Chapter 1410: Bomb (II)
The transmitter crackled in Good’s ear. It was Manfeld’s voice — measured, already committed.
“Senior Good. I want to break out of the clouds. I need your support.”
Before Good could frame a response, Finkin’s voice cut across the channel: “Out of the clouds? Are you serious? We’re in their headquarters!” A beat of incredulity. “You heard it the same as us — the barrier absorbed everything. What exactly do you think you’re going to accomplish? Newcomer, this is a battlefield, not a place to make impressions.”
The Fury of Heaven planes all carried transmitter-receivers. That was the reason they’d been trusted to fly above the clouds without Tilly’s direct command guiding each movement — they could coordinate at range, respond in the moment, make decisions that no signal flag or delayed relay could handle. But carrying the equipment didn’t mean using it wisely.
Good held off. He’d watched Manfeld during training with a kind of studied skepticism that he hadn’t quite admitted was attention — and what he’d seen was someone he hadn’t been able to fit into any category he already owned. The man came from a knight lineage, which usually explained either particular grace or particular arrogance, and Manfeld had delivered neither. He’d come to Graycastle from the Kingdom of Wolfheart after whatever had finished his family’s decline, and the veterans from ordinary backgrounds had made the usual assumptions and said the usual things to establish where he stood. Good had done none of it, partly from discipline, mostly because he hadn’t yet decided what he was looking at.
Good had seen plenty of Wolfheart knights during the Church’s annexation of that kingdom. He remembered what they looked like when the pressure became real. Manfeld was asking for a second pass over a city full of demons when the first attempt had failed and their observer was down.
That was not the shape of a knight seeking to impress an audience.
“Senior — do you remember the technique of using the plane’s body to control the bullet trajectory?” Manfeld said. “I believe the same principle applies to the bombs.”
The moment he stopped speaking, Good noticed something: the buzz around him had subtly changed. The formation had thinned. The sounds in his immediate airspace had opened up.
“That brat has already come out of the clouds!” Finkin shouted. “What do we do?”
Using the airframe to guide the drop trajectory. Good turned the thought over. The similarity to the gun technique was immediate and clean — if you could aim the gun by tilting the plane, you could aim the bomb the same way. The question was whether you could do it at speed, at angle, close enough to the target to matter, without Sylvie’s positioning.
He coughed twice, adjusted his grip, and opened the all-channel. “We can’t leave Team Two unsupported. Her Highness Tilly is watching.”
”— Hahaha, of course!” Finkin’s voice underwent a rapid conversion, arriving at righteous conviction in under two seconds. “Protecting my comrades is exactly my strength, gentlemen, proceed without concern — leave the Devilbeasts to us, Team One — yeehaw!”
Easy to read. Every time. Good pushed his control stick forward.
Two teams broke the cloud cover from different angles simultaneously, cutting two paths across the sky as they descended — one curving into the Devilbeasts, the other driving straight for the obelisk. At this altitude, without Sylvie’s eyes, they could still see the target with their own. The difference in speed between the Fury of Heaven and the Devilbeasts was apparent the moment both were in open air. The beasts stabilized altitude only to have the biplanes brush past them — the weight of the hundred-and-fifty-kilogram bombs didn’t slow them enough to matter, not at this speed differential, not in a straight run.
A cluster of demons moved to intercept the five Fury of Heaven planes going for the obelisk. They never closed the gap.
Manfeld adjusted his heading, found the angle, and dropped.
His four comrades, watching him, read the geometry and followed in sequence.
All five bombs held the plane’s speed and direction as they left the belly of the aircraft. They passed above the defense towers and the outer buildings, carrying their arc toward the Red Mist Lake. Unlike the first drop — scattered by wind across a wide pattern — these five fell tight, concentrated, nearly overlapping in flight. The first hit the obelisk and shattered against stone. The remaining four struck directly above the Red Mist Lake in rapid succession.
The explosions rolled through the city in a wave. Under the climbing fire, blue light flickered and shuddered across the surface of the barrier — not the clean pulse of the first drop, but something strained, uneven, the light dimming between each surge. The lake itself never felt a tremor; the barrier held from start to finish. But it had held differently this time, and every pilot who’d seen both drops knew it.
“Well done, Newcomer.” Finkin whistled across the channel.
Good snapped into a hard turn and broke from the Devilbeast pursuit. He switched to all-frequencies. “Your Highness Tilly — Teams One and Two have completed the drop. Requesting permission to withdraw.”
“Understood. Permission granted.”
Phoenix fired a red flare. The fleet read it and disengaged: planes peeling away from their demon opponents, climbing hard into the dazzling corridor of sunlight that had been at their backs all morning. They rose into the blue and disappeared, swallowed back into the sky.
Nassaupelle — Mask — exhaled slowly.
The humans continued to exceed what he expected.
The formation separation. The feint by the main force. The immediate withdrawal after delivering the strike, no hesitation, no attempt to press advantage — the entire operation had taken two to three minutes from the moment the defensive Devilbeasts rose to intercept until the last plane banked away. That degree of discipline, applied to war machines that already maximized speed and range beyond anything the demons had built, was something the race had not prepared for.
No wonder Ursrook feared them. I may have judged him too quickly.
But even Ursrook, the genius of the race, had only recognized the threat. He had not perceived the underlying principle. If the clumsy and earthbound humans can achieve flight using iron machines, what could our race accomplish with the same technology? The Sky-sea Realm would no longer be our ceiling. We would be the final victors. Ursrook had used fear to make his argument, when it was ambition that would have moved the right audience. If he had framed it that way — who knows? Mask might have stood beside him.
A pity.
“What was that trembling?” Silent Disaster came through the door to the obelisk’s summit in full armor, pushing it open with the particular energy of someone who had missed something and resented it. “Has the Deity of Gods come under attack?”
“It has, but you arrived late and missed the interesting part.” Nassaupelle glanced at the armor. “Are you planning to fight dressed like that? Don’t strain yourself.”
“That is not your concern.” Silent Disaster’s voice was clean and cold. “Where is the enemy?”
Nassaupelle pointed skyward. “They have presumably identified the gap between their iron birds and the Bogle Beasts.” He spread the thought out slowly. “What an irony. In the Second Battle of Divine Will, the Bogle Beasts were our greatest asset. The margin we fought on.”
Silent Disaster stared at the empty sky and said nothing.
“Relax.” Nassaupelle began replacing his masks, settling them one by one across his stacked head. “I’ve made my observations. I have a countermeasure already in development. The iron birds’ movements and trajectories are not unpredictable — they are actually quite obvious, compared to the Bogle Beasts.” He paused. “While we’re discussing the subject: since you’re so eager for combat, do something useful for me.”
”…”
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not mocking you.” Mask spread his numerous arms. “Several of the iron birds came down to the southeast of the city. If any of the pilots are still alive, bring them here. It shouldn’t be difficult for you.”
“Alive.” Not a question.
“Of course alive.” Nassaupelle smiled beneath his masks. “Only a fresh brain is worth the work of transplanting. And pilots who just survived an intense aerial battle will carry the clearest, most recent memories of their tactics. A perfect sample for validating my countermeasure.” He tilted his stacked head slightly. “This will be my first time working with the brain of an ordinary human. I wonder which of them will receive that particular distinction.”
Silent Disaster turned and walked away toward the Birth Tower, his disgust apparent in the angle of his departure and in nothing else.
Nassaupelle watched him go without comment. Silent Disaster’s distaste for his methods was consistent and thorough; it would also never prevent the other Demon Lord from completing the task. When the race required something, Silent Disaster delivered it. That was the shape of the man.
Mask turned his face toward the west — toward the territory the humans still held — and slowly extended one hand in that direction. From this vantage point, that hand could encompass the entire continent. A few more days and the Deity of Gods reaches the Hermes Plateau. The Symbiotic Demons in the experimental station have accumulated sufficient power. The King shall see that I alone am sufficient to sustain an entire army. Blood Conqueror and Silent Disaster are here only to provide contrast.
Far off, something flickered.
Nassaupelle stilled.
It came from the direction of the Swirling Sea — a single point of light that appeared and was gone in an instant. Small. But the intensity was wrong for its size, too bright for its distance, like sunlight catching the face of a mirror at exactly the correct angle.
An illusion?
By the time he turned his full attention toward the Swirling Sea, the light had vanished completely. Only the horizon remained, unchanged, indifferent.