Chapter 976 — Non-Directional Burst

The vast surge of magic from the direction of the eastern plains instantly triggered the border detection system's alarms. A shrill ringing shattered the small hours at Border Camp No. 22; this defense node, set between the Paramell Highlands and Longwind Fortress, snapped awake in an instant, and the commander and soldiers garrisoned there were left almost bewildered by what was about to happen.

"Detecting a magic fluctuation of enormous scale!" reported Gao Luodao, the soldier in charge of the monitoring system. His eyes were wide, fixed desperately on the data streaming back from the magic detection device. "From the southeast... closing fast!"

An observer hurried from the monitoring room and rushed to a platform near the perimeter wall. In the dawn light slowly brightening across the sky, he engaged the composite filter of the lookout apparatus and pressed his eye to the lenses ground from artificial crystal.

A twisted, searing, colossal cloud of energy had already taken shape in the distance, skimming low over the ground and flying fast toward the camp. Beneath that cloud could be seen the faint flicker of great shields and the first tips of banner lances—black banners with red patterns rising and falling along the horizon's edge like strange fish leaping across the water's surface.

"Heat cone in sight!" the observer Gao Luodao called out. "The cone has formed!

"Enemy markings observed... Typhon! It's Typhon's Iron River Knights!!"

When the camp commander heard this report, his face held nothing but blank astonishment.

Typhon? Attacking out of nowhere? At a time like this?

Had those Typhon bastards all gone mad? Was there even a shred of logic behind any of this?!

A subordinate's shout came from nearby: "Sir! Your orders!"

The commander raised his eyes swiftly to the distance, then without a moment's hesitation gave his command: "Overload the shields—batteries one through four, charge and aim. Everyone to the walls. The moment the enemy enters the firing identification zone, open fire. You—go notify Longwind Fortress. The Typhon have started a war!!"

"Yes, sir!"

The soldiers sprang into action, and the camp commander clenched his fists hard. When he looked again toward the southeast, the face of this veteran—who had survived the battle of Bedrock Fortress and the divine calamity on the Holy Spirit Plains—wore nothing but resolve.

The heat cone had formed, the Typhon knights had begun their charge; there was no longer any possibility of communication, confirmation, or reporting—there was simply no time. Since the enemy had chosen to strike without declaring war, then holding this camp was his duty and his soldiers'.

There was something strange behind all this—the commander had indeed sensed it. The Typhon actions defied all logic; sending an ace knight order to hurl itself suicidally at a defense line without mage support was sheer folly. Even if that ace order could tear a gap in this camp, what then? Could they fight their way through the entire Longwind defense line?

Yet at this moment, no one could explain that strangeness—the enemy had come.

Surging energy churned between crystal and metal. The fixed magic-cannon adjusted its angle through the precise turning of gears and bearings, its muzzle raised high, pointed at the knight order charging in the distance. After the briefest of delays, the thunderous roar of the shell accelerating and bursting from its rails erupted—and a pale cyan stream of light tore away the last shred of darkness from this winter dawn.

Wreathed in pale cyan vapor, the magic-crystal shell shrieked through the air, tracing a long arc—and in the direction of its fall, the knight order charged across the plains on horseback, surging magic filling the ranks and lending the whole formation a strange, half-real, half-illusory air. The shrieking from the sky did not escape the ears of this force of superhumans, yet throughout the charge, not a single knight turned his head to look up.

The shell plummeted with unerring precision straight into the Iron River Knights' attacking formation, and an instant later a deafening explosion tore across the plain.

Boom, boom, boom!

A colossal cloud of explosion, borne upward by the shockwave, billowed into the sky. Across the shield canopy stretched above the knights, dense ripples suddenly surged, and in some regions the shield's surface began to take on white noise like interference static—after all, a barrier raised by human effort combined could never rival the shields of a castle fortress; even if it could withstand the power of "Skyfire" for a short while, it plainly could not last long.

And how much "Skyfire" did the Cecilians have?

Barely a dozen seconds later, the shrill whistling that came rushing down again from the high sky supplied the answer.

Explosion after explosion rang out in relentless succession; as the distance closed, the camp's smaller cannons opened fire too, and shockwaves and blast clouds great and small ran riot over the knights' combined shield in turn after turn. The barrier held up by a great host of extraordinary beings joined together finally began to show breaches and signs of critical overload—at the edges of the battle formation, knights began to fall from their horses one after another, stricken by magic backlash or blast injuries.

Yet still they charged forward in silence, as though utterly insensible to the agony visited upon their bodies.

The thermal cone began its descent, gradually synchronizing with the wedge formation of the massed knights. Watching this unfold, the camp commander understood that this first wave of impact certainly could not be stopped.

"Prepare to receive the impact—"

The next second, the camp's shield collided violently with that vast, constrained body of plasma.

A tooth-grating shriek filled the interior of the shield; dense, brilliant sparks burst from the shield generators and magic capacitors all along the walls, and great swaths of white noise appeared across the front of the camp's shield. And in the camp commander's eyes, those Typhon knights had already begun shifting their ranks before the thermal cone even arrived—even as they let that high-energy cloud mass crash against the shield of its own accord, they split into more than ten waves of echelons and began assaulting the shield nodes at every point.

On the walls, the Cecil soldiers began to fight back with ray guns, lightning generators, and every manner of individual weapon, but the camp commander knew this place could not be held.

Just as the energy barrier raised by the Typhon Knights could not match a castle's shield, this mere border camp... was, after all, no Long Wind Fortress.

The humming drone that precedes a shield's collapse reached his ears.

"How long until the Iron Throne arrives?"

"Sir, the World Serpent has already set out from Border Station Seventeen!"

"All hands—light your blades!" The commander gritted his teeth, reached down, and drew the molten-edge sword at his waist. "For our nation!"