Chapter 134: Shattering of the Sky

High above Port Solis, the final volley of heavy, two-thousand-pound bunker-buster bombs slammed square into the glowing apex of the Aegis. The golden dome, webbed with miles of brilliant white fractures, groaned with a sound like grinding tectonic plates.

Then came the snap.

CRACK-SHATTER!

It was an ear-splitting, universe-rending sound that blew out the eardrums of every living soul within five leagues. The three-hundred-year-old barrier shattered into millions of jagged, crystalline fragments of golden light. For three seconds, a glittering, beautiful rain of dying mana fell over the city.

Then the real horror began.

Without the golden shell to deflect the incoming ordnance, the full, unbridled fury of the United States Navy and Air Force crashed down upon Port Solis with zero resistance.

There were no troop transports landing on the beaches. There were no landing crafts dropping ramps into the surf. The Americans had zero intention of risking a single boot on hostile stone. Instead, they unleashed the full, terrifying reality of modern standoff doctrine: absolute destruction delivered purely from beyond the horizon.

Five miles out at sea, the guided-missile cruiser USS Bunker Hill and the destroyers Winston S. Churchill, Carney, and The Sullivans brought their Mark 45 five-inch naval guns into rapid, automated continuous fire missions. The automated autoloaders slammed seventy-pound high-explosive fragmentation shells into the breeches every three seconds, churning the horizon into an unbroken wall of flame.

THOOM! THOOM! THOOM! THOOM!

The naval bombardment struck the waterfront like an erupting volcano. The ancient stone warehouses, timber wharves, and granary docks were erased in towering geysers of pulverized rock, black mud, and roaring fire. Shells with delayed-action fuses plunged deep into the foundations of five-story stone mansions belonging to the imperial nobility, detonating from within and causing entire avenues of grand architecture to collapse into smoking heaps of rubble.

Behind the harbor keep, the high temple district—a glittering complex of ivory pillars, vaulted marble ceilings, and golden statues—was struck by an entire coordinated strike package of precision-guided Tomahawk cruise missiles.

KER-BLAM! KABOOM!

The main dome of the Grand Basilica took three direct hits in the exact same footprint. Ten thousand tons of blessed marble collapsed inward, crushing hundreds of praying priests, acolytes, and fleeing noble families who had gathered beneath the altar seeking divine sanctuary. The shockwaves were so monstrous that stained-glass windows two miles away were blasted into millions of lethal flying needles, shredding the crowds of screaming civilians running blindly through the cobblestone streets.

Above the clouds, two B-1B Lancer strategic bombers swept over the coastal ridgeline at high subsonic speed, their heavy bomb bay doors hanging wide open.

They did not drop single precision bombs. Flying at thirty thousand feet, completely untouchable by any arrow or spell, they carpeted the primary military barracks, administrative keeps, and central squares with five-hundred-pound unguided iron bombs and high-density cluster munitions.

WHISTLE-CRASH! BOOM-BOOM-BOOM-BOOM!

A continuous, unbroken carpet of fiery detonations tore through the lower city. The market square, packed with thousands of terrified refugees trying to push toward the northern mountain roads, disappeared inside a boiling wall of orange flame and suffocating black smoke. Wooden wagons carrying children, stone bakeries, and enchanted fountains were vaporized in microseconds. The overpressure wave stripped the roofs off hundreds of houses, hurling horse-drawn carriages through the air like twigs and turning ordinary cobblestones into lethal supersonic shrapnel that cut down fleeing families in rows.

Inside the palace courtyard, Goddess Viona lay on her side in the dirt, her body convulsing with violent, agonized spasms.

"AAGHHH!" she shrieked, clawing at her own throat.

The Aegis was tied directly to her divine core. When the massive kinetic overpressure crushed the dome, the magical backlash had struck her soul like a physical hammer. Golden celestial blood poured from her nose, mouth, and tear ducts, pooling sickeningly in the dust. Her divine mana was entirely scrambled, her senses swimming in a deafening red haze.

"Lady Viona! Get up! Please, get up!" Prime Minister Belis wept, scrambling across the quaking stone flags. Blood ran down both sides of his face from his ruptured eardrums, but he threw his frail body over the goddess to shield her from the falling stone splinters.

A shadow fell over the courtyard.

Two carrier-based F/A-18F Super Hornets shrieked over the harbor at Mach 1.4, barely a thousand feet above the burning towers. The supersonic sonic boom blew the ceramic roof tiles off the royal pavilion, instantly deafening the few surviving guards.

From the inner barracks, the surviving summoned heroes stumbled out onto the cracked flagstones, their dark Torment Bands pulsing with erratic, panicked crimson light.

Among them was Daiki, the A-rank Inferno Sorcerer, his hands still heavily bandaged from the earlier magical backfire; Rena, the Tempest Caller; and Shin, the Gravity Weaver, his face pale and eyes wild with terror. Alongside them stood seven other summoned classmates—talented warriors and mages who had been hailed as invincible champions of the empire.

"Attack!" Viona gasped from the dirt, her bloody fingernails digging into Belis’s shoulder. "Kill the iron birds! Shoot them down! Use your ultimate spells!"

Daiki threw his hands forward, screaming through the pain as two crimson magic circles spun to life before his palms. "Infernal Dragon’s Breath—"

He never finished the chant.

Five miles out over the water, the automated radar array of the Bunker Hill detected the massive thermal and mana spike on the terrace. The ship’s fire control computer instantly cued a GPS-guided five-inch extended-range artillery round directly onto the coordinates.

BOOM!

The shell roared down from the sky at Mach 3, impacting dead-center on the flagstone directly between Daiki’s feet.

The boy’s reinforced leather armor and defensive mana shield were completely useless against seventy pounds of high-grade military explosive detonating at point-blank range. Daiki’s body was instantly vaporized into a crimson mist of shredded meat and shattered bone. The magic circle collapsed with a hollow pop, and a scorching blast of heat scorched the surrounding pillars black.

"DAIKI!" Rena shrieked, terror entirely breaking through the mental fog of her Torment Band.

She turned to run toward the palace archway, her hands gathering wind mana to form a desperate defensive cyclone.

Before her spell could reach full pressure, a high-explosive five-inch shell fired from the USS Carney crashed through the roof of the archway right above her.

KABOOM!

Fifty tons of solid granite masonry and carved imperial marble collapsed down like a crushing guillotine. Rena was completely buried beneath the roaring avalanche of rock, her screams instantly silenced as the stone slammed down onto the courtyard floor.

Shin, the Gravity Weaver, backed away into the center of the terrace, tears streaming down his face, raising his wooden focus to erect a desperate localized black hole toward the sky.

An AGM-88 HARM missile, fired from an F/A-18F miles away, locked onto the dense electromagnetic distortion created by the gravity spell. The high-speed missile plunged vertically through the smoke like a falling spear.

KER-THUMP!

The warhead detonated. The blast wave erased the boy entirely, leaving only a scorched, black crater in the center of the flagstones and a drifting cloud of gray ash.

Within ninety seconds of the barrier’s collapse, three A-rank and S-rank heroes—champions who had been trained to fight a demon lord forces—were slaughtered like stray animals in an open field, without ever touching a single enemy soldier.