Chapter : 2029
"Valkyrie, you are the disruption," Lloyd said. "Once the line breaks, you get in close. Don't let them reorganize."
"Understood," Vala said, her voice tight with adrenaline. "Slice and dice."
"Ghost, you have overwatch," Lloyd finished. "If any commanders try to cast a big spell, you put a slug through them before they finish the first syllable."
"Consider them deleted," Kaito said.
A red light began to flash in the cargo bay. A buzzer sounded, loud and harsh.
"Bay doors opening," the pilot of the airship announced.
The floor of the airship split apart.
Suddenly, the roar of the wind filled the bay. The howling gale was deafening. The light of the morning sun flooded in, blindingly bright after the gloom of the hold. Below them, the ground seed miles away. The clouds whipped past like white smoke.
It was a terrifying drop. For a normal person, looking down at that height would freeze their heart. But these weren't normal people anymore. They were Titan pilots. They were wrapped in Star-Frost Ore and powered by Golem Hearts.
"Drop in three... two... one..." Lloyd counted down.
The clamps holding the suits released with a heavy, tallic clank.
"Mark!"
Ten tons of tal dropped into the void.
Ren felt his stomach lurch into his throat as his suit fell away from the ship. For a second, he was weightless. Then, gravity took hold. The wind scread against his external sensors. His heads-up display (HUD) lit up with altitude numbers scrolling down so fast they were a blur.
Altitude: 10,000 feet... 9,000 feet...
They were falling like stones. They were falling like teors.
Down on the ground, the army of the dead marched on. The Curse Knights clanked in unison, a rhythmic sound of tal on dirt. They didn't look up. Why would they? In their world, death ca from swords, or arrows, or spells cast from the ground. They had no concept of an aerial insertion. They had no concept of heavy tal rain.
Bael rode near the front, looking smug. He was a sleazy, transactional devil who preferred buying victories to fighting for them, but today he felt powerful. He had fifty thousand soldiers. He had the backing of the Fire Fly Corporation. He thought he was unstoppable.
He didn't hear the wind changing. He didn't see the ten black dots falling from the clouds, growing larger with every second.
Up in the air, the Titan Squad was picking up speed. Terminal velocity. They were falling at over 120 miles per hour. The air friction was heating up their armor, but the Star-Frost Ore stayed cool on the inside.
"Steady," Ren told himself. "Wait for the mark. Trust the math."
Inside the helts, Lloyd’s voice was calm. "Retro-thrusters in five seconds. Do not fire early. We want maximum kinetic impact. We want to shake their teeth loose."
5,000 feet...
Vala watched the ground rushing up to et her. She could see individual soldiers now. She could see the banners of the enemy. It was a sea of spears and black iron.
"This is going to be loud," Vala whispered, a grin spreading across her face.
2,000 feet...
"Prepare for impact," Lloyd ordered. "Fire thrusters... NOW."
________________________________________
The silence of the morning was shattered by the roar of ten engines firing at once.
On the backs and legs of the falling Aegis suits, chemical thrusters ignited. Blue flas shot out, fighting against gravity. The deceleration was violent. Inside the cockpits, the pilots were slamd into their harnesses. The G-forces were imnse, enough to black out an untrained man, but the Soul-Circuitry helped their brains process the stress.
They didn't stop falling. They just slowed down enough to survive. They weren't trying to land softly. They were trying to land hard.
The Curse Knights on the ground finally looked up. They heard the scream of the thrusters—a sound like a tearing sheet of sky. They saw ten streaks of blue fire and black tal descending upon them.
They didn't have ti to run. They didn't have ti to raise their shields.
BOOM.
The first suit, piloted by Ren, hit the ground.
It landed right in the center of the vanguard. The impact was cataclysmic. It wasn't just a heavy object hitting dirt; it was ten tons of mass moving at high speed, aided by the explosive force of the retro-rockets blasting the earth.
The ground erupted. A shockwave of dust, rock, and shattered bone rippled outward in a perfect circle. Dozens of Curse Knights were instantly pulverized, their armor crumpled like tin foil, their bodies turned to dust. The earth cracked, spiderwebs of fissures shooting out from Ren’s landing zone.
BOOM. BOOM. BOOM.
Chapter : 2030
The rest of the squad landed seconds later. A line of explosions tore through the front ranks of Bael’s army. It looked like the fist of an angry god had punched the earth ten tis in a row.
Dirt and debris flew hundreds of feet into the air. A massive cloud of brown dust swallowed the landing zone, hiding the machines from view.
For a long mont, there was silence on the battlefield. The marching rhythm of the undead army was broken. The war-beasts shied away, terrified by the sudden violence.
Bael, the rchant Prince, pulled on the reins of his drake, calming the beast. He squinted through the dust cloud. He was surprised, but not scared. Not yet.
He laughed. It was a high, mocking sound.
"Golems?" Bael shouted, his voice amplified by magic so his army could hear. "They throw rocks at us? They drop statues from the sky? How pathetic!"
To Bael, this was a primitive tactic. In the world of high magic, dropping heavy things was a child's ga. He assud the humans had just dropped so enchanted stone statues, hoping to crush a few soldiers. He didn't sense any mana coming from the dust cloud. He didn't feel the pulse of a spirit or the heat of a spell. Just cold, dead tal.
"Look at them!" Bael sneered, pointing a clawed finger at the dust. "They are lifeless! They are just dolls! Is this the great defense of the North? Throwing toys?"
Inside the dust cloud, red eyes began to glow.
The chanical whirring sound of servos and gears cut through the silence. It wasn't the groaning of stone golems. It was the high-pitched whine of advanced hydraulics.
Ren stood up in the center of the crater he had made. His suit, the heavy-weapons variant, was undamaged. The mud and blood of the crushed enemies slid off the matte-grey armor. He checked his diagnostics.
[System Status: Online.]
[Landing Impact: Absorbed.]
[Ammunition: 100%.]
[Target Count: 50,000.]
"Target rich environnt," Ren muttered. His voice was calm, filtered through the external speakers of the suit so it sounded like a grinding avalanche. "Deploynt successful. We are active."
Vala’s suit, lighter and faster, stepped out of the smoke next to him. She rolled her chanical shoulders, the vibro-blades on her arms extending with a sharp SHING sound. The blades humd, vibrating so fast the edges blurred.
"They think we're statues, Rook," Vala said over the squad comms. "The ugly one on the lizard is laughing at us."
"Let him laugh," Kaito’s voice chid in. His suit was already crouching, taking a sniper position on a piece of uplifted rock. His massive rifle was unfolding, locking into place. "He’s standing still. I like it when they stand still."
The dust began to settle, revealing the ten titans standing in a phalanx formation. They looked alien. They looked impossible. They were machines of war standing in a field of dieval magic.
Bael stopped laughing. He saw the glowing red eyes. He saw the spinning barrels of the rotary cannons. He saw the sleek, manufactured perfection of the armor. These weren't crude golems made of mud and runes. They were sothing else.
But Bael was arrogant. He was a Prince of Hell. He believed that nothing made by humans without magic could hurt him.
"Destroy them!" Bael ordered, waving his hand dismissively. "Mages! Forward! Turn them into scrap!"
A unit of dark sorcerers, wearing robes stitched from human skin, stepped forward. They began to chant. Green, sickly light gathered in their hands. They were preparing a specific spell, a favorite of the Rust-and-Decay faction.
"Cast [Great Oxidation]!" Bael commanded. "Rot their tal! Turn their iron to dust! Show them that steel is nothing before the power of the Abyss!"
The mages unleashed the spell. A massive wave of corrosive green fog rolled toward the Titan Squad. It was a spell designed to age tal a thousand years in a second. It would turn swords to rust flakes and armor to dust. Against normal knights, it was a death sentence. Against normal golems, it was fatal.
Ren watched the green fog coming. He didn't move. He didn't try to dodge.
"Magic incoming," Ren reported. "Corrosive type."
"Hold position," Lloyd’s voice ca over the comms from his command post far away. "Trust the engineering. Trust the Null-Field."
The green fog washed over the Aegis suits.
Bael smirked, waiting for the machines to crumble. He waited to see the black tal turn orange and flake away, revealing the squishy humans inside.
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