A crackle of static burst in the Imperial soldiers' ears: "Azimuth 175, altitude 3,500! Prepare to fire!"
With the grinding screech of metal, gun barrels jerked upward in unison. Ogre loaders smoothly rammed armor-piercing shells into the breeches, the brass casings clattering crisply like falling silver coins.
Through the gun sights, crosshairs aligned on the winged, blurry silhouettes high in the sky.
The longswords in the hands of the Holy Guard blazed fiercely. Heavenly flame and divine light rained down continuously, scorching the Imperial soldiers below like divine retribution.
In the eyes of ordinary mortals, these beings were exalted angels, divine messengers worthy of worship and prostration. But in the eyes of the Imperial soldiers, they were merely enemies—enemies that could be cashed in for military merit.
"Fire!" The commander's bellow coincided with the deafening blast of the first shell leaving its muzzle. The backblast from the barrel blew the caps clean off the Imperial soldiers' heads.
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
In an instant, accompanied by dense, guttural roars, countless blooms of orange-red fire blossomed in the sky. Shrapnel wove a blazing net through the clouds, howling up toward the Thracian Holy Guard high above.
To counter these angelic godbloods, the Empire had even engraved runes specifically designed to suppress solar divine power on many of their armor-piercing shells.
The leader of the Holy Guard—a six-winged angel—wore a detached expression. Fire surged within his golden eyes, and the brand between his brows lit up.
"Chants brand the brow; divine eyes burn bright."
Chanting a holy hymn in a low voice, he slowly swung his flaming longsword. The tip drew a circle in the air, conjuring a crimson magic circle of condensed sparks before him.
The other Holy Guards followed suit, murmuring hymns and tracing circles with their blades. More and more crimson magic circles manifested in midair, ultimately coalescing into an inverted pentagram hundreds of meters in diameter that dyed the entire sky orange-red.
*Boom!*
*Boom! Boom!*
The anti-aircraft armor-piercing shells slammed into the magic circle, detonating again and again, yet they failed to shake the formation in the slightest, raising only ripples of energy across its surface.
Vast and intricate, the formation bore nothing holy about it; rather, it gleamed blood-crimson, exuding an eerie, unsettling aura.
On the ground, Tar furrowed his brows, muttering, "An inverted pentagram..."
The Holy Guards brought down their longswords. Accompanied by a dull roar across the heavens, blazing meteors poured from the circle, plummeting toward the Imperial soldiers below.
Worse yet, the base of every meteor was enveloped in a spinning inverted pentagram formation.
Even the intercepted artillery shells were fused into a single mass, compacted into a massive sphere of metal nearly ten meters wide, and hurled down toward the earth.
The sky shuddered; the earth trembled. This all-out strike by the Holy Guard was no less potent than a forbidden spell of the ninth tier or higher—far beyond what mortals could withstand.
*Wrrr—*
The eardrums of the Imperial soldiers ached from a vibration tearing through the air. Perplexed, they looked up toward the sky, only to freeze rigid in place.
Across the sky, crimson fissures cracked open, and fireballs trailing sulfurous tails crushed through the clouds.
"Cassius above..."
"That's..."
Confusion instantly morphed into terror. The Imperial soldiers trembled all over, their faces pale, at a total loss.
They were used to watching their enemies struggle, wail, and scream amid disaster.
Yet at this moment, beneath the full might of the Holy Guard, they themselves had become the victims, the hopeless souls awaiting impending doom.
Seeing the meteors plummeting from the sky, Tar turned pale with shock and barked, "Anti-aircraft guns, intercept them! Open fire!"
*Boom! Boom! Boom!*
Muzzle flashes erupted from dozens of anti-aircraft guns. Shells trailing dense smoke soared skyward, weaving another dense web across the air.
Yet these meteors were shielded by the inverted pentagrams. Even when struck by the shells, they did not detonate in midair; instead, they absorbed and drew the metal into their mass.
Scalding fragments showered down like rain, claiming Imperial lives with ease and even punching straight through steam tanks.
Before the meteors even struck the ground, blistering gales swept across the land. The scorching heat seared their skin, dust stung their eyes, and the air reeked of burning.
The Imperial soldiers tried to turn and flee, only to find the meteors seemingly everywhere, having blanketed the entire Imperial position.
"Sinful souls burn away; our Lord endures forever—"
The ground cracked open, and countless glowing-red chains rose up, thrashing wildly in midair. They cut off all routes outward, trapping the Imperial army completely.
Fear finally curdled into despair. Many Imperial soldiers fell to their knees, praying that the god in their hearts—the Cinder Emperor, Cassius—would intervene and save them from this death trap.
"O Great Red Dragon..."
"Your Majesty Cassius protect us, we'll survive this!"
Watching the meteors hurtle ever closer to the ground, the half-dragon officer gritted his teeth in unwilling fury, sweat soaking through his back.
Tar knew that once these meteors made full impact, the mixed division under his command would likely be wiped out to the last man.
This would likely be the first time since the Empire's founding that an Imperial military formation was annihilated as an organized force. As its supreme commander, he would be nailed to the pillar of historical shame.
Tar hoisted a rocket launcher onto his shoulder, fired at the meteors overhead, and roared, "Spell Protection Teams, hold the line!"
Over a hundred hulking ogres raised their massive shields. The runes carved into them flared brilliantly, projecting an Antimagic Field that formed a hemispherical dome hundreds of meters across, shielding the Cinder Empire's encampment.
Yet moments later, the massive meteors crashed down, shattering the antimagic barrier as effortlessly as crushing an eggshell.
*BOOM!*
A world-shaking blast erupted. Pillars of fire shot into the sky as billowing smoke swept over the earth, swallowing everything on the ground—Imperial soldiers, artillery, and steam tanks alike.
The thermal wave rolling across the land flipped over everything in its path. Charred limbs and jagged debris flew wildly in every direction, whipping into a terrifying maelstrom.
Right then, ripples spread across the distant fabric of space. Fissures tore open in the sky one after another, and more than a dozen airships and hundreds of wyverns surged forth like turbulent storm clouds, instantly filling half the sky.
*Roaaar!*
Soaring high on his dragon-blooded giant eagle, Alger looked at the soaring flames and smoke, his pupils constricting violently. "Damn it, we're still too late..."
He raised his longsword, pointing it toward the Holy Guard high in the distance, and shouted, "Don't let them escape! Avenge our fallen soldiers!"
Instantly, the wyverns reared back and screeched, beating their wings as they spewed searing dragonfire, surging toward the Holy Guard like an unstoppable tidal wave.
The heavy elemental cannons beneath the airships locked onto the distant Holy Guard as well, unleashing thick, devastating beams of light that erupted into a furious tempest of lightning, frost, and fire.
Countless missiles streaked through the air as thick as rain, hurtling toward the Holy Guard.
After unleashing that cataclysmic meteor disaster, the Holy Guard had depleted nearly all their energy, leaving them unable to sustain prolonged combat.
Bizarre changes manifested across the bodies of many Holy Guard members: fissures broke open on their skin, revealing raw, crimson flesh, and feathers shed from their wings, igniting into ash midair.
The leader of the Holy Guard turned around, flapping the six wings at his back. He stared expressionlessly at the Imperial reinforcements and said in an indifferent voice, "Our objective has been achieved. There is no need to entangle ourselves further. Fall back."
"Yes, my Lord."
At his command, every member of the Holy Guard raised their longsword in perfect unison, like puppets on strings.
*Wrrr—*
Beams of light surged skyward, scattering the clouds like pillars holding up the heavens.
The ethereal hymn resonated once more. Beneath the feet of the Holy Guards, the inverted pentagram spun rapidly as the surrounding space warped and fractured, shrouded in a faint glow.
"Damn it, they're teleporting! We can't let these Thracians get away!" Alger roared in agitation. His dive accelerated, turning him into a streak of crimson.
"Do everything you can to seal off the space! I'll disrupt them!"
Aboard the airships, the Imperial court wizards raised their staves and incanted spells, constructing intricate, complex spell matrixes to lock down the surrounding space.
*Dimensional Lock.*
Thick magical chains manifested from the void, shimmering with faint light as they drew together to envelop the surrounding space.
Meanwhile, the distance between Alger and the Holy Guard dwindled rapidly.
*Roaaar!*
He bore down fiercely. The dragon-blooded giant eagle beneath him gave a throat-tearing shriek, exuding an immense draconic aura; behind it, a colossal, majestic phantom of a red dragon even took shape.
As a Dragonblood Duke of the Empire and one of the Cinder Emperor's earliest retainers, Alger possessed terrifying might. Alone, he could generate the momentum of a hundred Redscale Conquerors executing a Dragon Roar Charge at once.
In mere moments, trailing an afterimage across the sky, Alger closed the distance to the Holy Guard leader to five hundred meters—a span the giant eagle could cross in a single breath.
"Die—!"
Alger roared, crimson scales surfacing on his face as veins bulged on his forehead, his dragon-like golden slit pupils blazing with fury.
The leader of the Holy Guard turned back to meet his gaze across the open sky. His eyes were likewise golden, yet cold and detached, with two inverted pentagrams slowly rotating within them.
Those eyes were profoundly mysterious and unfathomable, seemingly capable of devouring a man's soul, causing even Alger to lose his focus for an instant.
The Holy Guard leader slowly beat his six wings, leveled his flaming longsword at the knight, and spoke coldly: "Minions of the evil dragon, you will inevitably be destroyed by our Lord..."
One hundred meters.
Fifty meters.
Twenty meters.
Just as Alger swung his longsword, poised to cleave the Holy Guard leader's head from his shoulders—shrouded in light, the bodies of hundreds of Holy Guards first turned translucent like phantoms, then vanished into thin air, leaving no trace behind.
The sound of the holy hymn warped as well, degrading into a low, raspy laugh that echoed through the heavens.
*Swish—*
Alger's blade struck nothing but empty air, the edge cleaving through the atmosphere. The sheer force of his blow even left hairline fractures across the surrounding space.
He reined in the giant eagle and hovered in midair, gazing down at the charred corpses and wrecked tanks below, his expression grim beyond measure. "Damned Thracians! They still got away."
Spiraling down to the ground, Alger inspected the wreckage closely, catching the pungent stench of sulfur in the air.
Pinching a handful of ash from the dirt, he couldn't help but frown. "The scent of souls? This doesn't seem like a blessing from the Sun God; it feels far more like power hailing from the Hells.
An entire mixed division... this is going to cause a massive uproar in the military." Alger sighed. He looked up toward the headquarters of the Western Front Army, his expression turning ever more solemn.
...
In the Isaac Valley, at the temporary command post of the Imperial Western Front Army, the senior officers were in an uproar, arguing ceaselessly upon receiving the reports from the front.
Since the founding of the Empire, this was the first time an entire division-sized unit had been wiped out as an organized force. In a sense, it was historic.
If this news reached the homeland, it would inevitably ignite a massive furor and send the Imperial populace into an uproar of outrage.
"What? The Third Mixed Division was completely wiped out?!"
"Cassius above! That was fifteen thousand men, fully equipped with an armored regiment and an air regiment! How could those Thracians have swallowed them whole?!"
"I said it before—that Tar is a bloody incompetent! He never had the ability to command a division!"
"By the Great Red Dragon, an entire mixed division destroyed as an organized force—this is likely the first time since the Empire's founding that we have suffered such a loss! It is an Imperial disgrace! How can we ever show our faces to His Majesty Cassius?!"
"Enough!"
Arturo slammed both hands onto the table and surged to his feet, bellowing with a furious scowl, "What's done is done! Squabbling and pointing fingers accomplishes nothing!
I am the supreme commander of the Western Front Army. I will take full responsibility for this!"
Scanning the room, Arturo cast a piercing gaze over the varied expressions of his officers before softening slightly, speaking through gritted teeth: "We underestimated the Kingdom of Thrace, and we underestimated the depth of Fadlan's heritage.
Faced with Thrace's deep defense system, we split our forces and advanced just as we did when invading the Northlands and Ethel, causing the Third Division to become disconnected from the main force, which led to this catastrophe...
Their Holy Guard can unleash attacks on the level of forbidden spells. Without high-tier combatants like Duke Alger or Duchess Misha to counter them, they can wipe out one of our divisions in an instant!"
Another officer spoke up: "We must adapt our tactics. As one of the three kingdoms that inherited Holy Fadlan, Thrace holds no shortage of hidden trump cards. We must advance steadily and avoid reckless pushes that cause unnecessary losses."
"But we are fighting on Thracian soil! If our advance is too slow and we get bogged down in a war of attrition, our rear supply lines won't keep up..."
"Then we leave those scattered cities across the realm to the Starfallen and concentrate our main force for an all-out assault on Auguste!"
The Imperial officers fell into heated debate once more, their arguments rising in a clamor.
Arturo stared fixedly at the giant map of Thrace before him, his fists clenched so hard they nearly bled, his voice raspy. "The Holy Guard..."
Chapter 698