The windy condition of the battlefield soon swept most of the dark smog away, giving the Belkan observers a chance to survey the battlefield.
"UAV Operators, establish new angles, we need to assess the damage."
"New headings for UAVs... 157, 220, 315. Confirm?"
"Operators confirm all. Transmitting new visuals now."
One by one, the drone operators get their cameras through the gaps in the smoke screen. With new video angles coming up every few seconds, it doesn't take long for Belka to paint the full picture of what they need to know.
There, in the middle of the flattened no man's land, lies the Hydra, or what's left of it. The Kaiju's three draconic heads are no more, with one head destroyed, leaving a blackened stump, another is cut off by the neck, laying some hundred meters away from the main body, while the last one is just gone, fully obliterated. Its tails, which used to have a complete set of six, now lie limply with two destroyed at the roots, the spawning chambers seem to be decimated beyond usage. Moving to the Hydra's main body. Its crystal armor has now been stripped off its body, lending view to the weaker silicone skin that is also similarly blasted wide open. This, in turn, grants the Belkan observers the sight of the belly of the beast, literally.
Lay deep in the center of its excessive body mass is a weakly pulsing pink crystal of impressive size, its diameter must reach 80 meters at the very least. Just from a single glance, the Reich Marshal can identify this. "Son of a bitch is still alive."
As if punctuating that point, the crystal's pulses become brighter and faster as the air around it starts to be ionized. The dark cloud above Auschwitz then turns into thunderclouds with bolts of lightning striking the wasteland below.
"I want all available units to attack that crystal now!" Yuki shouted the order, making the battle net scramble to life as nearby units with available ordinances started re-engaging the not-yet-dead-Hydra.
The 501st artillery units are the first to fire, having already got the zero on the crystal. Nearby air units need to reposition themselves in an attack pattern, however, as they have been on a standby pattern, it will take them some time to deploy their own firepower. Usually, that pre-deployment period is used for the artillery ordinances to come down. But in this particular scenario, they don't even have five seconds, much less nearly thirty seconds of shell flight time. From the center of the pink crystal, an energy field spreads out and latches on the ruined body of the Hydra. In a flash of sickly pink light, the main body and the heads are fragmented, cut apart cleanly, before the pieces start rising up into the air. The floating pieces then push together into orbs that begin twisting, morphing into many more Archangels that start flying in circles, forming a dome around the crystal. It's not just the Hydra's body that got converted but also the many corpses from the mass graves around Auschwitz. And from the look of it, the number of flying pigeons will be way over the roof.
Yuki frowns, already noticing a headache that's about to form. "Bastard demonified the mass graves... "Damn it! Should have noticed sanitized the place, how the Hell did I miss this!?" Yuki cursed before switching on a direct line to all frontline aircraft. "This is Overlord to all readily available jets! Destroy the crystal now while you still can!"
Yuki then turns to Bryn who is looking at her worriedly. Sighing at the unasked question, Yuki has her thoughts accelerated to an unhealthy pace. According to the plan, the Reality Anchors should have been more than enough to stop the transfiguration of the corpses and living beings to Demons and Zombies. Unbelievably, that blasted crystal managed to bypass multiple anchors to do just that. Yuki has multiple guesses as to why it was able to do just that. It still doesn't change the fact that she could have done some fire prevention techniques precisely for a situation like this, however. Granted, nobody expects a Kaiju to appear in broad daylight and eat up a million Deutshmarks like nothing. But at the end of the day, Yuki is not looking for excuses to justify her negligence, she is looking for solutions. And nothing quite beats the tempting answer of firepower beats everything.
"Bryn, what's the progress on pulling our ground assets away?" Yuki asked while massaging the bridge of her nose. While waiting for Bryn's report, Yuki watches as the rockets, bombs, and missiles her fighter pilots deploy barely make a dent in the increasingly large and dense dome of white and pink. Any hole they make would immediately be sealed by a never-ending swarm of Archangels.
Maybe that program on Ningyo's railgun should be expedited if this predicament becomes another Monday for Belka.
Bryn then pulls up the status of their ground force. "Marshal, some of the rescued prisoners are still being escorted out of the predicted blast radius of our WMD. And we have already pushed their evac process by whatever means we could."
Yuki shakes her head. "Damn it, that's really not what I wanted to hear right now." Taking one more look at the screen and comparing it to the sensor readings on another, Yuki adds. "And now we completely lost visual and radar contact on that crystal."
The Archangel Dome has grown dense and large enough to block both visual and radar scans of their air assets. Right now, they can only confirm that the circle is expanding, seemingly endlessly, and nothing else. If, before, they could draw the Demons away by taunting them, they sure couldn't now. No matter how the squadrons blow them up or skim below that 2 km ceiling, the Archangels just, mindlessly fly protectively around that crystal core. They're stuck at an impasse until the civilians they liberated can get back to the FOBs, which should be safe outside of the danger zone.
A stalemate is what they all thought. All except for Yuki who is running her mind ragged like never before, even placing her thoughts under time dilation. Yuki knows that Bryn and other officers are trying to find the last piece of the muzzle, just like her. But they're much too slow as they don't have Yuki's perks. A somewhat apt description would be Yuki's mind is going a thousand miles per hour to find a needle in the haystack while the others are at walking paces. To some, it may have been only five seconds. But to Yuki, it has been five minutes. That amount of leeway let Yuki notice a previously unaware reading. And that is the mana density in the air.
"Bryn." Yuki calls out, her face impassive.
"Yes, Marshal." Bryn replied at once, noticing the cold tone Yuki had.
"Get me the mana density readings since 30 minutes ago."
With a few clicks of a keyboard, Bryn brings forth a chart for Yuki and other officers to look at with appraising glances. Yuki, knowing what she's looking for, smacks her tongue annoyingly. "Goddamn it, I hate it when the worst-case scenario comes about."
Bryn, not quite catching on, says. "Have you noticed something, Marshal?"
Yuki nods, but not explaining just yet. "Bryn, I need you to get Berlin on the line."
Bryn doesn't hesitate and opens a comms link back to the Obsidian Castle. The call video call is immediately connected, and the feed is directed straight to the underground command center beneath the castle itself. On the video call are Yuki's mothers, the two Empresses of Belka who are dressed in their regalias while standing to direct their subordinates.
"Empresses, I apologize for the interruption and the bad showing so far." Yuki said without any metric of nonchalance. "But I am afraid we have no time for pleasantries. I need you two to pay full attention to what I am about to say."
Lu quickly loses her ever-present smile. "You have our full attention, Reich Marshal." Hel too nods in support, though her eyes betray her concern for Yuki.
Putting that out of mind, for now, Yuki speaks. "To simplify the matter, on-field mana reading has shed light on a worrisome matter. Whenever the pilots blow a hole in the dome, the mana density is raised ever so slightly, it's as if mana is leaking from somewhere. Clearly, mana is leaking out from inside the dome, and judging from how it spikes up every so often, I can only dare a guess as to how much mana is actually packed beneath the dome."
Yuki stops to let that sink in before saying. "That amount of mana is enough to blow up the entirety of Europe, condensed to the point that it appears to the outside world as liquid mana that got vaporized back to gaseous form."
A collective intake of cold breath can be heard from all over. Though Lu, Hel, and Bryn haven't sucked in a breath, their face impassive, they still have cold sweats rolling down their foreheads. They, of all people, understand just how absurd but worrisome the words Yuki just spouted. They do get what Yuki is getting at, however.
Hel is the one to speak up first. "I will deal with getting the citizens calm and cooperating with our military and civil forces. Meanwhile, Lu will organize a nationwide martial order and get our allies to do the same. It shouldn't take much effort when we already got the general alert out."
Lu nods at that and so does Yuki, with the latter saying. "We need to minimize the potential damage in any way we can. I suggest you two also prep for mobilization of our emergency resources. Food, medicines, war supplies... All of them. Deploy all Reality Anchors to minimize the fallout and tell Nicolae to deal with the worst of damages. She will know what to do by then."
Lu gives her agreement. "Alright, we will do as you say. However, will you be able to deal with that? Nicolae surely can get there and swallow up the threat."
"And risk something else to happen without our notice in the future?" Yuki shakes her head. "I am afraid things won't be that simple."
Both Lu and Hel sigh, with the latter speaking. "We understand. We trust that you can handle yourself. That said," Hel looks at Bryn. "please take care of her." Yuki is pushing herself again was left unsaid.
"I will have her back 24/7, Empresses." Bryn replied full of seriousness.
The Belkan Empresses nod before the video call is disconnected. During their short communication, the situation at Auschwitz waits for no one. Right now, the thunderstorm is getting worse and worse despite it's not raining. It doesn't have to be said that air deployment is somewhat hampered by this. It takes the operators everything they have to keep the air group flying safely for both their and the civilians' sake. Things turn from bad to worse when the mana readings shoot through the roof from one in the blink of an eye.
Warning tones ring out from multiple CIC stations as the mana scanners nearly fry themselves trying to get a read on the ground situation.
"Come on, people, give me something I can work with!" Yuki ordered.
A multitude of reports trickle in, with both Yuki and Bryn working to simplify them to one crucial matter. "I need to know what the Hell that crystal's trying to do with that much elemental mana people! And more importantly, if that thing needs elemental mana, can our Reality Anchors diffuse them to a non-elemental one?"
"We don't know why it's doing that but what we do know is that we are outmatched in terms of output, Marshal." One operator reported.
"So you meant to say that our hands are tied? Once again?" Yuki asked back only to receive a grim nod. "Fuck!" She cursed. "I really should have gotten a railgun up in space when I had the chance!"
Alright, Yuki's mind running on a time dilation constantly is wearing her out. It starting to affect her mood and she knows that. Shaking her head while Bryn is looking, Yuki stealthily wipes a trickle of blood from her nose. "Fine then, guess we need to do the real hard way. All units, pull back for rearm and refuel, and I mean all of them."
It's not just the officers who are surprised but Bryn too. "Marshal?"
"We still need time for the civies to get out, us throwing pebbles at them barely makes a dent, so why don't we just sit back and take our sweet time like it's trying to do? The blasted thing takes time to build up its power and it seems to me now that so are we. It's only a matter of who will get to their tip-top shape first then."
Yuki then takes a look at every one. "I need all aircraft, all guns, and all missiles, and I mean all missiles this combined fleet have to be pointed at that dome, ready to be fired synchronously on a moment's notice. I want a 30-kiloton Minibreve missile to be ready for launch on the Tirpitz. And if one is not enough, then another, and another. I want that thing dead and gone before the start of midnight!"
Yuki emphasizes her words with a clap of her hands. "Now get to work, people!" And that got everyone into maximum gears alright.
But much like before, were it so easy.
Mushroom - Europe=Mushrope
bruh
Rock and stone brother
@Alfonziak AoE2 Spiffing Brits exploits
Phew, good thing I always have an ethernet cable with me as a safety belt, otherwise I would have fallen off of this cliff. I was speeding through this so fast, I missed the cliffhanger.
TFTC!
Also, I dare you to change the title to "The long *ss day". Almost the same...
@Bersleid
It's a good thing you got a lifesaver
TFTC!!
