Missouri's priority was the warehouse. Anything headed that way, she'd do her best to swat down—but if something slipped through, then it slipped through.
"It's fine," Hikaru rubbed Ella's cheeks. "I'll make the Abyssals pay for every scratch. They'll regret wrecking my base—regret ever coming into existence."
Ella ducked her head, flustered. "Abyssals weren't 'born' in the first place."
Another massive jolt hit before she finished. Ella toppled into Hikaru's arms, clutching her head with teary eyes.
Her forehead had collided with Glowworm's—an iron-hard head blessed by skills that could crack battleships. Ella never stood a chance. The fact she didn't cry was already admirable.
Glowworm herself felt nothing. She turned, saw Ella blushing with watery eyes, and nibbled on her finger in confusion.
Blücher planted her great anti-ship blade like a cane, bracing on the bucking floor with a grave face. "To defeat the invincible me, the Abyssals have unleashed a forbidden art—the Thousand-Fathom Tsunami Dragon Cannon!"
Glowworm abandoned thoughts of why Ella was tearing up and pouted. "Such a chuunibyou. Amethyst would totally like her."
Outside the warehouse, Blücher wasn't wrong—the Abyssals' massed bombing had raised a tsunami.
The floating island that housed the base pitched and rolled with the waves.
And with bombardment that dense, even Lexington's group couldn't avoid picking up scrapes—one point here, two points there. Stacked up, only Bismarck with her damage immunity and Vestal with god-tier evasion were basically untouched; everyone else had taken hits—Veneto still kept her Saint Shield tucked away.
The Airfield Princess sensed an opening. A black eagle relayed to her; after a moment's thought she turned to Abyssal Musashi, eyes set. "We have to take a risk."
Lexington's bomber groups had just finished another run. Abyssal Musashi, soaked to the bone, crawled out from the blast gusts, spat out a fish that somehow got into her mouth, and asked, "What risk?"
"The base's anti-air is at its limit. I want every ounce of aerial firepower—bombers, torpedo bombers, and missiles," the Airfield Princess traced a wide circle, "all in, all at once—drive them to the brink!"
Guided-missile destroyers were rarer than submarines. Musashi hadn't had any, but the Airfield Princess and the Fortress Princess had brought a squad of a dozen from Base 544—hard-won assets from years of cultivation there.
A word on how Abyssals "recruit": beings like Abyssal Musashi—or the already-sunk Abyssal Yamato—raise banners in the Ink Sea and call strong, unaffiliated Abyssals to muster. The catch is obvious: the truly rare elites are usually long since absorbed by bases and nurtured—like 544's missile-destroyer squad. Used well, a dozen could flip a battle. Musashi had been saving them.
Even so, with the Airfield Princess so adamant, Musashi still hesitated.
"Our base AA is at the breaking point?" Musashi looked skeptical. "We've thrown million-plane raids before and never hit their ceiling. And now eighty thousand does it?"
"They pulled all their carrier planes to hammer us," the Airfield Princess pointed skyward. "They lost a few hundred five- and six-star fighters. The fact they can still hold off an eighty-thousand-sortie strike is already a miracle!"
Musashi wouldn't commit. "Specifics. I need their AA profile."
"How would I have 'specifics'? Everything I have is relayed up from the carrier flagships on the two flanks!"
Seeing Musashi still wavering, the Fortress Princess snapped, exasperated. "Musashi, you saw it. After losing airframes, they're not switching to fighters for air superiority—they're still materializing bombers to grind us down and stall our three million. The more they stall, the less we can play their game. Don't give them what they want!"
[End of Chapter]