Summoning Our Country - NHS Kai

Chapter 14: Donnerschlag Part 1

Boom.

Another deep exploding sound rocked the palace. That time, it felt closer, shaking the ground and rocking the shining chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. Everyone's curiosity skyrocketed as they felt that something horribly wrong was happening. The officers ran out from the meeting hall to go outside. The king wanted to follow them but he was stopped by Andres and his advisors.

"Your Majesty! You can't go! It might be dangerous!"

"I have to see it with my own eyes!"

Overpowering the advisors, the king rushed out of the meeting hall and into the hallways. As the loud footsteps of his boots resonated throughout the grandiose halls, more and more explosions could be heard happening outside.

Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.

The king began to sweat as he ran. However, his anxieties were the primary source of his perspiration. He could only explain the explosions with a single answer-one that he was not ready to accept. There, at the other end of the hallway, he saw sunlight reflecting from the marble floors as the doors to a balcony lay open. The magnificent silk curtains waved in the wind as the sight of men in brown military suits stood outside with their heads swiveling all over the place. In the time it took for the king to reach the balcony, ten more explosions had gone off. There, standing in the mid-morning sun and breezy gales, the king, looked up to a terrifying sight. The sweat from his brow continued to pour as he lost the energy to even curl his hands into fists. Emotions welled up as his thinking slowed to a halt.

"I-Impossible..."

Large, grey, unyielding metal birds flew in formation from the skies to the west and southwest to the capital. Their extremely fast speeds made the gentlemen on the balcony rule out the fact that they were birds or wyverns. They weren't even the aircraft from the Leiforians nor the Muish, or even the Imperials. It was beyond any doubt alien. However, eagle-eyed officers spotted peculiar details on the wings and bodies of the aircraft-a black and white cross imposed on a red circle.

"T-The Gra Valkan flag...!!!"

Each aircraft had a role in the form of lumps that dropped from their opened underbellies. These lumps then plummeted into the ground below, erupting into a mess of orange and black as fire and dirt were thrown up in explosive fashion.

Boom!

In the receiving end were their coastal batteries, which were loosely manned and terribly maintained. In any case, they didn't have the elevation to shoot even wyverns out of the sky. To the east, the military police headquarters, which had been the subject of an attack by clandestine Gra Valkan forces the night before, was leveled in a series of explosions from the bombs dropped by Gra Valkan planes. At the harbor, where moored Pagandan wooden and iron gunboats were sunk in quick succession, a lone armored cruiser stood its ground against the mass of bombs dropping all around it. Its circuit guns erupted into life as its gunners manually turned them to follow the enemy planes flying overhead.

Tatatatatatatatata!

However, the manually-aimed circuit guns proved useless as black lumps of explosive fell on the Pagandan flagship Tilas, piercing its deck and exploding through its armored belt. Hit by two bombs, the explosions opened massive holes along the starboard waterline, filling the now exposed protective mana stone bunkers with seawater at egregious rates. In no time, the Tilas unceremoniously went down under the shallow waters of Priscina harbor.

Under the noise of explosions and unorganized, disparate rifle fire from their own soldiers against the unstoppable Gra Valkan onslaught, they heard the heart-piercing shrieks of their own citizens in the city below running for their lives. The government and military officials looked on in horror, unable to cope up with the extremely fast pace of the course of events. Before long, their anger and frustration came to a boiling point, but they unwittingly decided to turn these feelings against one another.