Chapter 88: Interlude to the Final War

Amphere Harrison

The dark skies mad the atmosphere more eerie and creepier than usual. The southern winds are made out of cold snowy breeze which adds the chill on my spine. I’m seriously shivering. Maybe I should return back to the deck after a couple of minutes.

S.S. Liberty is all the ship we can have to enter the said demonic land in order to become stealthy. But we’re not completely short of firepower. We have fifteen dragon knights, including one general, one pentagram knight, one pseudo-general, and one (fake) hero. Aside from our regular crew members and our powerful dragonoids, Richard and Kyrie decided to go with us. They said that they will be of use even though they don’t have a knight. Richard still has portals, albeit weaker. And Kyrie can somehow fight using her weakened Chaos Claws.

Also we have Exceria, who is continuously praying right now in the chapel, singing the Song of the Saint to protect us from harm. I don’t know what that song can do, so we’ll see in the upcoming fight. Since I can’t use Vesryn Pulse on her for this week, that’s the least she can do.

Suddenly, the landscape started to differ. There were no more snow on the ground, and the trees appeared to be withered. Some other trees are being burnt eternally by fire, and these trees have glowing symbols carved in it. It looks like three sixes formed in circles, kinda like those magatama beads.

As we venture deeper in this dead forest, the red moon appears to be bigger. “Look at the bloodshot moon. Isn’t it bigger than usual? I have never seen any phenomena like it.” One of the knights said.

But then Sherman countered the statement. “That’s not the moon. The moons are over there.” He pointed out to the far west where the two little planets of Alterra were. They appear so small compared to the one we have in front.

“Necross Ascension.” Cleru muttered. “That’s the Underworld, as Necross said. Since war has been going on in different parts of the world, the murder death counts are continuously raising, which makes the Underworld closer to this planet. We don’t have a way to monitor all the death counts starting from the last decade or what year did Dragunov started counting. That is why we should prevent any casualty to any sides as possible.”

S.S. Liberty is armed by special cannon shells that give off tranquilizer gas once it explodes. Our machine guns are also equipped with sleeper bullets that should pacify normal goons like Arcadians. Our objective here is to capture Nox and Dragunov if possible. But I doubt we can apprehend Nox at all since he’s the big bad guy. That guy is seriously the ambassador of the Underworld, Necross.

We had the Pentagram Knight Remuel to lead the airship since his Gadget Dragon has a heartbeat sensor. By the way, Gadget Dragons are just four meters in height, and they completely look like baby versions of Futuretech Dragons. They are mostly white, but this Gadget Dragon has its thin metal plates in gray. Instead of wings, they use boosters to fly.

“Guys.” Remuel talked via communicator. “I detect multiple hearbeats coming from twelve o’clock. Probably Arcadians.”

“Get back up here so that we can use our camouflage.” General Holster commanded.

When the Gadget Dragon and its knight entered back to the ship, Cleru immediately stabbed the floor with his rainbow scimitar. I have heard that one of Rainbow Dragon’s ability is to control light refraction, which can affect the visibility of an object. Nothing happens from the inside, but I’m sure, the airship is adapting the outside colors like a chameleon right now.

“Airi, begin hacking their security systems.” I commanded my dragonoid. “And also, compute the number of hostiles in the vicinity.”

“Totally!” Airi said cheerfully. Her scarlet hair started rising upwards, and the V symbol on her forehead made its appearance once again. She activated the Eye of Deus (Or borrowed, since I’m the original source of that power) and then closed her eyes. “Security system has been totally breached without problems. Estimated hostiles are about 31,253 dragonoids.”

“Wow, you’re so gifted when it comes to this!” Mark Anthony praised us. “How did you do it?”

I don’t want to answer. We’re pretty much veteran on these kind of things because we used to sabotage facilities, power plants, and science labs when we were terrorists. The Empire’s security systems can be broken by Airi with no sweat, so breaking a terrorist’s technologies are not even considered a warm-up to us.

We proceeded to hover undetected. We can see from above those dragonoid terrorist who are completely alert. It seems that they are ready for battle anytime and anywhere. It seems logical that there’s a lot of Arcadians here because we just busted all their safe houses and secret bases. The Demonic Cathedral should be their last haven as for the moment.

Or maybe they’re waiting for us. Dragunov is always one mile ahead of us after all.

Remuel, with his Gadget Dragonoid came to the deck and stared me and Airi with amazement. “Chimeratech Dragons are sure the peak of the robotic dragon category! What else can you do?”

“W-Well…” Airi rubbed her cheeks. “I can totally go deeper than the Marianas web and even give you unlimited Bitcoins, I can totally access the Empire’s quantum computers and browse the top secret archives, and control genetic programming even for bionic compounds such as cyborgs. That is why I’m the master of security penetrations! Totally! But my knight is the god of other kind of penetration-Uwah!”

I immediately karate chopped her head before she could reveal our most confidential part of our life. This idiot is too much blabby. I’m curious about her talking about the deepest part of the web though.

Suddenly, the airship shook as if it bumped a giant iceberg. But this isn’t titanic, and there are no floating icebergs around…We have been stopped by an unseeable force! It’s too bad that we can already see the gigantic cathedral in the horizon.

The Demonic Cathedral is about eighty-meters tall, and five hundred meters wide, which makes us really doubt how the heck does satellite can’t capture some of this place’s images or even found in a GPS. The cathedral is surrounded by seven-meter demon dragon statues that look like Light Bringer Dragons that appears whenever a man eats those disgusting black hearts. There’s no longer snow on the ground where the cathedral is. Instead, it seems to be floating steadily in a river of blood.

“There seems to be some kind of barrier blocking our way.” General Holster grinned. “We’ll have to break through and penetrate it, right Amphere?”

For Pete’s sake, stop riding Airi’s green jokes.

Before any of us activated our Vesryn Pulses, we had our airship fire smoke grenades that contain sleeping gas. The terrorist goons completely lost their consciousness before they even hit the ground. Their automatic defenses have been completely turned off by Airi, so we encountered little or no resistance.

“Activating Vesryn Pulse!” All of us knights shouted as soon as we went up the surface. The fifteen dragon knights soared on the skies, readying their long range attack! Photon balls, gigantic swords, earth projectiles, lightning surges, gigantic slob of bubblegum, rainbow-colored fireballs and others made their way, shattering the force field like glass.

But before the airship could enter inside, several dark portals emerged. There’s about a hundred of them. Each of them revealed rotten dragons of various types and knights who all looks like a zombie, holding a black beating heart!

And the final war will now start!