"Enemy attack!!"
"Anti-air, quick!"
"Traverse all gun elevations!"
The Duke of Kaest's roar echoed inside the bridge.
"Set up a barrage net!"
"Hurry! Hurry!"
Orders were conveyed to every corner of the fleet at the fastest possible speed.
In the massive landship cluster, giant cannons originally designed for surface strikes laboriously raised their muzzles, pointing toward the sky.
At the same time, smaller caliber rapid-fire secondary guns and multi-barrel ballistae installed in various corners of the warships began to rotate frantically, searching for the targets diving down from above.
"Quick!"
"Fire!"
In an instant, a barrage net composed of countless shells and bolts opened abruptly over the fleet.
Shells exploded in the air, forming clouds of black smoke and balls of orange-red fire, with countless shrapnel fragments splashing outward at high speed.
Leithanien's Stuka B-type bomber group plunged headfirst into this storm.
A young Victorian gunner stared fixedly at his sight, his hands trembling slightly from tension and excitement.
He locked onto a diving bomber and roared as he stomped on the firing pedal.
A string of shells accurately hit the wing of that Stuka.
Accompanied by a loud bang, the aircraft's wing snapped in the middle. The fuselage lost control, spinning and dragging long plumes of black smoke as it crashed headlong into the ground, exploding into a huge ball of fire.
"We got it!"
"We shot it down!"
The gunner waved his fist excitedly.
On the deck, soldiers who witnessed this scene erupted in cheers.
The gloom of despair had been torn open, and the sunlight of hope seemed to shine through.
They were not just sitting ducks; they could fight back!
Immediately following, a second, a third...
Under the Victorian fleet's frantic, cost-is-no-object saturation attacks, several more Stukas were blown up in mid-air.
For a moment, the morale of the Victorian soldiers soared to its peak.
The Duke of Kaest stood on the bridge, her hands gripping the edge of the command console tightly.
She watched the sparks blooming in the sky, her face devoid of any joy.
She knew better than anyone the tragic cost behind these meager results.
To shoot down these few planes, her fleet had exposed almost all its anti-air firepower, and the ammunition consumption was astronomical.
And in the sky, more Stukas continued to dive down endlessly.
Boom!
The bridge of an assault ship was hit directly by a heavy bomb. The entire command tower, along with the officers inside, was instantly blown to pieces.
The warship instantly lost control.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Countless bombs fell.
The broad deck of the dreadnought Guardian was hit consecutively, igniting a raging fire.
A gunship's ammunition magazine was detonated; the entire warship was blown in two, slowly collapsing amidst a violent sympathetic detonation.
The soldiers' cheers had long since vanished, replaced by heart-rending screams and wails of despair.
Thick smoke, flames, and the scent of death shrouded the entire battlefield.
"My Lord Duke! We have suffered heavy losses!"
"The Guardian has lost power!"
"Seven gunships have been destroyed! If this goes on..."
Butler's voice was somewhat difficult to distinguish amidst the noisy alarms.
"I know."
The Duke of Kaest's teeth ground together with a creaking sound.
Her land fleet, in which she took such pride, was like a giant in clumsy armor being toyed with by an agile hunter armed with a musket in this cross-era air-ground multi-dimensional war.
But she was not resigned.
As a Grand Duke of Victoria, her status and glory did not allow her to be a deserter!
"All main guns of the Glory, rapid fire! Shoot them down for me!"
"Even if I die, I will tear a chunk of flesh from them!" she issued a frenzied order.
Just then, a soldier at the lookout post let out another terrified scream.
"That... what is that—!"
Everyone looked in the direction he pointed, only to see several strange objects trailing tail flames rising from the eastern horizon.
Their speed was so fast the naked eye could barely track them, and their trajectories were incredibly bizarre, occasionally pulling up.
Leithanien's "Red Flag" anti-ship missiles revealed their fangs on the Terra continent for the first time.
The Kaest fleet's firepower and attention were currently focused on anti-air defense; relying solely on the Originium Arts of the casters inside the warships or the bolts and ballistae, they simply could not hit objects moving at such speeds.
The gunners were already adjusting the traverse of the naval guns, but it was too late.
The "Red Flag" anti-ship missiles easily broke through the final defense line, aiming straight for the fleet's flagship, that most massive and conspicuous high-speed warship—the Glory.
"Evade! Full speed evasion!" an officer let out a desperate roar.
But it was all too late.
For a landship two hundred and fifty meters long, any evasive maneuver appeared incredibly clumsy and slow.
The first "Red Flag" missile accurately hit the bow of the Glory.
Kaboom—!
A loud noise.
The entire warship jumped violently upward, then smashed heavily back onto the ground.
Inside the bridge, countless instrument panels burst instantly, sparks flying and metal fragments scattering.
Everyone was thrown to the floor by this immense force, rolling into a heap.
Piercing alarms resounded through every corner of the warship.
"Bow armor completely penetrated!"
"Fire in deck compartments one through five!" The damage control report carried a sobbing tone.
The Duke of Kaest climbed up from the floor. Her forehead was smashed, and fresh blood flowed down her pale cheeks.
She held onto the twisted railing and looked out the window, her eyes filled with disbelief.
That was the Glory's thickest bow armor!
Armor thick enough to withstand continuous bombardment from a dreadnought's main guns had been pierced in a single blow by that thing which didn't even look that large.
What kind of power was this?
What kind of Originium Art was this?
She had no time to think, because the second missile had already arrived.
This time, its target was the brain and heart of the entire warship—the bridge command tower.
Time seemed to slow down at this moment.
Everyone inside the bridge subconsciously raised their heads.
They could clearly see the warhead of that missile, after breaking through the final layer of armor, carrying the howl of death as it constantly enlarged before their eyes.
The Duke of Kaest's pupils constricted to their limit.
She opened her mouth, seemingly wanting to say something, but in the end, no sound could come out.
She just watched quietly as that fire of destruction pounced toward her.
Perhaps, this is the "glory" of the new era.
She thought so.
In the next instant, white light devoured everything.
Seen from afar, the Glory's towering bridge instantly turned into fine powder amidst a silent flash.
Immediately following, as if a chain reaction had been triggered, a series of muffled explosions came from inside the warship.
A few seconds later, an earth-shattering loud noise erupted from the midsection of the Glory's hull.
The main ammunition magazine had cooked off.
A gigantic fireball, even more dazzling than the sun, spewed out from the warship's interior, blowing the steel hull hundreds of meters long in half at the waist.
The massive warship twisted and folded within the flames, with countless parts and burning wreckage thrown tens of meters into the high air.
Finally, this steel beast symbolizing the old era's glory of Victoria collapsed with a crash amidst a wail of unwillingness.
Glory, destruction confirmed.
Duke of Kaest, KIA.
The destruction of the flagship and the death of the commander thoroughly shattered the last shred of morale remaining in the Victorian fleet.
"The Lord Duke... is dead..."
"The Glory... is gone..."
"Run!"
The remaining warships lost unified command and fell into utter chaos.
Like a swarm of headless flies, some tried to turn around and flee, some were still firing futilely at the sky, and some even collided with each other out of panic.
And at this moment, the Leithanien armored division that had previously retreated surged up again.
The torrent of steel composed of "Tiger II" tanks crushed over the wreckage of destroyed warships, crushed over the corpses of Victorian soldiers, and drove straight in.
Their muzzles constantly spat tongues of fire, picking off the Victorian warships that had lost command and were fleeing in panic—one by one.
The Victoria land fleet, which once rampaged across the Terra continent and made countless nations tremble at the news of its approach, under Leithanien's dimensionality reduction strike of air-ground integration...
Was completely annihilated in just one morning.
On the battlefield, only soaring smoke, burning wreckage, and the desperate wails of survivors remained.
A Leithanien soldier climbed up a nearby small hill and forcefully planted a red Leithanien military flag into the soil beneath his feet.
The flag flapped loudly in the wild wind filled with the smoke of gunpowder.
Beneath it was the graveyard of Victoria.
In front of it lay the vast, flat plains leading to Londinium.
________________________________________
Get rewarded for helping with our community goals!
🎯 Reward for all: +1 bonus chapter at 50 Powerstones.
🚀 Tier Reward: Help us reach 20 members for +5 chapters on all stories!
👻 Join the crew by searching Ms. Medusa on (P). You know the spot! 😉