Chapter 122: Desperate Counterattack

The night air over the bluff was thick with the sharp smell of ozone, scorched rock, and boiling seawater.

Through the fifty-yard transit aperture opened in the golden curve of the Aegis, Goddess Viona watched the distant ocean with feverish delight. For months, she had felt trapped and humiliated, her divine authority mocked by silent iron ships sitting safely outside her reach. But now, seeing the purple lightning strike the destroyer’s bow and watching the loose scrap on the carrier’s deck get torn into the sky by the gravity spheres, her divine arrogance flared back to life.

"Look at them scramble!" Viona laughed wildly, her voice echoing off the stone walls of the inner keep. "Their iron machines are shuddering! Their weapons cannot stop the combined might of my sacred champions! Cast again! Drown them in flame! Crack their hulls open!"

On the open cliff, the eight mage heroes did not celebrate.

Bound by the dark Torment Bands, their minds were hollow, operating purely on cold magical output. Blood dripped steadily from Daiki’s nose, his veins burning crimson beneath his skin as the parasitic artifact forced his mana pathways past their natural limit. Beside him, Rena’s hands trembled violently, the wind howling around her fingers as she gathered another tempest vortex.

Behind the line of casters, Miyuki knelt on one knee. Her fingers were clamped white around her wooden healing staff, her breath shallow and strained. Pure emerald-gold restoration mana flowed continuously from the staff’s head into the ground, branching outward like glowing roots to feed the mages’ empty reserves.

Tears leaked from her glazed, unblinking eyes, but her expression remained completely dead. Her body was just an engine pumping life into weapons of war.

"Mana replenishment at eighty-two percent," Miyuki murmured in an empty monotone. "Secondary casting sequence primed."

Standing at the absolute edge of the bluff, Ayanokoji held his black abyssal spear in a relaxed, two-handed grip. His glassy crimson pupils tracked the flashes of light erupting five miles out across the dark water.

His brain, functioning with enhanced S-rank analytical speed, calculated the trajectory of the counterattack before the sound even crossed the bay.

"Counter-battery fire detected," Ayanokoji stated flatly. "Five-inch naval artillery shells and RIM-116 surface-skimming missiles inbound on direct vector through the aperture. Terminal velocity: Mach 2.4. Time to impact: four seconds."

Beside him, Kenji Sato drew his radiant longsword.

The S-rank Holy Sword Master took a single step forward, the black band on his forearm pulsing with violent crimson light. Pure, blinding white holy mana erupted along the steel blade, extending the edge into a six-foot beam of razor-sharp divine light. Kenji’s arrogant smirk was gone, his posture rigid and mechanical.

"Defensive parameter active," Kenji droned. "Target: incoming kinetic ordnance."

"Mages, continue channeling," Ayanokoji ordered, shifting his weight onto his back foot. "Melee interception commencing."

The darkness across the water ripped open.

Dozens of high-explosive five-inch naval shells and four supersonic Rolling Airframe Missiles tore through the fifty-yard gap in the Aegis, screaming straight toward the crowded bluff.

SHCK-BOOM!

Kenji moved like a streak of white light.

His S-rank sword arts unleashed dozens of radiant slashes into the air in a fraction of a second. White holy arcs severed two of the incoming naval shells cleanly in half, causing their high-explosive filler to detonate prematurely fifty yards out over empty air.

Simultaneously, Ayanokoji’s black spear became a blur of dark steel.

His spear thrusts were mathematically precise, striking with enough concentrated piercing force to shatter enchanted stone. The black spearhead stabbed the nose cone of the lead RIM-116 missile.

KABOOM!

The missile detonated against the spear’s heavy reinforced tip. The blinding explosion of heat and shrapnel engulfed Ayanokoji, but his dense aura shielded his body, the kinetic backblast merely sliding his boots three inches across the granite. Without pausing, Ayanokoji spun the black shaft, using the flat of the blade to deflect a five-inch shell into the rocky cliff face behind them.

BOOM!

A massive chunk of the upper cliff crumbled into rubble, raining gravel across the terrace.

Yet, even with two S-rank vanguards operating at maximum physical output, human reflexes were facing automated naval salvos.

Two five-inch shells slipped past the crossfire.

One struck the rocky ledge barely ten feet to Daiki’s left.

KER-BLAM!

The concussive shockwave pulverized the stone, throwing two of the casting mages off their feet. Shrapnel tore through Daiki’s leather armor, splattering blood across his robe and shattering the intricate magic circles hovering before his hands. His spell collapsed into a chaotic backfire, burning his arms in wild red sparks.

"Interference confirmed," Ayanokoji reported without looking back, thrusting his spear to deflect another fragment. "Casting formation disrupted. Casualties sustained."

"Heal them!" Viona shrieked from behind the safety of the barrier. "Miyuki, restore their bodies instantly! Kenji, cut down every piece of iron that comes through that gap! Do not let them silence the mages!"

Miyuki raised her wooden staff, her emerald mana surging into the wounded mages, knitting torn muscle and sealing cracked ribs within seconds. But the strain on her own body was immense; her knees buckled further, her breath coming in ragged gasps.

The opening in the Aegis was turning into a deadly funnel of fire, and both sides were locked in a vicious exchange of steel, lead, and high-tier mana.

Inside the Combat Information Center of the USS Gerald R. Ford, the rapid clatter of keyboards and urgent damage control reports filled the room.

"The localized gravity field overhead has dissipated!" the radar officer announced. "Flight deck wind shear returning to acceptable parameters! Electromagnetic interference dropping!"

Rear Admiral Donovan did not hesitate. "Order Strike Flight Blackout off the deck. Two F-35Cs with AGM-158C Long Range Anti-Ship Missiles and precision laser-guided penetrators. Launch now."

On the carrier’s bow, the electromagnetic catapult hummed with immense electrical power.

THUMP-WHOOSH!

An F-35C Lightning II shot off the deck into the black night, its afterburner a tight blue diamond in the darkness, followed three seconds later by a second stealth strike fighter.

The jets climbed sharply to twenty thousand feet, keeping their radar signatures minimal as they looped around the northern flank of Port Solis, using the high coastal mountains to mask their approach from visual detection.

Down below, the destroyer Carney and cruiser Bunker Hill continued their synchronized fire through the gap in the barrier.

Their five-inch guns were glowing dull cherry red in the dark, automated cooling systems pumping seawater across the barrels to prevent jamming. Every five seconds, another high-explosive round roared toward the bluffs, keeping the imperial heroes pinned under a relentless hail of steel splinters and concussive thunder.

On the bluff, the situation was rapidly deteriorating.

Shin, the S-rank Gravity Weaver, forced himself back to his feet, blood leaking from his ears under the psychic pressure of the Torment Band.

"Spatial compression... stage two," Shin chanted, his hands clawing at the empty air as he tried to open a localized vacuum rift over the carrier’s bridge.

"Ayanokoji! Kenji!" Viona’s shrill command hammered into the heroes’ minds. "Cover Shin until the void tears that ship in two!"

Kenji stepped directly in front of the gravity mage.

His holy sword flared with blinding brilliance as he entered a full defensive stance. A five-inch shell roared through the aperture, aimed straight for Shin’s chest. Kenji met it head-on, his blade slicing in a vertical upward arc.

CLANG-BOOM!

The holy blade split the seventy-pound shell cleanly, the explosion erupting right in Kenji’s face. The blast-wave blackened his skin and tore his uniform sleeves to shreds, but the mind-controlled sword master didn’t even blink. He planted his boots into the stone, his radiant aura flickering wildly as he absorbed the blunt force.

Beside him, Ayanokoji’s spear was moving with terrifying efficiency.

Every thrust, parry, and redirect was stripped of wasted motion. A second Rolling Airframe Missile came skimming low over the rock; Ayanokoji took half a step to the side, hooked the missile’s steering fin with the crescent blade of his spear, and slammed it down into the empty ocean below the cliff.

KABOOM!

A geyser of black water shot fifty feet into the air, drenching the rocks in cold spray.

"Aperture coordinates are completely zeroed by enemy fire control," Ayanokoji stated, his voice calm despite the burning shrapnel singing the air around his head. "They have established an automated firing pattern. Holding this static position while maintaining the opening yields an unfavorable attrition ratio."

"Shut your mouth and fight!" Viona screamed from the inner courtyard. "Shin’s spell is almost complete! Ten more seconds!"

Shin’s hands glowed with pitch-black gravitational mana. A tiny, swirling black dot began to expand in the air, humming with enough spatial distortion to bend the light around the bluff.

High in the clouds above, Flight Blackout reached its release point.

"Blackout Lead has visual on the transit gap," the pilot spoke through his oxygen mask. "Target is laser-designated. Dropping GBU-24 Paveway III. Two thousand pounds of bunker-busting joy heading down the chimney."

The two-thousand-pound laser-guided bomb detached from the internal weapons bay of the F-35C.

It did not use rocket propulsion. It made no sound.

Gliding silently through the freezing night air, the heavy steel penetrator angled sharply downward, tracking the invisible infrared laser beam painted dead-center into the fifty-yard opening of the Aegis.

On the bluff, Ayanokoji suddenly looked up.

His S-rank danger perception tripped an internal alarm. His eyes locked onto the black shape dropping silently through the clouds, moving at high subsonic speed straight through the center of the aperture.

"Heavy kinetic penetrator inbound," Ayanokoji said in an instant. "Estimated payload: two thousand pounds. Impact: two seconds."

Kenji reacted immediately. He raised his radiant sword with both hands, channeling all his remaining S-rank holy mana into a massive, vertical sky-cleaving slash.

"Holy Severance!" Kenji droned, unleashing a towering blade of white light straight up into the path of the falling bomb.

The holy slash struck the nose of the heavy bomb eight hundred feet above the bluff.

BOOM!

The laser seeker was severed, and the bomb detonated prematurely in mid-air right inside the throat of the fifty-yard transit gap.

The resulting explosion was catastrophic.

Two thousand pounds of specialized high explosive detonated within the confined space of the barrier opening. The overpressure wave had nowhere to expand cleanly; it slammed into the edges of the Aegis with the force of an erupting volcano.

CRACK!

The golden barrier shuddered violently, webbed fractures of bright light spreading dozens of yards across its surface. The concussive blast rebounded downward like a falling hammer, crashing directly onto the bluff.

Shin’s gravity spell was blown apart before it could form, the magical backlash collapsing into his chest and hurling the boy violently against the inner stone gate.

Kenji’s holy sword was ripped from his grip, spinning away into the darkness, while Kenji himself was thrown backward, skidding thirty feet across the stone, his armor dented and blood pouring from his mouth.

Ayanokoji drove the butt of his black spear deep into a crack in the granite, holding on with both hands as the shockwave washed over him, stripping the fabric from his shoulders and forcing him to his knees.

Behind them, Miyuki was blown completely off her feet, her wooden staff flying from her hands as she hit the terrace steps, coughing up a mouthful of blood before going limp.

Inside the courtyard, Goddess Viona was knocked flat onto her back by the sheer atmospheric pressure leaking through the gap. The ears of the high priests burst, screaming as they clutched their bleeding heads.

"Close it!" Viona shrieked in absolute terror, scrambling frantically across the floor on her hands and knees. "Close the aperture! Seal the barrier! NOW!"

The trembling temple mages slammed their focuses into the ground.

With a blinding flare of golden light, the fifty-yard gap in the Aegis snapped shut.

The silence returned instantly, heavy and suffocating.

Inside the sealed dome, the sounds of war vanished, replaced only by the groans of the wounded. Shin lay motionless on the flagstones. Kenji was struggling to push himself up on broken arms, his glowing red band flickering erratically. Miyuki lay slumped on the steps, her healing mana completely exhausted.

Ayanokoji pulled his black spear from the stone, slowly standing up.

His face was streaked with soot and blood, his clothes torn, but his red-tinted eyes remained cold, vacant, and completely undisturbed.

He looked down at Goddess Viona, who was sitting in the dirt, clutching her chest, her regal composure entirely reduced to ash.

"The saturation strike failed to achieve mission objectives, Master," Ayanokoji reported in his hollow, mechanical drone. "Fleet casualties: minor surface damage to one escort vessel. Imperial casualties: one S-rank incapacitated, three A-rank mages wounded, and structural integrity of the forward bluff compromised."

He tilted his head slightly, resting the black spear against his shoulder.

"They did not flinch, Master. They simply adjusted their aim."