Ethereal Ascendance: A Journey of Transformation

"Huh? What do you mean we've always been enemies? Have we even met before?"

Adrian couldn't help but freeze when he heard this. But he didn't have time to think much about it, assuming Nicola was still angry about being hurt by Divine Punishment, so he explained further.

"This attack came unexpectedly. The servants who were taking care of you forgot about you while helping others evacuate. None of them are strong enough to handle this situation, so I had to risk coming to save you! Besides, if anything happened to you, how could I explain it to the Angel race?"

At this time, Edenmere was probably having serious internal troubles, so the messengers Adrian sent out couldn't find any other angels. Of course, neither he nor Nicola knew about it.

"......"

Hearing his serious explanation, Nicola finally realized she had mixed up the Adrians from two different worlds again! Her intense emotions slowly began to calm down.

To be honest, this world's Adrian hadn't done anything to her before they met! Moreover, his explanation made sense - an Eight-Winged Angel would definitely have high status in Edenmere. There wasn't much reason to doubt him.

Just then, another cannon shot hit the area where they were. The violent shaking made both of them have to lean against the wall to stay standing.

"Let's get out of this place first!"

Under the pressure, Nicola had no choice but to accept reality. After all, the person in front of her wasn't the one she used to know. Even though Adrian had hurt her before, now she had to follow him to escape first.

Finally reaching agreement, they continued moving quickly towards the tower exit.

"What's really happening? Don't tell me this city is about to be destroyed! What if we fall from the sky?"

While running, Nicola tried to calm down and asked about the situation.

In our world's history, the floating city had fallen before. She had heard about such stories from Cyra and me.

But now Nicola had no wings and couldn't fly. If this world's Lantine Oasis was going to fall too, she really worried whether she could survive this disaster.

"It's not that bad! Actually, even with such heavy attacks, it's not easy to completely destroy the city! In theory, as long as the core power system underground stays okay, it can keep the city running and slowly repair itself..."

But Adrian's answer surprised her. As for why they were in such trouble? Simply put, the city hadn't been maintained well for years, and the enemy's attacks were too strong, more than the barrier could handle. So the auto-defense system had to use almost all city power for the barrier - but looks like even that wasn't enough!

So Adrian had to order everyone to move to the underground spaces, which had enough shelter and escape equipment. The tower actually had elevators, but they couldn't use them because of low power, so they had to use emergency stairs.

"You have such an amazing city but can only take hits? Don't you have any way to fight back? At least mess up their attack rhythm! Like that Divine Punishment thing you used to attack me, why not use it now?"

Nicola asked in disbelief. After all, her wounds still hurt, so it was hard to forget about that.

"Divine Punishment is all used up, it has limited uses! And when enemy ships spread out, it can only destroy very few enemies each time. It's useless against such a large-scale attack!"

At this point, Adrian could only smile bitterly and tell the truth. Not only was the power output less than half of the original design, but most other defense weapons also couldn't be used properly.

Lantine Oasis had faced battles before since rising to the sky. They hadn't even finished training their first batch of ancient weapon experts when merciless cannon fire came again, and stronger this time, almost breaking through the barrier.

According to Adrian, though the barrier couldn't hold anymore, the underground space still had working auto-defense systems. As long as he kept highest control of the city, better to defend first and wait for chance to counter-attack. This was his next strategy as king.

But things didn't go as planned. When they finally reached the tower's bottom floor, they found the stairs to the underground shelter blocked by rocks!

Probably a cannon shot had hit the tower base, and some collapsed outer wall unfortunately blocked their way down.

"Don't worry, there are other ways, but we need to leave the central tower and take some risks outside!"

Even with Nicola and Adrian's strength, digging through would take too long. With no choice, Adrian had to look for other entrances.

They had just crossed the nearby plaza into a street when they saw several enemy ships break through the barrier and land on the ground nearby.

"That's Lumina Sanctum's army!"

Seeing the flame-shaped badges on the soldiers coming out of the ships, Adrian instantly recognized the enemy.

"Ancient God Religion?"

Nicola frowned when she heard this. These flames were supposedly from Lumina Sanctum's flag. Though she had dealt with Ancient God Religion before, it was mostly in Ilandra Dominion Empire's territory, so she rarely met them.

"Though Ancient God Religion has been starting 'holy wars' against others for decades, they usually target other religious groups. We New Parristol never had problems with them. So their real target must be this city?"

Adrian understood the saying about how having treasures brings trouble. He probably was prepared for this since becoming New Parristol's king.

But he never imagined Lantine Oasis, which stood strong for thousand years, would be broken by a single religious regime! Before this he even thought multiple countries had joined to attack.

But for Nicola, if the enemy was Ancient God Religion, everything made more sense - no wonder these ships had firepower beyond normal level, and dared to send so many troops to attack Lantine Oasis even after other countries had failed. They must have known they could break the city's barrier!

"Normal soldiers are okay to deal with, but meeting bishops would be big trouble!"

Still fresh from her last near-defeat, Nicola couldn't help muttering.

From previous fights, she deeply knew Ancient God Religion's high-level members mostly had "special abilities", able to use very special attacks when pushed to limits, really troublesome!

And that was when she was at peak condition. Now without wings, she could only run.

As Galadra explained, Ancient God Religion's god could give followers any abilities beyond normal human understanding. Those super-grade ships attacking Lantine Oasis weren't even worth mentioning!

But more surprising was that a group of people suddenly appeared from another direction, looking like New Parristol civilians, slowly moving towards the central tower...

Great! These two groups would definitely meet.

"These people, I told them to stay safe in the underground shelter until I return!"

Adrian recognized these people right away. Turns out his trusted subordinates were worried about the king going alone to save Nicola, so they gathered people to come help.

Problem was, these people clearly weren't very strong, making it very dangerous in this heavy bombardment. Of course Adrian couldn't abandon them, so he had to pull Nicola along to intercept them.