Chapter 1022 — The Rising Wind
Blade of Dawn · Page 3 of 4
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.