Chapter 353 - 354: Just the Archangel Passing By

Chapter 353: Chapter 354: Just the Archangel Passing By

Yzak’s starlit road to glory vanished in an instant.

The moment the Strike appeared, every ZAFT pilot on this side shuddered.

Yzak himself broke out in a cold sweat.

They were right in the middle of the enemy fleet.

Sure, mowing everyone down here had felt great, but Yzak knew very well that he could not handle the Strike alone.

At the very least, he would need Dearka and Nicol with him, all three attacking together.

If this were an open battlefield, Yzak might have been willing to stake his honor on a one-on-one duel.

But they were in the middle of the enemy fleet!

The Strike ignored Duel and turned toward the Archangel instead.

Seeing that, Yzak actually felt himself relax a little.

"Nani, the Strike ran away?! What do you mean a lot of people died?!" Sutherland aboard the Doolittle, on the other hand, flew into a rage when he heard that the Strike was leaving. "Mark the Archangel and the Strike as enemies too!"

[???]

[What kind of move is that?]

[I’ve seen ridiculous things before, but never anything this ridiculous]

[Man thinks he doesn’t have enough enemies already]

[Feels like Blue Cosmos and the regular Earth Alliance are enemies too, huh?]

[God-tier decision-making]

[I’m just saying, if they let the Archangel and the Strike leave, they could probably actually win]

[Even if they can’t win, they can still retreat]

[You kidding? Yzak is really strong too, okay?]

[From the last shot, Yzak’s Duel only has about a third of its power left. He’s going to have to retreat soon]

[Holy crap, you’re right]

[Once the Gundams retreat, I think the Earth Alliance can still get away without much trouble. Winning is another matter, though. Le Creuset’s CGUE hasn’t even entered the fight yet]

"What is this?!"

Yzak had absolutely no idea that his status as "third-best in the world" had already turned him into half a comedian in the audience’s eyes.

Just then, he suddenly received a signal on an encrypted frequency.

And it was coming from the Strike right next to him.

"The Strike!"

Yzak was furious, but he still opened the channel.

"...Yzak."

It was Athrun’s voice.

"Athrun!"

Yzak roared Athrun’s name.

"I’m aboard the Strike. The Strike and the Archangel will withdraw from this battle. After that, I’ll go meet up with Lacus..."

If Sutherland refused to treat the Archangel as one of his own, then naturally the Archangel was not going to be polite either.

Besides, Murrue had always considered herself a member of the Earth Alliance’s Eighth Fleet, serving under Rear Admiral Halberton.

Blue Cosmos?

They could get lost!

"Ah!" A savage grin spread across Yzak’s face.

If the Strike and Long Legs were not enemies, then ZAFT was guaranteed to win this time!

[Grass (a type of exclamation), the second he heard the Archangel was getting out of here, his voice shot up an octave]

[I’m dying, the Archangel’s bridge got blown up and the headless general can still scare ZAFT]

[Something with no head can still move. Seriously, that’s terrifying, okay?]

[Grass (a type of exclamation), it really is]

[Lmao, that actually is pretty horrifying]

[??? I don’t get it]

[Imagine a huge muscular guy in real life with no head who can still move. How would you feel?]

[Grass (a type of exclamation), that’s freaking scary]

With the Archangel’s bridge gone, it was basically like a person losing their head.

Yet even so, the Archangel could still turn and maneuver. That was freaking terrifying.

With the Archangel and Strike no longer holding them back, ZAFT’s offensive suddenly seemed to become even fiercer.

"Damn it, why did ZAFT’s attack suddenly change?!" Sutherland could not understand at all why things had turned out this way.

Freed from all restraint, Duel Gundam went all out. The Moebius units charging Duel could forget about trading five for one. Before Duel’s battery ran dry, even throwing ten or twenty Moebiuses at it might not be enough to bring it down.

And that was not even the real nightmare.

Dearka’s Buster Gundam had been freed from its restraints too.

Yzak no longer needed covering fire, which also meant Dearka had been unleashed.

Buster Gundam deployed its 350mm railgun once again.

At that moment, three Drake-class escort ships were trying to reform their formation and support the Doolittle.

But in Dearka’s eyes, they could not have made better targets.

"Here’s a present for you, Blue Cosmos!"

The instant the targeting reticle locked on, Dearka pulled the trigger. An ultra-long-range armor-piercing round punched through the first warship’s engine, and the ensuing explosion swallowed the ship whole.

Then came the second shot, and the third.

Dearka fired three shots in rapid succession. Once the volley was over, however, the railgun temporarily went offline and became unusable.

That was fine. Dearka had already finished the most important part of his job. He pulled out his beam rifle and continued fighting.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Three balls of fire flashed in front of the Doolittle.

Three escort ships had just been blown apart with three shots.

"Disengage! Retreat!"

Sutherland shouted, his voice trembling.

"But our allies are still fighting!" his deputy exclaimed, eyes wide.

"Don’t you understand? We’ve already lost! At the very least, we have to get out of here!"

The Doolittle began trying to turn.

"Trying to run?"

Yzak was the first to notice.

"Leave this to me!" Nicol’s voice suddenly sounded over the encrypted channel. Concealed by the Mirage Colloid System, Blitz Gundam appeared like a ghost directly above the Doolittle.

After being discovered the first time, Nicol had immediately withdrawn from the battlefield.

But Blue Cosmos had soon fallen into chaos, so after "vanishing" for a while, Nicol had returned to the battlefield under Mirage Colloid.

And now that Athrun no longer needed him to rendezvous or provide support, well... it was time to fight!

Unlike the Archangel with its state-of-the-art Laminated Armor, an Agamemnon-class ship did not have armor nearly as good.

And Blitz’s targets were the Agamemnon’s turrets.

The Agamemnon-class carried relatively few weapons, but it was equipped with two of the most powerful ship-mounted weapons available—the Gottfried Mk.71 225cm Dual High-Energy Beam Cannons.

However, the Gottfried cannons had neither armored turret protection nor secondary-gun defenses. In other words, once Blitz got close, those two powerful cannons did not even have the ability to fight back!

After Blitz Gundam directly blasted both Gottfried cannons apart, the Doolittle had effectively been defanged.

With no carrier craft and no weapons, the Doolittle had become nothing more than a drifting target.

But Duel had already reached the other side and was continuously firing on the Doolittle.

"Port sections three through seven have been completely destroyed!"

The Doolittle’s bridge was swallowed by the red glow of warning lights.

The shockwave threw Sutherland to the deck, sharp shards of glass embedded in the right side of his face.

"How?! How did this happen?!"

The lights representing friendly units went dark one after another as ZAFT’s blade pierced straight through the heart of the fleet.

Blitz, Duel, Buster, followed by even more GINNs.

At last, amid a thunderous roar, the Doolittle exploded completely and turned into dust in space.

The flash of the explosion seemed to reflect across Le Creuset’s white mask.

"Notify all units. Switch to free-hunt mode."

The final massacre... had begun.