Chapter 133: Wrath of the American Freedom Part 2

Five miles out at sea, the United States Carrier Strike Group ceased all defensive maneuvers.

The peaceful blue ocean erupted into an industrial war engine.

Aboard the guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill, sirens wailed throughout the narrow steel passages. The ship’s automated weapons systems spun into active targeting mode, linking directly with the destroyers USS Winston S. Churchill, USS Carney, and USS The Sullivans.

On the foredecks and aft decks of the four warships, the heavy steel hatches of the Mark 41 Vertical Launch Systems (VLS) flipped open in synchronized sequence.

One hundred and twenty-eight missile cells were exposed to the open sky.

CLANG-CLANG-CLANG-CLANG!

"All batteries, synchronized surface-to-surface saturation!" the tactical officer on the Bunker Hill shouted. "Targets: Grid Alpha-Zero through Delta-Four! Sequence ripple fire in three... two... one... LAUNCH!"

WHOOOOOOSH!

The ocean turned into an apocalyptic inferno.

In a span of forty seconds, ninety-six Tomahawk Land Attack Missiles and forty-eight RIM-174 Standard ERAM missiles configured for heavy surface strike erupted from the decks in deafening, continuous pillars of flame and thick white smoke.

The roar was so immense it shook the water for leagues around, creating massive clouds of burning exhaust that choked out the sun above the fleet. One after another, the heavy missiles pitched over, their solid-fuel boosters kicking them into low-altitude cruise profiles.

They formed a terrifying, unbroken swarm across the waves, skimming barely thirty feet above the water at eight hundred miles per hour, heading straight for the golden dome of Port Solis.

Simultaneously, from the west, the heavy aviation arrived.

Four B-1B Lancer supersonic bombers, flying out of the mainland forward air base, tore through the high cloud deck at Mach 1.2. Their swing-wings locked back, their bomb bay doors snapping open to release strings of Joint Direct Attack Munitions and AGM-158 JASSM cruise missiles from thirty thousand feet.

Over two hundred tons of high-explosive ordnance converged on a single point in space: the apex and seaward face of the Aegis.

On the stone quay of Port Solis, Goddess Viona was still basking in her triumph.

Ayanokoji stood beside her, his black spear dripping with Phillip’s blood. Beside him, Kenji wiped his holy blade with a silk cloth, while Miyuki stood quietly behind them, her staff resting on the stone.

Prime Minister Belis sat on his knees twenty paces away, weeping uncontrollably into his hands, entirely broken by what he had just witnessed.

"You see, Belis?" Viona laughed, turning back toward the inner keep. "The great proxy is dead. The foreign dogs did not even have the courage to rush the pier. They watched their commander die, and they did nothing. They are terrified!"

Before Belis could choke out a response, the air began to hum.

It wasn’t a gentle magical resonance. It was a deep, bone-rattling vibration that rattled the teeth in Viona’s jaw. The water in the harbor began to churn violently, jumping six inches into the air as the sound waves hit the coast.

Ayanokoji’s head snapped up.

His dull, red-tinted pupils contracted as his S-rank sensory skills registered the incoming telemetry.

"Master," Ayanokoji said, his voice flat, but speaking three times faster than normal. "Massive kinetic saturation detected. Bearing two-seven-zero. Number of incoming contacts: one hundred and forty-four. Velocity: high subsonic and supersonic. Altitude: sea-skimming and high-angle dive."

Viona frowned, annoyance flashing across her face. "What? More iron darts? Let them hit the Aegis! The barrier has stood against the elder dragons! It can hold against a thousand of their—"

BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

The sky exploded.

The first wave of forty-eight Tomahawk missiles slammed directly into the seaward curve of the Aegis all at once.

The explosions did not look like magical fire. They were massive, dirty balls of orange flame, black sulfur smoke, and supersonic shockwaves carrying over a thousand pounds of high-explosive composition per missile.

The blunt kinetic energy hit the barrier like an iron freight train moving at the speed of sound.

CRACK!

The sound was not the muffled thud of absorbed mana; it was the deafening, ear-splitting sound of thick ice shattering under an anvil.

The golden surface of the Aegis flared with blinding, unstable brilliance. For three hundred years, the barrier had been designed to block and absorb rival spells—dragon breath, lightning storms, and elemental curses. It was built around magical defense.

It was never designed to endure raw, non-magical blunt force.

There was no mana in these weapons to diffuse or unravel. Instead, thousands of pounds of high explosive, burning chemical fuel, and jagged tungsten shrapnel were slamming into the exact same point over and over again. The relentless physical overpressure hammered directly against the barrier’s structural integrity, treating the ancient divine shield like a physical pane of glass under a jackhammer.

BOOM! KABOOM! CRACK-BOOM!

The second wave of missiles hit three seconds later.

Then the third wave.

The impacts were relentless. Every two seconds, another dozen five-hundred-pound and one-thousand-pound warheads detonated against the exact same fifty-yard section of the dome directly above the harbor mouth.

The sky above Port Solis disappeared behind an impenetrable, boiling wall of fire, smoke, and thunder.

The concussive pressure was so monstrous that the sea beneath the barrier was pushed down, forming a massive crater in the harbor water before roaring back as forty-foot waves that smashed into the stone docks.

Inside the barrier, the sheer kinetic shock began leaking through the thinning energy field.

The ground beneath Port Solis shook with the violence of a magnitude seven earthquake. Ancient stone towers along the waterfront cracked down their centers, their masonry collapsing into the streets. Roof tiles shattered. The stone quay where Viona stood began to split into webbed fissures, seawater bubbling up through the cracks.

"Ah!" Viona screamed, stumbling as the violent tremor knocked her off her feet.

She fell onto her hands and knees on the wet flags, right beside Phillip’s cooling corpse. Her circlet flew off her head, clattering across the stones.

Above her, the golden light of the Aegis was turning sickly, erratic, and pale.

Web-like fractures—deep, glowing silver cracks—were spreading rapidly across the dome. Where the missiles were detonating, the barrier was no longer smooth; it looked like a frozen lake spiderwebbed with thousands of fractures, groaning under a terrible, crushing weight.

"Belis!" Viona shrieked, terror finally cracking through her divine vanity. "What is happening?! Why is the barrier shaking?!"

Belis didn’t answer. The old man was flat on the stone, his hands clamped over his bleeding ears, screaming in sheer agony as the continuous concussive roar pulverized his senses.

"Ayanokoji!" Viona cried out, her voice shrill and desperate as she looked up at the boy. "Explain this!"

Ayanokoji stood with his legs planted wide, his black spear held low, his lifeless red eyes looking up at the collapsing dome.

"The Aegis was forged to withstand magical warfare, Master," Ayanokoji reported in his unbothered, mechanical monotone. "It has no dampening capability against continuous, high-volume conventional explosions. The sheer physical blunt force is overloading its structural matrix."

He tilted his head slightly as four heavy two-thousand-pound JDAMs dropped out of the high clouds, plunging like black anvils straight into the center of the fracture lines.

KABOOOOOOOOM!

A flash of blinding white light eclipsed the sun.

A fracture line three hundred yards long ripped across the apex of the golden dome, spraying showers of burning, golden crystal shards down into the bay like falling glass.

The divine mana core inside Viona’s chest convulsed.

A sharp, agonizing pain tore through her soul as the barrier’s feedback hammered into her divine body.

"GAHHH!" Viona screamed, coughing up a mouthful of bright golden celestial blood that splattered across the stone quay. She clutched her ribs, her breath coming in ragged, terrified gasps.

The barrier was tethered to her own existence. And the barrier was being battered to pieces by repeated, merciless bombardment.

"It cannot sustain this fire rate," Ayanokoji stated coldly, his voice cutting through the deafening roar of the explosions. "The barrier is cracking from pure physical stress. Total collapse is imminent."

He looked down at his trembling master.

"John Smith does not care how the shield works, Master. He is simply crushing it until it breaks."

High above, through the thinning smoke and the webbed cracks of the dying barrier, the sky was completely dark with another wave of descending fire.

The United States had stopped asking for surrender.

They were simply coming to wipe the city off the map.