Chapter 429 - 404: Hunter and Prey (Part 2)

Chapter 429: Chapter 404: Hunter and Prey (Part 2)

It was as if a Silence Skill had been cast.

Ola froze for a second, subconsciously reaching up to tap the small insect on the back of his neck. ’Is it broken?’

After a full minute and a burst of harsh static, the voice of the King Insect, which rarely ever spoke, resounded in his mind.

[Warning: Wide-area surveillance node "Kirov-3"... life signs have vanished.]

[Searching for backup link... Rerouting signal... Connected to "Kirov-2".]

[Communication restored.]

The instant the signal reconnected, a distorted, panicked shriek nearly shattered Ola’s eardrums.

[Above!! Look above!!]

Ola jerked his head up.

The sky had gone dark.

Something was falling from far above.

It was the Kirov, the all-domain signal relay that had been hovering at an altitude of eight thousand meters!

Its massive, grayish-white gasbag had been sliced cleanly down the middle. Green insect blood mixed with viscera rained down like a foul, torrential storm.

[It’s dead...]

Ola stared rigidly at the bloody rain falling from the sky.

’The King Insect was at eight thousand meters.’

’Who could silently slice a fifty-meter-long behemoth in half at this altitude?’

The answer lay above the clouds.

As the Kirov’s enormous carcass fell, the clouds it disturbed began to churn violently once more.

Hundreds of golden lights pierced through the rifts in the roiling clouds, carrying with them a suffocating sense of pressure.

It was the color of the sun, and the color of death.

Hundreds of figures slowly emerged from the shattered clouds.

They rode on the backs of great beasts with wingspans exceeding fifteen meters—creatures with the heads of eagles and the bodies of horses, covered entirely in golden feathers, each one shimmering with a dazzling light.

Ola recognized them. They were clearly the Empire’s "Radiant Sun" Dragon Eagle Knight Order.

One of the four great aerial cavalry corps of the Empire.

They were like a pantheon of lofty gods, looking down with cold indifference at the grimy flock of "Big Thief Gulls" below.

That gaze wasn’t one for looking at an enemy.

It was the look one gives to poultry waiting for the slaughter.

[Run!!!]

Ola only had time to scream that one word.

The lead Dragon Eagle Knight made his move.

He calmly took a giant greatbow from his back, one as tall as a man.

He nocked an arrow, his movements as smooth as flowing water.

TWANG—!

An armor-piercing heavy arrow, forged from pure steel and covered in etched Runes and blood grooves, streaked toward them.

It was too fast for the eye to follow, wreathed in a white shockwave that tore through the air.

Ola only saw a black line flash before his eyes.

Immediately after, a brief, agonized cry came over the communication channel.

"Ah—"

The sound stopped abruptly.

It was a Knight on the far right of the formation.

He didn’t even have a chance to react.

The terrifying kinetic energy instantly shredded the gull’s fragile bones, blowing the Knight and his mount into a fine mist of blood.

A rain of shredded flesh and broken feathers drifted mournfully down on the wind.

This was a regular army.

This was a legion of the Empire, forged in the meat grinder of war.

With pure strength and skill alone, their first strike was utterly overwhelming.

[Spread out! Don’t bunch up!!]

His eyes wide with fury, Ola barked the command into the channel.

The once-dense wedge formation immediately shattered, its members scattering in all directions.

But the clouds above churned once again.

The hundreds of Dragon Eagle Knights folded their massive wings at almost the same instant, their golden armor forming a single, dazzling sheet of light under the sun. Leveraging their altitude advantage, they plummeted toward the scattering flock below like a brilliant curtain of light, bringing with them a suffocating wind pressure.

[Bank left! Evasive maneuvers!]

Stuka let out a piercing shriek.

Relying on the terrifying explosive power from its biological modifications, it forced itself into a barrel roll so violent it nearly snapped its wings.

A Knight.

At some point, he had ridden his Dragon Eagle in close, his lance viciously thrusting out, propelled by the extreme speed of his dive.

Though the tip of the lance never touched Stuka, the slipstream, focused to a razor’s edge, grazed its belly.

A few feathers were cleanly severed, and a long, thin, bloody line appeared on the skin of its abdomen.

"These monsters!"

Ola gripped the saddle, his heart pounding.

’We can’t win.’

’There’s no way we can win.’

’All our preparations were for ground troops. Whether in skill or equipment, we’re not even in the same league.’

’This is like trying to fight a fully armed Knight with a fire poker.’

[Climb!!]

[To the stratosphere! To the dead zone!!]

’It’s the only way out.’

’Thanks to Velin’s biological modifications, the Big Thief Gulls had a greater tolerance for high altitudes than the Dragon Eagles.’

’If we can just make it to the thin, bone-chilling air at ten thousand meters, these tin cans in their heavy armor won’t be able to follow.’

Stuka beat its wings with everything it had.

The reinforced walls of its ventricles contracted madly, pumping blood throughout its body.

Climbing.

Climbing, heedless of everything else.

Behind them, in the clouds, the golden lightning followed like a shadow.

Comrades fell every second.

The sounds of explosions, agonized screams, and thunderous attacks mingled together.

Seven thousand meters.

The temperature plummeted.

A layer of white frost formed on Ola’s eyebrows.

His lungs began to burn—a sign of oxygen deprivation.

But he didn’t dare stop.

The golden reapers behind him were still closing in.

Eight thousand meters.

Stuka’s movements began to slow.

Its wings were covered in icicles.

Every flap took ten times more effort than usual.

[We’re not done! Move it, dammit!]

Ola felt his partner tremble beneath him; it was the exhaustion of a body pushed to its absolute limit.

HUMMM!

A heavy, earth-yellow halo of light spread out from Ola’s body.

It was a skill unique to Knights—the [Aura of Tenacity].

A warm current washed over the giant bird’s body. The icicles hanging from its wings shattered and fell away, blasted by the surging aura.

Stuka let out a roar unlike any bird.

Its eyes turned crimson, and the muscles all over its body bulged.

Its speed surged.

Eight thousand meters.

Nine thousand meters.

The air was so thin it was nearly impossible to breathe.

The thunderous sounds behind them finally faded into the distance.

The heavily armored Dragon Eagle Knights had been forced to stop their pursuit at the eight-thousand-meter mark.

They couldn’t fly any higher.

Ola lay flat on Stuka’s back, gasping for breath. Every inhalation felt like he was breathing in razor blades.

He looked back.

Through the thin clouds, he could see the golden figures circling below, like a swarm of hornets angered by the loss of their prey.

In this dead, silent airspace, where the air was so thin that every breath tasted of blood, Ola started a roll call in the hive channel.

[Sound off.]

The responses came back sparsely, punctuated by ragged gasps and deathly coughs.

Thanks to his earlier, desperate scream to run, and thanks to everyone not wasting a single second trying to fight back, most of the brothers had made it. They relied on the desperate burst of climbing power from their Big Thief Gulls to punch into the death zone above eight thousand meters, snatching their lives back from the lances of the golden reapers.

But even so, looking at the tattered remains of their once-dense formation—mangled as if it had been chewed on by a dog—Ola’s heart still seized with a violent pang.

Out of a company of one hundred, only sixty-some were able to answer him.

That meant that in just a few short minutes of one-sided slaughter, nearly forty of his brothers had been lost forever below.

’And all for a few worthless decoys.’

’Over thirty lives.’

’Not even a body left.’

"Hector..."

Ola squeezed the name from between his clenched teeth. Bloody saliva trickled from the corner of his mouth, dripping onto Stuka’s white feathers.

"I’ll remember this debt."