The swarm of Great Spikes across Palace Square had been wiped out, leaving behind a chaotic sprawl of corpses, dead iron fragments scattered in pools of blood, the wreckage of shuttle craft, and pulverized masonry and earth.
The remaining Great Spikes hovering in the sky showed no intention of launching another large-scale descent.
Without anyone noticing, the battlefield gradually fell quiet.
Save for the other side, where four super combat powers were encircling and hunting down a red-shoulder. The roar of devices and the thunderous clashes of fierce combat continued to echo from the ruined expanse of the Winter Palace...
Boom... Boom! Whoosh!
Clang! Clang... Bang!
From time to time, another shattered wall collapsed.
For a single national front, today the Azure Xiongzhanli Front had fought the hardest, most brutal battle in humanity's century-long struggle.
Across the square, soldiers who had lost their targets gradually halted, turning around to silently look in every direction.
After a brief moment of daze, they raised their hands to wipe the blood from the corners of their mouths, bound up their wounds, and replaced their source energy blocks.
Then, with great effort, they tried to find their squads on the battlefield—either embracing in silence or stopping numbly beside fallen comrades.
...Softly calling their names, then holding their breath, waiting for an answer.
Occasionally, someone would call out the name of every teammate and receive not a single reply... Unable to hold up any longer, he would sink down to sit beside his comrades.
Head bowed, he lit a cigarette and simply kept his head down.
One hundred and twenty-seven dead iron lances, some intact and some broken, all lay across the ground. The vast majority of the soldiers who had manned the strike formation were now lying flat on the earth as well.
They had burned through every ounce of strength and energy in an extreme overcharge, and nearly every one of them was pushed past their limits. Coughing up blood, they used source energy supplies in a desperate attempt to recover their bodies, while lifting arms they could barely raise to pull out cigarettes, biting them sideways, and leaning in to catch a light offered by a comrade.
And so they lay in silence, gazing up at the sky.
Looking at the swarm of Great Spikes above that had caused all this, and behind it, at the blue canopy and white clouds that had been obscured for so long.
At this moment, across the Winter Palace battlefield of Xiongzhanli where the bloodbath had not yet fully drawn to a close,
the scene and the atmosphere were rather unusual.
On one side was an eerily quiet, bloodstained square.
Across the ground that had just been a battlefield, soldiers stood, sat, or lay; some were overwhelmed with excitement, some grieved, and some harbored complex, tangled emotions...
Many had reddened eyes, yet not a single person sobbed aloud—not even the youngest girls huddled over their comrades.
On the other side, the sounds of fighting and the shattering of ruined walls dragged on.
The distance was not far, and those sounds rang clearly in everyone's ears.
Gradually, the soldiers all turned their heads, listening, watching...
Until—boom.
Crack. Clatter.
The entire complex of the Winter Palace suddenly fell completely silent.
Drip, drip... All was still.
Across the square, the soldiers silently rose to their feet.
In silence, they stared at the shattered gates of the Winter Palace.
Ssshh... At last, a faint sound was heard, accompanied by footsteps that continued on, drawing nearer.
They were here.
The four active super combat powers of Xiongzhanli—the martial leaders and the traitors. The silhouettes of Anton, Mikhail, Gennady, and Stepan came into the soldiers' view, standing abreast not far apart.
All of them bore wounds. They had deactivated their devices and shouldered their blades behind their backs.
Falling in step, they crossed through the ruined gateway.
Then they halted at the entrance, trying to smile or doing their best to control their expressions as they looked toward the soldiers across the square.
Whoosh!
Anton swung a massive object out from behind him.
It was what he had been dragging all the way here.
The sound was rather loud as the object traced an arc through the air.
Clatter-clatter... Thud!
Dead iron groaned and twisted in midair before crashing heavily onto the square's ground.
...It was the corpse of another red-shoulder.
"Ura!"
In that instant, someone finally cried out. A shout of raised arms after long suppression broke out across the post-battle Palace Square.
"Ura!" Thousands upon thousands of arms thrust upward.
"Ura! Azure!"
"Ura! Warriors of the Slavs!"
"Ura! Xiongzhanli!"
...
"Halt!"
"Do not clean up the battlefield!"
"Retreat!"
"Quick!"
Less than five minutes had passed since the fighting ended, and there had been no time to reorganize anything when an urgent warning from the Xiongzhanli Front Rejecters came through the communicators of Anton and Mikhail.
"Retreat!" They had not yet heard the reason, but both immediately turned around and shouted urgently, only then remembering to switch channels to keep roaring into their comms.
From the tone and agitation of the Rejecter operator, they could roughly guess what was coming.
They looked up at the sky.
There, in the distance, a uniquely shaped Great Spike craft—resembling four heavy trucks stacked atop one another—was hurtling forward at low altitude, growing larger by the second.
It's probably... too late, Anton and Mikhail thought in unison.
At the same time, Stepan and Gennady exchanged glances from where they stood nearby, expressions bewildered, before their gazes followed those of Anton and Mikhail.
Beside their ears came the frantic cry, "Hurry! Move!"
Mikhail was waving his arms violently, roaring over and over.
Baffled, the soldiers followed orders, firing up their devices and scattering in all directions.
Having been imprisoned for the past few months, Gennady and Stepan had no idea that beings above red-shoulders had appeared in this Great Spike invasion, nor did they know what the arrival of that strange craft signified.
Yet the sheer panic and reaction before their eyes warned them that whatever was coming seemed unfathomably powerful and terrifying.
"What is that thing?" Stepan asked numbly.
Right then, the Great Spike craft halted in midair. With a whoosh, from its flank emerged a sharply contoured Great Spike with blue light surging at its waist... one that Stepan and Gennady had never seen before.
It stood in midair.
No, it seemed the hovering craft behind it was using source energy fluctuations to generate a solidified air field... and through the constant vibrations of that condensed air, it held the creature aloft.
"Daie... above red-shoulder," Anton answered.
Xiongzhanli had not encountered a Daie yet, but based on prior intelligence, they could definitively conclude that this uniquely shaped, colossal Great Spike was indeed a Daie.
Perhaps it was the one from Antarctica, perhaps the one from Huaxia, perhaps the very same one, or perhaps another... In any case, it was not something the four of them could defeat.
At this moment, "...Oh." The Daie standing in midair let out a low, subtle murmur.
Judging by human nuance, it seemed to have just figured something out.
Then, it raised a hand and slowly drew its blade.
The massive blue light column sword grated against iron armor, letting out a screeching grind.
Among the remaining Great Spike swarm in the sky, numerous vessels began gathering momentum, stirring restlessly.
Down below, the soldiers who had received the order were fleeing in all directions. They were still frail and exhausted, burdened with the wounded and weapons, unable to make much distance in time.
Meanwhile, Anton, Mikhail, Stepan, and Gennady stood in the center of the square, staring upward.
"That thing seems to speak... doesn't it?" Stepan asked in confusion.
"Yes. Teacher, General Stepan, Mik—" Anton began.
The Daie plunged downward from midair.
"Go!" Mikhail bellowed. At the same time, with an explosive roar and whoosh, he surged into a short sprint, and General Mikhail leaped into the air, gripping his blade with both hands to slash toward the Daie.
He felt that they could not let it land smoothly. If it landed cleanly, they would have even less of a chance; if it landed cleanly, the swarms gathering momentum in the sky would most likely dive down behind it.
That would be a massacre.
Whoosh! Whoosh! Whoosh!
Three more sounds rang out in rapid succession.
Anton, along with Stepan and Gennady who still did not know what a Daie truly was, burst into motion almost simultaneously with Mikhail. They leaped into the air as one, gripping their blades in two hands and striking toward the Daie.
On Palace Square, the Four Supers of Xiongzhanli joined forces to intercept the Daie in a magnificent, earth-shaking spectacle...
Running soldiers could not help but look back as they fled, their hearts swelling with excitement and morale.
Yet in truth, this was a mistake.
...They would all die.
And after that, the Xiongzhanli Front would have no supers left...
"You should leave too." A voice rang out, familiar yet unfamiliar.
Immediately following was a sharp whoosh.
Like wind condensed into a blade.
In that instant, down on the ground, a speeding jeep lost control, slammed violently into a stone pillar, and flipped upside down.
In midair, a figure shot past Anton, Stepan, Gennady, and Mikhail, slashing toward the diving Daie.
As that figure leaped and struck, it began to burn like a crimson flame.
Gradually, the fire spread outward from the heart in his chest like flowing magma, spreading to his throat, his shoulders, down to both arms gripping the blade, and blazing out through his broad back...
Growing fiercer and more blazing by the second...
Until at last, his entire being was transformed into living magma.
"General Ivan."
General Ivan, who had suddenly vanished years ago; General Ivan, who was rumored to have gone mad and grown exceedingly dangerous; General Ivan, who had once aided the Splinter Faction yet was never resented by a single soldier of the Xiongzhanli Front; General Ivan, ranked fifth on the Dome Leaderboard...
He was the strongest combat power in the history of the Azure Xiongzhanli Front.
He was once the ideal and goal of countless soldiers, and later their regret and heartache.
He had been the god and totem of this mighty legion, its most glorious presence.
He was the eternal hero of this land.
He had returned... back to Palace Square.
Chapter 648