The Butcher of Sargon (Patreon)

Volume 2 Chapter 66: In the Name of the Ascended!

Madness!

This is madness!

This Adakrys must be insane!

Although his body was being gripped by Garde, Charles could still see clearly that the direction Garde was heading was straight toward Columbia’s territory.

What was he trying to do?

Did he really intend to challenge a battleship? A high-speed battleship?

Charles couldn't help but finally begin to doubt.

Was Garde really human?

Was he truly a Terran, just like them?

How could the difference between one person and another be so vast?

...

In the wilderness, a giant behemoth weighing hundreds of thousands of tons was speeding across the land.

On Terra, the most powerful weapons of war were undoubtedly the mobile cities.

When a mobile city entered wartime status, it became a moving steel fortress that rampaged across the earth.

Yet even so, mobile cities had their flaws.

Their greatest weakness was their movement speed.

Even the smaller districts that had merged to form a mobile city moved at a pace so slow it was almost laughable.

In a war between mobile cities, if one side chose to flee, the other side often found themselves unable to catch up, no matter how hard they tried.

Closing the distance between mobile cities was no easy feat.

Under these conditions, a new type of weapon better suited to coordinate with ground forces emerged.

High-speed battleships!

After generations of development, the modern high-speed battleships could maintain speeds exceeding sixty kilometers per hour, all while retaining massive dimensions that are three hundred meters long, one hundred meters high and wide.

This enormous size allowed them to carry more soldiers onboard, and made them incredibly effective at assaulting and harassing mobile cities during warfare.

Some aggressive ship commanders would even order their battleships to ram into the walls of mobile cities, either to forcibly halt their movement or to cover the troops disembarking for a direct assault.

An entire warfare system had developed around the use of high-speed battleships, and it was now a compulsory subject at every major military academy on Terra.

Whenever war broke out, no commander could afford to overlook the vital role played by high-speed battleships.

Only a high-speed battleship could counter another high-speed battleship!

This was an unshakable truth in every commander’s mind.

Thus, as the commander of one such battleship, Major General Bernard of the Ninth District Border Defense Forces was currently feeling extremely annoyed.

Because of a telegram from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Arts Units and Originium, he had been dragged out of his warm bed and forced to command his battleship into action.

As a rare member of the Petram race, Bernard’s favorite pastime was eating his fill and sleeping, which, conveniently, also helped him extend his already long natural lifespan.

Despite the Petram people's famed longevity, Bernard, who had already been alive since Columbia's founding, knew just how troublesome the people from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Arts Units and Originium could be.

“That fucking idiot, why the hell would he be dragging me out with a battleship just to deal with one damn Adakrys? Anyone who didn’t know better would think we were fighting the kings of Kazdel themselves.”

Two centuries ago, during the great coalition war against Kazdel, Bernard had been a young lad of only fifty years old.

Curious about the outside world, he had joined Victoria’s expeditionary force and marched all the way to destroy Kazdel’s capital, returning in victory afterward.

At first, he had thought the coalition of nations attacking Kazdel was a ridiculous overreaction to the threat of Kazdel's possible unification.

But after actually experiencing that war, he understood, the demons of Kazdel, especially their Ten Kings' Court, were monsters of unspeakable terror.

Even now, two hundred years later, Bernard had personally witnessed Columbia’s rise to power. 

From an obscure soldier, he had climbed his way to the rank of general, not because he lacked ambition, but because he simply couldn’t be bothered to climb higher.

The higher you rose, the more you had to deal with endless schemes and infighting.

Wasn't it much better to rule comfortably over some remote border district instead?

As long as he had a high-speed battleship by his side...

Who could defeat him?

Who could bring him down?

Even if the Ten Kings' Court themselves came, they wouldn’t stand a chance!

This was Bernard’s confidence, a confidence born from commanding a colossal behemoth weighing hundreds of thousands of tons.

"Archers, prepare!"

Inside the command room, Bernard tapped the tabletop lightly with his fingers.

"According to the coordinates those hyenas from the Bureau sent us, get ready to open fire. Aim carefully, I don’t want any stray shots hitting elsewhere."

The battleship had already crossed into Minos territory. Although it was at the request of those agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Arts Units and Originium, Bernard had no intention of shelling a Minosian town.

"Send a message to the Bureau. Tell them to drive the target out to at least two kilometers away from the town. Otherwise, I refuse to open fire."

At the moment, the battleship was about fifty kilometers from the Minos town, which is the maximum range of their cannons. If they opened fire from that distance, their accuracy would be terrible.

If a stray shell accidentally hit the town and caused casualties, those agents could just wipe their hands clean and leave, but Bernard would be the one facing a military court.

"General, sir," a communications officer reported awkwardly from within the command center, "we’ve lost contact with the Bureau. Maybe the relay station malfunctioned."

On Terra, there were no satellites. In the wilderness, without signal towers, communication relied either on messengers or on portable signal relays carried by communications soldiers.

This was a standard method for coordinating operations across Terra’s battlefields.

Loss of communication, even for a powerful high-speed battleship, was like becoming blind.

Still, losing communication didn’t mean losing the ability to fight.

The battleship’s onboard scanners and bio-radars could still detect enemy movements and prevent surprise attacks or infiltrations.

High-speed battleships, though powerful, were not invulnerable on the inside.

Suddenly, a new red blip appeared on the ship’s bio-radar.

"General, sir! We’ve detected a large Originium creature on the radar, it’s moving very fast. It could collide with us within a minute."

"Ignore it," Bernard replied casually.

"If it poses a threat to the ship, smash it."

The spotters weren’t alarmed either.

Out in the wilderness, it wasn’t unusual to encounter strange Originium creatures, sometimes even terrifying ones, like the supersonic Originium worms.

But no matter how fierce the creatures, they were fragile before the might of a battleship.

The battleship’s outer armor was reinforced five meters thick, the foundation for why they dared to ram mobile cities at high speed. 

The massive cannons lining the deck made the ship armed to the teeth.

No creature could shake a high-speed battleship.

Bernard had always firmly believed this.

Until—

"General, sir! We've visually confirmed the fast-moving entity, it appears to be a person."

"A person?"

Through the ship’s electronic surveillance system, Bernard quickly caught sight of a figure sprinting rapidly from the distance.

If it hadn’t been so far away, Bernard would never have believed that the cloud of yellow dust kicked up by the running figure was caused by a human being.

An Adakrys?

They were very close now.

Since there are no time for hesitation, Bernard decisively issued an order:

"Intercept him!"

With technological advancements, Columbia’s high-speed battleships had long since abandoned manual aiming, they now used automated dynamic target-tracking systems for precision fire on moving targets.

It took less than five seconds for the crocodile man in the distance to close the gap by almost 500 meters at incredible speed.

On the side of the high-speed battleship, the secondary cannons locked on and prepared to fire.

"Fire!"

The order rang out.

Over a dozen of the ship’s secondary cannons roared simultaneously, without any hesitation about conserving ammunition, after all, all expenses for this operation could be reimbursed through the military supplies department. What were a few dozen shells in the grand scheme of things?

The network of shells fell precisely onto the crocodile man’s projected path.

If his goal wasn’t the battleship, he should have stopped and surrendered with his hands raised.

But Bernard noticed that the crocodile man did not back down.

He was now less than two kilometers from the battleship.

At his current speed, he would collide with them in less than twenty seconds.

"Full firepower!"

Bernard frowned.

He simply couldn’t believe that anyone in this world would dare charge headfirst into a high-speed battleship. Was he insane?

"Wait—Zoom in on the image!" 

Bernard gave the order, having noticed something unusual.

But it was already too late.

At least twenty of the ship’s secondary cannons had opened fire at once, and over a dozen grenade launchers had set up an interception net.

Bernard believed firmly that even if it were one of the insane King of Sarkaz, no one could survive direct bombardment from a high-speed battleship.

There was no cover out on the wasteland.

Once detected by the battleship’s radar, you could only be reduced to ashes under its relentless barrage.

And yet, on the screen, the Adakrys man still did not falter.

Out on the wilderness, he slowed slightly, tossing Charles aside to avoid him being killed by the impact.

"This is far enough," Garde said, a feverish, exhilarated smile spreading across his face.

"You stay here and witness everything that's about to happen."

From the moment he first laid eyes on a mobile city, the wild blood running through Garde’s veins had stirred a deep yearning within him.

He wanted to conquer a mobile city.

Especially after arriving in Columbia, after setting foot in Trimounts City, that desire had grown even stronger.

He wanted to crush a mobile city!

He wanted mobile cities to kneel at his feet!

But Garde knew that at his current strength, he couldn’t yet bring down a full mobile city head-on.

The road must be taken step by step. The meal must be eaten one bite at a time.

So for now, he would start with this battleship!

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The battleship’s bombardment turned a swath of land hundreds of meters wide into a hellscape.

The air itself was so hot it seemed like a single breath would melt your internal organs.

Charging through the inferno, Garde rushed forward like a moth into flame, at speeds over 300 kilometers per hour, against the tide of explosions.

With both arms crossed to shield his body, the figure that’s tiny compared to the colossal battleship collided with the armored giant.

But it was not a one-sided crushing.

Accompanied by a deafening crash, a shockwave visibly rippled across the wilderness.

A towering golden crocodile man, tens of meters tall, planted his feet firmly onto the ground.

And he swung his fist at the battleship.

BOOM ——————!!