Vol 5. Chapter 12: Threat from the Sky
“Wheat Hill City has been occupied with no major resistance by the ground forces that sortied from Fratara Outskirts Base.
The Play-Knight Domain Village has been encircled by the airborne forces from the heavy cargo planes, and we have confirmed the local lord’s surrender.
The Afrasia royal capital is currently executing a neutralization operation with drop forces.
Northend City: Gigantia, Titan, Oceanus, and Coeus have reached the airspace overhead. Airborne drops of combat power are in progress. Within ten minutes, the follow-on heavy cargo plane group is scheduled to begin releasing additional airborne forces.”
At present, Paraiso’s army was conducting a lightning invasion against each city in the United Kingdom of Aphrasia that still maintained relatively functional economic activity.
And from the look of things, that operation was about sixty percent complete.
“It was a little scary seeing a multi-legged tank get cut down, but... well, that level of loss is within assumptions.”
“Yes-affirmative, Commander Ma’am. The destroyed multi-legged tanks are currently being recovered by multi-legged heavy walkers. We are sending the SR-1 Albatross-class flying boat to Jewelry Lake north of the royal capital, so we will airlift them back from there and forward them to analysis.”
The battle footage monitored in real time—when Eve was shown a living human cutting down a multi-legged tank over ten meters long with a single sword, even she got a little excited.
Apparently in this world, if you take it far enough, you can fight gigantic creatures with just one blade.
Naturally, Asahi, watching together through the communication window, had been cheering.
“Commander Sis-ter!! Asahi—Asahi gets to analyze it too, right!? I want to talk directly with the tank’s AI and ask about that slash!”
“Calm down, Asahi. I’ll let you participate properly. I mean, you’re the lead on this. So calm down, okay?”
“WOOHOOO!!”
Ringo lowered the volume appropriately, so the Commander Sis-ter’s eardrums were spared.
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Northend City was the northernmost city in the United Kingdom of Aphrasia.
It /N_o_v_e_l_i_g_h_t/ was both a frontier development base for the north of the country, and in a sense, a city on the very front line.
This city fought monsters every day.
That said, it wasn’t that monsters came charging in toward the city.
Further north from this city lay the massive mountain region called the Northwall Mountains. Even The Tree, which had not possessed satellites before, could not confirm what lay beyond it—the peaks were so vast and continuous that they blocked any view of the far side.
And their height exceeded 10,000 m.
The foothills of those Northwall Mountains were covered in an enormous forest, and it was said that countless monsters lived there.
All the people of Northend City knew was the surface layer of that forest. No one knew what lay deep within.
Even so, merely entering the surface of the demon forest was a life-or-death gamble, but it was a place where you could bring back results worth the risk.
Therefore, Northend City had a culture that valued strength above all else.
If this city had been in a decent location instead of in the middle of wilderness, it might have become the most successful city in the kingdom. But in reality it was just a backwater of a backwater in a rural nation, with almost no interaction with other countries.
If they could have invested a little more into trade, perhaps they might have developed further.
But the location had been bad.
Northend City was a city of adventurers.
Adventurers entered the demon forest, hunted monsters, and brought back their materials.
Food and resources—almost all of it—came from the forest’s bounty.
Those with strength fought powerful monsters and carried home their prey.
Those with knowledge dismantled monsters, gathered plants, and put those materials to use in battle and daily life.
With many materials holding strange properties derived from monsters, Northend City developed to a reasonable degree and maintained a standard of living that let people survive without hardship.
And then, into that city enjoying a certain kind of peace, invaders arrived from a remote height above.
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It appeared suddenly in the southern sky.
Something was floating in the air.
And before they knew it, those things had completely covered the sky.
Naturally, panic erupted across the city.
Monsters were too familiar a threat here.
So they were taken to be gigantic flying monsters.
Even adventurers who challenged the demon forest every day could think only of fleeing in the face of such enormity. They were people who had learned the habit of not challenging monsters they couldn’t beat, not approaching them, and running immediately.
But there was nowhere left to run.
Since the threat had come from the south, fleeing that direction wasn’t an option. Normally, high-threat monsters came from deep within the forest. No one would deliberately run toward the direction monsters came from.
Yet running north meant running straight into the monster nest itself.
So the policy was declared: scatter in all directions, then regroup after the threat passed. The decision was about to be conveyed to the residents.
At that moment, something came down in vast quantities from the gigantic sky creature.
Of course, that was Paraiso’s main combat power—the multi-legged tanks.
The multi-legged tank groups fired their rocket motors and descended to the ground in a ring that surrounded Northend City.
In other words, the residents’ escape routes were sealed.
Even so, clinging to a sliver of hope, the residents split into multiple groups and fled in different directions through multiple gates.
If they stayed inside the city, they would only be trampled.
No one believed they could coexist with monsters, nor that surrender would be accepted—so in that sense it was Paraiso’s miscalculation.
Even so, what Paraiso did was not going to change.
After securing air superiority and confirming upper-air safety, many heavy cargo planes flew in from the southern sky.
The heavy cargo plane group scattered the multi-legged tanks it carried in their bellies, along with enormous numbers of multi-legged ground-attack aircraft.
It was a perfect encirclement that let even an ant escape.
They intimidated the charging groups of adventurers and residents attempting to break through the ring, forcing them to stop, lowering their threat level, then deployed android communicators to urge surrender.
Android communicators were convenient terminals for The Tree, but unlike multi-legged tanks, they were structurally very fragile, and they were not meant to be pushed to the front in actual combat.
Right now, the ones handling mop-up and enemy neutralization were the multi-legged ground-attack aircraft, around two meters long.
With the mass advance of air forces, the microwave power beaming range expanded, and fine-grained power control for many friendly targets became possible, so they decided to introduce large numbers of them into each city’s capture operation.
Android communicators were easy to use, but they were expensive, and the defensive performance of their Brain Units—critical components—was low, so they were not individual units Paraiso wanted to use in real war.
And only after being neutralized did the adventurers and residents finally understand that this invasion wasn’t a monster attack, but something carried out by an enemy power.
Not that understanding helped them.
It wasn’t good news for Paraiso, but here and there, reports came in of multi-legged tanks and multi-legged ground-attack aircraft being damaged or wrecked.
It seemed there were indeed multiple adventurers with notable individual power.
However, the force assigned for the capture of Northend City was 212 multi-legged tanks and 848 multi-legged ground-attack aircraft. In addition, Gigantia, Titan, Oceanus, and Coeus were circling overhead as air power, while numerous drones were being launched simultaneously.
There were also multiple multi-legged tanks held on airborne standby by transport drones as reserve power, so even if the adventurers managed to shave off some units, overall combat power was not diminished in the slightest.
A group of android communicators, escorted by multi-legged tanks, multi-legged ground-attack aircraft, and anti-personnel drones, stepped inside Northend City’s walls.
A group that had given up on escape was barricaded inside the lord’s manor.
Calling on that group to surrender was the role of the android communicators.
Eventually, the last remaining resisting group was neutralized.
And the United Kingdom of Aphrasia was completely absorbed into Paraiso’s sphere.
High above Northend City, the gigantic fortress in the sky was slowly circling.
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“Emergency.
Unidentified object detected.
Gigantia battle group has transitioned to Condition One Battle Stations.
Escort fighters, scramble.
Begin launch prep for all fighters.
Unidentified object, eleven o’clock.
Altitude 1,200 m, ascending.
Estimated length: 100 m or more.
Closing on the course of Ship Two, Oceanus, at a speed of over 600 km/h.”