A while before Leyton attacked with his army of tanks and helicopters, he had managed to summon only one tank by using the spell, “Summon Tank.”

“Alright! I got my tank!” He said happily at the successful summoning. Then he pointed his finger at a distance away from them and said, “Tank, fire in that direction.”

There was a moment of silence as he and the three girls waited for something to happen. However, nothing happened, and he glanced at the girls in confusion before looking back at the tank.

“I said fire over there!” He ordered.

Once again, they waited patiently for a few seconds to see if something would happen, but nothing happened. This made Leyton sigh and wonder aloud, “What’s wrong with this thing? Is it broken?”

“Um,” began his wife, Skye, looking curiously at the tank. “I think it’s missing bullets?”

“Oh!” He said, realising the obvious and hitting himself on the side gently at his silliness. “Of course! It needs missiles, a driver, and an engineer to operate! Damn. I feel silly.”

“Did you think it’d fire magically with just your command?” Skye asked curiously with a raised eyebrow in amusement.

“It was worth a try,” he remarked with a sheepish grin. Then he began to think while muttering, “Still, what to do now? I don’t know how to operate a tank, and I doubt anyone in this world would know either.”

There was a moment of silence before he muttered, “Should I summon people that can operate it?”

Skye blinked in alarm at his words and said quickly, “Leyley, that’s kidnapping!”

“Yeah. You’re right,” he said, nodding in agreement and crossing out such a thought. He glanced at the angels and asked, “Hey, miss angels. Do you have any idea if it’s possible to enchant an object and make it do something for you by a way of commands? Like, program something to do something for you?”

“Uh,” the two angels began and looked at one another with puzzled expressions.

“I think it’s possible to enchant something to make it do what you want, but…” stated Veva and looked uncertain.

“It’s a difficult thing to do and it takes a high-level user to perform it,” said Lexi said apologetically.

“Mmm,” he said and nodded in understanding. “Does that make me a high-level user?”

“Certainly,” replied Veva with a small smile.

“Alright then,” he said and cracked his fingers by turning back to face the tank. “Time to test out my theory then.”

“What are you going to do?” Skye asked him curiously.

“I’m going to program it,” he told her shortly, focusing only on what he was going to do.

Aiming his hand at the tank, he said, “Program:-

Command LOAD: Intake energy from the area and turn it into missiles and load them;
Command RELOAD: Discard the empty shells and activate command LOAD;
Command FIRE: Launch the loaded missile to my specifications, alias command is LAUNCH, optional to give the direction to fire at;
Command MOVE: Intake energy from the area and convert it to fuel, optional to give the distance and/or direction to move;

Command STOP: Stop performing current action, optional to specify FIRE, MOVE, or ALL;”

With each command he set to it, the tank glowed in a blue light before returning to look normal. Once he finished programming it, he smiled contentedly with a smile.

“Alright. I think that’s the minimum commands it needs to operate. Is there anything else that I should add to its program, Skye?”

“I… don’t know,” she admitted, looking perplexed. “I don’t know anything about tanks to be honest, so do what’s best for you.”

“Mmm. Well, I think I could try tweaking or adding more commands to it, but let’s test and see if this programming works or not.”

“I’m nervous,” his wife admitted, looking worriedly at the tank.

“It’ll be fine,” he said with a smile, then he added, “better get back a little bit.”

As she and the angels moved away from them, he pointed his finger in a faraway direction that looked empty and said, “Alright. Tank, load and fire over there.”

This time, he heard the tank roar into life and felt the atmosphere around him tingle for some strange reason. Then he watched as the tank raised its turret in an elevation and heard the gears churning inside the machine before, with a boom, a missile was launched from it.

Smoke drifted from the tank as the missile soared into the air at high speed, flying in the specified direction. They watched as the missile flew through the air and disappear within a few seconds. Then they heard it hit the ground from the tremor they felt beneath their feet before they saw a rising mushroom cloud in the distance.

“Wow! It worked!” Leyton exclaimed, looking happy and excited that his programming worked.

“Hey. What’s that?” Lexi said suddenly, pointing towards the cloud of dust soaring towards them.

Leyton looked at it for a moment before he widened his eyes in shock at the realisation of what it was.

He turned to the girls and told them, “Lexi and Veva. Activate your barrier. Now would be good.”

They blinked at him in surprise before aiming both of their hands in front of them and said, “Barrier.”

In an instant, a barrier formed around them that was reflected with power. As soon as the wind swept towards them and hit the barrier, a heavy impact occurred. They were surprised by the strong impact the wind had against the barrier, but they were truly shocked when the tank got pushed back several meters before it got flipped upside down.

“This is crazy!” Leyton exclaimed, looking shocked.

Skye moved forward and clutched his hands nervously while glancing anxiously around them. The angels were amazed by the power of the wind seeing as it moved a heavy tank quite a distance away from them.

The wind slowly died down and returned to normal. Sensing this, the angels deactivated their barrier and breathed a sigh. None of them had expected for this to happen, and they all looked towards the rising mushroom clouds in the distance.

“Oh wow. Um… I didn’t expect it to be this powerful,” admitted Leyton, blinking in surprise at the rising mushroom cloud in the distance.

Suddenly, the two angels rushed to face him with glittering eyes full of excitement and said, “Sir! That was awesome! You could easily destroy the higher order with that kind of power! What was it?”

“Uh…” He said hesitantly, looking baffled by the excited angels. “It’s a missile.”

“Missile…” They repeated slowly, adding the word into their dictionary and looking amazed.

“I think it’s far too powerful, Leyley?” Skye asked him curiously.

“Yeah. It’s too powerful,” he said, nodding at her in agreement. “I don’t think a real tank would be able to do this and there’d be too much devastation with this kind of power, not to mention the high chances that the tank might simply explode as it couldn’t handle this much power.”

“Better lower the power output then?”

“No. I better put a limiter to restrict how much power it intakes to avoid recoil.”

“Good idea.”

“What?!” The angels exclaimed, looking shocked. “Sir! It’s good as it is!”

“No, it’s not, you stupid angels!” Leyton retorted, looking at them as if they were crazy. “Destroying the enemy is one thing, but what’s the point if we destroy ourselves with it?”

“We can just cast barrier magic to protect ourselves!” They said together, looking pleadingly at him.

He looked at their faces with a disgruntled look on his face before looking sideways at his wife. Skye looked at him and supported him by shaking her head.

“Yeah. You do that if you want. I, on the other hand, am going to put restrictions on the power intake,” he told them with a small smile.

With that, he began to walk towards the upside-down tank to check on its condition while the angels became disappointed, their shoulders drooping while Skye patted them sympathetically.

 

==== + ==== + ==== + ====

 

Closing the Book

 

“Those angels are crazy,” the boy said, looking amazed by their craziness. “Why the heck are they happy to use that kind of power in actual battle? They’re nuts!”

“Well, when you think about it, their craziness might actually seem reasonable,” the older man said with a soft smile.

“Reasonable? How?”

“They were hopeful of destroying their enemy without losing too many of their comrades.”

“Oh. When you put it that way,” the boy said, looking conflicted.

The man looked at him with a smile and said, “But Leyton is right that it’s too much power and the recoil could destroy them as well. There’s no point in doing something like that, is there?”

“I agree,” the boy said, nodding in agreement while looking dejected.

His less than happy expression made the older man blink in surprise and ask, “What’s wrong? You look suddenly down.”

“Uh,” the boy began with a groan, “I thought he summoned people from another world and put them under his mind control, but he did something else instead.”

The older man laughed and asked, “Wait? Were you hoping that he did kidnap them like you imagined?”

“It was a practical choice to make considering the situation he’s in.”

“True, and we did get to see that he contemplated it before Skye convinced him,” the man said with a smile. “Besides, this is a much better way of doing things than being a criminal as your first step in protecting another world.”

“I know, but it’s vexing to think I was wrong,” the boy said, looking down at the book. “It’s almost like that the author wanted me to think in a certain way and then disappoint me by doing something else.”

“Like I said before; he’s being unexpected and it quite entertaining,” the man said with a grin.

“Possibly,” the boy said with a chuckle. “Still, that’s one strange command structure to give a tank, don’t you think?”

“It’s the basic and Leyton said so himself,” the man pointed out. “We’ll probably see more commands and a few tweaks since his test worked out a little more than he had anticipated.”

“Yeah, but he’s got a gruelling task of summoning fifty tanks and twenty helicopters from what we’ve seen in the previous chapter, and then program them all,” the boy said and smirked.

“What’s so funny?”

“He’s got to program them all, and that’ll be very tiring for him, I’m sure,” the boy said with a grin.

“Oh? Is that what you think he’ll do?” The older man asked shrewdly.

His suddenly question made the boy’s smile to fade and look suspiciously at him.

“Wait a minute. You know what he’ll do, right? Spill it already!” The boy demanded, looking annoyed.

The older man chuckled and replied, “Why me? Let the story reveal it.” Then he winked at him and finished by saying, “Read on!”