Chapter 66 16:
The white corridor passed around him like a blurred stain as he accelerated toward the exterior of the Dorymathos, and unsurprisingly, he had not been the only instructor trying to figure out what was happening.
In the corridors, the rest of his colleagues emerged from their quarters with similar expressions of confusion and alertness.
Some increased the speed of their flight while others ran, and others farther away simply levitated toward the origin of that growing rumble.
Nouwlan recognized several of them, such as Commander Norr-manh, or the instructor Tula, however, none of those present spoke to each other since there was no need.
They had all reached the same conclusion.
That growing vibration, accompanied by that noise, only left one clear meaning.
When Nouwl-an finally crossed the great exit arch and the violet sky of Viltrum unfolded before him, his body stopped dead in its tracks.
His eyes widened from the impression and the air from his lungs seemed to escape through his half-open mouth.
The city, the capital of Viltrum itself, the sacred imperial seat, was in flames.
From his elevated position, around four hundred meters above ground level, Nouwl-an could see the entire extension of the Viltrumite capital stretching as far as his sight could reach.
In every direction, quadrant, and district, fire and smoke rose toward the sky like infernal gateways.
Black and gray columns twisted over the monolithic buildings, staining the immaculate whiteness of the city with a thick crust of soot and ash that seemed repulsive at first sight.
Boooom!
And the explosions did not cease.
Before the eyes of all the nearby instructors and viltrumites, they glimpsed bursts of plasma and molten metal blooming one after another, in a rhythmic succession.
"By Argal..." someone whispered behind nowl-an.
Instructor Tula had stopped beside him, her gray eyes wide as saucers. "What is happening?"
"Why do you ask that?" another asked her, his face reddening with every second. "Isn't it obvious?"
Their eyes followed the smoke toward its origin, detecting those responsible.
The ground, on the outskirts of the Dorymathos, had opened up, revealing a crack several hundreds of meters long that extended in the shape of a crescent around the base of the three great towers.
From inside that fissure, hordes of lithari emerged like furious ants, their armor reflecting the red lights of the explosions.
"Those are... Lithari? By Argall, are those lithari?"
"How... HOW DO THEY DARE!"
As Nouwl-an watched, feeling his anger constantly increase. The other instructors seemed to boil with rage, a few of them shouting in the name of battle.
This was a lack of respect, more than that, it was an indescribable insolence.
a series of siege cannons emerged from underground, their metallic structures rising over hydraulic rails, advancing with a crude and improvised diligence.
But that did not make them any less dangerous.
One of the cannons fired, and an incandescent projectile crossed the sky whistling before impacting one of the residential towers of the western district.
The explosion was massive, a fireball that engulfed the first twenty floors of the building.
Surprisingly, the skyscraper twisted, the glass melted, and the structure began to tilt with a shrill groan.
Nouwlan clenched his fists.
"Insolent damned slaves," he spat, his voice blinded by cold fury.
The instructors around him shared that same fury, if not even more than nowl-an himself.
You could feel their muscles tense, their hearts pounding much stronger, and the psychological sensation of standing before what they were meant to exterminate.
A raw and unfiltered rage, reflected through their eyes, where that murderous cricket that desired the blood of every single one of those responsible for this attack against the sacred planet of the empire hid itself.
Below, in the streets, the viltrumites of the city were already responding with a ruthless fury, extremely painful and merciless.
Nouwlan watched them hurl themselves from the buildings like white projectiles, their bodies tracing trails of death over the lithari hordes.
That deadly advance traced a line of murder, without the attackers being able to offer any kind of resistance, concluding in an explosion of flesh and metal.
A class 20 viltrumite landed in the middle of an enemy formation and his mere landing generated a shockwave that hurled the enemy soldiers through the air like rag dolls.
a female viltrumite whom Nouwl-an recognized as the supervisor of the northern district, pierced through the enemy ranks like a spear, her arms extended to the sides, decapitating half a dozen lithari with each pass.
But the lithari kept coming out, not stopping in the slightest, he did not see a single one wanting to flee.
It seemed that each death of their brothers only filled them with determination, so they intensified the offensive assault unfolding before his eyes.
Those warriors who had lost all sense of self-preservation fired their plasma rifles against the viltrumites, without him having seen a single casualty so far.
Everyone knew it, those shots would barely cause damage, probably a scratch, but they did not hesitate for even a second to unsheathe their combat axes against enemies who could kill them with a single blow, and they did.
They died by the dozens, by the hundreds, by the thousands, but they kept advancing.