Chapter 1009 — "Miracle"

The commander of the dragoon squadron gripped the control stick and watched his surroundings with undivided attention. An experienced gryphon rider, he had flown missions in foul weather before, but a blizzard of this magnitude was a first. The communication from the surface had put him on his guard, and the air currents that had suddenly strengthened seemed to confirm his commander's worry: this storm was far from normal.

The Typhonians might be hidden deep in the clouds.

Visibility fell to an alarming degree; the naked eye could no longer make out anything in the distance. The mechanic activated the extra filters around the cockpit, and under the detection-distortion spell the surrounding clouds appeared to the squadron commander in a hazy form — not clear, but at least serviceable as a kind of early warning.

Toward the surface, the driving snow was likewise badly obstructing the view; the two armored trains looked dim and indistinct, and one could only just tell that they were gradually accelerating.

Just then the squadron commander suddenly saw a flash of firelight in the distant clouds.

In the detection-distortion filter view, it was plainly visible that great swaths of spell fluctuations had suddenly appeared in the previously empty air.

"Enemy in sight!" The squadron commander's shout of warning rang out on the internal channel. "Southeast —"

"Craft 12 under attack!" "Craft 6 under attack!" "Under attack! This is 7!" "Engaging the enemy! Request cover! I've got one on my tail!"

A blinding crimson beam swept in from afar. Fortunately he had raised his guard in advance; the craft's power spine was already running at full output and all protection systems were active. The beam struck the shield and sent ripples across it. Controlling the dragoon's attitude, the squadron commander began firing dense barrages forward from the onboard arcane missile launchers while issuing order after order: "Scatter to both wings!" "Second and third squads, strafe the clouds to the southeast!" "All craft, switch on identification lights and open the distance from the enemy!" "Call for ground fire support!"

The fierce battle erupted in an instant. Countless enemies seemed to rise like phantoms out of the blizzard — Typhon battle mages and gryphon riders poured out of the thick clouds and actually closed to grapple with the steel dragoon craft, flesh against iron. And compared with the Typhon air force the Cecil had known, these suddenly appearing enemies were plainly abnormal: more agile, faster, more utterly fearless of death. The blizzard's foul conditions left even the dragoons feeling cramped and hampered, yet those Typhonians, who ought to have been the more fragile, seemed to draw extra strength from the storm, turning fierce and powerful.

The battle mages and gryphon riders began attacking the flying machines with missiles, lightning, and high-energy rays, while the latter answered with denser and more sustained barrages. In an instant the dim sky was lit by unbroken firelight; explosions high above scattered the cloud masses and the snow again and again, and in every flash one could see countless shadows grappling in the storm. The sight set Clement's heart surging.

He had never witnessed such a scene, never known such a battlefield.

Flesh and steel fought to the death in the blizzard; missiles, lightning, and beams tore across the sky; two armies contended here for mastery of the heavens — and whatever the outcome of the day, this unprecedented aerial battle was destined for the history books.

High-intensity searchlights suddenly swept across the sky, and in the raking beams the grappling figures overhead were thrown into relief. The next second, from the direction of the surface came a continuous chain of detonations and shrieks — pale blue shell trails and crimson high-energy beams streaked across the sky, and bursting shrapnel and deafening thunder shook the whole battlefield.

The anti-aircraft guns of the Iron Scepter and the World Serpent had opened fire.

Count Claremont frowned—he and the battle mages he led had still not closed to a distance from which they could attack those armored trains.

"Fight to the death for our Empire!" Within the force field shaped by the wide-area transmission spell, he heard a fanatical gryphon knight commander let out a roar; the next second, he saw a gryphon driven by its master's forced mind-control plunge downward, that valiant knight threading through the anti-air barrage and the air-to-air barrage, but his good fortune soon ran out: a magic-crystal shell from the ground flew past him, and upon sensing the magical aura brushing past it, the shell detonated in midair, its terrifying shockwave and searing gas cloud effortlessly tearing apart the protective aura around the knight and ripping him and his gryphon into four or five pieces.

A second later, the shredded knight and gryphon coalesced once more, appearing at the spot where they had just died, and continued charging downward.

The God of War bestows miracles: warriors who fight bravely in the storm may be granted inexhaustible strength, and... three lives.

A flying machine swept past the fanatical knight, unleashing a dense hail of barrage; the knight, fearless, charged straight into the barrage without dodging or evading, and at the same time flung out with a wave of his hand a spear condensed from the power of lightning—the next second, his body was torn to pieces once again, but the flying machine had also been struck by the spear at some critical point and exploded in the air into a bright fireball.

Moments later, Claremont saw the knight appear again, his torn body reassembling in the air; he raced through the gale, and behind him a cloak of tentacle-like growths and flesh flapped wildly in the wind—a hideous monster of a man, charging once more into the anti-air barrage.

Miracles demand a price—those who approach godhood are no longer human.

A blinding beam of light split the sky, and the hideous, twisted knight was struck once more by anti-air fire from the armored train; his wildly flapping cloak of flesh and the sky-full of tentacles were instantly ignited and vaporized by the high-energy beam, and the whole man became a few charred fragments falling from the air.

This time, the knight did not appear again.

That was the third time—miracles are finite, and those who exhaust them return their souls to the god.

"Seems that in the face of the Cecilites' 'new toys,' the three lives the god gives out aren't quite enough."

Claremont laughed, raised both hands high, and calling upon the power of storm, lightning, frost, and flame, charged forward once more.