After passing the阵地, Lightning climbed to a high altitude again, and then... stopped.
“What’s wrong, goo?” Maggie asked, raising her head.
She didn't answer, but turned and looked down at the direction of Taquila – in the dark night sky, two hundred meters was almost the limit of her visual distance. Trying to find the Demon Slayer under such conditions was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
But it didn't matter if she couldn't see him.
Lightning knew the other party could see her.
From Taquila's direction, she should be directly against the moon at this moment. As long as the Demon Slayer looked up, it would be impossible to ignore the white shadow.
But it didn't chase after her.
The only reason could be that the other party had realized that her speed was far beyond its reach.
It gave up the futile attempt.
She won this round!
Lightning took a deep breath, extended her right hand to the night sky. Although her fingertips were still trembling slightly, she still mustered the courage to raise a finger.
That was the gesture of victory that His Majesty taught her!
Then she turned around and flew towards her own camp without looking back, while telling Sylvie everything she had seen.
“Regular God’s Stone pillars... I see.” The latter recorded the approximate size and handed it to Agatha. Estimating the shape of the shadow and the location of the stone pillars based on the volume of the God’s Stone was a basic skill for high-level members of the Exploration Society. Soon, the revised data was sent back to the observation room.
Although there was a visual error in it, it was better than firing randomly. Sylvie used her Magic Eye to determine the position and picked up the phone to the artillery camp.
After a while, the fortress artillery position erupted with the first roar!
Although the flames bursting out of the chamber flashed like fireflies, they were still very conspicuous to the plain shrouded in darkness.
Especially when more artillery joined the attack, the light blooming from the muzzle even faintly reflected the outline of the position. Sometimes the flames brought out by the shells would also draw a short trajectory, as if they were meteors leaping from the earth.
On the other side, the echoes of the explosions were endless, and the sleeping fertile plain was finally awakened.
“So beautiful, goo...” Maggie murmured absentmindedly, staring at the intermittently visible artillery position.
Lightning stood against the wind, clenching her fists.
Now, only the last hurdle remained.
...
Eersuluk floated in the air, watching indifferently as clumps of mud pillars rose before and after its army – this was the most threatening attack method humans had to date. As long as the projectiles landed in the army, they could instantly take the lives of more than a dozen natives. Moreover, its power did not need to be displayed through contact. Even if they were tens of meters apart, the iron fragments shot out from the projectiles were enough to penetrate armor and tear flesh.
Even it was not sure it could withstand a direct hit.
In the report it submitted to the Lord of the Sky, it named this weapon "Fire Rain".
In addition, there were "Fire Crossbows" that could continuously fire crossbow bolts, and "Fire Branches" that could be carried by a single person... All of humanity's current evolution undoubtedly came from the element of fire. Compared to the "inheritance and promotion" that the Lord believed in, it was more inclined to believe it was an accident – in terms of the diversity of abilities, witches were superior. If a suitable Awakener had appeared in the past few hundred years, coupled with humanity's long-term research on fire, it was not impossible to achieve a large-scale leap.
But even if humans took a completely different path from them, it did not mean it was helpless. For example, the rolling stones made from God's Punishment Veins showed hardness sufficient to resist Fire Rain. Eersuluk clearly saw that after several direct hits and violent explosions, the God's Stone still remained intact. When the opponent's projectiles hit the edge of the stone pillar, they would even bounce off directly, without leaving a single pit.
What was truly dangerous was the Fire Rain that happened to pass over the stone pillars and smashed into the "Tombstone" group. Their invulnerable armor was simply vulnerable to Fire Rain. As long as they were hit, they would basically be torn apart.
Ironically, the King had high hopes for this kind of indestructible symbiont, which had no pain and no fear. He believed it was the most valuable breakthrough obtained from the "Inheritance Fragment", which not only greatly enhanced the logistics capabilities of the front line, but also enriched the tribe's combat methods. Just one hundred Tombstones would be able to completely annihilate humans – also the inferior insects in the eyes of most tribesmen.
So the Lord gave it exactly one hundred Tombstones.
As a result, after fighting for most of the year, not only had humans not been annihilated, but Taquila was already crumbling. And Eersuluk now had less than forty percent of the Tombstones it could drive.
If the Lord of the Sky had not been so trusting of the King at the time, how would it be so stretched now?
If these symbionts were all consumed on the road, it would have to let the natives resist.
That was no different from sending them to their deaths – the impact of Fire Rain hitting the God's Punishment Stone pillars was by no means something that natives could resist. Even the Obsidian Claws of the Tombstones could be broken by the shock, let alone flesh and blood?
But Eersuluk didn't care.
Because these sacrifices were worth it.
And humans... would pay the price for their sacrifices.
...
10:00 PM, underground headquarters.
The battle had been going on for nearly three hours. Every five minutes, Tie Axe would hear the muffled artillery fire from overhead, along with sparse dust falling.
Apart from that, there was no movement on the position, as if the devils had not launched a general attack, and the First Army was firing into the air from beginning to end.
This was very different from previous war experiences.
In order to save ammunition and protect the gun barrels, he had asked the artillery camp to extend the firing interval and aimed most of the firepower behind the shadow. The problem was that even if such strikes caused real damage to the devils, the results could not be observed through the Magic Eye.
The only thing that could be confirmed at the moment was that the 152mm fortress guns could not destroy the God's Punishment Stone pillars. Although the dense artillery fire could reduce the movement speed of the shadow to a minimum, it would always recover. He didn't know how the Spider Devil made such a big guy roll over the bomb craters.
“Damn it,” Tie Axe punched the table in frustration, “If it were daytime, these monsters wouldn’t be alive now!”
The biggest trouble the First Army was currently encountering was that no one knew where the shells were landing. If the artillery wanted to hit the target, it had to correct the landing point through multiple test shots. But facing two blind spots that were more than one hundred and fifty meters wide and almost infinitely long, each shot was equivalent to a test shot without feedback.
According to Sylvie's observation, the Demon Slayer had not broken into the camp, but had been cruising in the shadow's rear, obviously guarding against Lightning. Although the latter's speed was superior to the enemy's, high-speed flight consumed a lot of magic power. It was okay to intersperse two attacks from time to time, but it was too dangerous to hover in the shadow, get rid of the Demon Slayer, and provide the landing point.
No feedback meant that no additional strikes could be added.
In this way, it became difficult to quickly eliminate the enemy's forces through dense firepower.
The current situation was like gambling. He could pour all the shells into the shadow, causing it to completely stop moving. But if the enemy retreated the Spider Devils, the First Army would be wasting ammunition.
In addition, there were many Mad Devils moving on the two wings outside the shadow, seemingly wanting to form a left and right encirclement. If he aimed the artillery at them, he could immediately know the results, but these devils were distributed very sparsely, and it felt a bit of a waste to deal with them specifically.
“So that’s why the enemy chose to launch an attack at night,” Edith said calmly. “This is already a gratifying result... Without Sylvie, let alone the shadow blind spot, we probably wouldn’t even know where the enemy is. Besides, the devils are always on the receiving end. It’s not in a hurry, so why should you care?”
“I just don’t want to waste the ammunition that I finally accumulated,” Tie Axe frowned.
“Don’t worry, they can’t keep pushing that thing all the time. I think the other party is also clear about this. They will launch a general attack when they get close to the range of the mortars.” Northern Pearl slightly raised the corners of her mouth. “It’s a pity that the devils don’t know that the night is only temporary. When they enter the range of the flares, it will be time to decide the victory or defeat.”