Chapter 135
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Translator: Ace
Chapter: 135
Chapter Title: 13th Floor - Lv. 775 Lava Hammer Assault Division (6)
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"All units, prepare!"
Major Spencer’s battalion tensed up as one.
They knew in advance what I was about to do.
And they had a rough idea of the results it would yield.
Strictly speaking, a wind spirit wasn’t specialized for firepower.
It was summoned for swift mobility and a wide array of physical utilities.
For raw area-of-effect destruction, fire spirits were the go-to—along with earth spirits, surprisingly enough.
You might wonder why earth spirits, but meteors were rocks at their core, and that said it all.
Of course, a spirit king’s immense elemental dominance didn’t just vanish, but this time around, I’d decided against using Sylphid offensively.
The dragon flapped its wings. Winds howled into a frenzy.
Fifty-odd armored vehicles carrying the battalion’s four hundred souls floated lightly into the air.
It was possible only because wind could physically interact with the world.
Nearly five hundred tons of metal streaked across the sky in a perfect line.
The Greenskins’ eyes bulged at the sight of our suddenly airborne vanguard.
It was the path of wind that Sylphid had carved.
The armored vehicles picked up speed.
At velocities beyond imagination, a few goblin machine gunners ducked their heads and huddled low.
The Spirit King’s power had neutralized air resistance itself. Charge. Charge again.
We had to be pushing past a thousand kilometers per hour. Transonic speeds, right on the cusp of breaking the sound barrier—a velocity no ground vehicle could dream of.
In the blink of an eye, we made first contact with the enemy.
Truth be told, we’d long since entered each other’s effective firing range.
No one had simply mustered the wits to shoot.
Major Spencer, who’d been glaring ahead from my side to track positions, barked into the radio.
"All forces! Drop high-explosives!"
Mechanized infantry carriers normally hauled a mix of gear and ammo, but this time they were packed stem to stern with bombs.
In this environment, an armored vehicle’s payload capacity outstripped any aircraft of comparable class.
The drivers popped the rear doors.
Even at these mad speeds, the goblin crews shoved the stacked ordnance out.
Anti-tank high-explosives tumbled nose-down in a stream, carrying the full brunt of the vehicles’ kinetic fury—like they’d been fired from cannons.
Our column wasn’t flying high. Shaped charges rained down on the enemy tanks like the payload of a screaming dive bomber.
Counterfire only erupted after the battalion had thundered past.
But there was no proper aim. Rockets streaked toward empty sky where we’d already been.
Hell, if we’d been proper aircraft from the start, maybe—but dust-belching ground pounders suddenly taking to the air?
No one had anti-air on the brain.
We pressed on, watching the explosions bloom along our wake.
The wind path stretched endlessly ahead.
Behind the Empire’s tanks and APCs trailed their infantry.
Some too massive to rightly call foot soldiers, others barely qualifying—but this time, cluster munitions showered the field, spraying shrapnel far and wide.
Trolls wouldn’t drop, but orcs and ogres would feel it.
And in the far distance, our fighters and bombers arrived.
Our friends, seizing the distraction to turn the enemy lines into a smoldering ruin.
The battalion we’d pegged for first clash had pierced their lines in the most absurd fashion imaginable. Bombings followed in our wake.
Artillery barrages would come next.
Then shadows cloaked the sky overhead once more.
Empire airships zipped past from behind.
We were moving too fast for their main batteries to track. Agile, auto-tracking anti-air autocannons swung into motion instead.
Fat chance.
"Brace for impact, everyone!"
"Grip tight! You slip, you die!"
"Ain’t the time to meet the Goddess!"
"Kwaaaagh!"
The rear doors, flung open to dump bombs, couldn’t be shut in this madness.
We ignored it and punched the throttle harder.
Not one goblin, zealous in faith, slipped up. They rode out the instantaneous double-sonic acceleration without flying loose.
Outstanding work, troops!
Enduring that shock with zero training. They could fly fighters.
Another burst of speed, and every anti-air system that had started adapting lost us again.
I glanced aside. Major Spencer’s eyes were spinning like pinwheels.
Just a bit longer. We’re almost there.
I couldn’t eyeball the outside myself.
I was seeing through Sylphid, who flew alongside the command vehicle.
Now for gradual acceleration.
No air resistance meant far less strain.
Mach 3.
Enemy aircraft whipped past.
They couldn’t even get a lock.
Squad leaders screamed from inside their vehicles for everyone to hold on.
Mach 5.
Faster than most missiles. An Aegis destroyer might’ve coped, but this airdrop battlefield hadn’t seen one coming.
The troops couldn’t even scream anymore.
Mach 7.
Speeds rivaling ground-launched hypersonic cruise missiles.
Physically impossible to intercept.
We hit something approaching Mach 10 and arrived.
The enemy high command, plain as day in Sylphid’s eyes.
Greenskin commanders—like old Trdongt—had to suppress their instincts and feign composure.
Such talents were predictably rare.
And if you massacred them? Their command structure evaporated for the foreseeable future.
Most Greenskins lacked even tactical savvy, let alone strategic grasp. They just charged.
All they knew was how to swing their weapons or drive their rides.
Winds enshrouded the battalion’s vehicles once more, decelerating our insane velocity in defiance of inertia.
Another jolt rocked through us.
A few might hurl.
We slammed down near freefall.
But I’d controlled it through Sylphid right up to the end—no casualties.
Mana overuse killed me once in the process. Good thing I was a vampire.
The instant we touched down, troops poured out in a flood.
Dazed eyes rolling, puking their guts out—yet they snapped to positions.
Vehicles rolled into cover. Machine gunners poked heads up and took aim.
Vomit dribbling from chins, their shots still landed true.
The triumph of sheer willpower.
If every soldier in the old Japanese Imperial Army had this grit, their theories on spirit might’ve held water.
But they’d lacked a goddess worth offering body and soul.
What was impossible before fanaticism?
Only undead me, the kid, and the girl were untouched. Old man and youngest staggered to the ground.
"Still manageable, eh."
"Slower than that planetary train on the last floor! But fun anyway."
Old man and girl’s takes.
Good thing we’d trained our semicircular canals back on the previous floor.
Heads spinning, return fire streaked from the proper fortress ahead—not some slapdash container outpost.
Trolls shouldered through the anachronistically grand gates.
I grinned at Sylphid.
The colossal dragon shrank down and swooped to my side.
Small as when we’d first contracted.
I wrung every drop of mana from the fusion reactor core.
Sylphid’s maw gaped. Compressed air lanced out like a laser.
The lead troll warrior shredded into rags and vanished.
The beam held only a heartbeat, but Sylphid whipped its head, scattering devastation.
Holes punched through the fortress walls. Columns scraped and collapsed in puffs of dust.
As mana overload edged me toward another death, the spirit king withdrew to its realm.
The fusion reactor dimmed.
I’d siphoned even the trickle sustaining it. Better scrap the thing than restart.
"Thanks. Catch you later."
Sylphid seemed to nod as it faded translucent.
The prime virtue of a Greenskin commander: suppressing base instincts to think clearly.
But that was secondary.
The true must-have? Strength.
No power, no obedience from the troops—no matter your rank.
Thus, Empire officers grew stronger with every promotion.
Like marines from some comic.
And this was a vital livestock world feeding the Empire’s teeming masses.
A backwater post since it wasn’t frontline, but the Empire wasn’t total idiots—the top brass was solid.
The troll brigadier smirked and rose.
He’d hated babysitting his seat out of positional duty.
He hated how the higher-ranking assault division commander shook his authority, too.
Empire forces respected seniority across systems. He’d been king here—until now, maybe.
Plenty higher and stronger lurked out in the void.
Then prey arrived in the most outlandish way. Joy trumped shock.
Perfect timing—he’d been second-guessing his star.
Smashing skulls beat staring at panels any day, for a troll.
Especially against foes worth the fame.
A low rumble built as blinding light erupted. Plasma greatswords—trolls’ favorite toy.
They parried most gunfire on the slant, and the scorching output thrilled.
Tanks and APCs melted when you jammed it in.
Pure satisfaction. Destruction: trolls’ primal drive.
The fortress exterior lay in ruins from whatever barrage.
Holes everywhere—no need to pick a careful path out.
The floor, scorched hot from high-pressure air friction, felt just right.
Other staff must’ve thought the same.
Colonels and majors converged from all sides, weapons in hand.
They strolled slow, almost swaggering.
Fear didn’t touch officers of their caliber. The weak never wore that braid.
Chosen elites.
That pride turned charges into menacing prowls.
None were frail enough to die from that earlier strike. Here gathered reversal heroes.
They hadn’t pictured trading brain-racking troop deployments for frontline brawls.
The brigadier chuckled at the amusing twist.
Troll growls echoed. I spotted goblins shuddering.
Those still leashed under the Greenskin banner flinched at the sound.
Genetic terror, maybe.
That only made the troops grit harder.
The Empire: ancient foe, endless nightmare.
Its yoke lingered as a complex, even now that parity reigned.
"Fall back!"
That snapped them to their roles amid the haze.
Clearing the fortress brass wasn’t the grunts’ job.
We’d leapfrogged the lines into the heart. Enemy turf.
Awaiting forces sauntered closer.
Upside: pure infantry.
Downside: overwhelming mass. No artillery here.
The latter? I’d handle.
Airdrop battles hinged on ground ops syncing with the fleet war.
Federation blue capsules rained amid skyward flares.
Theater commanders offworld already knew what brewed.
And scowled in disgust.
They figured they’d bottled us tight.
Their top brass, prime ground assets—all here.
The decisive field I’d forced.
Only the most diligent ogres claimed command seats.
Empire black pods soon deluged the zone.
Variables sealed. Fleet edge: ours.
Ground fight: theirs.
But the biggest wildcards—bio-tank heavies—would pile here.
Sweep ’em clean.
Against the pod shower, I spread my arms.
Perfect timing: sunset guttered its last gasp. Darkness fell.
My Barbarei scarf-cape fluttered. Every drop from [Blood Spring] poured forth.
No longer vibrant crimson, the pooling mire twisted into ominous, blackened scarlet.
Wolves clawed up from its depths.
Standard vampire wolves? Mere wild beasts. These matched trolls in bulk, spawning endlessly from the blood.
Wolves charged. An Empire troll with lt. colonel tabs leaped, face a mask of disbelief.
Physique granting monstrous prowess.
Earth quaked as it vaulted dozens of meters.
Its cleaving sword lit the gloaming like a lone flare.
Flash—wolf bisected.
Troll snorted. Then its head vanished.
The dark red wolf gummed the skull like taffy.
Blood fountained from the five-meter neck, spawning fresh wolves.
Per my command, the wolf hawked the head—at the troll with the highest stars.
He caught his subordinate’s noggin.
Low growl rumbled.
"Hoo."
Hoo my ass. You’re all corpses here.
[Lord of Blood]: master of armies forged in blood.
Infinitely multiplying, bleeding foes dry, birthing horrors from the spill to multiply anew.
Tens of thousands would rise. The planet would drown in red.
The crimson horde would devour the Empire.
Independent summons, yet a strategic area-denial beast.
The one whose face drained was the assault division ogre commander, grasping the dark red wolves’ meaning via satellite feed.
Unlike the dimwit trolls.
"Get down there now! Prep drops!"
Those idiot trolls hadn’t a clue what came next.
Curses of a magic-scarce age.
Kill the summoner to stop it.
Dangerous.
As drop pods prepped, he yanked a fat cigar. Rocket hammer’s muzzle belched, smoke curling.
Inhaled deep. Mind sharpened.
He checked his revolver cannon, musing.
Death or triumph. That was Greenskin to the core.
Fine day to die.
Them or him.
Before departing, he warned the fleet admirals.
If he didn’t return, purge the planet with barrages.