Chapter 1022 — The Rising Wind

Inside the War Citizen, a senior officer hurried through the busy stations to stand before Ma Qi, his voice urgent: "General! Do we attack? The commanders of several tank regiments have sent inquiries more than once..."

Ma Qi, in full military dress, had just ended a call. Hearing his subordinate's words, this steady, knight-born middle-aged general said only a few brief words: "Orders from above — attack!"

"Yes, General!" The senior officer snapped a salute, his voice loud and ringing — but he had barely turned and not yet taken a step when he suddenly stopped, looking back at Ma Qi with a flicker of puzzlement. "By the way — attack which side?"

Ma Qi glared at him at once: "Do I need to answer that?! The biggest one, of course — the one easiest to aim at!"

A brilliant grin spread across the senior officer's face, and his voice rang out all the louder: "Yes, General!!"

In the next second, surging magic was poured into the engines and drive spines; gears and connecting rods turned under the power of the arcane mechanisms; the war machines began to advance, and the vast army of steel poured toward the Winterhold defense line like a flood — and after a brief delay, the great prismatic generator at the tail of the War Citizen began to hum, harsh white light welling up across the surface of its focusing crystal, and with a shriek that tore the air, a torrent of magic formed of pure arcane energy crossed the vast distance in an instant and hammered into the distant iron-grey giant still advancing.

Then came the twin rail-accelerated main guns fore and aft of the War Citizen, the main gun of the Zero, the main and secondary guns of the Iron Scepter...

"Boom, boom, boom—"

The roar of arcane weapons rang out one after another, and within the surging tide of steel, unbroken flashes of light blazed up; powerful beams and shells rained across the vast distance, bombarding the out-of-control god that had already drawn close to the Winterhold fortress complex.

Such a huge, conspicuous "iron giant"... was indeed rather easy to aim at.

……

"The Frost Battlemage Corps has been wiped out! Node Eleven has failed! The magical flow is undergoing severe imbalance — there is a risk of regional collapse in our magical network!"

"Camps Twelve through Sixteen in the magic supply zone are out of contact. The garrisons at Camps Nineteen and Twenty-Two have suffered heavy casualties and can no longer hold their nodes — they have withdrawn from the battle!"

"The Eighth Regiment of the National Knights is out of contact..."

"The Fourth Griffin Knight Regiment has completed its aerial attack mission — forty percent have returned..."

Reports from every mage outpost poured ceaselessly into this, the largest of the mage towers. Palin Winterhold, master of the tower, gripped his staff tightly, his face as cold as the mountains in winter.

The elite forces the Empire had accumulated over so many years were being consumed at a terrifying rate. He could no longer even feel the pain of it — only a sense of utter absurdity. Yet the most absurd thing of all was this: the terrible giant was still alive, and had already begun attacking the Winterhold fortress complex. Mortal attacks could inflict only rather limited damage upon it, yet each of its counterattacks meant the annihilation of some unit, whole and entire.

The pressure this exerted was terrifying. Even the Typhonian soldiers, whose wills were as firm as bedrock, could only feel fear and wavering when confronted with such a battlefield for any length of time.

That the entire defense line had not yet collapsed could only be credited to three things: on one hand, the officers and men had summoned their utmost courage under circumstances that allowed no retreat; on the other, the old Duke Pei Yi Wendell, commanding the whole front from the first line, was forcibly sustaining the most basic morale and order through the power of the National Guard Knights; and finally... because the line was simply so vast, and the units struck from the roster by the god's wrath perished so swiftly, that the small detachments scattered in every corner of the line could not directly perceive what deaths and wounds this long front was enduring at every second.

Only those who could grasp the whole battlefield knew what mortals were facing on this field.

"So this is the Calamity of the Gods..." the Count of Winterhold could not help murmuring to himself. "For the past thousand years and more, what exactly have we been worshipping..."

He glanced instinctively at the magical projection nearby, just in time to see that ruthless, cold giant let out a roar that tore at the sky. Deep within the hollow helmet, in those two balls of firelight devoid of any humanity, there seemed to hold all the most extreme madness in the mortal world.

It had nothing sacred left about it; it had become a pure natural disaster, a monster, slaughtering every living thing on this land by instinct — or rather... manufacturing a war in which everyone must die.

Just then, a sudden flare at the edge of the magical projection caught the Count of Winterhold's attention. The next moment he saw enormous bursts of firelight explode across the body of that iron-gray giant — and mere seconds later, beams and shells like a torrential downpour came crashing down, blanketing the whole region where the giant stood.

The Count of Winterhold was stunned for two seconds before he realized that this was a sight produced by the Cecilians.

The Cecilians had already crossed the standoff and exchange-of-fire zone and entered the territory controlled by the Typhonian Empire — yet every sentry post set along the edge of the original defense line had long since been destroyed by the Mad God, and no one had given any warning or report of the Cecilians' arrival.

Of course, in the present situation, no one cared about that anymore.

"Your Majesty! The Cecilians have launched an attack!" Palin Winterhold hurried to the transmission crystal, activating the spell as he spoke in a rapid, urgent tone, then immediately added a clarification. "Ah, they are not attacking us..."

"...Maintain the attack frequency of the Annihilation Force as far as possible," the voice from the other side of the crystal came as calmly as ever. "As of now, this battle has only just begun."

"Yes, Your Majesty!"

In any case, the Cecilians' arrival greatly heartened the officers and soldiers along the defense line. When they saw those shells and torrents of arcane power falling from the sky onto the iron-colored giant, even the most resolute knights could not help but heave a great sigh of relief — no Typhonian had ever imagined such a situation, never imagined that they would actually be heartened by the Cecilians' appearance, still less imagined that those shells and arcane torrents raining down from the heavens could become things that set their minds at ease.

The defense line, which had just begun to waver, steadied once more. The mortals did not fall back, and the earth-shaking roar of the guns sounded again.

(The Special Edition of Record of Abnormal Creatures has launched! Made by a new team! Everyone go give it a boost — whether there will be more depends on how this one performs!)