Chapter 997: Missiles
"Sign it already. This deal won’t last forever. No hidden strings, I promise."
Victor watched as Marcus hesitated, his expression cycling through uncertainty, reluctance, and something close to resignation. After a long moment, Marcus finally exhaled, shoulders slumping as if a weight had been lifted.
"Haah... thank you," he said quietly, and this time the gratitude in his voice was unmistakable.
Victor chuckled and reached out, patting him on the shoulder. "Relax. We’re brothers in arms now. There’s nothing to thank me for."
Marcus nodded, but his eyes were red, like he was fighting back something stronger than nerves. For a brief moment, he looked as though he might actually cry. He regretted ever opposing the Alliance, even though he knew that if he were given the chance to go back, he would probably make the same choices again.
Back then, everyone had been scrambling to dominate their own region. The other three regions were clean and simple, each ruled by a single massive guild. Only the Northern Frontier Region was different, fractured into three powers, three main cities, and three factions constantly watching one another. Marcus had lived in a state of constant tension, always afraid that the Alliance would push north and swallow Springhaven whole.
For years, he had been little more than a puppet of the Steele Consortium, bound by contracts, stripped of freedom, and unable to find any real joy in the game. Blade Syndicate had survived countless titles and iterations, weathering rise after rise and fall after fall, until Ethereal arrived and changed everything.
Ethereal was supposed to be their next golden age. Instead, it became the wall they could not climb.
In every MMO before this, Blade Syndicate had been untouchable, first on the server and feared by everyone else. Now they were sharing a region with the Druid God’s Renegade Alliance, and for two long years they had been beaten down again and again. They were earning more money than ever, thanks to Ethereal’s massive global player base that dwarfed any previous game, but pride and dominance were another matter entirely.
Now they were abandoning the Northern Frontier Region, formally allying with the Alliance and accepting the role of a vassal guild. The era when Blade Syndicate could stand tall on its own was over.
Marcus’s thoughts churned as he stared at the contract. Blade Syndicate was a profit-driven alliance, and leadership had eventually fallen into his hands. He had truly believed Ethereal would be his chance to take it even further. Instead, he was bowing his head, and the realization stung more than he liked to admit.
Still, the investors backing him only cared about one thing: money. They had no interest in guild politics or pride. As long as the profits kept flowing, they would remain silent. And with the Druid God offering such favorable terms, Marcus knew he would gain more leverage than he had ever had before.
This decision was his alone. He had paid the Steele Consortium’s penalty entirely out of his own pocket, without informing the investors. Even if the profit margins improved under the Alliance, he was now irrevocably tied to them.
Everything hinged on this war.
If the Alliance lost, he was finished. Blade Syndicate would be stripped from his control, and he would be discarded like a failed investment. But if the Alliance won, he could walk back with his head held high, untouchable and unquestioned.
It was a gamble, pure and simple, and he was betting on his old rival being just as unstoppable as ever.
He signed the contract. The system confirmed it instantly, the agreement notarized and sealed.
"Take your people back," Victor said, relaying Ethan’s instructions. "Stay clear of the battlefield and don’t get caught in the crossfire. When we need you, we’ll call."
Marcus nodded without argument. Victor turned and flew back toward the massive war machine looming over the battlefield.
—
"Coalition army detected, ten kilometers out."
"Five kilometers."
"They’re deploying flying mounts. Estimated count... one hundred thousand."
"What do we do? Should we—"
Reports flooded in one after another, overlapping with rising tension. Victor suggested deploying their own flying war mounts to intercept, but Ethan shook his head without hesitation. Those mounts were his trump card, and he had no intention of exposing them yet.
"They’re just regular flying mounts," Ethan said calmly. "Their only option is to drop bombs from above."
"That’s still dangerous," someone argued. "A hundred thousand mounts dropping explosives is a massive area attack. Even basic bombs will cause heavy casualties. If we don’t shoot them down, they’ll keep harassing us."
As if to underscore the point, a dark cloud appeared on the horizon, a dense, ominous mass advancing steadily toward the Alliance’s formation. Despite the approaching threat, Ethan still hadn’t ordered the column to halt.
Without a dedicated countermeasure, the conventional response would have been to dig in, shield tanks forming a defensive wall while marksmen and ranged classes fired upward. Regular flying mounts weren’t particularly agile, and skilled ranged attackers could dismount riders with enough focus and luck.
But if those had been flying war mounts, it would have been a different story entirely. They would have flown higher, beyond effective attack range, and unleashed long-range bombardments of their own. A bonded flying war mount was essentially a bomber platform, granting complete air superiority and turning everything on the ground into easy prey. If war mounts were allowed in dungeons, ground bosses would not stand a chance.
The dark mass of mounts drew closer, yet the Alliance troops continued marching on foot, formation unbroken and orders unchanged. Leo grew visibly anxious, repeatedly glancing back toward the deck of the war machine.
"What is the boss thinking?" he muttered. "One bombing run and we lose thousands."
The tension was palpable, but discipline held. When the flying mounts closed to within five hundred meters of the vanguard, Ethan finally turned his head.
"Mad Engineer," he said evenly. "Showtime."
Every gaze snapped toward the Mad Engineer, who grimaced immediately. "Me again..." he grumbled under his breath.
"Don’t play dumb," Ethan replied. "I know you installed anti-air systems on this thing."
The Mad Engineer’s eyes widened. "How... how do you even know that?"
"Just do it," Ethan said, waving him off.
As for how he knew, Ethan kept that to himself. Some lessons only had to be learned once.
With a pained expression, the Mad Engineer flipped open a control panel and entered a precise sequence of commands. Panels along both sides of the war machine snapped open with a heavy clatter, revealing row after row of extended launch tubes, each one packed with gleaming warheads.
"You’re actually firing them?" the Mad Engineer said weakly. "That’s at least fifty thousand gold gone in a single volley."
He winced at the thought of all those bright orange coins vanishing in an instant. His demonic fel war machine was terrifyingly powerful, but it was also a bottomless pit for money.
"Don’t lecture me about gold," Ethan replied flatly. "I have more than I know what to do with. Fire it, or I’ll personally throw you off this deck."
Ethan didn’t even sound threatening. He didn’t need to.
The Mad Engineer sighed deeply. "Fine... it’s not my money anyway."
Warning alarms blared as he pressed the final button.
The launch tubes ignited, and exactly one hundred missiles screamed into the sky. They didn’t travel far before detonating mid-air, each warhead splitting apart. Inside every missile were at least a thousand micro-warheads, each no larger than a bullet, scattering outward in a widening storm.
SWOOSH. SWOOSH SWOOSH.