Rout and Destruction

Whoosh— An ear-piercing screech tore through the sky as rows of armored wyverns swept across the heavens, trailing white vapor lines behind them, their razor-sharp metallic wing armor shearing through the air. To the many enemies of the Cinder Empire, this was the sound of the Grim Reaper! "Damn it, those big birds are back!" "Bloody birds!" "Last time they came, they blasted me black and blue! Good thing I kept my skin!" "Get down, quick! Last time, I only dodged them explodin' eggs by hit'n the dirt!" an orc shouted at the top of his lungs. To the ignorant green-skinned orcs, the bombs dropped by the aerial corps were "exploding eggs" laid by giant birds. Even so, they knew full well these were lethal things capable of snatching their lives away—after all, the blackened corpses carpeting the ground were ample proof. Bombs rained down in orderly droves from above, detonating almost in unison. Shrapnel and thick, viscous petrol mixtures splashed violently in every direction, erecting wall after wall of roaring flames across the ground. The Empire's napalm bombs had been engineered specifically to counter these green-skinned orcs, conjuring terrifying seas of fire that burned and spread relentlessly, incinerating the semi-botanical greenskins to ash. By this stage of the war, the orcs were no longer the mindless maniacs who charged heedlessly without a care for their own lives. While they remained brutish thugs, they had grown considerably more cautious, even figuring out how to dig holes in the earth to avoid the blasts. They did not fear death, but they dreaded being robbed of a chance to fight their hearts out before dying; they were terrified of dying without ever knowing what hit them. In their old way of thinking, dying on the battlefield was a fine thing. Now, however, after enduring the Empire's carpet bombing, the orcs' perspective had undergone a radical shift. "Let's move!" "Run!" "Hide in the pits and they can't hit us!" Surrounded by walls of fire, the green-skinned orcs clamored and shoved, racking their brains to get away from the wyverns and the flames spawned by the explosions. Uncharacteristically, signs of an outright rout began to surface. Boom! A bomb burst in midair, its scorching tongues of fire engulfing dozens of nearby orcs. The blaze spread rapidly, trapping even more orcs within the inferno, leaving them to wail and screech helplessly. "It's burnin' up!" "Big Mouth, save me! Help put out the fire on me back!" "Piss off! Don't come near me!" "Damn it, it's all your fault—now I'm on fire too!" Two orcs, covered in flames, even grappled with one another and rolled through the inferno, soon turning into two entangled masses of blackened charcoal. In dying together, they had fulfilled their desire to perish in the midst of a brawl. Witnessing this, more orcs gave up struggling against the fire and instead turned to fight their comrades. Their excuse was flimsy in the extreme—they just wanted one good, satisfying brawl before dying. "Blackback, what're ya lookin' at me for?" "I'm lookin' at ya, so what?!" "Lookin' to die!" "Hahaha! Before you burn to death, I'm killin' ya first!" "Same here!" The flames expanded at an unimaginable speed, like crimson scythes reaping the earth again and again. Thick smoke drifted across the wasteland strewn with charred corpses, through which countless dark silhouettes writhed, howled, and marched toward their deaths. Yet following the artillery carpet, massive steel beasts breached the dense smoke, rampaging across the earth and crushing any orcs lucky enough to have survived the bombardment. Even their treads were soaked in green-glowing orc blood. Boom— The steel beasts roared, their thick gun barrels erupting with fire. After the thundering blasts, clustered groups of orcs in the distance were blown into mangled remnants across the ground. "Kill these imperial beasts!" "They're finally here! Are these the Imperials?" "Waaaagh!" Now that they could finally lay hands on an enemy, some orcs were ecstatic. Brandishing bone clubs and stone axes, they swarmed toward the steam tanks. One orc even leaped onto the rear of a steam tank, hammering madly at its plating with a bone club, while countless others hurled spears and rocks, trying to inflict damage on the steel behemoth. Bang! Bang! Dull clangs rang out, yet no matter how hard they struck, they could not penetrate the steam tank's thick armor plating. "Can't scratch it!" "Curse it! Even the beast these Imperials tamed is wrapped in iron! It's an iron lump!" "Look out, this beast is going wild!" Boom— The next moment, the steam engine ramped up to full throttle, billowing thick plumes of white smoke from its exhausts. The dragonblood goblin driver had painted a pair of blood-red eyes on the front of the hull. The steam tank surged forward like an enraged beast in flesh and blood, plowing into the orcs and flattening hundreds into paste within moments. Its protective forcefield snapped on with a jolt, flinging the orcs clinging to its hull into the air, where machine gun turrets shredded them into sieves before they could land. Over a hundred tanks followed behind the sea of fire, forming a dense wall. Like colossal meat grinders, they slaughtered every orc that managed to escape the flames. Still, quite a few orcs found another way out. They dug furiously into the ground, burying themselves in tunnels beyond the reach of the advancing fire, and even sealed up the entrances. Green-skinned orcs were beings that sprouted from the earth to begin with. They could draw air and nutrients from the soil, possessing tenacious vitality; even buried alive deep underground, they could survive for months by eating dirt. "Good thing I hid early. Almost everyone out there's dead..." "Yeah, we're smarter than 'em. We deserve to live, loot more stuff, and kill more people." Listening to the crackle of burning flesh, the agonized wails, and the furious brawls above, feeling the earth shudder repeatedly while dirt and gravel rained down, the orcs hiding in the burrows felt exceedingly fortunate. They hadn't killed any Imperials yet, nor had they plundered the legendary riches of the City of Evindeldan. Dying for nothing in this sea of fire would have been a dreadful waste. Yet what these subterranean orcs never anticipated was that the aerial corps was about to launch a massive strike specifically aimed at them. Boom! With a tremendous rumble, the ground shook. At first, the orcs thought it was merely an ordinary bombardment and paid it no mind, remaining prone in their tunnels. They had no idea that a lethal catastrophe was quietly descending upon them. Soon, the situation took a sudden turn! A dazzling flare of light streaked across the sky once more. Accompanied by deafening detonations, several bombs fell with pinpoint accuracy near the tunnels. When the bombs exploded, they first generated an enormous, scorching fireball. Like an enraged beast, the fireball swallowed everything in its vicinity and rushed straight into the tunnels. The extreme heat turned the air in the tunnels scalding hot. The orcs' skin began to scorch, while hair and clothing burst into flame. "I hid myself! How are these Imperials still burnin' us?!" "Too hot! Nowhere to run!" They shrieked in agony, rolling in the tunnels to douse the flames on their bodies, but to no avail. Immediately after, a powerful shockwave swept through along with the detonations. Like an invisible colossal hand, the shockwave slammed violently against the tunnel walls and fortifications. Orcs were hurled into the air before crashing heavily back down. Their bodies shattered on impact, internal organs ruptured and bones fractured under the violent force. Then, high-temperature shockwaves permeated the soil, washing over the orcs like waves and incinerating their bodies whole. Yet the devastation of the thermobaric bombs did not end there. As the explosions continued, the air within the tunnels was rapidly consumed until even the air trapped in the dirt was sucked dry. The orcs began to suffocate, guttural roars catching in their throats as though defying death itself. "No..." "Let me out..." With oxygen dwindling, their voices grew faint and powerless. A suffocating darkness and silence enveloped the tunnels. Only the occasional faint groan gave evidence of any lingering life. Soon, even those sounds were swallowed by the gloom. The orcs had no idea that the Empire's military engineers had spent months developing specialized bombs for various tactical scenarios—including orcs hiding underground—all designed to exterminate them without exception. ... Looking down from high above, the ground was shrouded in billowing smoke, glimpses of the surface appearing only as the smog churned. Mantou gazed at the devastated landscape, ablaze with seas of fire and carpeted in orc corpses, and could not help murmuring in awe, "This firepower... is f**king terrifying." Singo nodded in deep agreement and spoke over the radio: "Yeah. Three million orcs, and we wiped out more than half of them in just a few days. It's honestly... easier than butchering chickens. My EXP has already capped out, and I can max out several extra proficiency skills. This mission was an absolute jackpot." Even he hadn't anticipated this mission would yield such an astronomical amount of experience points, let alone Mantou, who was often considered rather inexperienced. Looking down at the churning sea of fire, Mantou remarked, "What a sight. Reminds me of the Bombing of Tokyo I saw in movies—LeMay's barbecue. Heh, looks like that American really went back to his old trade. A shame we don't have 'Little Boy' or 'Fat Man'—doesn't quite hit the spot without them." Singo chimed in dryly, "Given the mental state of that maniac from the Order of Primordial Return, he might actually have snuck something like that into our munitions depot." Mantou's jaw dropped. Dumbfounded, he stammered, "S-Surely not... Using nukes against orcs? Would they really go that far?" "Let's hope not." Singo shook his head and fell silent. Over the radio came Curtis's calm, steady voice once more: "Everyone, prepare for coordinated cluster bombing. Cut off the orcs' escape route and box them in." "Yes, sir!" The wyvern knights responded in unison, engaging their gravity devices to execute a rapid climb, trailing brilliant plumes of fire behind them. Through the helmet's display, Mantou could see vast swarms of black dots—green-skinned orcs fleeing north in disarray, chased by rapidly spreading flames. This time, the aerial corps' mission was to cut off the greenskins' retreat, bombing from north to south to create an all-consuming firestorm that severed their path of escape and encircled them. "A pincer from north and south, sealing the perimeter to bag the enemy... classic dumpling wrapping! Underhanded enough. I like it," Mantou chuckled. With his comrades, he ascended to an altitude of ten thousand meters, tracing arcs in the sky before banking around into level flight. Watching the black dots enlarge on the display, Mantou grinned and placed his hand on the bomb-release button located on the wyvern's neck. Curtis's clear, detached voice came through the headset once more: "All units, prepare for release—" "Three, two—" "One—" "Drop!" The moment the order dropped, Mantou clicked the release button, as did dozens of other wyvern knights. In an instant, hundreds of napalm bombs cascaded from the payload bays beneath the wyverns' bellies like a torrential rain. Dense swarms of bombs filled the sky in a breathtaking spectacle. As they ripped through the air, they produced piercing whistles that made eardrums ache and hearts shudder. "Hurry!" "Keep runnin' north!" "Damn it all, we're not dying as cannon fodder for those old bastards! I'm gonna loot fair and square!" Even now, the orcs remained chaotic and rowdy, jostling and shoving as they fled the inferno creeping up behind them, rushing northward toward their homeland—the Ugo Steppe. Just then, the orcs at the front caught a familiar sound—the screech of death. "Gruumsh above..." "I... I don't believe it..." Trembling, the orcs looked up with wide eyes to see the flock of strange birds reappear ahead of them, dropping exploding eggs without pause. The birds were like apparitions from folklore, shadowing them wherever they went, bringing fire and death. An orc pointed at the sky, knees knocking together, and shrieked, "Strange birds! There're strange birds in the north too!" "Get out of the way!" "Don't block me path!" Yet the orcs behind them, oblivious to what lay ahead, shoved madly forward, trampling the halted orc beneath their feet as they surged northward like a rampant flood. Before long, with roar after roar of detonations, what lay ahead was no longer an open expanse of steppe, but another raging sea of fire and churning smoke. At this moment, the green-skinned orcs had nowhere left to run. Be it north, south, east, or west, in the heavens or beneath the earth, the brutal Imperials would hunt them down—until not a single green-skinned orc was left standing on the face of the earth.