Chapter 11
- Aaaagh!!!
Each time the anti-air gun fired, one wyvern knight would fall from the sky.
The gunners seated at the anti-air emplacements, the loaders swiftly feeding in shells, and the fire-control officers pointing targets with their batons were all busily doing their jobs.
In the midst of it all, there were only a few people preparing for battle.
They were the gunners manning the 20mm machine guns.
The gunners forgot their duty for a moment and stared at the streaks of fire blooming in the sky from the anti-air guns.
"The wyverns..."
"What am I even looking at."
A thousand years ago, the Emperor's founding ancestor ended the age of myth and established a vast nation that unified the continent.
On the land where five great powers had gathered to become one country, the founding emperor declared that the age of humankind had arrived.
Even so, the remnants of the age of myth did not vanish easily.
Human technology was too poor to catch up to the mystery known as magic.
Thus, the final remnant of myth that remained for more than a thousand years was the wyvern.
The only means of aerial transport allowed to humans who could not fly.
Before the rulers of the sky, human infantry was still helpless.
But not anymore.
Because Lord Kyle Leopold—and the weapons forged by the South’s advanced technology—were literally grinding the wyverns to pieces.
"Fire!"
Thudududung-!
The thunder of the anti-air guns, fired in rapid succession, filled the plain.
The 76mm shells tearing across the sky as they streaked through the air put a period on the last chapter of the age of myth.
There was no more fear to be seen in the bodies of wyverns torn apart and falling to the ground.
A thousand years since the founding emperor established the Empire.
At last, the moment humans overcame their fear of skyborne beasts had arrived.
"Enemy aircraft at 1,500! What the hell are you idiots doing!?"
"Ah, I’ll return fire at once!"
Looking up, I saw a few knights shining brilliantly. They were the ones who had somehow managed to force their way through the storm of anti-air fire and get through.
The machine-gun gunners pulled the triggers toward the now-close enemies.
Tukakakakak-!
The machine guns, boasting a rate of fire of hundreds of rounds per minute, all began spewing fire at once.
Even knights who had pushed their aura to the limit could do nothing before that overwhelming wall of fire.
"Aaaagh!?"
One unlucky knight was caught in the crossfire from three quad-mounted machine guns, twelve barrels in all.
Human and wyvern were shredded in an instant. The knight, torn apart as he fell, was beyond recognition.
The other knights were no different.
No matter how formidable aura was, it could not stop hundreds of bullets flying faster than sound with bare flesh alone.
Thus, the only one who barely made it to within 500 meters of the anti-air position was Eisen, commander of the 12th Knight Order.
- Screeeech!!!
With a mournful cry, the wyvern that had reached its limit crashed down, and the staggering Eisen painfully forced his body back up.
What entered his sight were dozens of gun barrels aimed straight at him.
A man who had lived an unknightly life would not be granted any glorious death.
"Ah..."
The moment he exhaled his last breath, five anti-air guns erased Eisen's body without a trace.
It had taken only 2 minutes and 35 seconds for the Western elite knights to be wiped out in front of the anti-air position.
The ones most devastated by that fact were the infantry unit following behind them.
The moment the knights approached, deafening bombardment poured down, and the sky was covered in beams of light of unknown origin.
Before those beams of light, even those magnificent knights and fearsome wyverns could do nothing and fell.
Faced with a terror they could not understand, the infantry had only one strategy.
Retreat.
The panicked soldiers began running back the way they had come.
And there were people who had been waiting for this exact moment above all others.
It was the two ambushed anti-air artillery platoons.
"Move it, move it, you bastards!"
Lahan, the soldier in command of the two platoons, was urging his men on while moving the anti-air guns and small-caliber anti-air weapons.
The order he had received from the Grand Duke was simple.
The moment the enemy infantry crossed the gorge leading toward Sarsen Port, seal it off.
They had been lying in ambush for the past two days for that very purpose.
As the force's role was to keep the enemy from escaping, they could not afford to be late by even a moment.
By then, the anti-air position had already begun spitting out that massive firepower.
But there was no time to stand there and watch.
"Wow, the wyvern unit's melting away!"
"If you have time to watch that, build a barricade instead, you bastard."
Lahan said it offhandedly and stepped to the very front. He personally hauled carts, military vehicles, rocks, wood, and all sorts of materials to build a barricade.
Since the commander himself was setting an example and building the barricade, no soldier dared complain about being hurried.
Thanks to that, they were able to finish a decent barricade in the two minutes it took for the wyvern unit to be annihilated.
"Lower the anti-air gun angles! Fire the regular shells without proximity fuses first! Those proximity fuses are insanely expensive mana-stone shit, so save them!"
"Mount the machine guns on top of the barricade! Five should be enough!"
"Everyone got enough rounds? We still have infantry running their asses off toward us, so check your ammo one more time!"
Thanks to that effort, a two-meter-high barricade was completed in no time. Once the anti-air guns and machine guns were mounted on top, it looked like a rather convincing fortress.
That was about the time the leading edge of the fleeing infantry unit arrived.
"Fire!"
Thudududung-!
The four anti-air guns all roared at once.
Though they were called anti-air guns, their original form was the 76mm naval cannons used by dreadnoughts.
They were veterans at eliminating ground targets.
The infantry that arrived first in the gorge simply vanished without a trace.
"Sweep them away!"
As the crimson beams spat out by the 20mm machine guns raked across the infantry formation, soldiers with their shields and armor riddled through collapsed one after another.
The artillerymen at the anti-air position, having finished off the wyvern unit with confirmation kills, also began advancing, dragging the anti-air guns along.
As 230 men stretched out in a line to form the encirclement, the net widened, but the range of that overwhelming firepower made even such spacing meaningless.
Ahead of them were the barricade and machine guns blocking the narrow passage.
Behind them were the anti-air artillerymen who had just single-handedly slaughtered sixty wyvern knights.
To the left was the deep sea, and to the right a sheer cliff.
By the time the five thousand infantry finally came to their senses, they were already perfectly surrounded by three hundred anti-air artillerymen.
***
"Aaaagh!!!"
"Break through the gorge! Dammit, if you can't, push with your bodies! We're five thousand, and they're only a few dozen!"
"We can't! We can't get any closer!"
"What the hell are you talking about! Where did the shield troops go—"
Boom-!
A shell let out a chilling whistle as it slammed into the officer. The ground flipped over, and mud and gravel burst into the air.
Something sticky was mixed in with the black dirt that rained down.
It did not take long for the soldier who touched his own cheek to realize that the 'sticky' substance was blood.
Piiiiiiii-
A thick ringing drowned out his hearing, and every sound on the battlefield became muffled.
Someone's desperate scream. The cannons' howl. The sound of that eerie weapon spewing light.
Everything on the battlefield looked as though it were moving in slow motion.
Even the crimson flashes that skimmed past people.
Even the people they brushed past, collapsing one after another like scarecrows.
KWAANG-!
Another huge explosion shook the soldier's vision.
Even so, the soldier did not flinch.
He had long since lost his sense of direction from the shock of the bombardment. In this hell where officers and soldiers alike were equally crushed and shredded, there was no room left to feel any sense of reality.
He would only keep walking forward, just as his instincts told him.
The elite corps that had fought countless battles in the West over the past ten years was melting away.
Even the army that had cruelly massacred and oppressed the natives of the western border was nothing before the true malice wrought by human technology.
"Ah..."
Memories flashed through the mind of the half-mad soldier.
So this was it. Divine punishment.
This was the price for the one-sided abuse and plunder of the natives over the past ten years.
The soldier, having lost all sense of reality, stood there blankly.
And he simply stood there and accepted the fate coming for him.
Fortunately, fate was not such a cruel thing.
"All units, cease fire!"
Voices roared from both sides of the gorge and the anti-air position.
Then the evil weapons that had just been grinding humans to pieces fell silent as if by a miracle.
Then their commander stepped forward and shouted.
"The Western army, which dared to ignore the rightful agreement between the Count of Sarsen and the South and brazenly try to seize the port, should all have died in the first place!"
"But our merciful Grand Duke has decided to give you a second chance!"
"All of you, drop your weapons and surrender! Do that, and I swear in the Grand Duke's name that your lives will be spared!"
Even anger over losing comrades can only be shown to an opponent of equal standing.
To the Western army, the Southern forces that were carrying out overwhelming slaughter from hundreds of meters away were more like incomprehensible monsters.
Every soldier who saw humans being crushed and expected it to be his turn next threw down his weapon without exception.
It was a good ending for both them and the South.
Better to be ground down as parts for a Southern factory than to die.
Thus the first battle fought before Sarsen Port came to an end.
The battle lasted about 15 minutes.
The Western army's losses were 60 wyvern knights, about 1,500 casualties, and 3,500 prisoners, while the Southern side suffered not a single casualty.
It was a perfect victory forged by the human technology Kyle Leopold and the South had built up.
Only then did the crystal orb's light, which had been showing the battlefield situation, go out.
In the meeting hall where everyone had fallen silent, Kyle Leopold asked,
"So, anything else to say? Charles Raymonds?"