The steady cacophony of Straight Shots and other Shot artefacts rang out throughout the battlefield as the First Aerial directed supporting fire from afar. Unlike the people on the ships, they were capable of flying, which meant that they were in the unique position of having to intercept the incoming enemies personally.

Unfortunately, Aziz didn’t have the luxury of hanging back and pumping fire at the enemies. Like the demons back then, these warriors of darkness, which Queen Hyperion had called spectres, were completely heedless of injury. They were completely willing to dive straight into a sea of enemy fire and bounce off the thick defences that had been created.

He scanned through the sea of spectres, and then locked on to a particularly troublesome target. There were elites scattered within the sea of fodder, which were more than capable of sundering the thick defences that were currently protecting a few hundred thousand troops from being annihilated by the enormous volume of fire coming from the Central Circle.

It was not hyperbole — a group of ships had been obliterated when one such elite cleaved through their thick defences with seeming ease, which was why Knights and Lords had been ordered to intercept elite spectres. He had seen it for himself just three minutes ago, and from the looks of it, there had been no survivors whatsoever.

The rest of the fleet had been forced to clump together to seal the gap in their defences, but a few spectres had managed to slip through anyway, causing quite a few casualties before they were finally put down.

Aziz, clad in the experimental Exo-Skeleton, withdrew a sword, which unfolded into a weapon five metres long. That singular action seemed to turn him into a target, and spectres began to peel off from the descending sea to approach. His Exo-Skeleton shook, and Aziz began to move erratically.

A howl died mid-utterance as Aziz bisected an especially large enemy into two, and smiled. “I wonder why the Holy Temple kept this in their vault.”

Bobbing backwards to avoid a spectre from above, the nearly-weightless Shipbreaker — the official name for his weapon — enacted swift retribution with a motion that such a long weapon had no business executing. Qi gushed out from the thrusters at his back a moment later, and the world turned into a blur as he charged towards his sole target.

Time seemed to slow as he closed in at an unbelievable speed, but to his shock, the elite spectre had somehow detected his approach, despite having its back to him. Metal shrieked a moment later, and a terrific force blasted Aziz backwards. The thrusters on his Exo-Skeleton fired and stabilised his tumbling body, but the colonel no longer had any desire to fight this particular opponent.

After all, when he was reeling from the enemy’s parry, a nebulous power had surged out and covered the entire area. Therefore, it went without saying that the enemy was a Lord, with his own Fief. That would explain why the enemy could block his full-powered attack, and…

The thoughts whirling in his mind vanished a second later.

Some part of his mind had given him three solutions. The first solution was to overcome this mighty foe before him. The second was to force out an opening in the Fief with incredible force. The third was to hold on until aid inevitably came.

A semi-divinity’s Area, when used, was always an eye-catching event. Be a Lord’s Fief, a Paragon’s Dominion or a Demigod’s Divine Territory, the manifestation of one’s vows would turn heads and attract allies and enemies alike.

Spitting out some blood, Aziz glared at the spectre. “Hey.”

The spectre tilted its head as the colonel levelled the Shipbreaker at it.

“Tell me,” said Aziz, “what kind of vows could a monster like you possibly have!”

The thrusters behind his back roared, and Aziz closed in once more, the Shipbreaker sweeping out laterally. He was moving too fast to know if his attack succeeded, but the colonel had no intention of pausing dramatically to check on the results. Instead, the Exo-Skeleton’s thrusters took over once more, firing erratically while trying to manoeuvre him into a spot when he could execute a second charge once more.

Black light streaked past him time and time again as the thrusters fired wildly, and Aziz couldn’t help but feel a measure of dread. The fact that he was still on the defensive could only mean that the Lord was chasing him, and—

His thoughts cut out once more as tens of black cubes, each one around a metre in length, rippled into existence all around him, and the Exo-Skeleton began to jerk in ways he never knew was possible. The cubes shot out at him a moment later, but even with the mind-numbing movements his armour was making, the colonel knew that there was no avoiding every single cube.

Deactivating the automated evasive function of the Exo-Skeleton, Aziz pumped qi into his Shipbreaker, before slashing upwards diagonally. The initial, enormous barrage of cubes crumbled away from that mighty attack, opening up enough space for him to bob and weave through the remaining cubes, while deflecting and dissecting anything he couldn’t dodge.

The hail of attacks ground to a halt a moment later, and Aziz felt his heart sink. The Fief had exhausted itself to launch such attacks autonomously, which was a good thing, but the only reason why the Fief had actually vanished was because its user was already gone.

The distant explosions that came from the Central Circle abruptly intensified, just as an overwhelming surge of power erupted outwards from the naval fleet below him. A spectre was falling from the skies, its body turning into black smoke, but it had executed its purpose brilliantly.

After all, pieces of light were falling and vanishing with the spectre.

Over fifty ships had been left defenceless by that single, suicidal attack. The barriers would regenerate after a minute or two, but Aziz knew that they didn’t have the luxury of this much time.

“Darn it.” Aziz ran through the options in his mind, but—

A unified cry, one that echoed with both volume and will, tore through the battlefield as tens of Knights, each of them distinctly unique in nationality, arrived in front of the defenceless ships. At the same time, a reassuring drum beat filled the air, driving away whatever fear that Aziz was harbouring.

“You fools…” Aziz glanced at the Knights, who were all from the Hall of Guardians. This was the kind of situation in which numbers mattered, and he didn’t spend more than a few seconds thinking about it.

With a burst of speed, he bolted over to the clump of brave people, who accepted him without any comments, and then began to weave his own defences.