Chapter 157: Chapter 157: The Iron Armada
Chapter 157: The Iron Armada
The clouds above the Jagged Peaks parted not from the wind, but from the sheer mechanical force of the Velkrath Imperium.
I stood at the prow of the flagship, the Aegis Prime. It was a colossal, heavily armored steampunk gunship.
Four massive runic propellers kept the black iron hull suspended in the air, while thick steam stacks vented pure kinetic exhaust into the freezing mountain sky.
Flanking my flagship were a dozen smaller artillery cruisers, their hulls bristling with heavy, auto-loading mana cannons.
Down below, nestled in a deep, treacherous valley, was the Orc Purist war camp. It was a primitive sprawl of animal skin tents, wooden barricades, and crude fighting pits.
"They thought the mountains would hide them," Silas noted coldly. The Chief Inquisitor stood beside me on the deck, looking down through a brass spyglass.
"They have no anti-air defenses. Just bows and thrown spears."
I looked down at the camp through my glowing red visor. I saw the massive, ancient Orc Warlord, Arutus Bloodfang, rushing out of his tent.
I saw the Zenith Academy Remnants scrambling to cast protective wards. They had destroyed my train.
They had killed my people. Now, they were going to understand the true disparity between a primitive tribe and an industrialized superpower.
"Rolf," I commanded over the roar of the propellers.
"Open the ports."
"Weapons free!" Rolf howled into the communication tube.
The entire fleet shuddered as the massive iron ports along the hulls slammed open.
Dozens of heavy mana cannons extended into the open air, locking their targeting runes onto the primitive camp below.
"Burn it to the mud," I ordered.
The sky violently erupted.
A deafening barrage of concentrated kinetic and explosive artillery rained down upon the valley. The devastation was absolute.
Wooden barricades splintered into dust. Animal skin tents vanished in blinding flashes of blue and orange fire.
The sheer concussive force of the bombardment triggered massive avalanches along the gorge walls, burying half the camp in seconds.
The Purists shrieked in terror, their primitive weapons completely useless against a threat they could not even reach.
After two full minutes of apocalyptic bombardment, I raised my hand. The cannons immediately ceased firing. The valley was nothing but a smoking, cratered ruin.
"Drop," I commanded.
I did not wait for the airship to land. I vaulted directly over the iron railing, plummeting hundreds of feet into the burning valley. Rolf and Kaelith dove immediately after me.
CRASH.
My heavy brass boots slammed into the center of the ruined camp, shattering the frozen earth.
Before the dust could even settle, a massive wall of pitch black necrotic magic expanded across the clearing.
The surviving Zenith Remnants had gathered in a tight circle, funneling all their remaining mana into a forbidden barrier spell to protect Arutus and the surviving Orcs.
"Hold the line!" a desperate human scholar screamed, his robes scorched and bloody. "The Warlord must survive!"
"Shields are useless against the Forge!" Rolf roared.
The Silver Colossus hit the ground running. His symbiotic silver armor pulsed with overwhelming kinetic hunger.
He did not use an axe or a spell. He threw his massive, armored body directly into the dark magic barrier.
CRACK.
Rolf’s armor instantly absorbed the kinetic feedback of the impact, amplifying his strength tenfold.
He drove his silver gauntlets into the center of the necrotic shield and violently ripped his arms outward. The barrier shattered like cheap glass, exposing the terrified scholars.
The human mages desperately raised their wands to cast counter spells, but they never got the chance.
The shadows cast by the burning tents suddenly came to life. Kaelith materialized silently directly behind the lead scholar.
The Noctharion Empress did not use daggers. Her hands were coated in the pure, starry darkness of the Law of the Absolute Void.
She simply tapped the back of the scholar’s neck. The matter erasing void instantly deleted his vocal cords and spinal column. He dropped silently to the dirt.
Kaelith became a blur of absolute eradication. She blinked from shadow to shadow, perfectly syncing with Rolf’s brutal frontline assault.
Every time Rolf shattered a secondary ward, Kaelith was already inside their guard, silencing the mages with terrifying, surgical precision.
I ignored the slaughter. I walked straight through the burning wreckage, my eyes locked on the center of the camp.
Arutus Bloodfang stood waiting for me.
The ancient Warlord was bleeding from a dozen shrapnel wounds, but he did not look afraid.
He gripped his colossal, rusted executioner’s sword with both hands. His old Orc eyes burned with pure, fanatical hatred.
"You bring flying metal ships to do your killing, Goblin?" Arutus spat, his deep voice carrying over the crackling fires.
"You put a collar on your own neck. You wear their tailored coats and build their iron roads. You are a slave to human machines."
I did not draw a weapon. I continued walking toward him, my heavy S-Grade Hive Chitin armor absorbing the ambient heat of the burning camp.
"And you are a dying relic of the mud," I rumbled, my voice projecting with the heavy, suffocating weight of my Domination Aura.
"You think rolling in the dirt makes you strong. The world is moving forward, Arutus. You will either lay track for the future, or you will be crushed beneath it."
"I will carve the future from your mechanical corpse!" Arutus roared.
He lunged forward with surprising, primal speed. He swung the massive executioner’s sword in a devastating downward arc, putting the entire weight of his heavy, muscular frame behind the strike.
I simply raised my left hand.
CLANG.
I caught the rusted blade directly in my brass palm.
The kinetic shockwave buckled the ground beneath my boots, but my mechanical arm did not even flinch.
My 4,100 Aegis Rating completely nullified his physical strength.
Arutus gasped, his eyes widening as he tried to pull the sword free. He could not move it an inch.
"Your era is over," I stated coldly.
I ignited my core. A small, hyper concentrated spark of the Flame of Death flared from my gauntlet directly onto the rusted steel of his weapon.
The black and crimson fire did not just melt the blade.
It actively consumed the metal, rapidly eating its way down the length of the sword toward his hands.
Arutus yelled in shock, violently dropping the hilt before the conceptual fire could touch his flesh.
He stumbled backward, falling heavily onto the frozen dirt. He was completely disarmed. His camp was destroyed.
His Zenith allies were dead.
I took a slow, heavy step forward, my right fist clenching as the hydraulic pistons in my arm hissed.
Arutus knew he was dead. Panic finally broke through his fanatical exterior.
He reached desperately into his fur tunic and pulled out a jagged, pitch black scroll covered in Zenith teleportation runes.
It was a highly illegal spatial tear scroll.
I could have stopped him. My reaction speed was vastly superior to his.
A single burst from my boot thrusters would have allowed me to crush his skull before he could even channel his mana into the parchment.
But my red visor scanned the scroll. I scanned the remaining crates of forbidden magic in the ruined camp.
A Warlord who hated magic did not magically acquire illegal Zenith artifacts on his own.
Someone with deep pockets, massive resources, and political connections was intentionally funding these primitive terrorists.
Killing Arutus now would be cutting off a single weed while leaving the roots entirely intact.
I intentionally relaxed my muscles. I halted my forward momentum for exactly half a second.
DING!
[System Alert: Target Marked.]
[Sovereign’s Mark Applied: You have imprinted a microscopic trace of your Domination Aura onto the target’s soul. Tracking range is now limitless.]
Arutus ripped the black scroll in half.
A violent, jagged spatial tear ripped open in the air behind him.
The vacuum of the portal forcefully sucked the Warlord backward into the void. He locked eyes with me one final time before the spatial tear violently snapped shut, leaving nothing but a cloud of ozone and ash.
"Alpha!" Rolf shouted, running up beside me with his silver claws dripping with human blood.
"He tore a portal! He got away!"
Kaelith emerged from a shadow near the collapsed barrier, her twilight eyes narrowing at the empty space where the Warlord had been sitting.
"You missed."
"I never miss," I replied softly, dismissing the black fire from my hand.
I turned back to the smoldering ruins of the camp.
The Zenith Remnants were completely wiped out, and the Orc Purist faction was broken.
"Arutus is a scared, beaten dog," I explained, looking at my two Vanguard Generals.
"And a beaten dog always runs straight back to its master. He just used a highly restricted Magical scroll. He is not the mastermind of this rebellion. He is just the muscle."
Rolf’s golden amber eyes widened in sudden understanding.
"You tagged his mana signature."
"I put a leash on him," I corrected, a cold smile forming beneath my dark helmet.
"Recall the fleet. We are returning to the capital. Let him run. We will wait until he opens the door to his benefactors, and then we will burn the entire house to the ground."
