Chapter 977 — Detonation Point
Blade of Dawn · Page 2 of 5
Yet at that very moment, a strange, grating hum suddenly came from somewhere unknown, drawing the Typhon nobleman's attention.
He did not even need to look up; by experience and by the nerve reflexes in his very bones he completed his judgment—that was the Cecilians' arcane weaponry launching an attack, and the order had not yet finished charging; without a combined shield his warriors could not withstand the Cecilians' weapons—upon this instantaneous judgment he immediately ordered everyone to scatter and lie flat, ready to evade the ceaseless barrage to come.
But the knights had only just begun to move when a blinding white beam, laden with terrifying magical power, swept across the sky, scything in from an immense distance; wherever the beam passed, all things were reduced to ash, rock and steel bursting or melting in an instant, and frail human flesh was vaporized on the spot. The entire order was swallowed in that lethal white light like a sandcastle overwhelmed by a tidal wave, and even the "monsters" who had lost the capacity for normal thought wailed shrilly within that dreadful radiance.
In the swiftly dissipating chaos of Count Mogelrock's consciousness, he recalled nothing, thought nothing, and had not even time to marvel.
The speed of the rainbow ray was plainly beyond comparison with ordinary shells—even a well-trained knight could not evade those death-gaze torrents of energy.
Several kilometers away, an armored train clad in heavy steel cruised at low speed; above the arsenal car at the rear, the rainbow cannon—with its streamlined casing and large focusing crystal—was cooling little by little, and the covering structures at the rear of the car lifted to either side under the action of machinery, revealing the heat-conduction grilles within, now a dark red; with a hiss of pressure, great clouds of steam burst forth in all directions.
The technology of the rainbow cannon was constantly being improved; even the formerly most intractable problem of heat dissipation had been cracked after the technicians found a cooling conduit from the Gondor era and deciphered its secrets. Though problems remained—the bulky size of the heat-dissipation array, the extra cooling time required after sustained fire—at least these devastating energy batteries could now at last be mounted on land vehicles such as armored trains.
In the tactical section at the center of the train, Ma Qi stood before the command platform, watching through the images relayed by the external monitors the position of the hillside after the rainbow ray had swept across it.
It was now like a hellscape—but that did not mean every enemy had been annihilated. The Iron River Knights were a powerful army, and those cunning Typhonites would hardly send such an elite force to hurl itself alone against an entire defense line; that would be practically handing their ace over to die, and moreover, without adequate support, a knight order fighting alone would have its combat power cut in half.
So there had to be something larger behind this attack. Though it was unknown what conspiracy the Typhonites were brewing, for safety's sake it was best to sweep that direction a few more times.
And while at it, fire a base load of secondary batteries at any possible hiding or ambush positions around the target point.
General Ma Qi was a cautious man.
The main and secondary guns of the Iron Throne—Jörmungandr began free fire; the deafening roar partly pierced the barriers of the car, bringing a low echo into the command center, and amid those familiar roars Ma Qi's brow furrowed tightly.
He could not figure out why the Typhonites would start a war.