To the accompaniment of an intense rhythm and the roar of artillery fire, the legions of the Cinder Empire closed in on the walls of Corinth. At this moment, the terrifying beast finally bared its fangs in full.
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
Artillery shells tore through the sky one after another, crashing into the positions of the Aethel coalition forces and kicking up violent explosions in succession.
"Ah!"
"Watch out!"
"My arm! I can't feel my arm!"
Soldiers wailed and screamed. Under the saturated barrage of dense firepower, shrapnel constantly ripped into them, and surging flames swallowed them whole.
An officer swung his saber and shouted, "Return fire! Damn it, what are your cannons for?"
As a former major stronghold of Thrace, Aethel had likewise purchased advanced artillery from the Cinder Empire and possessed its own artillery legion. Duke Walter had believed they could mount a measure of counterbattery fire.
Yet the officers soon realized how catastrophically mistaken they were. Cannons, as it turned out, were not all created equal.
The coalition soldiers fumbled in a frantic rush to haul out shells, stuffing them into the barrels and hurriedly aiming toward the distant Cinder Legion.
Muzzle flashes bloomed in clouds of dense smoke. Their shells traced graceful arcs through the sky, only to fall limply short of the tank legion, blowing useless craters into the wasteland.
Their range fell terribly short!
Seeing the counterattack fail, overseers roared in fury while the coalition artillerymen scrambled frantically to reload...
Right then, a human soldier looked up, despair washing over his face—reflected in his eyes was a dense, sky-blotting canopy of incoming shells.
"Amaunator above..."
*Boom!*
In an instant, hell erupted across the front. Shells poured like rain over the coalition's artillery positions. Plumes of fire and dust soared into the sky, engulfing the entire redoubt in a raging sea of flames.
The thousands of heavy cannons upon which Duke Walter had pinned such high hopes were reduced to heaps of scrap metal. Meanwhile, the gold coins spent to purchase them had gone straight into the Cinder Empire's coffers, used to manufacture even more guns and shells.
In the Cinder Legion's artillery emplacements, Datou the ogre—artillery commander sporting the rank of lieutenant general—held a pair of binoculars to his eyes, squinting at the distant inferno.
—That had been the coalition's artillery position.
"Tsk, tsk. Foolish southern humans, absolutely ridiculous. Giving away their artillery positions so easily. Years have passed, yet these morons still don't understand warfare in the New Era. Giving them good weapons really is a waste; they're only good for clearing our scrap inventory." The ogre shook his head, scoffing disdainfully.
He lowered his binoculars, smugly pulled out an "Emperor" brand cigarette, and stuck it between his lips.
"Allow me, General." A nearby half-dragon guard hurried over eagerly, puffing a small flame from his mouth to light it for him.
After all, the armaments the Cinder Empire sold south were all obsolete, backlogged stock.
With the Cinder Ministry of Technology rapidly ascending the tech tree, the cannons in coalition hands lagged at least an era behind the empire's. Whether in range, accuracy, or destructive power, they were ruthlessly crushed by the Cinder Legion's heavy guns.
And moments ago, Datou had easily spotted the coalition's artillery position—they had lacked even the basic sense to conceal it.
Promptly mobilizing hundreds of cannons, Datou had laid down a savage carpet bombardment, instantly obliterating those antiquated guns into literal scrap metal.
"Cunning Imperials..."
Walter gritted his teeth, his brow furrowed as he watched the artillery redoubt turn into a sea of fire.
After this shelling, he understood all too clearly: the Three Kingdoms had been swindled by those cunning imperial merchants!
What they had bought were no advanced weapons, but obsolete junk discarded long ago! And every gold coin spent on them had been forged into the shells fueling the Cinder Empire's invasion!
Thousands of heavy cannons thundered in unison, their endless shells streaking across the sky. Thick gunsmoke blotted out the heavens, and violent blasts erupted continuously across the coalition positions. Before the two armies had even clashed, the coalition suffered heavy casualties.
Fortunately, this one-sided slaughter did not last long.
Above the clouds, Barachiel slowly raised the lightning blade in his hand and gave the command to his celestial host: "In the name of Mount Celestia, shield our allies—"
His voice rolled like thunder, resonant, mighty, and heavy with divine authority.
Immediately, golden-glowing giants let out deep battle roars and stepped to the front of the cloud bank.
Encased from head to toe in metal plate, each heavily armored giant bore a spear-like blade on one arm and a massive shield on the other.
—They were shield archons, the steadfast bedrock of celestial armies, enduring waves upon waves of devils and demons without complaint and withstanding lethal strikes from the mightiest of foes.
Now, the shield archons raised their colossal shields shoulder to shoulder, forming a dense wall of steel high in the sky. A massive barrier of radiant light thousands of meters wide expanded, intercepting nearly every shell raining toward the coalition ranks.
Fierce detonation after detonation battered the solid rampart. The shield archons shuddered under the shockwaves, yet not a single one flinched or stepped back, quietly absorbing the fury.
Beautiful trumpet archons fluttered their pure white wings, blowing into the silver horns held in their delicate hands. The soaring, melodious notes echoed over the coalition positions, mending the wounds of the fallen.
The Arcane Legion chanted incantations. Amid surging fluctuations of energy and motes of flickering light, brilliant enchantments settled over the coalition soldiers.
Then, fearsome spells—meteors, fireballs, ice shards, and bolts of lightning—soared into the air, crashing toward the Cinder Legion advancing at speed below.
*Boom!*
A charging steam tank took a direct hit from a fiery meteor. It ignited and blew apart in an instant, reduced to a smoking heap of scrap metal.
Upon the towering walls of Corinth, thirty Sun God ballistas fired giant bolts trailing brilliant light, skewering the Cinder Empire's steam tanks, armored vehicles, and soldiers across a distance of over a kilometer.
The enraged roar of the armored corps commander, Dragonblood Marquis Arturo, blared through the speakers of his steam tank:
"For the Cinder Empire! For His Majesty Cassius! All units, hear my command—crush them into dust!"
The iron behemoths roared across the wasteland. Fire erupted from their thick gun barrels, pounding the coalition ground troops and detonating with catastrophic fury.
Against the alloy-infused armor-piercing shells fired by the steam tanks, even the heavy shields of the shield archons were not impenetrable, and heavily armored infantry below were blown to bits.
Billowing steam and swirling black smoke swept forward as the metal beasts bore down on the coalition soldiers.
"Our Fadlan Empire has never bred cowards! Do not retreat! Defend our land!"
"For Fadlan!"
Frontline officers drew their sabers and screamed at the top of their lungs, leading soldiers right up to the tanks to swarm the steel-clad beasts.
*Boom—*
Yet reality was no bard's tale. The spears of the coalition soldiers clattered feebly against the tank armor.
The steam tanks ground forward without hesitation. Blood and shredded flesh splattered in all directions, staining the treads crimson in an instant. Roaring relentlessly, the tanks rolled on, leaving behind only gore and broken fragments.
On the primary land battlefield, dozens of vanguard steam tanks punched straight through, violently breaching the coalition lines, tearing open defenses, and carving their forces into scattered, isolated pockets.
The tanks leveled defensive fortifications with their massive main guns, while the Cinder Empire's infantry advanced swiftly in their wake.
Pouring through the breaches created by the armor, the infantry expertly laid down rifle fire and hurled grenades, creating a dense web of suppressing fire to screen the armor's advance.
Honed by countless drills and exercises, combined-arms infantry-tank tactics were etched into the very bones of the imperial troops, nearly second nature.
Under the sledgehammer assault of the Cinder Legion, the coalition soldiers were caught off balance, falling in swathes like mowed wheat. In no time, the front was littered with corpses and choked in smoke.
An ordinary army would have likely succumbed to panic and completely routed under this steel torrent.
Yet the North Aethel coalition was composed of extraordinary forces—remnants of the Fadlan Empire's elite, the celestial host of the Silver Heaven, and the Arcane Legion from the City of All Magic.
Though staggered for a brief moment under the empire's fierce onslaught, they quickly regrouped, found their footing, and unleashed a ferocious counteroffensive.
The mages of the Arcane Legion chanted spells and raised their staves. Dazzling auras of magical light pulsed as the surrounding Weave fluctuated violently.
Walls of fire, stone, and force rose in the paths of the steel behemoths. Conjured fog blinded their vision, upheaved earth flipped tanks onto their sides, and sharp spikes of ice punched through armor plates.
Spatial rifts even opened without warning, swallowing tanks unable to brake in time into bottomless voids.
"Arrogant minions of that evil dragon! You shall taste the wrath of the Sun God's scions!"
Several angel godbloods beat their wings, hovering in midair. Fierce fire blazed in their eyes like demigods descending upon the world.
Together, the angelic scions raised their crackling swords of divine energy toward the sky, unleashing a blinding brilliance.
Marquis Karen swung his sword and bellowed with earth-shaking fervor: "For Holy Fadlan! By sacred fire, I grant you destruction!"
*Boom!*
Pillars of gold and crimson flame descended from the heavens, piercing right through the foremost steam tanks in an instant—including the illustrious "Old Pal" class tank.
The engines of the iron behemoths shrieked in mechanical agony before detonating, leaving only a few piles of smoking scrap, their crews reduced to ash.
Above the clouds, bralani drew their bows taut, targeting the Cinder Legion below. Metal arrows flew in droves, lightning-silver hair whipping around the elfin archers.
The arrows pierced the clouds and whistled down with piercing cracks. Crisscrossing the sky with luminous silver trails, they fell like a brilliant meteor shower.
Striking the iron behemoths, the arrows buried deep into thick armor, instantly conjuring within each tank an explosive whirlwind of sand, dust, and snow that shattered their internal mechanisms.
Archer archons raised their bows in unison, loosing arrows of streaming light into the soldiers of the Cinder Empire, piercing their dragon-blooded hearts.
Ground infantry had no way of hitting celestial beings so high in the clouds; they could only charge forward beneath the tempest of radiant arrows, treading heavily past the bodies of fallen comrades.
The coalition's counteroffensive was strikingly effective. In barely ten minutes, the Cinder Legion lost twenty-one steam tanks. Never before had the legion encountered such a well-matched foe.
Yet the sky was not the exclusive domain of godbloods and celestials. The Cinder Empire's aerial forces were just as formidable.
While the wyverns and drakes of the Cinder Legion might be slightly inferior in raw individual prowess to celestials born of power and virtue, they held an overwhelming advantage in sheer numbers.
What was more, there were dragon-blooded monsters granted repeated boons of dragon blood, possessing strength far exceeding their kin.
*Roar—!*
Smaug, leader of the Wyvern Legion and an atavistic wyvern nearly twenty meters long, threw back his head and roared in fury with majesty not a whit inferior to a true red dragon.
Rallied by their leader's call, thousands of wyverns craned their necks and shrieked together, beating their wings in a turbulent tide as they surged toward the celestial host.
Upon the backs of many wyverns rode soldiers in specialized gear. These were not elite, demanding knights of refined horsemanship, but what the empire designated "aerial troopers."
The wyverns and drakes of the imperial air force were divided into clear tactical branches: "bomber wyverns" fitted with bomb-dropping apparatuses, and "fighter wyverns" mounted with machine guns and grenade launchers. The imperial aerial troopers were the specialized corps tasked with operating these weapons.
*Clack-clack-clack-clack—!*
Machine guns mounted to the wyverns' chests spat searing tongues of flame, while autocannons fitted to their flanks barked terrifying shells. The dense blanket of firepower instantly pinned the celestials down.
The celestials were forced behind the shield archons, loosing retaliatory arrows as best they could, no longer able to spare attention for the ground forces below.
Wyverns wailed and tumbled from the sky, but angels too were riddled with bullets, crashing to the ground.
Alger, commander of the Redscale Conquerors and a Dragonblood Marquis of the empire, astride the broad back of his dragon-blooded giant eagle, led the true wyvern knights into the swirling sky melee.
Raising his flaming greatsword, Alger charged at the forefront of the formation, shouting at the top of his voice: "For the Cinder Empire! For His Majesty Cassius! Destroy them—"
"Dragon Roar Charge!" He leveled his Everburning Greatsword at the celestial ranks.
Instantly, hundreds of wyvern knights charged as one. Their mounts snapped open their wings and dove at breakneck speed, opening their maws to let loose screams that shook the heavens.
*Roar—!*
In that instant, their draconic roars resonated in wondrous harmony. The flight of hundreds of wyverns seemed to merge into a single entity. The warriors of the celestial legion trembled and shook.
The phantom of a hundred-meter red dragon materialized before their eyes, swooping down upon them in a ferocious dive.
In the blink of an eye, the Redscale Conquerors thrust their lances and swung their blades, severing golden, radiant heads. They shattered the shield archons' line, tearing a massive breach across the celestial host's front.
After cutting their way through, the Redscale Conquerors pulled up together in a near-vertical climb, positioning themselves high above for the next dive, while the Wyvern Legion poured into the breach behind them.
The wyverns flapped their wings and thrust their heads forward, tearing into celestial warriors with razor fangs and driving venomous tail stingers through armored chests.
The chest-mounted machine guns and flank autocannons also flared continuously with furious fire, riddling the less protected celestials into sieves.
"Roar—I'll kill you all!"
With a savage snarl, the white dragon flapped her wings, claws outstretched, and plunged into the celestial host. Bitterly freezing frost gushed from her gullet, instantly flash-freezing several celestial warriors into solid blocks of ice.
Wyverns, drakes, and celestials tangled in brutal melee, locked in frantic, blood-soaked combat.
Throughout the fray, many wyverns had their hearts pierced or heads cleaved by celestial warriors. Clothed in the radiance of the heavens, those loyal, brave warriors fought to the death against the wicked invaders.
Yet savage wyverns also tore celestials to shreds, scattering flesh and blood until even the corpses were mutilated beyond recognition. For the rapacious wyverns, the goal was simple—indulge their lust for slaughter, draw their Emperor's favor, and earn a nobler bloodline.
The clouds were torn apart by the fierce battle and stained ash-black by gunsmoke. Heavenly radiance mingled with machine gun muzzle flashes and roaring explosions; the screeches of wyverns, the battle cries of celestial champions, and the shrieking chatter of automatic fire all blended together.
Carcasses of wyverns, remains of celestials, severed limbs, and rain of blood plummeted incessantly. The sky itself had transformed into a gruesome meat grinder.
Chapter 615