"Have you spotted that ship? It's approaching the waters near my position. Yes, it's heading back! Can you establish contact and find out what on earth is going on?"
Gennady was speaking urgently with the Rejectors.
Yet the response from their end suggested that they, too, were currently unable to get through to the vessel.
At the same time, Aleksei kept his eyes fixed on the ship. It was moving slowly, but it was undoubtedly closing in on the coast.
If a vessel had simply met with disaster on the open sea... it would be heartbreaking, but they would understand that such things were part of the risk.
"Why would it turn back? This makes no sense at all."
Aleksei glanced down at the surface of the sea by chance. Suddenly, his brow furrowed. *Wait, this isn't right. Even if that ship is returning, at this distance, its wake shouldn't be sending surges up to my thighs, should it?*
There was no answer to his question, but an instinctive alarm tightened in his chest. Aleksei reached back swiftly, his hand resting on the hilt of the battle blade behind his shoulder.
"Teacher! Teacher, something's not right. Call for nearby backup, quickly!"
"What is it?" Gennady paused, but before Aleksei could answer, he barked, "Understood!"
"Also, tell the civilian evacuation columns on the shore to hurry inland! Keep them away from the water!"
"Got it."
By the time Han Qingyu, Lao Jian, and the others received orders and drove over, large crowds of civilians heading north were already fleeing inland.
Yet there were no enemies.
Even when they reached the shore, not a single Great Spike or Great Spike craft was anywhere in sight.
Instead, the returning ship on the sea was drawing ever closer.
Soon, it was close enough that they could vaguely make out the people aboard.
A group of them stood on the forecastle deck.
At the same time, faint cries and weeping seemed to drift over the water.
"There are people aboard. Alive. Crying out to us," Gennady said into his comms. "No Great Spikes spotted so far... Have you seen any? None on your end either?"
"The fact that we can't see anything even though it's turning back is exactly what makes this so alarming!" Gennady said in exasperation. "What do we do now? Should I find a way to board and inspect it before it docks?"
With over two thousand reinforcements gathered along the coast, neither Gennady nor Aleksei had yet noticed Wen Jifei or Rusty Sister.
Not until someone in the crowd shouted.
Wen Jifei's rifle and Shen Yixiu's iron armor were far too recognizable to the Azure soldiers. As for the other set of iron armor and the woman beside it, none of them knew who they were.
"Didn't Major The Qing come?" Aleksei turned his head and hollered toward Wen Jifei.
Han Qingyu and his friends barely knew him, but Aleksei knew them all too well. Reluctant as he was to admit it, deep down he knew that if Major Qing were present, they would feel somewhat more at ease.
Just as Wen Jifei was hesitating over how to answer, Gennady raised a hand sharply to silence the clamor.
"No need to board for now," the Rejectors' operator said over the comms, his tone utterly dejected.
"Why? What happened?"
"...There are many," the operator said, his voice flat as cold ashes.
Along the vast northern coastline of Oceania, numerous ships were returning. Among them were vessels that had set sail two or three days ago.
Furthermore, not a single one of those ships could be reached.
"Could someone have broadcast a fake order and forced them to come back?" Hu Biaomao spoke up abruptly from behind Lao Jian.
Everyone around froze in shock.
"Impossible. Azure prepared for that long ago. The channel that can issue a recall order requires a three-tier cipher, and only the Chairman knows it."
The answer came through the comms, and Gennady repeated the explanation aloud.
"Then what if Chairman Kemore is a traitor?!"
"Snow Lotus, or Pure Purgatory, or something like that!"
"Lurking for decades just for this day!"
That remark sent a shockwave through the crowd.
Everyone on the shore turned around.
Not far away, Pegmont—pink hair and all—strode toward the shoreline carrying the two-meter-long broadsword General Ivan had left him, with Makarov walking alongside. Makarov was trying his hardest to convey through body language that he did not know the man beside him.
"Relax. I'm Pegmont. Whatever comes, I'll be the one to chop it down." Pegmont tossed his pink hair and happened to spot Wen Jifei.
His gaze shifted past Second Lieutenant Shen Yixiu's famous iron armor, lingering for a moment on the other suit of armor.
*That must be him.*
On the entire battlefield, only Pegmont knew for certain that Han Qingyu was there.
As if sensing his gaze, the iron armor walked toward him.
"Why do you show up everywhere?" Pegmont asked.
"Counting on you," the iron armor murmured as they brushed past each other.
Both had spoken quietly, almost at the same instant.
*So, is he really crippled?* Pegmont felt a brief surge of excitement for half a second before sinking into dejection; he realized that it didn't actually make him happy.
He hesitated over whether to ask. Caring about the guy felt thoroughly nauseating, Pegmont thought.
"Look! There's another one over there!" a soldier suddenly yelled.
"Over there, too!"
"Look over that way, two ships coming together..."
By now, along the vast northeastern coastline of Oceania, virtually every Azure unit that could be mobilized in an emergency had arrived at the shore.
At almost every point along the coast, returning vessels were approaching, some fast, some slow.
According to the Rejectors' observations and estimates,
nearly six thousand ships were currently heading back.
This meant that nearly five million residents of Oceania who had already evacuated were now returning.
Add that to the civilians who had not yet had the chance to evacuate, and the total exceeded ten million.
In other words, at least half the population of Oceania was now trapped along the northeast coast.
In the end, Azure had failed to get them away.
"The ship stopped," Makarov said, lowering his sniper rifle and nodding to Wen Jifei, who had lowered his as well.
By this point, there was no need to look through a scope.
The ship had halted, drifting motionless on the water not far offshore.
It was confirmed that there were no Great Spikes aboard.
However, Aleksei looked down and saw that the unnatural surges lapping at his feet had not ceased—in fact, they were growing stronger.
"There's something in the water, and it's close to the surface," Aleksei said.
He was right. On the ship, several escorting Azure soldiers were gesturing frantically toward the water, signaling that something was beneath the surface.
Thus, the ships remained moored or creeping forward across the sea.
The Azure fighters stood in battle-ready ranks along the shoreline.
An eerie calm.
It persisted until the vast majority of the returning ships had come to a standstill.
Then—*BOOM!*—
Before Azure could send anyone out to reconnoiter,
torrents of colossal waves suddenly surged hundreds of meters into the air behind every single returning vessel along the entire coastline.
Thousands of locations, all at once.
*Crash!* As white curtains of water cascaded down,
whatever had lurked beneath the waves revealed itself.
One Great Spike craft after another, variant and standard alike, emerged dripping with seawater into view.
They hovered in the air directly behind the ships, roughly a hundred meters up and no more than three hundred meters away.
From that vantage, it looked as though they had escorted the returning ships back to shore.
*Clang! Clatter!* Across the shore, every Azure battle formation drew their blades, bracing for combat.
Yet for seven or eight minutes, all the Great Spike craft hovering over the sea remained in place.
They did not attack, nor did they draw nearer.
Until another seven or eight minutes had passed.
A peculiar Great Spike vessel slowly appeared in the sky. Then, a Daie stepped out of the hatch, hovering in midair with a sword in hand, looking down upon the entire coastline, all the ships, and every Azure unit.
"Amusing, isn't it? I told you: you humans will not be leaving. None of you."
A low, rasping voice, carried by the violent surge of source energy, reverberated across the sky.
Chapter 685