Fall!

The western outskirts of Tiandu. Sandbags were piled beneath houses of crumbling brick and broken tile. Foxholes were dug into courtyards, and timber bracing reinforced the backs of perimeter walls. The civilians living here had long since fled, and judging by the household goods left behind, their departure had been exceedingly rushed. Soldiers of the State of Brahma sheltered behind the fortifications, repeatedly checking their gear and ammunition to kill the remaining time. Not a single person spoke. Silence blanketed the nocturnal positions, yet anyone could see the unspoken sorrow that hung in the air. Stationed here was the 70th Myriad of the State of Brahma, commanded by Myriarch Pikli—Gail's old man. As one of the conditions for securing his son an undergraduate spot at Mammoth University, Pikli had volunteered to spearhead the front line, taking his troops to the absolute forefront of the Defense of Tiandu. In Brahma Province, the first line of defense had always been reserved for cannon fodder. Though General Duwata had permitted him to "act as he saw fit," Pikli knew full well that his chances of survival were slim. Rumor had it that the Legion's shells could vaporize an entire position in an instant, especially those warheads capable of splitting apart midair. Even among the Alliance's elite corps, plenty of corps commanders had met an untimely end in the opening bombardment, to say nothing of a makeshift myriarch like him who had switched tracks halfway through his career. Still, Pikli felt no regret. He had paved a future for his son. As long as that little brat wasn't completely useless and didn't squander his time in school, then even if Pikli died and Gail never had the chance to become a myriarch, returning as a commissioner would still be well within reach. Standing beside Myriarch Pikli, his adjutant raised a pair of binoculars toward the distant airships, his face etched with worry. "Damn it... how the hell are we supposed to bring those things down?" The adjutant had no idea what bargain his commander had struck with the general. All he knew was that the 155mm artillery supplied by the Alliance had proven entirely useless against those monstrosities. Yet he did not regret standing here, either. Not everyone took up arms purely for personal gain; he, at least, fought for a righteous cause. "Hell if I know! Worst comes to worst, we'll take those big-nosed bastards down with us!" Pikli spat a low curse, adjusted the brim of his officer's cap with an index finger, and glared at the five steel fortresses floating in the sky. Brave words aside, he had no real plan for taking those big noses down with them. The disparity in power was simply too vast! From the very beginning, this had been an asymmetric war. Watching the steel fortresses creep closer and closer, Pikli felt every second drag on like an eternity of torment. He even found himself praying involuntarily that everything would end quickly—if only to spare him the agony leading up to that final glory. Right then, all five airships dropped their anchor chains in unison. The heavy chains struck the earth, plowing through the soil under sheer momentum and kicking up rolling plumes of dust. The adjutant's pupils shrank abruptly behind the binoculars. He gasped in a low voice, "They've dropped anchor!" That was the telltale sign of an impending barrage! Pikli's heart leaped into his throat. He ripped the radio from his shoulder strap and roared at the top of his lungs, "All units, take cover!" Truth be told, his warning was hardly necessary. The communication gear of the Brahma Army only reached down to the Century level, whereas actual combat was conducted in Decads. Because of this, the tactical decisions of frontline junior officers relied far less on commands from the rear than on the movements of the enemy directly in front of them. The moment those chains hit the dirt, the soldiers on the defensive line had already scrambled into dugouts at the shouts of their Decurions. Those with nowhere to hide threw themselves flat into foxholes or depressions in the ground. At the very moment the 70th Myriad braced for the shelling, a blaze of blinding flashes lit up the sky. A rain of fire poured from the heavens, instantly illuminating the pitch-black night! As if showing off, the Southern Legion had loaded tracer rounds into every single gun, aiming to shatter their enemy's positions, bodies, and spirits in one overwhelming display of firepower! Rows of already rickety houses were blown apart in an instant, scattering shattered bricks and broken tiles across fragmented streets. Pikli ducked frantically into a dugout, yet the deafening roar of artillery still left him utterly dazed, his face plastered in cascading dirt and grit. And this was merely the prelude! Before the echoes of the first salvo had even died, the Wilante gunners in the airship battery bays were already completing the reload for their second volley! First, they would use cluster munitions to clear out a portion of the "rats," driving the rest deep into their holes. Next came the incendiary shells. Surface oxygen would be consumed in an instant. Carbon dioxide was heavier than air, and the phosphorus pentoxide generated by burning white phosphorus was far heavier still. The lethal gas would flood the underground bunkers, exterminating the final batch of vermin. It was far more direct than the Death Agent... *** On the bridge of the *Clarion*. Reclining in his chair, John gazed out the floor-to-ceiling viewport at the earth below while twirling a medal between his fingers, the corners of his mouth curving upward. "Well struck." "Pity it's useless." Though he had never set foot on that soil for even a second, watching from the heavens gave him a clearer perspective than the brothers fighting on the ground. Those Rat Clan, Snake Clan, and other survivor tribes were not truly spineless; they had simply hibernated too long through the half-century of winter. Given enough time to fully awaken, they might well have become formidable foes for the Legion. And if the Alliance truly managed to bind them to its war chariot, the threat to the Legion would be unprecedented. What a shame. Right now, all they possessed was the courage to face the long night, and courage alone changed nothing. Against absolute might, their death throes were utterly meaningless. The playful smirk at John's lips hardened into cold disdain. He tapped the medal against his armrest, then slowly raised his calloused right hand. Yet just as he was about to drop his hand to give the command, he saw the medal resting on the armrest suddenly float upward as if gravity had vanished. It wasn't just the medal. The mugs, notebooks, pens, and caps scattered across the consoles, along with every officer standing unsecured in the corridors... everything was drifting into the air as if weightless. It happened so abruptly that no one had time to comprehend what was occurring. John froze in his seat. Before shock could even register on his face, he felt the seatbelt across his shoulder pull like a gaunt, withered hand, violently dragging him downward. Meanwhile, the officers who had drifted into the air crashed brutally into the ceiling alongside floating trash and loose debris. *Thud!* A dull, heavy impact echoed overhead. Staring at a world turned upside down in an instant, John's face contorted in sheer terror. What in the world was happening?! The same question burned through everyone's mind. Right then, a panicked scream burst from the comm channel: "Damn it!! We're falling!" Before the voice could finish, Myriarch Ryan's roar tore into his ear: "*Clarion*!! What the hell are you doing?!" "I—I don't know?!" John screamed back, his voice warping with dread. He hastily switched frequencies, trying to feign composure as he bellowed into the radio on his shoulder: "Deploy the buffer system! Quick!" That system had been installed specifically to counter phase cannons. Of all known weapons, only phase cannons could inflict fatal damage on an ironclad airship's antigravity units. Drawing on the Alliance's modifications to the *Heart of Steel*, the Equipment Manufacturing Bureau in Triumph City had designed cushion airbags beneath the airships of each major legion. That way, even if struck by a phase cannon, an airship would not plummet to its doom under its own immense weight. Yet to John's mounting horror, the downward-deployed airbags did nothing to slow their descent. They were still accelerating toward the earth at more than 1 G! Wait— An acceleration exceeding 1 G?! Watching the flight parameters flashing frantically on the holographic display, John suddenly realized the truth. Their descent wasn't caused by a failure of the antigravity engines. In fact, their engines were still running perfectly! What had hit them wasn't a phase cannon at all, but something else entirely! It was like an invisible hand gripping their airship, dragging it violently toward the ground at nearly 2 Gs of acceleration! Against that overwhelming force, their antigravity drives were utterly useless. Like wheels spinning helplessly in quicksand, they revved in vain, powerless to halt the plummeting altitude. They were doomed! They were going to crash! Despair crept across John's face. Yet, as a battle-hardened veteran, he refused to sit passively and wait for death. Gritting his teeth, he unbuckled the harness, threw his arms up to shield his head, and slammed into the ceiling under less than 1 G of relative force, taking the blunt impact full-on. Fortunately, the bridge's ceiling wasn't too high. The crash left him battered and dizzy, but not unconscious. Nearby, an adjutant scrambled to his feet from the ceiling, then rushed over to haul John up as well. "Sir, are you—" "To the escape pod..." John cut him off, seizing the man's arm and gasping for breath. "The escape pod... has a chemical engine! We can get away! Move!" Snapping to attention, the adjutant nodded vigorously. Supported by the officers who could still walk, they dragged John toward the escape pod adjacent to the bridge, limping along in a frantic rush. Martin was among them, terrified out of his wits. He was shaken to the core by this inexplicable force, but he managed to keep pace with John, avoiding being left behind on the bridge. As for the unfortunate souls who were knocked out, paralyzed by the impact, or stationed in the power bay and battery decks, they had no choice but to go down with the ship... There was only one escape pod. Though it could carry a fair number of passengers, it could never hold everyone. A jet of orange-yellow flame burst forth, tracing a desperate arc across the sky as it hurled the escape pod toward the distant west. *** At the very moment the *Clarion* plunged downward, similar scenes played out aboard the other four airships. In a dimension unseen by human eyes, an invisible membrane woven of gravitons collapsed downward into a vertical, abstract well. Had the collapse been allowed to continue, stretching the well's depth infinitely and rippling ever outward, the center of that wellhead would have birthed a point of infinite density, drawing in all surrounding matter to become an all-consuming void and unleashing a far more terrifying cosmic catastrophe. Evidently, the fusion reactor aboard the *Heavenly Palace* possessed no such power to warp space-time dimensions. The collapse occurring across that membrane was merely a ripple stirred by a light breeze across a lake—all it could manage was a sharp, localized spike in gravitational force. Yet though such a force was miniscule on an astronomical scale—no brighter than a firefly beside the stars—it was more than enough to crush a handful of airships. An invisible hand seized them by the throat, ripping them from above the clouds and hurling them violently toward the earth. They had fallen into the well! And not just them! Even the orbital debris trailing in low Earth orbit followed the invisible walls of the well, tumbling into its depths! Debris plunging into the atmosphere traced fiery streaks across the sky, creating the spectacle of a magnificent meteor shower from afar! The Wilante had forged new hulls around old starship cores with antiquated weapons, yet it was glaringly obvious they never truly understood what force allowed that steel to soar through the skies. And so, rack their brains as they might, they could not comprehend why their airships had suddenly plummeted from above the clouds. Watching the five sky fortresses fall from the heavens, Myriarch Ryan's eyes bulged, near bursting, his ash-gray face paralyzed with despair. "No—!" His desperate scream could not break free of gravity's hold. The ironclad fortresses crashed into the muddy wilderness one after another. Fragile airbags were sliced to ribbons by jagged steel. The buckling metal screamed under unbearable stress, crushing directly into ammunition racks packed with incendiary bombs. *Rumble—!* Blazing pillars of fire surged into the clouds, dragging thick black smoke upward to form towering mushroom clouds. The shockwaves swept across the plains, pulverizing sandbags along dirt roads and flattening crooked walls. Crew members who had failed to escape were killed instantly, and the Wilante positions situated directly beneath the crashing airships suffered next. A length of steel girder over ten meters long tumbled across the fields in flames, spinning like a burning windmill. A Greyhound reconnaissance vehicle couldn't veer away in time; the flying girder slammed into its flank, sending the vehicle spinning through the air like a top! Right beside the overturned recon vehicle, a speeding truck attempting to flee was flipped by the shockwave. An entire squad of Wilante soldiers was flung from the flatbed, tumbling bruised and battered into the mud. Cursing, they scrambled to get up, but before they could even lift their terror-stricken faces, an incoming wall of flame swallowed them whole! The entire western outskirts of Tiandu were submerged in a sea of roaring fire, as secondary detonations from stored ammunition went off like endless fireworks. The deafening explosions echoed across the plains, clearly audible even aboard the *Heavenly Palace* more than twenty kilometers away. The soldiers of the Southern Legion's 30th Myriad stood frozen, and the soldiers of the State of Brahma's 70th Myriad stood equally stunned. Men rose to their feet in unison, staring dumbfounded at the epicenter of the cataclysm, struck entirely speechless. Even the players spectating from afar were stunned. "Holy crap..." Staring at the blazing inferno, In Debt God couldn't help gulping, muttering under his breath, "Those slugs in the swamp actually have this kind of juice?" Construction Site Boy and Bricks swallowed hard too, his face full of disbelief. "This is probably the first time they've taken direct action since the server launched." Drum Hair Washer pondered for a moment before chiming in. "Not necessarily. Didn't the boys from the Burning Corps tangle with them before?" Enlightenment dawned on Construction Site Boy and Bricks. "Oh right... that Beacon squad thing. Damn, that was ages ago! I would've forgotten if you hadn't brought it up." "And the Alpha Mobile Task Force," Laplace teased. "It really is weird. Those guys have a distinct identity, but their presence in the game is practically invisible." Compared to the Enterprise, the Academy's presence was microscopic. They had even less presence than the Free State, whose grand plans invariably started with a roar and ended in a whimper. To this day, they still didn't know whether the Flint Group salesman, abducted by some short-lived Heavenly King, was alive or dead. Brother Edge grinned. "Turns out they're better suited to scheming from the shadows than fighting on the front lines." Fortunately, those people were on their side. In Debt God looked over at Brother Edge. "What now?" "Now... it's time to end this battle." As he spoke, Brother Edge unclipped the assault horn from his belt. Seeing this, the surrounding players excitedly donned their gas masks and racked their LD-47 assault rifles. In truth, the battle was already decided. The Southern Legion's lines were in utter chaos. Although only two Myriads were caught in the blast, the psychological fallout of the airships' crash reached far beyond the explosions themselves. After all, those five airships weren't just the core of the Southern Legion's firepower—they were the very faith of countless Wilante soldiers! And now, without even knowing what their enemy had done, they had watched their faith tumble from the sky and disintegrate into a blazing inferno. Plunging alongside them from the clouds were their pride, their courage, and their belief in invincibility. It was not so much that they had lost their will to fight, but rather that they simply had no idea how to carry on this war. How the hell were they supposed to fight this?! Whether it was the grunts crouching in the trenches or Myriarch Ryan inside the command vehicle, the same despair was etched onto every face. By contrast, the Alliance's 155mm artillery and multiple-launch rocket systems concealed in the outskirts were already trained on them. Not only that, but the 1st Mechanized Infantry Division from Golden Gallon Port and the 2nd Mechanized Infantry Division that had just reached Tiandu were moving in, accompanied by the 1st Armored Division of the Black Tiger Army and the 1st Armored Division of the Black Panther Army. Even Brother Mole's Skeleton Corps was in position. Four divisions plus a reinforced regiment had formed a pincer around the Legion's eastern front forces, while nearly fifteen Myriads of the State of Brahma stood ready on the main front. In truth, they hadn't lost to the Academy. They had ultimately lost to their own arrogance... Before Brother Edge could sound his bugle, a resounding horn blast echoed from the distant ruins, followed by an earth-shaking chorus of whistles. It came from the Brahma 70th Myriad's positions. Standing at the entrance of a dugout, gazing at the boiling inferno in the distance, Myriarch Pikli's face was flushed with fierce excitement. Like most Brahma officers who had risen from the rough-and-tumble grassroots, he drew his sidearm and planted a boot on an overturned sandbag. "Men! Time for payback! Charge with me!" Including his personal guard, every armed Brahma soldier let out a ferocious battle cry, surging toward the Southern Legion's lines beneath a barrage of 155mm howitzer shells and rockets. "Kill them all!" It wasn't just the 70th Myriad! The 71st and 72nd Myriads stationed on their flanks launched their assaults simultaneously! The waiting Skeleton Corps charged in right alongside them! A full-scale offensive had officially begun! The crackle of gunfire echoed across the night sky, accompanied by tracer rounds dancing wildly across the dark. Confronting the surging onslaught, a Conqueror 10 tank returned fire while reversing, only to have its turret blasted off by a 60-megajoule round before it could withdraw more than a few meters. Crouched behind a machine-gun bunker, a Wilante soldier squeezed the trigger desperately, his face illuminated by muzzle flash and contorted with panic. Before he could finish emptying his magazine, a rocket struck nearby, hurling him and the fortification skyward. The airships that posed the greatest threat to artillery were gone. The Goblin Corps artillerymen could unleash their ordnance with complete abandon! And then came the propeller aircraft! A severed arm hurled by a rocket explosion had barely hit the scorched earth before a wave of fearless soldiers trampled it underfoot. The Southern Legion's defensive line was collapsing at a visible rate! Under the assault of the Death Corps and the 70th Myriad, the 30th Myriad deployed on the front line had already been driven from suburban fields to the banks of the Everflowing River. The reconstituted 34th, 36th, and 37th Myriads were in the same predicament! They were enduring a setback far worse than anything they had faced in Akale County. The tidal wave of attackers left them with no chance to even mount a defense. *** Inside the command vehicle. Listening to the steady stream of distress calls and casualty reports coming over the radio, Myriarch Ryan's eyes faded to a dull, lifeless gray, stripped entirely of the swagger and arrogance he had displayed half an hour earlier. It was over. This war... While he was still submerged in failure and despair, his adjutant suddenly grabbed his shoulder, shaking him forcefully. "General! We have to retreat! Before the Alliance breaks through to here! We still have a chance!" Tiandu was almost certainly lost, and Akale County would likely fall too. But it didn't matter; they still held Lion City and the entirety of Lion State! They still had auxiliary troops summoned from the colonies! They still had ample reserves of ammunition and artillery! As for the airships... Losing five was a crushing blow, but it didn't represent the Southern Legion's entire arsenal. Besides, airships weren't their only trump card! They still had the 902mm railway gun! They still had nuclear warheads! And they had the Death Agent under development! As long as they refused to concede defeat, no one could stop them from seizing ultimate victory. Shaken by his adjutant, the word "retreat" finally drew a flicker of life back to Ryan's rigid face. Part of it was bitterness; the rest was an emotion he couldn't put into words. In the end, reality won out. He lifted the comm unit and forced the word past his dry lips: "Retreat." At the very least, he could not let himself fall into the hands of the Brahma... In truth, even without Ryan's order, the frontline Myriads had already reached the brink of total collapse. Clinging to the line would merely have meant the difference between a "tactical withdrawal" and an utter rout. *** Meanwhile, aboard a research vessel more than twenty kilometers from the battlefield. Leaning back in his seat, Yang Kai watched the raging inferno with unconcealed amusement, a smirk plastered on his face. "...Wonder how many Myriads were packed onto those five airships. That fuel sure burns well, heh." Right then, the door behind him slid open. Dressed in a protective suit, Jiang Xuezhou entered carrying a data pad. "Professor, the data you requested has been fully collected. Should we shut down the instruments?" "Oh, store it in the database. I'll review it later; I'm busy right now." Yang Kai waved her off dismissively, his eyes already drifting back toward the viewport. Then, catching himself, he added a quick instruction: "By the way, keep the recording running. Get the whole thing on video." He would need to send a copy to his allies later, after all. "Understood." Looking at her mentor, whose petty vindictiveness was smaller than a toothpick, Jiang Xuezhou made a helpless expression, gave a slight nod, and turned to leave the research vessel's cockpit.