Chapter 16
Suddenly, the night became as bright as day.
And there was no enemy easier to spot than the black knights floating in a sky bright as noon.
"Large-scale enemy sighting! Bearing 0-1-5! Open fire with all prepared gunners!"
The moment the battery commander’s order rang out, the twenty anti-air guns deployed on the rooftops of the high-rises all roared to life at once.
Thudududung-!
The successive reports woke Albion’s harbor, which had been sunk in silence. Black scorch marks bloomed in the middle of the wyvern formation.
"Enemy aircraft, distance 3000!"
However, the situation was a little different from the Sarasen defense battle fought in daylight.
Because they were fighting at midnight by the light of flares, the distance between the wyvern knight order and the anti-air battery had narrowed quite a bit.
"Enemy aircraft, approaching!"
"Hey, you idiot! Don't shoot the same spot! Where's the fire control officer?!"
"We're short on proximity fuses!"
What had gathered at Albion’s Sector 5 port were not elite troops like Sarasen’s air-defense unit.
The air-defense force hastily formed in just a month consisted only of soldiers who had received basic training. Air-defense combat was awkward for them.
In that situation, two battalions and sixty anti-air guns were rushed in, so it was only inevitable that things began to get tangled.
"Adjust elevation! Machine-gun gunners, take your positions yourselves! We don't have time to issue one-by-one orders now!"
"Enemy wyvern unit! Closing to 2000!"
"Hurry and get ready! They'll be in machine-gun range soon! Where are all the gunners?!"
Trying to carry out air-defense duty in unfamiliar terrain with soldiers who had no real combat experience, things were bound to get messy.
Three minutes into the battle.
Even with a total of ninety anti-air guns gathered here, the actual firepower was barely more than half that.
But the ones thrown into confusion weren't just the air-defense gunners.
"Argh, my eyes...!"
"Kyaaaagh!"
"Damn it, everyone switch on your night-vision spells!"
Knights' eyes surpass those of ordinary humans.
Moreover, some of the knights were using night-vision magic to make nighttime flight smoother.
With such a blinding light source rising like the sun, it was only natural that the knights' eyes would be blinded.
Of course, knights were human weapons who could carve people up even with their eyes covered.
But this was a chaotic battlefield with three hundred wyverns gathered together.
The noise the wyverns made numbed the knights' senses, making it impossible to orient themselves properly.
Then anti-air fire rained down on them.
With no proper view of their surroundings and knights falling one by one, even these formidable knights couldn't help panicking.
"Everyone, fall back! Re-form the line and attack after the air strike!"
"What the hell are you talking about? If we pull out now, we're all dead! Everyone charge!"
"Argh, not this way, you idiot!"
Knights who had lost their sense of direction collided midair, while anti-air fire poured down around them. Allied knights flying beside them kept disappearing all of a sudden.
With casualty reports from friendly units not coming in properly, and even the orders meant to handle the situation getting tangled, the confusion only deepened.
Whether it was the Southern gunners or the Western knight orders, both sides were turning into a complete mess.
In situations like this, the side with the longer range usually had the advantage.
In any case, if they just sprayed anti-air fire into the clustered mass, they were bound to hit something.
"Enemy, speed is dropping at 1800!"
Four minutes into the battle, the difference had become stark.
The Southern army kept firing anti-air shells even when they didn't hit perfectly, while the Western knight order clustered in the sky and floundered about.
"Machine guns, open fire, all of them!"
"They're too far away. They won't hit properly at this distance!"
"Doesn't matter. We just need to increase the confusion."
And so, just as the knight order was barely regaining its wits in the midst of the chaos, the machine guns deployed along the coastline all began firing at once.
Thousands of 20mm rounds sprayed like a monsoon and filled the knights' field of vision.
It was a fear of a different kind from anti-air guns. Faced with an overwhelming barrage of bullets with nowhere to dodge and no way to block them, the knights' momentum was completely shattered.
Battle is half morale.
Once their initial fiery morale was completely lost, they could no longer attack.
In the chaotic sky, where casualties and survivors couldn't even be properly confirmed, even Charles Raymonz had no choice but to admit this attack had failed.
But it wasn't over yet.
It was certain that all of the enemy forces had gathered here.
If they retreated now and used the wyvern knight order's exceptional mobility to attack elsewhere.
Then they could inflict more than just a loss on the enemy.
Having made that calculation, Charles looked around and issued an order.
"Tch, fall back! Retreat and re-form the line!"
Charles's order spread through the knight order via the mouths of the commanders.
Only then did the knights begin turning around... but by then, it was already too late.
Behind the wyvern formation,
five destroyers had already taken positions in the open sea, lit up by flares, the flashes of anti-air guns, and the glint of tracer rounds.
The South had no intention of letting the enemy wyvern knight order that had come this far escape unscathed in the first place.
The destroyer squadron commander issued an order while looking up at the sky.
"All ships, prepare for anti-air combat!"
The destroyers, armed with four 76mm naval guns and machine guns, lined up in a row.
A moment later, anti-air fire toward the rear of the wyvern unit began.
Each time the thunder of guns rolled out across the sea in succession, the retreating wyvern knights fell one by one.
Only after losing more than twenty knights in the chaotic situation could Charles finally grasp what was happening.
There had never been any escape route to begin with.
"Damn it, retreat in an orderly fashion! Break through the anti-air fire and veer north!"
Boom-!
Charles's shout disappeared into meaninglessness, drowned out by the explosion of the proximity fuses.
What replaced it was chaos.
Wheeeee-
A whistle cut through the chaotic battlefield.
Flares fired by the five destroyers once again obscured the retreating knights' vision.
Bullets flew in from all directions. Orders were drowned out by explosions, and fellow knights kept dying one after another.
In that situation of rage over lost comrades and judgment blurred by the flares firing from every direction, the choice most wyvern knights made was one.
If we're going to die anyway, let's take revenge first.
- Waaaah!!!
Most of the surviving knights began diving toward the city that they could still barely make out through the haze.
Five minutes into the battle.
More than a hundred wyverns had already plunged into the sea.
***
Kaboom-! Bang, kaboom-!
The knights hurled themselves at the harbor, where the coastal guns kept spitting fire.
Five minutes after the battle began. Now that the initial dizzying confusion had been somewhat brought under control, the ninety deployed anti-air guns began to unleash their full firepower.
Every few seconds, the guns lined up along the coast flashed.
The hail of 20mm rounds battered the aura wrapped around each body, and the wyverns that couldn't use aura were turned into chunks of meat as they fell.
"Charge... aagh!"
Boom-!
One knight let out a pitiful scream and plummeted, while hundreds of rounds battered his whole body. The lower-ranked knights had already been riddled into beehives and sunk deep beneath the sea.
Each time a comrade fell away one by one in the darkness.
Each time their aura was stripped away by the pounding bullets.
Each time the knights the West had raised over decades were killed by the hands of newly enlisted youths.
A single uneasy thought grew stronger in everyone's hearts.
That the age of knights was ending.
Thud-!
A knight who had been unlucky enough to take a direct hit from an anti-air shell lost his upper body. He was an old warrior who had made a name for himself through more than a hundred battles.
The sight of a one-man-army knight vanishing to a blind shell gave the knights following behind him a certain jolt of awareness.
The awareness that the commoners they had looked down on so lightly could kill noble knights more easily than anyone else.
If they had been ordinary humans, this would have been a terrifying situation.
But the emotion that came first to the knights was slightly different.
"This can't be right."
The Third Knight Order's commander, Joseph, gritted his teeth.
Ever since the imperial founding emperor established the Empire a thousand years ago, knights had always been noble.
Since the Empire's founding, the wyvern knights had been the Empire's sharpest blade, annihilating all enemies who stood in their way.
Within his worldview, the notion that commoners dared kill knights was absurd.
Those bastards who dared stand in the way of the Empire's greatest blade were surely the Empire's real enemies.
"How dare those lowly commoner bastards!!!"
Joseph clutched his lance tightly and gathered his aura.
In the rain of bullets pouring down, a few 20mm shells shattered his aura shield and sent shockwaves through him, but he ignored them and charged.
He would eliminate those bastards here, and cut down the obstacles that had dared oppose the Empire's knight order.
People who dared look up at the sky as commoners deserved divine punishment.
Joseph, pouring every ounce of moonlight aura into himself, leaped into the air and shouted.
"For the Empire!!!"
[ Meteor Spear ]
The knight lifted into the air transformed into a streak of light and plunged downward.
As moonlight crashed down where three anti-air batteries were gathered, bombs detonated in sympathetic explosions and triggered a massive blast.
The uncivilized commoners guarding the air-defense battery were melted away by the explosion just like that.
"Cough, hack..."
Joseph was also badly damaged by the blast, but he was a member of the Third Knight Order, one of the elite knight orders.
Even if he couldn't use aura for now, he would be able to fight properly again after a little time passed.
"You idiots... To think you'd dare set your sights on the heavens..."
Joseph kicked aside the corpses caught beneath his feet like trash and swept away the smoke with his lance-
"...Huh?"
He ended up locking eyes with a group of infantry.
Ten enemies, their appearances completely concealed by coats, steel helmets, and masks, each carrying a heavy machine gun.
The mana I could clearly feel from them wasn't all that strong.
But overcome by an instinctive, nameless fear, he found himself unconsciously backing away.
"Is your life precious, knight?"
An elite unit that spoke in a distorted mechanical voice, guarding the Southern Air Duke Kyle Leopold at close range.
"Imperial Guard First Squad. We will exterminate the ghosts of the old era."
The Imperial Guard joined the battlefield to finish the job.