Chapter 202: The Sky Breaker

The Commander’s halberd came down.

Holden didn’t dodge. He didn’t deflect the attack or draw his sword. He simply reached up with his left hand and caught the halberd blade in his bare palm.

CLANG!

The blade was simply caught between his fingers. Commander Vorth’s face went pale.

He pulled but the halberd didn’t move.

He pulled harder, muscles straining beneath his armor, but the weapon remained locked in Holden’s grip as though it had been welded to a mountain.

Holden glanced at the weapon.

"That’s a nice halberd. Heavy, good balance, enchanted edge. Probably cost a fortune."

Holden squeezed and the halberd blade crumpled. Blue-white sparks flickered across the enchantments once before they died completely.

The magnificent weapon became a useless lump of twisted metal in Holden’s hand.

Holden released it and the ruined weapon dropped onto the deck.

Commander Vorth stared at the remains of his weapon. His mouth opened, but no sound came out. His hands were shaking from the realization that was finally catching up to him.

"WHAT ARE YOU?"

Holden tilted his head.

"Disappointed."

The Commander’s eyes widened.

"Disappointed?" Vorth’s voice cracked with outrage. "I am Commander Dragan Vorth of the Iron-Blood Empire’s Third Grand Army! I have conquered seven kingdoms! I’ve killed Rank 3 warriors with my bare hands! I am not something to be disappointed by!"

"You conquered seven kingdoms with that halberd."

Holden pointed at the crumpled lump of metal on the deck.

"And I just crushed it like a beer can."

He shrugged.

"So, yeah. Disappointed."

The Commander roared. It was the roar of a man who had nothing left except rage.

He dropped the broken halberd shaft and charged.

His armored fists came up as he crossed the deck at full Rank 3 speed.

Holden kicked him.

There was no technique behind it. His foot drove into the center of the Commander’s breastplate.

BOOM!

The impact was catastrophic.

The enchanted iron armor, caved inward. The breastplate dented nearly six inches, its enchantments breaking under the force.

Vorth’s feet left the deck.

The commander flew across the ship, arms flailing and legs spinning as he became a human projectile.

Whoosh.

He slammed into the port railing.

The iron barrier buckled instantly. Vorth tore straight through it and disappeared over the edge.

His scream lasted three seconds.

Then it stopped.

The deck went silent.

Holden lowered his foot.

He looked at the broken railing, then at the empty space beyond it.

"Have a nice trip."

The System chimed.

[Imperial Commander Dragan Vorth (Rank 3, 3-Star) Defeated!]

[+5,000 KP!]

[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]

[+10,000 KP!]

[Current KP: 986,290]

Below him, through the gaps in the deck plating, cannons were still firing.

Six cannon emplacements on the port side and six on the starboard were aimed directly at Fortress Kharadon. Each volley tore into the walls Emric was struggling to defend.

Holden could hear the impacts even from three hundred feet above the ground.

BOOM!

He heard soldiers shouting as they rushed to reinforce the damaged positions.

The fortress was taking a beating. Holden needed to stop the cannons. Better yet, he needed to stop the ship.

He turned from the broken railing and sprinted toward the stern.

His body moved across the deck so quickly that the wreckage around him became a blur. Unconscious soldiers slid across the tilted deck as he passed. Abandoned weapons bounced and scattered beneath his feet.

He found the engine room hatch.

A heavy steel door sealed with a mechanical lock rated for security level four.

Holden put his hand against it and pushed.

The door came off its hinges. The entire steel frame ripped free from the wall.

CRASH!

The engine room was the heart of the ship.

It was a massive chamber occupying most of the lower stern section. The ceiling stretched twenty feet overhead, while conduits and energy cables lined the walls, pulsing with blue light.

The floor was grated metal, and beneath it, the ship’s propulsion systems hummed with industrial power.

At the center of the room, suspended inside a cradle of steel and energy, was the anti-gravity core.

An eight-foot sphere of condensed energy rotated slowly inside its containment cradle. Its surface looked like liquid light, blue-white and constantly shifting, pulsing with the power that kept four thousand tons of iron and steel suspended in the sky.

The core was the ship’s heart.

Destroy it, and the ship died.

Holden didn’t hesitate.

He leaped from the catwalk and dropped thirty feet toward the core.

He landed on the platform surrounding the containment cradle.

Two engineers who had been monitoring the core’s output scrambled backward.

One of them stared at Holden in horror.

"The core! Don’t touch the core!"

Holden raised his sword.

"If you destabilize it, the entire ship will..."

The engineer never finished.

Holden drove the Solar-Forged Sword directly into the anti-gravity core.

FWOOOOOSH!

The blade punched through the sphere as easily as a finger through a soap bubble.

Holden triggered Hellfire Cleave at maximum output. Crimson fire erupted inside the core.

The effect was immediate.

The concentrated, white-hot flames collided with the raw energy of the anti-gravity matrix. The two forces mixed for a second before violently rejecting each other.

The core cracked.

Then shattered and exploded.

BOOOOOOM!

The detonation threw Holden backward.

He slammed into the catwalk railing, bending it outward as the force nearly sent him over the edge.

His Phantom-Weave Armor absorbed most of the impact. A piece of shrapnel sliced his cheek, but the Blood-Amber Ring pulsed almost immediately, sealing the shallow wound.

The engine room was dying.

The explosion had ripped through the containment cradle and destroyed the systems regulating the ship’s flotation.

Conduits burst along the walls, spilling raw energy across the floor. The lights flickered, died, returned as emergency red, then flickered again.

Bzzt. Bzzt.

Click.

The hum stopped.

That constant, low-frequency vibration that had filled the ship since it left the Imperial shipyard was gone.

The ship groaned.

It was a deep, structural sound that seemed to come from the hull itself, from every rivet, plate, and support beam.

The floor tilted.

Three degrees.

Five.

Eight.

The ship was no longer level. It was falling.

Holden didn’t wait around to see what happened next.

He sprinted for the engine room hatch, tore through the corridor, raced up the stairs, and emerged onto the main deck.

The tilt was worse now.

Fifteen degrees.

The deck plating had become slick as condensation spilled from the failing environmental systems. Unconscious soldiers slid toward the port railing while cannon emplacements broke free from their moorings and crashed across the deck.

Holden reached the starboard railing.

Fortress Kharadon was far below, its lights flickering across the dark valley.

The other warships were pulling back.

Their commanders had clearly realized something was wrong with the flagship.

Holden didn’t waste another second.

He leaped.

For one stomach-dropping moment, he was in free fall.

The dying warship hung above him, tilting and groaning as it began its final descent.

The valley floor rushed up below.

Holden deployed the Abyssal-Bone Wings.

The massive wings snapped open and his descent stopped.

He hung in the night sky, wings spread wide as the cold wind rushed around him.

Holden turned and looked up.

The warship was dying beautifully.

Fire poured from the engine room vents, streaming behind the ship like a comet’s tail.

The cannon batteries, now unpowered and unmanned, tore free from their deck mounts and tumbled through the air.

The ship rolled.

Slowly at first.

Then faster.

The massive hull rotated as it fell, gaining speed as gravity pulled it toward the valley floor.

Below it, the Imperial ground forces were scattering.

Holden could see thousands of soldiers spread across the valley in organized formations. Those formations were breaking apart now.

Soldiers were running in every direction.

The shadow of the falling warship swept over them.

They couldn’t outrun it.

The ship hit.

BOOOOOOOOM!

Four thousand tons of iron and steel, superheated and still carrying ammunition and energy reserves, slammed into the valley floor.

The shockwave flattened everything within a quarter mile.

Tents, wagons, supply crates, soldiers, and horses were swept aside by a wall of displaced air and debris that rolled across the valley.

The ground split beneath the impact.

A crater roughly two hundred feet wide and thirty feet deep formed beneath the wreckage.

The iron hull shattered, sending fragments of superheated metal in every direction.

Fire erupted from the wreckage.

Then the remaining fuel stores, enchanted energy reserves, and ammunition caches began detonating one after another.

BOOM!

BOOM!

BOOM!

The secondary explosions tore through the Imperial staging area.

Formations preparing to assault the fortress were scattered. Supply lines were severed. Command posts were destroyed.

The organized military force that had been preparing to tear down Fortress Kharadon had suddenly lost its flagship and its commander.

Holden hovered above the battlefield.

The heat from the wreckage rose in columns, making the air around him shimmer. The wind from the explosions pushed against his wings as he watched the ship burn below.

The System chimed.

[Imperial War-Ship (Flagship) Destroyed!]

[+5,000 KP!]

[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]

[+10,000 KP!]

[Secondary Casualties (Ground Forces): x84!]

[+10,000 KP!]

[2x KP Booster Active! KP Doubled!]

[+20,000 KP!]

[Current KP: 1,016,290]

Below, the Imperial forces were in chaos.

Their flagship was a burning crater.

Their commander was dead.

Forty-six warships remained in the sky, but they had pulled back to a safer distance. Their captains were clearly reassessing the situation after watching one man fly onto their flagship, kill its commander and bring the entire vessel down.

The fortress walls were still standing.

Holden could see soldiers on the battlements staring at the burning wreckage.

He could see Emric’s shield raised on the northwest wall.

Renna’s arrows were still nocked.

Lyra’s spear continued to glow blue in the darkness.

Holden angled his wings and descended toward the fortress.

The Wings folded as he dropped the final twenty feet, and he landed on the battlement with a light thud.

Emric turned.

His shield was scorched. But he was still standing, and the wall behind him remained intact.

"The ship," Emric said. "You destroyed it. it crashed into their army."

Holden glanced at the burning crater below.

"I can see that, Emric."

Emric adjusted his cracked glasses.

"Statistically, the impact and secondary explosions wiped out eighty-four ground troops and destroyed their forward supply depot. Their offensive capability has been reduced by an estimated twelve percent."

"Good."

Emric looked toward the sky.

"That was one ship."

Holden followed his gaze.

"There are forty-six more."

The remaining warships had reformed their formation, keeping a much greater distance from the fortress now.

Their captains were cautious.

They had just watched a single person fly to their flagship, kill its commander, destroy its anti-gravity core, and bring the entire vessel down on their own army.

They were reassessing.

But they weren’t leaving.

Renna came running up the steps to the battlement, bow in hand.

"That was the coolest thing I’ve ever seen!"

She pointed toward the burning wreckage.

"The ship went BOOM, then CRASH, then MORE BOOM. The whole valley shook and I felt it from here!"

She looked at Holden, eyes wide.

"Did you just do that?"

Holden gave her a look.

Renna grinned.

"Yes. Obviously. I just wanted to hear you admit it."

Lyra appeared beside her. Her glowing blue eyes remained fixed on the sky as she studied the surviving formation.

"They’re regrouping. The captains are communicating. They’ll adjust their strategy."

"Let them adjust," Holden said.

He looked down at the burning wreckage in the valley. Then he looked back toward the sky.

Forty-six warships remained.

One down.

Forty-six to go.