As hundreds of lights bore down upon the East’s fliers, Marie led the others to a small building, where the combined headquarters of the Eastern and Southern air forces were situated at. A flurry of controlled chaos was boiling madly inside, with soldiers reporting all kinds of data based on how Ark City’s fliers were approaching.

“OPFOR coming in at 341.”

“OPFOR highest recorded altitude twenty-one thousand metres.”

“OPFOR highest acceleration 50.”

“OPFOR highest…”

Aziz and the others continued to listen in, but some of the numbers were rather shocking. Ark City’s fliers were already shocking to begin with, but over the past few exercises, their improvement had shot through the roof. For instance, they were capable of flying at twenty-one kilometres aboveground, which was pretty much the height ceiling for Lords.

Their speed was equally shocking too; 341 metres a second was far beyond the endurance of a Dynamo’s shell. Aziz knew just how much damage Shells took when travelling at speeds of that level; for him, he wouldn’t be able to hold it for more than a minute.

Yet, Ark City’s forces had started out at speeds of that level.

“It’s another new development,” Marie muttered.

“Yes, ma’am.” One of the officers in the building nodded. “Somehow, they increased their speed by a whole ten percent from the previous exercise, and yet preliminary analysis of their Shell shows little change in the rate of depletion.”

“Have you looked into the reason why?”

“They’re using Arts, I believe. We cannot detect sigil formation, but drawing sigils at such heights requires specialised training, so we can assume that they aren’t doing so,” the officer reported back. “In that case, they must have carved sigils into the skin to allow for such developments.”

Aziz nodded. Arts, the idea of carving sigils into one’s skin to use them as needed, were not new to him; most soldiers in the armed forces worldwide had it too. Although they were weaker, the near-instant cast time, as well as there being no need to draw sigils over and over, had their own advantages.

“Still,” Titania muttered, “what kind of sigil are we talking about here? Is it one that lowers air resistance? Or are these soldiers replenishing their qi reserves with those Arts?”

“Beats me,” Oberon replied. “But this doesn’t exactly look good for the Eastern fliers.”

His words turned a few heads over, but Aziz didn’t think that his former trainer was wrong in the slightest. The Eastern fliers were already firing at them from a stationary position to increase their accuracy, but their shots were literally hitting nothing. Ark City’s troops were weaving and bobbing with a coordination even Thunderbolt couldn’t match up to, which was saying a whole lot, considering that his soldiers were the best the Five Lands had to offer.

“Sudden increase! OPFOR coming in at—”

Her words were drowned out by the sound of small detonations appearing throughout the battle.

Another set of alarms sounded. “Turbulence detected! OPFOR coming in at 350! 360, 370...400!”

As one, Aziz and the others headed over to the speed-measuring station. The sudden spike in speed was too unnatural, and it wasn’t just them who had gone over right now.

“What’s the meaning of this?” One of the East’s bigshots asked. “Why is their speed spiking?”

“We’re talking about an increase in speed by 70 mps!” Another one stormed over. “Are your machines faulty? This spike is unbelievable!”

“Machines are not reporting any errors,” the soldier manning the booth replied. There was a semblance of calm in her words, but her quivering fists didn’t slip by Aziz unnoticed. “Ark City has managed to break the sound barrier.”

“The sound barrier?”

“A concept explained by Champion Octantis. One of her works elaborated on how travelling close to the speed of sound would create an impediment and place stress on the travelling object,” the soldier replied. “Once it’s broken, air resistance acting on the object will drastically drop.”

“Which leads to a spike in speed,” Marie muttered.

“Exactly, ma’am.” The soldier raised a trembling hand. “None of our forces now stand a chance.”

She pointed a finger outside, where shots by all three nations were missing so badly that it felt like Ark City was toying with them. More than once, those streaks of blue light slammed through the stationary formations of the Eastern forces, shattering their Shells just by streaming past them.

“What a one-sided defeat,” an Eastern officer muttered. “Ark City’s going to be a danger after the war.”

Not if you think of them as enemies even before the demon invasion begins, Aziz thought. He couldn’t quite get how those people thought; wouldn’t it be for the best if their allies had insane advantages like this?

He didn’t voice that out, however.

“This exercise…pause it for now.” Marie shook her head. “Get the Assembly fliers and the Eastern ones to stand down. There’s no point conducting any further training with Ark City unless immense improvements occur.”

“Ma’am?”

Everyone turned to Marie.

The Eastern officer who’d spoken earlier turned to her, face blanched. “What’s the meaning of this, Marshal Marie?”

“Exactly what I said. From now on, it’ll be better to have the Eastern forces train alongside the Assembly fliers,” Marie said. “I do not expect either of these two to make drastic improvements in the remaining nine months. Giving them more combat experience with against a fairer opponent would be better.”

“You—”

“I’m just stating facts, Commodore Tenouji. Pardon me if I’m being blunt. The same goes for you, General Ishtar.”

Both men fell silent.

“We’ll have the final round of this exercise be between my First Aerial Division and the crack troops of Ark City,” said Marie. “Relay my words to Ark City. We’ll begin in an hour, or when they feel sufficiently rested.”

Beckoning for Aziz and the others to follow, she returned back to their corner. Marie’s expression was…interesting, to say the least.