Ashen Dragon

...

"Damn it! Why, why on earth!" Kane roared angrily as he looked at the scene in the distance.

"Boom!"

In the next moment, a thunderous roar erupted from afar, hundreds of shells bursting out, trailing beautiful arcs in the sky, crashing down onto Thrace's positions like a torrential downpour.

"It's over, all over."

The artillery commander, however, collapsed on the ground, his face pale, he raised his head, trembling as he extended a finger, the reflection of fire glowing in his pupils.

"Oh God..."

The Empire's first wave of shells pierced through the clouds with a deathly scream, as the shells dropped vertically onto the ground, the tungsten alloy bullet head frictioning with the air, emitting a dazzling white light.

Fireballs nearly thirty meters in diameter blossomed like flowers of Hell, repeatedly erupting at Thrace's artillery positions, the shockwave lifting the ground along with those outdated heavy cannons, the cannon barrels torn into iron shard downpours in mid-air.

"Boom——"

Immediately following, the "Heavenly Punisher" rocket artillery salvo arrives, hive-like launch tubes unleashing incendiary cluster bombs.

Tens of thousands of steel ball fragments form a metallic storm at fifty meters altitude, while Thrace soldiers loading ammunition in trenches were penetrated like fragile paper.

Curling in the trench, Kane muttered, "Those weapons they're using...we've never seen them before."

He heavily struck the mud wall with his remaining arm, helplessly roaring, "Damn it, those shameless Imperial people deceived us!"

At that moment, a sharp whistling sound came from above his head, like the call of death, causing him to involuntarily lift his head to look towards the sky shrouded in thick smoke.

Silhouettes streaked across the sky, dropping bombs like raindrops in density—that was the bipedal wyvern bombing formation.

"Boom!"

Thermo-baric bombs exploded, the high-temperature shockwave quickly spreading, destroying everything on this land, vaporizing the mutilated bodies of the Imperial soldiers into charred outlines.

Finally, accompanied by the shaking ground, dozens of steam tanks rolled over the hill, charging towards Thrace's positions, infantry wielding submachine guns rapidly advancing from behind the tanks, offering fire cover.

However, upon reaching the positions, they were struck with the realization that the Thrace soldiers in the position were almost wiped out due to the artillery bombardment.

The trenches inside and outside were piled with charred bodies, still maintaining varied postures in life: some loading ammunition, some cowering in corners, some covering their ears...

"Seems they're almost all dead?"

"Isn't that normal? As the saying goes, our army is here to clean up the battlefield."

"Is this the Thrace People, the remnants of Fadlan? Can't see where they're strong, worth mobilizing us?"

"Let's just follow orders from above, no point thinking so much, isn't winning battles easily good?"

At that moment, a charred black hand suddenly reached out from the pile of corpses, the officer blown beyond recognition crawled up from the ground, hoarsely, "Damn...Imperial people!"

That was the commander of this army, Kane Awen.

As a supernatural-level Paladin, his vitality was extremely tenacious, with divine arts protecting him, he incredibly survived this terrifying bombardment.

He picked up the longsword on the ground, his damaged armor glowing, releasing the radiance of the Sun. "Evil Dragon Minions, great Amanata Majesty...will not let you off!"

Accompanied by a heart-wrenching roar, the Silver Sword swung, blade light breaking through the air, severing dozens of unsuspecting soldiers at the waist.

Immediately after, the survivors hidden among the corpse piles also roared out, wielding their respective weapons, pouncing on the weak Imperial soldiers.

"There's a survivor here!"

"Fire at will!"

"That's a transcendent, quick! Kill them!"

After a brief panic, the Imperial soldiers quickly organized, forming teams, shooting at the survivors from different directions.

Firelight erupted continuously at the muzzle, bullets pouring onto the Paladin like a storm, shattering his armor.

Kane stared angrily, surrounded by golden aurora, intercepting bullets, causing them to fall to the ground.

"For Thrace! Holy Fadlan!"

The Paladin shouted, leaping high, with one sword strike, vertically splitting the nearest Imperial soldier along with his gun into two halves.

Facing dense bullets, Kane rampaged among the crowd, killing over twenty in just a few minutes.

Since he was tangled with Imperial soldiers, to avoid harming their own troops, surrounding tanks and cannons couldn't fire, only crazily pouring bullets.

"Requesting fire support! There's a transcendent here!"

"Kill him with all might!"

Several small tracking missiles dragged gray smoke, flying from afar, hitting the Paladin's back, exploding suddenly.

"Boom!"

With a loud boom, Kane was directly blown away, his whole body cut by shrapnel, with a charred blood hole appearing on his back.

Several metal balls exploded in mid-air, transforming into nets flickering with currents, restraining the Paladin.

"Damn Imperial people!" In the flickering electric light, Kane struggled furiously, wielding the longsword, his whole body bursting with angry flames.

At this moment, cannon tubes extended from the bottom of the airship, with cold piercing rays descending from the sky, striking Kane's chest directly.

Frozen in place, his skin surface covered with a thick layer of frost, like an ice sculpture. Amidst the roar of the steam hammer, the old foreman yelled: "Armor plates for the seventh car must be quenched before frost arrives!" The crane hoisted three-meter square rolled steel plates over their heads, the dark red residual warmth turning falling snowflakes into water droplets in mid-air. At the end of the railway, at the freight platform, twenty flat cars were unloading just-online Mark IV tanks, whose steel beasts' treads crushed granite platforms, splitting rocks like biscuits.

"Diesel and nitroglycerin flow through the Empire's veins!" When the copper throat loudspeaker of one-eyed General Von Steine blasted at the central square, Erin's eardrums still vibrated from the morning Zeppelin fleet. That sky-covering fleet hovered at an altitude of three hundred meters, its aluminum skin reflecting a dead fish belly white in the morning sun, casting shadows perfectly covering the bronze eagle statue's wings.

The crowd surging in the square suddenly quieted down. The old general's mechanical prosthetic limb cut across the skyline, hydraulic joints hissing like a snake's tongue: "See those flying whales? Each of their gas bags holds two hundred tons of death! And the Southern Territory Barbarians still defend their palm trees with flintlocks!" The cheers from the crowd startled the Cold Crow on the bell tower, newsboys seized the chance to scatter extras into the air, the front-page photo showing new flamethrowers incinerating straw southern soldier models.

Erin squeezed among the farewell crowd, watching the first military train emit auspicious white smoke. Steel orchids tied to tank barrels by brides thrown, cavalry horse sabers and armored vehicle searchlights flashing alternately. When the last experimental land cruiser "North Wind God" rolled over the railway, the entire platform groaned under its sixteen pairs of road wheels. A student wearing round glasses suddenly fell to his knees, muttering to the melting iron tracks: "What kind of monster have we created?"

As the sunset dyed steam into a bloody mist, the southward steel torrent had become teeth marks on the horizon. Navigation balls dropped by airships lit sequentially in the dusk, like pearls hung on the Empire's hem. Erin turned to the once-again-boiling munitions factory, her shadow stretched long by searchlights, eventually merging with those never-cooling forge shadows. At the seventh pier of the military port district, crane boom swayed like a steel forest. George, the stevedore wearing a wicker safety helmet, wiped sweat from his forehead, his overalls stained gray-white by ammonium nitrate crystals. In the hold of the cargo ship "Iron Ten", box after box of 7.92mm bullets rippled with brass color in the morning light, the loading foreman slicing open wooden boxes with a bayonet, scattered bullets on the deck checking primers.