arms.

"Uh......" Tilly looked sideways, only to realize that there was an unfamiliar landscape below, and the Desperate Mountains had been left far behind them. The chase was so engrossed that he didn't even notice how far it had flown all the way to the northwest, "Maybe this is also part of the Fertile Plains, right?"

"You can't be wrong," Lightning pulled out his goggles, "but it's a fertile plain that I've never set foot in before. If we extrapolate from the route, we should be at the junction of the Wolfheart and the Eternal Winter Kingdom to the east, and the continental spine directly ahead—"

At this point, her voice stopped suddenly.

"What's wrong?"

Tilly looked in the direction she mentioned, then froze in place.

The mountains looming in the clouds in the distance, far taller and more majestic than the desperate mountains, but since they had known about its existence from Agatha and the expedition group, they wouldn't be too surprised to see it for the first time.

What shocked her was the mountains.

I saw a gloomy dark red cloud entrenched on the top of the mountain, and countless lightning flashed in it, like a storm of blood.

There is no doubt that it is not a celestial phenomenon that can be formed by nature.

The red cloud caused her a feeling of great unease.

.。 All come to read m.