After several full bombardment rounds, the energy value of Astral Cities' barriers had dropped slightly. The walls themselves remained untouched.
The fleet changed targets. With the Astral Cities proving impenetrable and the Castle Faction's flying troops closing in from all directions, the airships turned their guns on the aerial troops surrounding them.
Of the eight trillion Castle Faction troops, nearly two trillion were from flying races. There were every tier of them ranging from low-level races to top-level races, in numbers that filled the sky so densely that aiming was unnecessary. Regardless of which direction a cannon faced, it would hit something.
The bombardment was genuinely effective. Each round killed hundreds of millions of flying troops. Two or three rounds in, the Light Empire's aerial crews had accumulated a kill count that would have been celebrated in any other battle.
But it didn't matter here. Two trillion flying troops minus hundreds of millions was still an incomprehensible number, and the surviving troops were closing. Every airship in the fleet found itself engaged by tens of thousands of Castle Faction's flying troops simultaneously. Their defense shields and reinforced hulls couldn't hold against that volume of attackers. Soon, the ships began coming apart.
The wreckage fell in curtains—burning fragments, exploded hulls, bodies—catching the light of the morning sun on the way down. From any distance, it looked like a meteor shower.
"How many troops do those fuckers actually have?" Someone on the Light Empire's side said, "The intelligence mentioned one or two trillion, but there seems to be far more…"
"I think it's about ten trillion now. The Castle Lords recruit new troops every day. With billions of Lords, several trillion troops per cycle should be manageable."
"That's impossible."
"No, the Great Aetherium's Emperor went from a mortal to a Peak Supreme God in two months. Have the Endless Continent's Laws abandoned us entirely?"
No one answered that.
…
The aerial war lasted under half an hour.
Six hundred billion flying troops against one million airships with the troops engaging at close range after the opening bombardment rounds. The shelling had cost the castle forces something, but the melee that followed cost the Light Empire everything.
Dragons alone, Saints and Demigods being two to three hundred meters long, masters of Dragon Language Magic and close-quarters destruction, could tear a large airship apart with their bodies. Against six hundred billion of those, millions of airships had no answer.
The regular imperial airships fought to the end. Their crews, after losing the airships, took up weapons and engaged the flying armies directly, but it changed nothing. The civilian-converted airships fled when the situation became clear, almost every such regular airship was destroyed with its crew aboard.
The Astral Cities hadn't participated directly in the aerial melee. With too many friendly flying troops in the airspace, accidental casualties would have been severe. After the opening salvos that destroyed tens of thousands of Light Empire's airships, they had redirected their fire toward the ground: the military fortress cities and defensive positions on the eastern bank.
Within two hours of the battle's opening, the Light Empire had lost its river fleet and its entire aerial force. Except for a few scattered survivors, everything else was gone.
…
From inside the fortress cities on the eastern bank, the commanders and supernaturals watched burning airship wreckage fall from the sky and listened to the victorious roars of hundreds of billions of flying troops overhead.
Their morale collapse was quiet but total.
"Two hours." Someone said, "Our entire naval and aerial force is gone within two hours."
"The Dark Empire invaded us with five hundred billion troops. That's one of the largest forces they've ever deployed against us. Compared to the castle forces, five hundred billion is nothing. The castle forces have nearly twenty times that!"
"Those Castle Faction troops… they don't stop. The magic cannons were fired directly in their path, they know they'll die, and they don't slow down. How are they that loyal to the lords they've known for two months?"
"I saw young dragons, barely leveled, sent into cannon fire. They died like bubbles. Completely worthless tactically. And they went anyway."
"The Endless Continent's Laws have given everything to the Castle Faction. Do we have any hope?"
The question hung there. The honest answer, which no one said aloud, was that their goal was no longer victory. It was to hold the ground and delay their enemies until the Battle of Planets began, at which point the castle forces would have to redirect. Whether they could hold that long was what nobody was confident about anymore.
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