Ashen Dragon

But soon, the massive meteor crashed down, like cracking an eggshell, easily shattering the anti-magic shield.

"Boom!"

An earth-shattering explosion resounded, flames shot into the sky, and billowing smoke swept across the land, devouring everything on the ground — whether it was Imperial Soldiers, cannons, or steam tanks.

The scorching heatwave overturned everything, countless charred limbs and Shards flew in all directions, forming a terrifying storm.

At this moment, ripples appeared in the distant space, followed by space rifts opening in the sky. A dozen airships and hundreds of Bipedal Wyverns poured out, like a surging cloud mass, instantly occupying most of the sky.

"Roar —"

Alger rode the Dragon Vein Giant Eagle, soaring in the sky. He gazed at the towering flames and smoke, his pupils contracting sharply: "No good, we are still too late..."

He raised his Longsword, pointing towards the Holy Guard high in the distant sky, shouting: "We must not let them escape! Avenge the fallen warriors!"

In an instant, the Bipedal Wyverns raised their heads and roared, flapping their wings, spewing scorching Dragonflame like a raging tide, surging towards the Holy Guard.

The heavy artillery beneath the airships also aimed at the distant Holy Guard, firing thick beams of intense power, erupting into an Elemental Fury mixed with Lightning, frost, and flame.

After releasing that terrifying meteor scourge, the Holy Guard's energy was nearly exhausted, unable to sustain the upcoming battle.

The leader of the Holy Guard turned his head, flapping the six Feathers on his back, looking expressionlessly towards the Empire's reinforcements, with an indifferent voice: "Our purpose has been achieved, there's no need to tangle with them, let's go."

"Yes, my lord."

Upon hearing the command, all members of the Holy Guard raised the Longswords in their hands high.

"Buzz—"

Rays of light shot up into the sky, dispersing the clouds, like giant pillars supporting heaven and earth.

The ethereal Holy song resounded again; the reverse pentagram under the Holy Guard's feet rotated rapidly, and the surrounding space gradually twisted and shattered, enveloped by a layer of subtle light.

"Damn, they are going to teleport! We must not let these Thrace People escape!" Alger shouted anxiously, diving faster, becoming a scarlet afterimage.

"Try to seal the space as much as possible, I'll go interfere with them!"

Aboard the airships, the Empire's Court Mage also raised their Magic Wands, chanting Spell, constructing a complex and intricate Spell Prototype, attempting to lock the surrounding space.

[Dimensional Lock]

Thick Magic Chains stretched out from the void, their subtle light flickering, gradually closing in, surrounding the space.

Meanwhile, Alger was getting closer and closer to those of the Holy Guard.

"Roar—"

He rushed fiercely, the Dragon Vein Giant Eagle beneath him let out a heart-wrenching roar, exuding overwhelming Dragon's Might, with a massive, majestic Red Dragon phantom appearing behind.

As the Empire's Duke of Dragon Blood, one of the earliest Retainers of the Ashen Empire's Emperor, Alger's strength was terrifyingly immense. With just one person, he could create the momentum of a hundred Red Scale Conquerors charging with Dragon's Roar.

In mere moments, with an afterimage sweeping across the sky, the distance between Alger and the Holy Guard leader was reduced to only five hundred meters, a span that could be crossed in an instant at the Giant Eagle's Speed.

"Die —"

Alger roared, scarlet scales appeared on his face, veins bulged on his forehead, and a fire of anger erupted in those dragon-like golden vertical pupils.

The leader of the Holy Guard also turned his head and locked gazes with him from a distance. His eyes were also golden, exuding an indifferent expression, with two inverted pentagrams slowly rotating within.

Those pupils were extraordinarily mysterious and deep, as if they could devour one's soul, which caused Alger to lose focus for a brief moment.

The Holy Guard slowly waved the six wings behind him, raised the Flame Longsword, pointed at the Wyvern Knight, and said coldly, "Evil Dragon Minions, you will ultimately be destroyed by my master..."

One hundred meters.

Fifty meters.

Twenty meters.

Just as Alger's longsword was about to slash toward the head of the Holy Guard leader—hundreds of Holy Guards under the shroud of light first became vaporous, like phantoms, and then vanished into thin air, completely disappearing without a trace.

"Whoosh—"

Alger's longsword struck the air, the blade tearing through it, and his full-force strike even caused fine cracks to appear in the surrounding space.

He halted the Giant Eagle, hovering in mid-air, overlooking the scorched corpses and tank wreckage on the ground, his expression extremely grim: "Damn Thrace People! They still got away. But this power doesn't seem like that of the Sun God.

This was a whole Mixed Battalion, the military side... is bound to be stirred."

Alger's gaze shifted upward, looking toward the direction of the Western Front Command, his expression growing more solemn.

...

At Isaac Valley, the temporary command post of the Empire's Western Front, the Imperial Senior Officers, having received the frontline news, were in an uproar, quarrelling incessantly.

Since the founding of the Empire, this was the first time a division-level unit had been annihilated, creating a historical precedent in a sense.

"What? The Third Mixed Battalion was completely wiped out?"

"By Cassius! That was fifteen thousand men, complete with a full armor regiment and air force contingent, how could they all be devoured by those Thrace People!"

"I always said, that Ta'er is nothing but a damn fool! He has absolutely no capability to command a division-level unit!"

"Oh great Red Dragon, a Mixed Battalion was annihilated en masse—this is likely the first time since the Empire's founding that we've suffered such a loss! This is the Empire's shame! How can we face His Majesty Cassius!"

When dusk dyed the iron chimneys of the armory red, William finally completed the last dispatch of the military train. Leaning against the rivet-laden signal tower, he lit a pipe, watching the incessant flow of convoys against the backdrop of the evening glow: mules and horses laden with aerial bombs and trucks loaded with boxes of gas masks moving side by side, courier riders on military bicycles weaving between steamrollers and mobile kitchens. Suddenly, a sharp air raid siren tore through the sky, a squadron of six biplane scouts swept over the city, dropping not bombs but leaflets—the lithographed proclamation from His Imperial Majesty that fluttered down onto the closing department store rooftops.

As the iron foundry of Cast Iron City breathed out its eighth column of smoke at the break of autumn dusk, the fingertips of the female worker Erin had been worn bloody by the brass bullet casings. She watched as the river of bullets flowed along the conveyor belt, every five seconds a 7.92 mm rifle bullet tinged with her blood slid into a pine box, marked with the black-painted words "Southern Territory Special Supply" on the lid.

In the roar of the steam hammer, the old foreman shouted at the top of his lungs: "The armor plates for the seventh train car must be quenched before frost descends!" A crane hoisted sheets of rolled steel, three meters square, overhead, the dark red residual heat turning falling snowflakes into droplets before they touched the ground. At the end of the tracks at the freight station, twenty flatbed cars were unloading the freshly commissioned Mark IV Tanks, whose steel beasts' tracks crushed granite boulders like biscuit crumbs as they rumbled over the granite platform.

"Diesel and nitroglycerin course through the veins of the Empire!" When the copper-throated megaphone of the one-eyed General Von Steine blasted in the central square, Erin's eardrums were still vibrating in response to the morning's airship fleet. The vast Zeppelin Fleet hung three hundred meters above, its aluminum skin glinting with a pale, fish-belly white hue under the rising sun, casting a shadow over the wings of the bronze eagle statue beneath.

The bustling throng in the square suddenly fell silent. The veteran general's mechanical prosthetic traced the skyline; the hydraulic joints emitted a hiss like that of a snake: "Do you see those flying whales? Each one carries two hundred tons of death! Yet the Southern Territory Barbarians still defend their palm trees with flintlocks!" The crowd's resounding cheers startled the cold crows perched on the belfry, and newspaper boys took the opportunity to scatter special editions into the air, on the front page of which a new type of flamethrower burned straw effigies made to resemble Southern Troops.

Erin squeezed into the crowd bidding farewell, watching the first military train as it puffed out white smoke, a symbol of good fortune. Steel orchids thrown by brides adorned the tank cannons, their horse sabers and the searchlights of armored vehicles intermingling in a flash. When the last experimental Land Cruiser "North Wind God" trundled over the rails, the entire platform groaned beneath its sixteen pairs of bogie wheels. A student wearing round glasses suddenly knelt to the ground, murmuring towards the melting rails, "What kind of monster have we created?"

As the sunset painted the steam into a bloody mist, the southbound steel torrent had become a series of ridges on the horizon. The navigation light balls dropped by the airships lit up one by one in the twilight, like pearls strung along the hem of the Empire's skirt. Erin turned back towards the armory that had once again come alive with activity, her shadow stretched long by the searchlights, eventually merging with the shadows of the never-cooling furnaces.