Iron Cavalry of the Alliance!

Wasteland Online Official Forum. Escaping Mole in the Canyon: "...Ahem! Brothers, did the server just go down for maintenance or what?" Jieyan: "???" Tail: "0ω0?" Brother Edge: "Whuut??" Fang Chang: "Generally speaking, we call that condition 'respawn cooldown.'" Makabazi: "Hahahaha! I'm dying!" Commander Spring: "Bro, can you do it or not? (funny)" I'm the Darkest: "If you really can't handle it, tag us in. (grin)" Escaping Mole in the Canyon: "Piss off, piss off. Even the best stumble sometimes... Dammit! What rotten luck!" Fang Chang: "True, everyone has bad luck once in a while. At least Brother Mole's teammates are still online, so it shouldn't be too big of an issue." Ye Shi: "Is it just my imagination, or do I feel like this exact conversation happened before? (funny)" Elaina: "You should be asking: what day has this conversation *not* happened? (funny)" Elven King Fugui: "This game is way too realistic. (funny)" Escaping Mole in the Canyon: "Holy shit, how did you two end up down here too?!" Elaina: "Just dropped by to laugh at you. Going right back in a sec. (funny)" Elven King Fugui: "Safe travels, Commander! (funny)" Escaping Mole in the Canyon: "@#&@!" ... As it turned out, while boasting might not invite a lightning strike, carelessness and underestimating the enemy were guaranteed to breed trouble. Although the Southern Legion's 34th Myriad was merely a 'mechanized infantry division'—and an unlucky one at that, having been caught off guard—they were by no means the soft persimmon Mole had imagined, ripe for the squeezing. In fact, compared to the Southern Legion's still-unpolished armored forces, the mechanized infantry operating in tandem with artillery were their true aces! Being designated as reserves was merely their strategic role; it hardly meant the formation consisted of rookies. Wind the clock back half an hour. Because the *Clarion* had already deployed to the front line, the 30th Myriad, personally spearheaded by Myriad Commander Ryan, was advancing like an unstoppable torrent. The 34th Myriad could only rely on its own scout centuries and scheduled scout plane patrols to locate the enemy. In truth, with the war reaching this stage, the fall of Lion City was a foregone conclusion. Almost no one in the Southern Legion doubted that they would conquer all of Lion State before the end of the month, force the Bolo Republic to sign an armistice, and then concentrate their might against the Mammoth State occupying the three northern states. Under such circumstances, the 34th Myriad naturally harbored no fears of any counterattack from the Bolo Army. The scout units' primary task was simply ferreting out annoying tunnels and 'rat holes.' Yet as fate would have it, right while they had their heads down playing whack-a-mole, they slammed head-on into the Skeleton Corps rushing to reinforce southern Reedpur County. The two sides made contact along a gentle slope where woodland met farmland. The Southern Legion's 34th Myriad paid an immediate price for their complacency. The ten unlucky 'Greyhound' scout cars had barely spotted the surging steel torrent when incoming 155mm high-explosive shells blasted their armor to shreds. The players had opted for high-explosive instead of armor-piercing rounds primarily to prevent overpenetration. Given the Greyhound's armor thickness, it was like paper before the Alliance's Type 3 tanks. An AP shell would punch straight through, leaving two neat holes with terminal damage potentially inferior to an HE blast. Knocking out ten enemy armored units in their opening engagement sent the Skeleton Corps players' morale soaring! Mole immediately ordered the assault to push forward, intending to coordinate with their brothers in the Goblin Corps' air wing to swallow the entire division whole. However, the opposing Wilante were no pushovers either. Stunned by the opening blow, Myriad Commander Gibson of the 34th Myriad snapped back to his senses in an instant. Even as he called in air support, he barked out operational directives. What was more, the man pulled off a crafty maneuver: he detached two mechanized infantry cohorts, unloaded the riflemen and anti-tank gear from their armored personnel carriers, and sent them into the foxholes and rat holes dug by the Bolo soldiers to lie in ambush. Then he deployed his self-propelled artillery and light armor behind those foxholes. It had to be said, the tactic proved genuinely effective. Though the rat holes were somewhat tight for the burly Wilante, squeezing in was still manageable. High-explosive shells had a blast pattern that fanned mostly upward, inflicting limited damage on targets below ground level. Once the Skeleton Corps entered the riflemen's field of view, the Wilante soldiers lying in ambush in the rat holes immediately used their radio sets to relay coordinates to the rear and call in long-range fire. Fifty-two 'Fire Crossbow' self-propelled artillery pieces fired a synchronized volley, sending a dense rain of shells crashing down upon the Skeleton Corps' 1st Battalion. In truth, given the Type 3 tank's armor protection, so long as it didn't suffer a direct hit, long-range fire held little terror. Scoring a direct hit on a tank with indirect fire across such a distance had odds comparable to winning the lottery. Yet as luck would have it, someone was precisely that unfortunate. A 200mm APCBC shell struck Brother Mole's command vehicle dead center, punching straight through the vulnerable top hatch and detonating within, blowing the tank apart from the inside out. From armor penetration to detonation, the entire process took less than a second—so fast that Mole had returned offline before he could even register what happened. Meanwhile, the air squadron scrambled from West Sail Port tore into the airspace above the battlefield, diving with hundred-kilogram aerial bombs slung beneath their wings. Fortunately, the Goblin Corps, which had taken off from Tiandu Airport, joined the fray just in time, preventing the Skeleton Corps from becoming meat on the chopping block. Two hundred 'Daggers' clashed with two hundred 'Mosquitos.' Both sides wheeled and dove through the storm clouds, locked in a ferocious dogfight. While the aerial melee raged, four 'Thunderbolt' fighters flying in from Golden Gallon Port and six 'Sabres' from Evernight Port successively joined the fray. The former were the Alliance's next-generation fighters, powered by advanced yet temperamental plasma thrusters. The latter were century-old relics still fielded by the Legion. Though driven by vintage jet engines, their engineering sophistication and metallurgical precision approached the absolute pinnacle of chemically propelled aircraft. The Legion had stuck with jet engines not out of mere technological path dependency, but because across the entire wasteland, only the Enterprise—and now the Alliance—could force the Legion to deploy supersonic aircraft at all. The missiles fired by such craft were far more expensive than propeller-driven munitions, and their autocannons carried very little ammunition. Not only did the Legion's ground forces dislike them, but even the air corps themselves rarely favored them, usually rolling them out only for parades. Back in Sunset Province, Luo Yu had flown a 'Lingyun' fighter against one of these machines, narrowly scraping a win only by fusing with Yu. Now, however, neither he, Yu, nor the Alliance's aircraft were at their former level. Let alone four versus six—even one versus six! He had the confidence to give it another go three days later! Grasping the control stick with both hands, Luo Yu took a deep breath and sank his consciousness into his biological prosthesis. Yu's fruiting bodies spread throughout the cockpit. Through these biomass sensors, he could feel the slipstream scraping over the canopy and the micro-vibrations along the wingtips! The entire aircraft seemed to fuse into one with him! His vision penetrated the cloud deck. He could practically 'see' the enemy pilot's heartbeat and breathing. At that very moment, an air-to-air missile skimmed the edge of the clouds, rocketing toward him. Without the slightest trace of fear, a boiling battle spirit flared in his chest. Back when they fought the Church of the Torch, the enemy's flying units couldn't even manage two hundred kilometers per hour. Now, at last, he had a worthy opponent! "Yu, get ready to move!" As the missile radar hummed to life, a soft, ethereal chime resonated from deep within his mind. "Ee-woo!" Thick, sweeping tracer rounds crisscrossed the sky above and below, punctuated by the occasional scream of an air-to-air missile. From time to time, an aircraft burst into a fireball, tumbling downward accompanied by a deploying parachute. Those parachutes almost exclusively belonged to the Wilante. The Goblin Corps pilots had no need for such things—Mosquito hadn't bothered to equip his men with them in the first place. The aerial battle grew white-hot, hanging in an unbreakable deadlock for the moment. Meanwhile, the battle on the ground raged on. Although Brother Mole had bought the farm right at the opening bell, the Skeleton Corps' command structure did not collapse. In fact, several vehicle commanders following behind broke out laughing. "Holy shit, look at that dog Mole's insane luck." "How the fuck did that even hit?! Wallhacks!" "The trash dev dialed up the difficulty." "That's what you get for slacking off—instant karma." A cheerful atmosphere filled the comm channel, with plenty of people taking advantage of Mole's absence to lob a few insults. Still, the battle was ongoing. They didn't squander all their time chatting, quickly refocusing on the field. Even if only to avenge Brother Mole, they had to show what they were really made of! Elaina promptly assumed command, shouting into the comms: "...Air defense company, you spot anything in the airspace nearby? Drones or anything like that?" A reply came swiftly over the channel: "Negative! Forget drones, there isn't even a bird nearby." The enemy's air forces were still locked in a dogfight with the Goblin Corps and couldn't spare attention here. Elaina nodded. "Good... Looks like their spotters and radios are hidden right in front of us." This was an encounter battle; neither side had enjoyed much time to set up beforehand. In so short a window, the 34th Myriad couldn't possibly have deployed infantry along the flanks of their line of advance. Especially since doing so carried the risk of exposing their own artillery to enemy armor. Having deduced the gist of the enemy's deployment, Elaina made a snap judgment and rattled off a string of orders into the comms: "Support company, take note! Move to the marked map coordinates and deploy on your own initiative. Await further orders." "First and Second Armored Battalions, flank left. Third Armored Battalion, flank right. Target enemy self-propelled artillery and light armor units. Watch out for anti-tank weapons. Fifth Mechanized Infantry Battalion, cover the Fourth Battalion as they push forward!" The battalion commanders responded, "Copy that!" Pausing a beat, Elaina continued: "Also, air defense company, depress your flak guns! Push your FKs forward. If a spot looks like it's hiding someone or has foxholes, dump two belts into it first!" The FK-1 Defender crews answered, "Understood!" As the orders went out, the Skeleton Corps reshaped its advancing formation. The spearhead shifted from Type 3 main battle tanks to Chimera armored vehicles, while the heavy armor fanning out along both flanks surged straight toward the 34th Myriad's artillery positions like two giant battle-axes. The Skeleton Corps' offensive didn't descend into chaos simply because they had lost their commander. If anything, it was precisely because Mole possessed the confidence that 'even without me, the Skeleton Corps can keep fighting' that he dared drive his command tank at the very tip of the spear. Every main battle tank was staffed with an 'offline operator' occupying the radio operator's seat, responsible for relaying deployments from the offline forum to the game to adjust strategic maneuvers. Real-time tactical communication in-game was handled by the tank commanders, who coordinated directly with other crews. This was an SOP they had developed during the Battle of Sunset. Forget losing a commander—even if an entire reinforced regiment took a hit from a strategic-grade EMP weapon, the crews could still maintain near real-time coordination through the forum. Observing the Alliance armored units' movements, Myriad Commander Gibson felt a knot tighten in his chest. Instead of recklessly charging into the infantry's ambush positions after taking artillery fire, the enemy chose to swing around both flanks, bypassing the front. Seeing that his air support was tied up and the enemy's armor was already breathing down his neck, Gibson had no choice but to bite the bullet and order his deployed self-propelled artillery to withdraw, with the nearby APCs falling back alongside them. As for the three thousand-odd infantrymen left behind, they could only remain concealed in place. Across such an expansive area, it would be extremely difficult for the Alliance to ferret them all out, nor were they likely to waste so much time searching. While Gibson had made the correct operational decision from a commander's standpoint, it turned the infantry left behind to ambush tanks into abandoned pawns. Deprived of fire support and light armor cover, the more than three thousand riflemen scattered across the field were instantly orphaned. Once the enemy artillery fell silent, Elaina immediately issued orders to the deployed support company, launching spotter drones to guide the guns and hammering areas suspected of harboring enemy infantry with three consecutive salvos of incendiary rounds. Fierce fires erupted across the open field. Though the blazes were not vast, they worked wonders against Wilante soldiers crouching in earthen holes. Burly and tall, they were already severely cramped in the narrow cavities. The flames consumed the ground-level oxygen, forcing some out into the open while suffocating others alive in their burrows. Seeing that the fire had done its work, Elaina barked, "Dismount!" He led more than three hundred men from the Fourth Battalion out of their transports, fanning out in three-man fireteams alongside the Chimera armored vehicles to sweep forward. Ever since the 'Extinguishing Fire War,' the Skeleton Corps' mechanized infantry had been completely re-equipped with Type 5 light exoskeletons that balanced mobility and defense. Paired with the helmet's tactical targeting system, a soldier only needed to look toward a suspected enemy position, and iris-tracking sensors would instantly sync his line of sight to the gunner on the armored vehicle behind him, who would then decide whether to dump a burst into the spot. Shortly after dismounting, the squad ran into suppressing fire from Wilante riflemen. A hail of bullets whizzed through the air like horizontal sheets of rain. Ducking low beneath a burst of incoming rounds, Elaina raised his LD-47 assault rifle and fired back. The 7mm full-power cartridge punched clean through the helmet. Before the Wilante soldier lying in the foxhole could even grunt, his head burst like a smashed watermelon, scattering red and white across the dirt. Like a potato stuck in the earth, his broad shoulders wedged in the opening of the foxhole, keeping him from collapsing backward, leaving his upper torso sprawled across the lip of the hole. The death of their comrade struck no terror into the remaining Wilante; instead, it provoked their feral ferocity. Rifle fire echoed back and forth across the fields. The ferocious volley pinned Elaina's squad behind the hull of the armored vehicle. Yet no matter how fierce that firepower was, it was only spurting from pea-shooters; it couldn't hold a candle to the Chimera's 37mm autocannon. "Three o'clock! Hit 'em hard with HE! We'll watch for the rocket tubes!" Elaina banged his fist twice against the hull, then rested his rifle along the sloped frontal armor, took aim at a soldier scrambling out of a foxhole with an anti-tank rocket launcher slung across his back, and squeezed the trigger. With a few sharp cracks, the man collapsed before he could even chamber a rocket. The enemy commander had clearly overlooked the dimensions of those foxholes, as well as the sheer bulk of his soldiers and their equipment. A Bolo native could stand comfortably inside one of those pits and fire an RPG, but a Wilante could barely squeeze inside, let alone reload an anti-tank launcher. They had to crawl out just to operate it. Perhaps switching to cheap, disposable Panzerfaust rocket launchers would have served them better. Against light armor, the precise penetration of a shaped-charge warhead hardly mattered anyway. With the anti-tank infantry handily dispatched by Elaina, the Chimera serving as their cover focused on the soft targets firing rifles. The 37mm autocannon thumped rhythmically, clattering spent casings onto the turret and hull. In just a few breaths, the Wilante infantry blocking their path suffered catastrophic casualties. Even as the Chimera poured out steady fire, the FK-1 Defender trailing close behind rolled up. Its 20mm 'Red Dot' rotary autocannon, adapted from a destroyer's close-in weapon system, leveled at the muddy black soil ahead and suddenly let out a roar like tearing canvas. A torrential hail of bullets swept like a raging storm, shearing across the rows of foxholes ahead as if trying to rip the very earth inside out. In mere minutes, it chewed through six percent of the vehicle's onboard ammunition mass. Although these electromagnetically accelerated light kinetic penetrators lacked heavy armor penetration, they proved devastatingly effective against soft earth. Where high-explosive fragments couldn't reach, these directional metal spheres punched right through, riddling the foxholes like sieves. The enemy positions went dead silent in an instant. Elaina fired a few probing shots, and receiving no return fire, crept forward with Old Wang and another teammate. When he reached the nearest foxhole, he found the pit completely collapsed under displaced earth, the mound peppered with dense, tiny holes resembling a honeycomb. "Holy crap... that's brutal." Clicking his tongue, Elaina swallowed down his discomfort, unclipped the entrenching shovel from his exoskeleton, dug open the collapsed pit, and snapped a photo of the interior. It wasn't out of morbid curiosity. Documenting weapon effectiveness was part of the mission objectives; after all, this marked the FK-1 Defender's battlefield debut. Looking at the mangled mess of blood, flesh, and mud, even Old Wang, who had seen his share of hellscapes, felt his stomach churn. He couldn't resist a quip: "...Fuck, you can't even loot their gear after this." "What patch are we on? We don't need their gear anymore anyway." Ever since the Alliance's industrial might expanded, they rarely used captured weapons. Such spoils were usually passed down to rookies for early leveling, sold off to wasteland scavengers, or handed over to Boulder Armaments for reverse engineering. Elaina muttered an 'Amitabha' under his breath and shoveled the dirt back over the gory pit. Too grotesque. This game was always gratuitously realistic in the weirdest places. No wonder Ah Guang didn't let kids play. If Brother Ye Ao saw this, wouldn't he wet his pants on the spot? Elsewhere, the battle in the skies was nearing its conclusion. The Southern Legion's 3rd Air Wing had gradually lost momentum. Even the ace pilot credited with shooting down ten Alliance aircraft in the 'Harbor Defense Battle' was defeated, becoming a tally mark scratched into Feng Qing's cockpit. Luo Yu had achieved impressive results as well, downing two of the six Sabres himself. His wingmen took another two. Though it cost them one-for-one, that was a fair trade! With their numbers cut from an advantage to parity, the remaining two Sabres broke off and retreated. Running low on munitions, Luo Yu opted not to pursue. Instead, he escorted another damaged friendly craft and set course back toward Golden Gallon Port. When it came to raw acceleration, early-stage plasma thrusters were indeed no match for mature chemical jet engines; their primary strengths lay in endurance and sustained performance. After the dogfight concluded, Mosquito didn't bother chasing the retreating 3rd Air Wing either. Instead, he led his remaining thirty-nine aircraft toward the 34th Myriad fleeing along the northern railway. His guns weren't empty yet; heading home like this would be an absolute waste. Though they hadn't brought aerial bombs on this sortie, nothing stopped him from using his 20mm autocannons to make life miserable for the retreating Wilante. "Brothers! Forget the armored vehicles! Light up those transport trucks!" Howling over the comm channel, Mosquito pulled his goggles down over his eyes and was the first to dive. As he squeezed the trigger, dual 20mm cannons spat roaring tongues of flame, shredding the cab of an armored transport truck. The Wilante soldiers huddled in the rear tumbled out in panic, urged by their officers to scatter into the flanking woods. The once-orderly convoy descended into chaos. Several furious Wilante leveled assault rifles and submachine guns at the sky, spraying wildly, though they failed to nick so much as the aircraft's shadow. "Shooting at me with submachine guns? Have you lost your damn minds, hahahaha—holy shit!?" *Snap!* A bullet hole blossomed on the cockpit canopy. Mid-boast, Mosquito jumped in fright and yanked the control stick back, pitching the nose upward. The thirty-nine propeller planes took turns diving on the ground, destroying almost every operational transport vehicle in sight and blowing the tires off those too tough to destroy, leaving only heavy armored vehicles and light tanks behind. The brothers of the Skeleton Corps would clean those up. Having expended their final rounds, the airmen's mission was complete. By the time Brother Mosquito led his squad on the return flight toward Tiandu, the Skeleton Corps' three armored battalions had caught up to the routed remnants of the 34th Myriad. The enemy myriad was practically shattered. Aside from the fifty-two Fire Crossbow self-propelled artillery pieces that escaped thanks to their thick armor, almost all the remaining soldiers had lost their transport and scattered into the surrounding hills and forests. Unfortunately, Elaina's two mechanized infantry battalions hadn't caught up; otherwise, they might have wiped out the entire division-sized formation in one fell swoop. Still, Elaina couldn't be faulted for that. After all, no one expected the Wilante to be so stubborn, refusing to surrender even after being abandoned. Over three thousand big-nosed Wilante carrying roughly half a division's worth of anti-tank weaponry were scattered across a front a dozen kilometers wide. Even if Elaina burned through his regiment's entire ammunition stockpile, he wouldn't necessarily root out all three thousand stragglers. Manpower was their bottleneck. His two battalions numbered around six hundred men in total. Sweeping a frontline stretching more than ten kilometers was like searching for a needle in a haystack. Worse, they were effectively operating behind enemy lines now; halting in place risked being enveloped. The enemy was clearly banking on this. Unless someone shoved a rifle in their face and hauled them out of their hole by the scruff of the neck, no amount of surrender calls had any effect. Elaina couldn't help grumbling internally: *Who the hell are the gophers here?* Yet ignoring them wasn't an option either; the moment they retreated, this force would bite them in the rear. As Elaina weighed his dilemma, several horses approached from the distance. Hearing the clatter of hooves, he instinctively brought his rifle up, but the lead rider threw his hands into the air. "Brothers from the Alliance, don't shoot! Friendly!" With that, the man pulled on the reins and swung down from his saddle. Elaina eyed the civilian-clothed man, lowering his rifle barrel slightly. "Who are you?" The man stood tall, flush with pride and wearing an expression of deep respect, snapping a crisp salute. "Myriad Commander Jokale of the Bolo Republic's 11th Myriad!" *Well damn.* *A myriad commander showing up this far on the front lines—can you respawn in three days too?* Elaina gave him a surprised look, then glanced at the handful of soldiers dismounting behind him. "Where are your troops? Just this few?" Jokale spoke rapidly: "My troops are nearby! Commander Yudono assigned us to conduct guerrilla operations in this area! When I heard gunfire just now, I rode ahead on horseback. My men are jogging up behind me; they should be here in ten to fifteen minutes." The Bolo Army lacked vehicles, relying primarily on their two legs to move. Facing the Legion's mechanized columns, their reinforcements could never match the enemy's motorized speed. Often, friendly troops were dead and cold before they even arrived. This was why the Southern Legion had never taken the two-hundred-thousand-strong host seriously. Troops unable to reach the battlefield on time were useless, no matter how numerous. Driven by such helplessness, the Bolo front-line commander had apparently resigned this myriad to guerrilla harassment. Though Elaina doubted the viability of a force where a hundred men shared a single radio—before long, decurions would probably lose contact with centurions—they had no better alternatives. Suddenly struck by an idea, Elaina looked at the officer. "How many men do you have?" Jokale replied loudly and clearly: "About ten thousand, excluding us! We can accept your command!" "Excellent!" Elaina slapped his shoulder in delight, then cast a glance back at the 'potato field' behind them. "Those big-noses are holed up in rat holes and refuse to come out. We can't persuade them, so take your men and flush them out. They have radios on them—though they're on the Southern Legion's frequencies, you can work out a recognition code and make do." Not just radios, but exoskeletons and rocket launchers as well. While Elaina had no use for such gear, the Bolo Army wasn't about to be picky. Sure enough, Jokale's eyes lit up with delight, and he accepted the order enthusiastically: "Leave it to us! I guarantee we won't let a single one slip away!" "Good, it's all yours!" Elaina chuckled and patted him on the shoulder, adding, "Be quick about it. Their reinforcements could arrive at any time. Grab the gear and head south; it's too late to make it to Lion City anyway." Leaving behind a profusely thankful Jokale, Elaina waited until the Bolo soldiers arrived before handing the 'potato field' over to them. If they didn't want to surrender, so be it; managing a sea of prisoners was a hassle anyway. Offering a silent prayer for those pigheaded Wilante lads, Elaina led his men back to their vehicles, herding the hooded prisoners they had captured. The logistics company would process the captives and send them to the rear's POW camp. "Fourth Battalion, Fifth Battalion, support company, and air defense company, attention! Target: northern railway! Move out!" Rumbling treads and wheels rolled forward again, thrusting toward the rear of the Southern Legion's eastern front. Regrettably, this local victory could not reverse the tide of the broader campaign. While the Skeleton Corps engaged in a fierce battle with the 35th Myriad guarding the armored train along the railway line, the 30th Myriad, spearheaded by Myriad Commander Ryan, had already shattered the defenses northeast of Reedpur County and kicked open the gates of Lion City. Assaulted by three Southern Legion myriads and a steel airship, the six Bolo myriads defending outside the city were routed into disarray, forced to fall back inside the city walls to brace for urban combat. Yudono had evacuated a portion of the civilian population, and others had fled on their own when they saw the writing on the wall. Yet Lion City was ultimately a metropolis of a million souls; emptying it out was no simple feat. Besides, Abhishek was hardly the only one harboring illusions about the Wilante. Even having witnessed the atrocity at West Sail Port, some Bolo still believed those slaughtered had brought it upon themselves, justifying the Southern Legion's ruthlessness as understandable. Hearing that the 34th Myriad had been routed, Ryan remained remarkably composed. He didn't even vent his anger at Myriad Commander Gibson, who delivered the report, merely issuing fresh deployment orders with cold calm. With the war having reached this point, not even the most naive Wilante believed their true opponent was the filthy Bolo. Standing against them was the Alliance. When battling an ancient adversary, a temporary setback was no disgrace. Furthermore, losing a skirmish or two changed nothing about the fact that they were driving forward in triumph. Still, since the local survivors had chosen to stand with the lingering remnants of the Reconstruction Committee against the Wilante, they could hardly blame him for showing no mercy... Inside his command vehicle. Staring at the holographic display showing the metropolis cloaked in black smoke, Myriad Commander Ryan emotionlessly transmitted an order to the airship *Clarion*: "Position your airship over the southern districts of Lion City." The *Clarion*'s captain knew what he intended, and saw nothing inherently wrong with it, yet couldn't help questioning whether it was overly extreme. What they needed was not a ruin. Such things littered the Great Desert; no one would take them even as a gift. "What purpose does that serve? The ones left are nothing but remnants and stragglers. If you're concerned about casualties among your troops, we can send in the dogs first. Those things are cheaper than artillery shells." By 'dogs,' he meant the unbadged Glorious Army. Ryan didn't bother offering explanations, replying coldly: "Do as I ordered." He needed to break the local population's will to resist and teach them the cost of defying the Southern Legion. The *Clarion*'s captain sighed, offering no further resistance. "Very well... Ahem, I mean, as you command."