Watching them frantically aim their naval cannons at the decks of adjacent warships, Xia Yu smiled with genuine delight.
'Do you really think I have to land to attack?'
Stabilizing her massive form within the swirling thunderclouds, she beat her wings and unleashed another deluge of golden dragonfire from her two heads.
"It's... damn it, scatter! Scatter!" Count Boris shouted into the communicator, his eyes nearly bursting from their sockets. "Everyone, break formation to the flanks!"
The memory of those initial twin beams of light remained vivid in his mind. These were the outer hulls of high-speed warships! Weaving through hundreds of millimeters of specialized alloy plating—armor that resisted even direct naval shelling—the golden beams had sliced through them like a hot knife through butter.
Boris had seen extraordinary combatants before. Yet even those elites usually relied on boarding actions to dismantle a crew from within. For years, the continent had seen only one Witch King, who used Arts to summon a Catastrophe and annihilate Gaul's vanguard fleet.
Even then, the Witch King hadn't achieved that through raw personal power alone. In that battle, he had mobilized the Golden Sequence, linking every tower in Leithanien as a medium to call down the disaster. To this day, the Vyseheim region of Leithanien remains blanketed by Originium clouds from that war.
Count Boris didn't doubt the Witch King could take down a single warship with his own abilities, but he believed not even the Witch King could slice through one so effortlessly. If he were truly that invincible, how could he have been killed when Leithanien revolted against his rule? Stripped of his towers and sequences, the Witch King was merely a powerful caster.
Why did high-speed warships symbolize a nation's strength? Because such mass-produced industrial marvels had, in fact, surpassed traditional powerhouses.
For instance, the Ursus-Kazimierz wars had occurred ten times. In the past, Ursus gained little ground because Kazimierz's knight units were far superior in combat capability; Ursus simply lacked the high-end power.
However, in the tenth war, the Ursus military used vast numbers of modern warships to charge straight into the fertile Golden Plains of Kazimierz, nearly wiping the nation off the map. If not for the sudden rise of the Pegasus knights and the escalating political infighting within Ursus—where noble-led armies began to blatantly sabotage progress—Patriot, who hadn't yet defected, would have led his troops to surround the elite Silveredge Pegasus.
Ursus could have annihilated that core threat if the allied forces had simply plugged the gap toward Kazimierz. But the nobles refused to let Patriot, a subordinate of the late Emperor, achieve such monumental glory. Power is finite; if he took more, they had less. They delayed under various pretexts until Kazimierz reinforcements arrived and broke through Patriot's lines alongside the Silveredge.
Regardless, the national strength of Ursus grew steadily through modernization. Boris believed that in the next war, Kazimierz might not find a second Cyril Nearl. But Ursus already possessed nearly a third more warships.
In his heart, a warship was indestructible.
Yet now, the wreckage of the Kazan continued to smoke, split almost entirely in two from the center. It only remained in one piece because the dragon had initiated its attack from the bow, sparing the structural integrity of the section beneath its feet.
Torrents of golden fire rained from the heavens. Count Boris looked up.
'We won't be so lucky next time.'
The Ursus clearing fleet, once arrogant and overbearing, now fled in all directions like stray dogs, desperate to evade the light of judgment. But the golden dragonfire in the sky was thinning—every Ursus soldier knew what that meant.
With a one-in-seven chance, no one wanted to be the unlucky victim. Everyone stared into the sky, praying that the sentence would not fall upon them.
Then, two beams of light plunged them into despair.
The twin light cannons struck the Lebul on the right and the Poltava in the center almost simultaneously. Count Boris watched the Poltava, positioned right beside his flagship, and felt a secret wave of relief.
'Wait, wasn't the Duke's youngest son on the Poltava? And two beams? Right, it has two heads!'
He looked at the latter ship. The golden light of judgment swept across the bow, tearing through the turret. The massive surge of energy instantly ignited and detonated the stored Originium shells.
BOOM!
The hundred-ton turret was tossed dozens of meters into the air by the horrific explosion. The ammunition cook-off snapped the ship in half at the waist. Even before the beams could finish slicing the hull, the jagged, monstrous wound proved the vessel was beyond saving.
The Duke of Ural's youngest son was likely beyond saving as well. To survive such an explosion would require a miracle.
BOOM!
Another explosion rocked the Lebul on the far right. This blast wasn't at the bow but near the midsection, the standard location for Ursus warship magazines.
Seeing this, Boris's first thought was that the Lebul's officers were quite cautious; at least they had closed the internal blast doors and hadn't moved too much ammunition to the forward turrets. Of course, it made little difference. Before those golden beams, things blew up regardless.
'Wait, the first ship split by the beams was quite lucky. The magazine didn't cook off?'
Actually, it was a matter of trajectory. When Xia Yu struck that ship, she was standing on its deck, aiming primarily at the bridge with a diagonal beam, missing the magazine. Now, firing from the sky, she was effectively peeling back their skulls, aiming straight for the heart of the ships.
"Count Boris, sir, abandon ship!" others screamed in desperation across the channel. "Staying on these ships is just waiting for death!"
"But without the warships, isn't facing that dragon as mere mortals even more suicidal?" someone countered. "At least we still have the cannons! We can still—"
"Forget it! As if the cannons can hit it!" the one suggesting abandonment cut him off ruthlessly. "You saw what happened to the Lebul and the Poltava!"
"The dragon's attack can pierce through an entire warship to detonate the magazine... It's unheard of..."
In Terra, thanks to the extraordinary materials science left by prehistoric civilizations, local naval cannons could not penetrate an entire ship's defenses to ignite a magazine. Piercing the outer armor was already a feat. In the conflict between spear and shield, the shield currently held the advantage. It wouldn't be until years later, when a Sarkaz airship fired a shot from the heavens and obliterated a Victorian warship, that the tide would truly turn.
But an airship like that didn't belong to normal technology. It was a legendary necromantic unit. Even with the blueprints, Sarkaz factories couldn't produce a second one. There were no raw materials.
Thus, current warships generally didn't worry about magazine explosions. On the contrary, sending a suicide squad to detonate one's own magazine was the most defiant act a crew could take to prevent capture. Gaul had done exactly that in its final death throes.
"We must abandon ship! These vessels are just sitting targets now!" The tragic fate of the Lebul and Poltava had shattered their courage. "Staying inside means none of us live!"
"Or are you going to gamble on whether that dragon can fire again? Count Boris, give the order!"
Though he hesitated, Boris could already see people from the bridge of his flagship launching various light vehicles and rushing off the neighboring ships. Those without vehicles scrambled to escape on foot. The sight of his own hands shaking told him everything.
He was the same.
'Duke, just what kind of enemy are you plotting against... ten entire warships...'
He remained undecided. Boris couldn't bear the responsibility. Though a dragon had attacked the fleet, others back home would only use the Infected as an excuse to ruin him. Chernobog was a mining hub; many eyes were on that prize, waiting to pull him down.
'I can't just...'
As he wavered, the golden dragonfire rained down once more from the thunderclouds. Boris froze. He realized he had no choice. The dragon could fire two breaths simultaneously, destroying two ships at once. With only five left, no one wanted to be the next target.
"All personnel, abandon ship," he said, his voice raspy. "Scatter and escape. Everyone, I will see you in the south."
There was no response on the channel, only static and chaos. It seemed the officers were faster than his orders.
'Hah, well. Just a clearing fleet. Not exactly elites...'
He turned to his attendant. "Let's go!"
★ ★ ★
In the sky, Xia Yu had no intention of continuing to blast the ships with Placidusax's Ruin. She circled above, watching the thousands of Ursus troops scurry like ants. She had achieved her strategic objective. The morale and spirit of this army were utterly broken.
In that case, there was no need to destroy the remaining five warships. This was loot!
Xia Yu waited patiently for them to flee a certain distance. Then, the golden fire in her mouths condensed into beams. She dived aggressively, her beams carving a near-perfect circle on the ground, trapping the routed soldiers within.
'Want to run? Not that easy.'
Xia Yu hadn't forgotten the many Infected from the Guerillas scattered among the nearby mines. If these routed soldiers escaped and encountered them...
Inside an off-road vehicle, Count Boris and his guard watched in despair as the burning golden dragonfire erupted before them. They were so close to escaping. Yet the beams from the sky had plowed a deep trench into the earth, filled with golden flames and striking red lightning.
Who would dare approach that? That was a spell capable of burning through warship armor. No one thought their bodies were tougher than hundreds of millimeters of steel plating.
"It's herding us!" an officer noted, looking through binoculars. "The dragonfire has trapped us, and the lightning is gradually shrinking our range!"
"People are being forced back this way!"
Count Boris looked back. Indeed, a convoy was being herded back by the lightning. They were the lucky ones; at least they had vehicles. More than half of these six or seven thousand people were on foot.
"Count Boris, sir, should we try..." his attendant looked uneasily at the golden fire.
"Don't be a fool," Boris shook his head. "It clearly doesn't want us to leave. In times like this, the first one to move dies."
The officers and soldiers around him didn't dare take a single step. Their morale was gone. As more people gathered, Xia Yu beat her wings and slowly emerged from the thunderclouds.
Six thousand seven hundred men stood there, watching her descend. Not one dared raise a weapon. Only when the dragon landed before them did they see the horrific wounds, the severed tail, and the three missing necks.
'It used to have five heads?!' Boris was stunned. 'Are you joking? Two heads did this to a fleet... if it were at its five-headed peak... wouldn't every ship be gone after two rounds of beams?'
'It looks heavily injured... yet it still dismantled our fleet with ease... Duke, just what have you provoked...'
If the dragon before them weren't injured, Boris couldn't even imagine its power.
Xia Yu looked at their trembling forms and nodded. The ancients weren't lying: fifty thousand men really are easier to catch than fifty thousand pigs.
Slowly, she retracted the body of Placidusax and returned to her Tarnished state. The Dragon Lord was incredibly useful, especially against units with no anti-air. It was like harassment with a flock of Mutalisks against an opponent who forgot to build turrets or detectors.
As the dragon vanished, a tall knight in heavy armor, holding a greatsword the size of a door, appeared on the snow and looked at them. Count Boris froze.
"Surrender, or die," Xia Yu said, pointing the massive Grafted Blade Greatsword at them with one hand. "Choose!"