Chapter 64: The Black Hawk Flag Flies Over Seville

After confirming that the flare was the key used to guide the armored airship's attack, Morin immediately scrambled up the wreckage of the fallen Siegfried Mk I, using both hands and feet.

A pungent mixture of machine oil and other unidentifiable gases hung heavy in the cramped cockpit, which lacked the control sticks or other manual devices Morin had imagined.

Aside from some incomprehensible instrument panels and magic crystals, two glove-like objects were suspended on either side of the pilot's seat.

Along the central axis of the seat, several metal protrusions appeared designed to link directly to a pilot suit.

Morin rummaged through the storage compartment beneath the pilot's seat for a moment and quickly found a thick leather box.

Upon opening it, he discovered a flare gun and several specially crafted flares.

The flare gun itself had a quite ordinary design, differing very little in structure from the break-action flare guns in his memory, but those flares were undeniably extraordinary.

Their bodies were far more refined than standard flares, and their warheads and brass casings were densely engraved with microscopic runes, suggesting the application of magitech engineering.

With a crisp "click," Morin broke open the barrel, slid a flare into the breech from behind, and snapped the chamber shut.

He cautiously poked half his head out from behind the architectural ruins smashed by the armored knight, only to find the street transformed into a living hellscape.

Britannian and Royal Army soldiers charged forward like madmen, while the tongues of machine-gun fire from the Saxon positions mercilessly licked across the advancing crowds.

Men fell every second, yet those behind immediately stepped up to fill the gaps.

"Morin, fire it right into the densest cluster of them!"

Ludwig leaned against the mecha wreckage, enduring agonizing pain as he directed Morin toward the target.

Morin nodded, raised the muzzle in accordance with Ludwig's instructions, and pulled the trigger hard.

"Bang!"

Following a crisp report, the flare traced an arc into the sky and burst open right above the heads of the advancing Britannian troops.

Instead of emitting the blinding, intense light of a standard flare, it left a scattering of faint, shimmering specks suspended in the air like fireflies on a summer night, which then slowly dissipated.

...

"Report to the captain! We've spotted the target designation beacon of the Teutonic Knights!"

Aboard the L30 armored airship high above, an observer hunched over a transparent observation window stared intently at a giant lens before him and reported loudly.

Within the lens, in the smoke-shrouded city below, a specific zone was clearly and prominently circled by a flickering blue magical marker.

"Calculate the firing data! Transmit to all gun batteries upon completion, fire at will!"

From the captain's station, a stern-faced middle-aged officer immediately issued the order to attack.

A series of commands flowed rapidly through the brass voice tubes within the bridge, descending to the various gun stations on the airship's lower deck and to a separate small compartment.

Inside the small compartment, several Saxon military mages clad in blue uniforms distinct from those of ordinary soldiers hurried to cluster around a complex apparatus, immediately beginning to calculate ballistic trajectories and firing solutions based on the position of the designation beacon.

Intricate and obscure runes flowed across a crystal panel before them, ultimately translating into sets of coordinates that were instantly transmitted to each gun turret.

"Firing data locked! High-explosive shells loaded!"

"Commence attack!"

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The dull roar of artillery rolled in from the sky like distant thunder.

On the lower deck of the armored airship, those eight 203mm twin-gun turrets successively spat out tongues of destructive fire.

Sixteen 203mm naval guns fired in rapid succession, their shells tearing through the air with a piercing shriek as they plummeted precisely onto the street ahead of Morin, which was packed with Britannian soldiers.

On the ground, the Britannian soldiers, who had been charging frantically just moments before, had no time to process what was happening before death rained down upon them.

Violent explosions instantly engulfed the entire street; the earth trembled, and the buildings wailed.

Scorching shockwaves mixed with countless fragments of shrapnel and shattered stone to form a deadly storm, tearing everything on the street into shreds.

In the face of this level of firepower saturation, the human body was as fragile as paper, instantly shredded by the shockwave and shrapnel.

A single salvo brought the tidal wave of the charge to an abrupt halt, transforming the entire street into a purgatory of blood and fire.

Yet this was merely the beginning.

Adjusting their aim, subsequent salvos extended the bombardment deeper into the enemy's advancing formations, while the airship began to reduce its speed and simultaneously lose altitude.

As the armored airship continued its descent, it finally came to a hover hundreds of meters directly above the street.

Immediately afterward, rows of bomb bay doors beneath its underbelly sprang open.

Heavy bombs the size of gas cylinders were continuously ejected amidst the clanking sounds of mechanical unlatching, plunging downward into the dense smoke and dust churned up by the bombardment below.

"Rumble—!"

An explosion far more violent than the preceding artillery fire erupted.

The entire city seemed to shudder amidst these chain detonations, and gigantic mushroom clouds mixed with thick black smoke soared into the sky.

The brick and masonry structures on both sides of the street collapsed in blocks, looking like building blocks struck by a giant hammer, burying countless soldiers who lacked the time to flee beneath the ruins.

Following the artillery and aerial bombardment, the dense clusters of semi-spherical MG08 heavy machine-gun turrets on the airship's lower deck joined the fray.

Deadly whips of fire rained down from the sky, executing ruthless pinpoint suppression against any moving targets remaining on the ground.

The Britannian soldiers who had miraculously survived the recent bombardment were now utterly broken.

They no longer cared about advancing, nor could they hear the frantic roars of their officers.

The instinct for survival overrode everything else; everyone was weeping, screaming, and fleeing backward by any means possible.

Morin supported Ludwig, sheltering behind the wreckage of the armored knight, and stared in a daze at the war behemoth continuously pouring fire from the skies, momentarily lost for words.

Could this thing... be any more overpowered?

Isn't this literally strapping a cruiser to the sky?

Is this the strategic weapon of the Saxon Empire?

To combine industrial might and magitech engineering to such an extent yielded a military weapon whose destructive power far exceeded his imagination.

Moreover, the load-bearing capacity of this armored airship was visibly far superior to the Zeppelins of Morin's pre-transmigration knowledge, based solely on visual appraisal.

Putting aside the armored lower deck, the eight 203mm twin-gun turrets alone could not possibly be light, to say nothing of the massive cargo of aerial bombs stowed in the bomb bays.

At the same time, the colossal gasbags overhead displayed noticeable energy fluctuations resembling spell shields when observed at close range, indicating that the gasbags themselves were similarly protected.

Morin finally understood why the Saxon Empire could stand toe-to-toe with this world's veteran hegemon, the Holy Britannian Empire, despite lagging far behind in magical attainments.

If the armored airship maintained its altitude and denied mages the opportunity to pose a threat, ground forces seemingly had no effective means to deal with these airborne beasts of war.

These otherworldly Krauts certainly knew what they were doing.

By contrast, the Krauts from the world Morin left behind had managed to turn Industry 4.0 into Industry 404...

Alas, utterly pathetic.

The appearance of the armored airship acted as the final straw that broke the camel's back, completely shattering the morale of the Britannian expeditionary force and the Royal Army.

Within the city of Seville, the invading forces across all fronts saw their morale shaken to the core upon witnessing that sky-obscuring behemoth.

Conversely, the defenders' morale soared dramatically, as the armored airship broadcasted Saxon military marches through multiple high-power loudspeakers while carrying out its attacks...

As the defenders across all fronts launched counterattacks, the invading forces suffered a complete rout, fleeing in panic from the city that had cost them rivers of blood.

Flags of the Saxon Empire, bearing a black eagle on a yellow field, were finally hoisted once again across the high points of Seville.

Morin stared blankly at the rising banners, his mouth hanging open for a long moment before he muttered:

"That really is the Holy Roman flag, isn't it..."

-----------------

After leaving countless corpses scattered across the street, the enemy forces attacking the town hall defense line finally fell back entirely.

The airship overhead also ceased its heavy artillery and bomb attacks, merely using occasional machine-gun bursts to pick off stragglers on the ground during its patrol sweeps.

Morin led the twenty-odd surviving soldiers under his command out from the ruins.

First, he dispatched a runner to the rear lines to notify medics and stretcher-bearers to come forward and evacuate Ludwig and the other wounded.

Then, accompanied by Klaus, Baumann, and the others, he cautiously groped his way toward the thoroughfare that had been thoroughly plowed through.

They needed to clear the battlefield and ensure no remnants remained hidden.

More importantly, they needed to verify whether High Mage Eldridge had survived or perished.

The spectacle along the street forced these veterans of a day's bloody combat to suppress waves of nausea roiling in their stomachs.

The street was utterly unrecognizable, littered with enormous craters and collapsed buildings.

The Britannians and Royal Army soldiers left countless corpses behind; under the unreasonable firepower saturation of the armored airship, finding a single intact body was virtually impossible.

The air reeked heavily of blood, gunpowder, and the stench of burning protein, blending into a nauseating reek.

"Squad leader, over here!" a soldier shouted from not far away.

Morin and Klaus hurried over to find scraps of fine fabric, still bearing the faint remnants of ornate patterns, scattered among a pile of charred rubble.

Beside the fabric lay the charred lower half of a staff, along with unidentifiable remains of human tissue.

"This must be him."

Morin nodded as he looked at the fragments of the ceremonial robe.

The high mage who had caused them such immense trouble had ultimately failed to survive that heaven-shattering bombardment.

With Eldridge's death confirmed, Morin and the others breathed a collective sigh of relief; after all, the combat prowess demonstrated by the mage earlier had felt somewhat absurdly unreasonable.

Just as Morin prepared to lead his men away, another soldier trotted up holding a slightly soot-stained notebook.

"Squad leader, we found this nearby alongside some more robe fragments. Take a look!"