“The demon fliers are moving!”

“Estimated strength, Squires and Knights! Be careful!”

Shouts like these echoed throughout the group as everyone raced towards their demon counterparts. The Guardians had formed up into a spherical formation to prevent them from being individually overwhelmed from all directions, but for some reason, everyone seemed to think that charging into a melee was a good idea.

Aziz, who was holding on to a Straight Shot, wasn’t all that eager to get up close to their enemies…and they were quite outnumbered anyway. Even if the Guardians didn’t take the initiative to close in, the enemy would. Unfortunately, he couldn’t quite disagree with their current tactics, especially since he didn’t know who the commander of the Guardians here was.

“Nervous?” Marie, who probably had the same idea, asked. Two sigils were floating around her back. It was a new sight to Aziz, who didn’t realise that Marie had learnt to draw them.

“Please. You’re asking me that question?” Aziz rolled his eyes, raising the Straight Shot up to eye-level. Given that the gap hadn’t closed yet, there was no point in expending his energy in attacking, but it was something instinctive to him anyway.

“Well, you do seem rather nervous.”

“Rubbish,” Aziz replied, lying through his teeth. “Who’s going to be nervous after that battle last night? The great gods all showed up! Now that was nerve-wracking.”

“Is that so? You do have a point, but whether you’re nervous or not is not exactly independent of what the previous battle was like,” Marie replied.

“Enough about that, Marie.” Aziz squinted his eyes and focused on the enemy. “They’re here.”

The battle cries that had been echoing around them doubled in intensity a second later. A wave of monstrous, maddened howls followed in response, and the world seemed to shake as the leaders of both groups clashed with each other.

“No Barrier or Shell,” Aziz murmured, his Straight Shot tracking the demons closest to him. Shot after shot blasted towards his targets with deadly precision, and within moments, four demons were falling from the skies.

They looked very much like humans, save for a third eye. Firing off one more shot, Aziz unsheathed a combat knife and slashed out the incoming demon with his left hand, who had closed in from his left. Air hissed as the demon’s sword bore down on him, forcing Aziz to weave to the side.

The slash missed him by a hair’s breadth, and Aziz took this chance to dart forward. Slamming his knife into the demon’s chin, he kicked out a moment later, leaving a deep cut in the middle of the demon’s neck while disarming him.

A violent punch slammed into his right, and the Shell lit up, blocking the attack. As Aziz reeled from the force, he glanced at his right, where Marie was at earlier.

The marshal, however, was already tied up by five enemies, the sword in her hand clad with qi. One of them was bleeding profusely from multiple lacerations, clearly on the verge of death.

Firing a few shots at the demon before him, Aziz disposed of his foe swiftly before turning to help Marie.

“Oh, you’re done,” Aziz muttered.

“Had to use a sigil, though.” Marie’s right hand was now drawing sigils Aziz didn’t quite understand, but from how the demons that had tied her up earlier were now falling, it was probably a potent one.

“I should get used to drawing them,” Aziz murmured.

Marie nodded. “Unfortunately, we’ll have to make it back first!”

Her sword slashed out, forcing the incoming demon back. Aziz forced himself into the opening a second later, stabbing the demon’s abdomen and kicking away in a single fluid motion. Three shots flew past his right a second later, punching solid holes into yet another demon.

Without pausing to thank Marie, Aziz moved on to strike down yet another demon with Marie’s support.

“Where’s our fire support?” Aziz asked, sending some shots in the direction of a demon further out.

“Up there. The semi-divinities need them more,” Marie replied.

Aziz looked in the direction of the upper airzone, where the multiple satellite fortresses that he’d seen earlier was in the thick of the fighting. Small balls of light slammed into each other up high while innumerable explosions bloomed all around these fortresses, and the colonel suddenly stopped feeling all that aggrieved.

Fending off yet another frenzied demon, Aziz intercepted a demon trying to sneak up on Marie.

The two of them were panting, but at least the results of their steadfast defence and that of the other Guardians, had borne fruit. The enemy numbers were visibly smaller, their main body of troops even withdrawing. For a moment, the battle seemed to pause.

In that sudden lull, multiple long arcs of light surged towards the demon fliers, an attack that was swiftly followed by a myriad of attacks. Blinding light forced Aziz’s eyes shut, and the thunderclap that followed was followed by numerous dying roars.

When he next opened his eyes, the enemy fliers — the Knight-ranked ones — had been annihilated, their bodies falling from the skies and bursting apart where they landed.

“What was that power?” Aziz asked.

“Probably someone with a title. There’s lots of them in the Hall of Guardians,” Marie replied. “But enough about that for a moment. Let’s go clear up the lower air zone.”

She wasn’t alone in that sentiment, and as a single entity, everyone began to descend. With the Knights descending into the Squires’ battlefield, it didn’t take long before the balance tilted.

“It’s over for today, it seems,” Aziz murmured, watching as the bodies of the fallen slammed into the ground. The Heaven-cleaving Fortress continued to pound at the fortifications, reducing everything the colonel could see into rubble. With those attacks, the enormous fortress had extended the danger zone by one entire kilometre.

“Let’s hope that the reinforcements arrive before we fully push them out,” said Marie. “And preferably before the demons finally are able to send out their elites.”

Aziz nodded.

The battle was still going on in the upper airzone when the Guardians and the regular aerial forces retreated.