The Bombing and the Orc Advance

"Hahaha! Too fast! It feels like flying right on the wind!" Perched on the back of his wyvern ten thousand meters up, Mantou soared through the sky without restraint, carving two long contrails across the azure expanse. "Awoo!" Beneath him, Noodles stretched his long neck and let out an exhilarating howl. For the first time, high-speed flight felt effortless. Whoosh— A howling gust suddenly whistled overhead. Mantou snapped his head up to see Singo astride another wyvern outfitted with the Skyfire armor set, tearing through the heavens far faster than him—like a bolt of crimson lightning flashing across the sky! Singo started in level flight, then rapidly hauled back on the wyvern's head. The pitch angle climbed sharply until the tail pointed forward and the head trailed behind, mimicking a rearing cobra baring its fangs. Immediately after, under Singo's precise handling, the thrusters beneath the wyvern's wing barding vented violent torrents of air and dazzling plumes of fire. In a split second, the beast completed an impossibly tight somersault around its tail, etching a circular, blade-like trail in the sky. Mantou gaped in utter disbelief, any trace of smug satisfaction evaporating in an instant. "Holy crap... that show-off already learned flight aerobatics?!" "No way, Noodles! We can't let him outdo us!" Gritting his teeth, Mantou clumsily wrestled with the controls. Fire blasted from the propulsion tubes, sending the wyvern into a nearly vertical climb as he attempted to pull off an aerial somersault. Yet almost immediately, Mantou lost control of their heading. The surrounding slipstream turned chaotic, and as a rookie pilot, he had no idea how to correct it. Shuddering all over, Mantou squeaked out, "Oh shit, don't tell me we're gonna crash—" Moments later, they were tumbling through the upper atmosphere like a headless fly. Then they tipped straight over, plummeting toward the ground in a near-vertical dive so violent that sparks threatened to fly from the wyvern's head. The Skyfire armor's aerodynamic, sharp prow, designed to slice through the air, had now turned into their death sentence. "Awoooo!" Terrified shrieks tore from the wyvern as it plummeted alongside Mantou. In the nick of time, Mantou slammed the emergency brake. The Reverse Gravity mechanisms beneath the wing barding engaged instantly, snapping them out of their plunge right before they drilled into the dirt and leaving them hovering harmlessly in midair. "Phew... t-that was close. I almost became a toasted bun." Singo's amused voice crackled over the communicator: "Mantou, you practicing aerobatics too?" Mantou forced himself to sound nonchalant, stammering awkwardly, "Ah... of course. I was just practicing, uh..." "A vertical landing?" "Right, exactly! A vertical landing." "Dumbass, coming down headfirst isn't a vertical landing. Diving straight into the dirt is called a crash." Singo saw right through the lie, mocking him mercilessly. "Gentlemen, now that you are familiar with the basic controls, it is time to carry out the exercise..." Colonel Holland's voice sounded somewhat exasperated over the communicator. Dealing with these brazen, unruly Starfallen always required "special measures." He chuckled softly. "You should know that this gear is merely on loan from the Empire. Operating it outside of mission parameters incurs a rental fee—one gold coin per hour..." The expressions on both Mantou and Singo instantly froze. To their ears, that was the whisper of a devil! Mantou's tone turned dead serious. "Colonel Holland, I'm heading out to complete the exercise right now!" The two wyverns sped through the air at ten thousand meters. Enhanced by the Skyfire armor, their wingspans now spanned ten meters across. Mantou stared fixedly at his display screen. A detailed map was laid out before him, featuring a black dot marking his current position alongside several flashing red markers. —Evidently, those were their targets for the exercise. Using the reticle parameters on the screen, Mantou made fine adjustments to his heading and speed, maintaining level flight as the black dot steadily converged on the target. Holding his breath, Mantou muttered, "Should be... now." Click. He hammered the release button. The payload stored beneath the wyvern's belly poured out like a deluge, plummeting in rapid succession from the high altitude. Screeech— A shrill, piercing whistle echoed as the metal munitions pierced the air, trailing their calculated trajectories down toward the designated target. What Mantou did not know was that the targets Holland had prepared for them were a dozen unyielding dwarven rebels captured from the darker corners of the City of Wyverns. "You orc-mongering bastards!" "Dwarves will never bow!" "Unbind me!" "Damned reptiles, vile lizards!" Bound to wooden stakes with heavy iron chains, the battered dwarves thrashed furiously, hurling venomous curses at the Cinder Emperor and his minions. "Hahaha! I see it now—you're terrified! Because one day, King Zayn will lead his fearless dwarves back to slaughter you all!" One particularly burly dwarf raised his head, laughing heartily even in the face of doom. He was the former dwarven general and the leader of this resistance faction—Fern Rock-Favored, famed for surviving against impossible odds by hiding beneath piles of rubble. "General Fern..." "We have to rescue him! He's a hero of the shield dwarves! We can't let those dragon spawn humiliate him!" In a nearby cavern, another band of dwarves was frantically discussing how to wrest Fern from imperial clutches. They were the very last remnants of the resistance in the City of Wyverns—and in all of Evindeldan. "Wait..." "Look up!" "General Fern, what is that in the sky?" Whoosh— Alerted by the piercing shrieks, the dwarves looked up to see a dozen dark metallic ellipsoids plunging toward their coordinates. "That's..." Even the fearless General Fern's pupils contracted violently. He recognized those weapons. It was these very things that had stolen the lives of countless dwarven comrades, shattered their fortress walls, and ravaged the mountains and stone they held dear... With muffled pops far softer than ordinary detonations, the shells burst open, blanketing the ground in thick, cloud-like white mist. Fern roared toward the heavens, "Imperials! Is this your grand bluff? You think this meager trick will scare a dwarven warrior?!" The next instant, blinding fire consumed his vision. Boom—! Before the dwarves on the ground could comprehend what was happening, the earth shook violently. The white clouds erupted into a sky-shattering roar as superheated fireballs expanded in an instant, engulfing hundreds of meters of terrain and hungrily vacuuming up every trace of oxygen. In the span of a single breath, the dwarven prisoners tied to the stakes were engulfed in flames and reduced to charred husks. Even their chains melted into their flesh, while those closest to the blast's epicenter were vaporized entirely. General Fern remained frozen in his defiant, head-raised stance, transformed into an unrecognizable mass of liquid metal and biochar. Not one of the dozen dwarves survived, leaving behind not even an intact corpse. Immediately after, high-pressure shockwaves radiated across the surrounding hundred meters, rolling into the cavern and trapping the rescue party within. Not even thick bedrock could shield them from the searing heat and crushing pressure. Under the onslaught of that devastating blast, the dwarves contorted in agony, their screams drowning out the cavern. "Aaargh!" "It burns! Moradin above—!" In less than a breath, the air inside the cavern was sucked dry, converted into fuel for the raging inferno. Scoured by blast waves reaching thousands of degrees, even the self-proclaimed Sons of the Forge were powerless to hold on to their lives. No matter how tough their bodies were, they were still flesh and blood, entirely incapable of withstanding the Empire's war machines. Later, when imperial researchers inspected the site, they found the dwarven structures reduced to rubble and the personnel either incinerated or suffocated, with catastrophic casualties. Strangely, many corpses remained intact with no signs of shrapnel lacerations. Their mouths were stretched wide, and some had even torn their own throats open in their dying gasps—a tableau of true hell on earth. After execution by cannon, the Empire had pioneered an even grander, more terrifying method of execution: death by aerial bombardment. "Holy crap... That's what you get when those explosive maniacs design a weapon. That firepower is ridiculous..." Looking down at the ground swallowed by fire and smoke, shuddering from aftershocks as fireballs bloomed in succession, Mantou clicked his tongue in awe. [You killed a Dwarven Resistance Soldier. Gained 500 XP.] [You killed a Dwarven Officer. Gained 800 XP.] [You killed Fern Rock-Favored, the Hammer of Freedom...] Staring at the dozens of notifications flashing across his system panel, Mantou blinked in confusion before his face broke into an ecstatic grin. "I was just running a target practice exercise, and I wiped out a named boss?! And all these adds—did I just blow up a whole dwarf nest?!" "Well done, Count Mantou. You have completed the Empire's exercise with flying colors." Holland's voice carried a faint trace of amusement. In truth, using new munitions to execute dwarven rebels as a terror display had been the hobgoblin officer's very own idea. In another patch of sky, Singo looked down at the burning ground, taking in the scorched camps and the orcs howling amidst the flames and smoke. The corners of his lips curved up as he murmured, "Now this is getting interesting..." *** Ugo Steppe, Red Blood Valley. "Waaagh!" "Kill 'em all!" Orcs packed together like a bursting dam, surging out from the valley depths. Their eyes burned crimson, their expressions deranged, saliva dripping from the corners of their mouths—palpably hungry for the impending slaughter. Brandishing weapons, some called upon the name of Gruumsh, while even more howled in bloodlust: "War! We want war!" Slaughter, brawling, blood, death... These were the desires etched into the deepest recesses of every orc's soul. Those chaotic imperatives had woven themselves into the hybridized animal-plant cells of their bodies, coursing through every single drop of their blood. Across the grassland beyond the valley, foul-smelling mushrooms sprouted everywhere. From beneath their fleshy caps, green claws clawed their way out of the soil. In the depths of the earth, in the crevices of the rocks, green fungi grew without limit, greedily pillaging the barren steppe's nutrients and converting them into food for orcish growth and proliferation. "This... this is my legion! This is the might of the orcs!" Soro stood atop the cliff, gazing out over the boundless green tide, his chest swelling with pride. Visions flashed through his mind of tens of thousands of years ago, when Gruumsh led their ancestors to conquer the earth and battle dwarves and elves alike. That ancient glory was repeating itself here and now. Once, he had believed Batu was Gruumsh's chosen champion, that only their former chieftain enjoyed the All-Father's favor. Yet today, Soro saw Batu as nothing more than a pathetic failure. He, who had consumed the Black Water and was about to lead the orc race toward a glorious future, was the true favored one. With that thought, Soro hoisted his bone spear high and unleashed an earth-shattering roar: "March! We shall conquer Evindeldan and fulfill the millennia-old dream of our ancestors! Waaagh!" "Waaagh!" "Conquer! Conquer!" Most of the million-strong orc horde here had been spawned through spores, their ages ranging from a few hours to a few dozen days. They knew nothing of "ancestral glory," nor did they comprehend the "glory of the All-Father." Yet their simple, crude, and peculiar minds understood one thing perfectly: Fight! Time to krump! And that sounded like a bloody good time! Fighting meant tearing enemies to pieces, slathering their blood over oneself, savoring the sweetness of brains, and letting loose every primal urge. —This was the shared mindset across the green horde. Even if Soro tried to dress it in grand, noble rhetoric, it did not change the fact that these green-skinned orcs were bloodthirsty madmen. Gazing toward the south, Soro was brimming with confidence. After all, he commanded two million soldiers! And that figure was multiplying at a staggering pace; even he had lost track of how many orcs followed his banner. Even creatures as mighty as dragons would succumb under the suicidal onslaught of millions of orcs, overwhelmed and hunted to the death. "Imperials, you will pay for your arrogance!" Soro smeared rough war paint across his face, his lips parting in a savage grin. "What I sees is mine!" "What I loots is mine!" "What's breathin' can be krumped!" The orcs swept forward like a hurricane, trampling any beast in their path into paste and tearing the very sod from the earth. Despite Soro's best efforts to marshal them, he could never organize these green skins into a disciplined army. And so, a million orcs bellowed their crude, made-up chants, surging toward the south like a tidal wave. They believed they were marching into a glorious bloodbath against an honorable foe, oblivious to the reception the Empire had meticulously prepared for them. Far off in the sky, steel-clad wyverns spread their wings and soared, their razor-sharp wing edges slicing through the air with a piercing howl...