The political situation was somewhat stabilized after my declaration. Using the allied armies I stabilized the situation and secured the borders of my controlled territories. That was the moment I started properly reviewing the results of previous battles.

I am not a general so I left the land command to the people who at least have an idea how it is done. To myself I left the role of commander in chief and recon. While the first task can be handled from the tent, the second one had to be performed in field. By ‘in field’ I mean that I will have to go around the entire continent to launch a couple of planes, land them and run to the next location. I am busy with working and commanding, and those actions cannot be performed remotely, which is why I can’t leave the palace. It was the first time I reviewed my usage of aircraft. It was surely not because I was too lazy to go running around to launch scouts.

While the range of my planes is more than 500 kilometers, I usually just launch them to strike targets in 50 kilometers at most. My common tactic of short-range attacks is caused by the lag between finding the targets, flying and engaging them. The further they are, the more time it takes for my planes to reach the targets which both lets the enemy change the location, and leaves me with less aerial assets on stand-by. The closer the enemy is, the more air strikes I can make and that was my main reason for close-range tactics.

Current issue is me being too used to launch planes with no additional fuel tanks and with decreased fuel load. Also I lack the experience of long-range aviation usage. I can cover quite a lot of territory if I send out the scouts with a lot of fuel, which is why I started long-range scouting.

The results were astonishing, I managed to discover a few armies which already were in the attack range of my planes. Also I discovered a huge demon army which was approaching my palace. To counter its approach I ordered making proper defense in case some of the demons reach the palace.

I sent out the first wave of bombers to carpet bomb them into nothing.

When the bombers dropped their cargo, the bombs exploded right before they could damage anything. The demons also have a magical shield which protects them from aerial attacks. With this I only had to wait until the enemy arrives. I went at Lily’s to ask about the previous magic shield.

“It is the product of an ancient magic, it is powerful but can only work for a short time.” (L)

“Great, I only need to wait until the shield is dissolved.”

“Wait a moment and let me finish. The reason for the short time of work is that the shield requires massive amounts of magic, which humans lack. The demons on the other hand are MUCH better in terms of mana capacity. Even rank S mages are only capable to store as much mana as a common demon mage. So the shield you encountered might work for a few weeks without any issues.” (L)

“Ok, miss super mage, tell me how can the damned magic be weakened?”

“To weaken the magic you need to attack it again and again with great strength. Sooner or later the shield will be weakened to the point when it will break. Then you will have an hour until the demons can create it again.” (L)

This gave me some ideas how to break through the shield but that was not enough. Even if I can break through it, I will need a lot of airstrikes to weaken the enemy army. I decided to test out a way to break through the shield without having to sacrifice the power of my strike force.

A flight of dive bombers was sent towards the demons. When they arrived they almost waited until the demons spotted them and reinforced their shield. From that moment on, one by one the bombers prepared to dive in. They spread out the formation and by the time the first bomber was ready to drop the bombs, the second bomber only flipped and began its dive. The leader dropped a bomb from higher altitude than the bombers normally do.

Before the bomb reached the shield it opened and a lot of small charges dispersed around. When they exploded, the shield fluctuated, and by that time the second bomb was dropped. One after another, the bombs were damaging the shield and after the fourth bomb the fluctuations were so strong, that for a moment the shield even stopped working. I am sure that if there was a second wave of cluster bombing, the shield would be breached. I waited until the bombers returned home and assembled the air force.

A buzzing swarm lined up on the flight deck and started taking off from with the carrier’s catapults. After it assembled into the air armada, it set course towards the demon army.