Another Worldly Summons

Chapter 103: Air Campaign

The explosion energized the miasmatic properties of the carrier missile, and its device that deployed magic particles rapidly changed their properties, beginning to find a host – a living one – to forcefully inject Mana into the unfortunate beings. The purple miasmas rapidly engulfed the trenches, a large swath of land, and along with approximately 5,000 defenders, sealed their fate once the miasmatic fog reached their position, inhaled and in contact.

Rapid and painful crystallization process began. Cells with Mana burst into dozens of times their size at an abnormal rate. Microcrystalline gems tore off flesh, veins, and internal organs of its victims. Screams and agony resonated throughout the front – unbearable pain and the shock of what was happening to their bodies where crystals began to tear their skins as they expanded. Soon, those screams disappeared, leaving thousands of crystallized, lifeless defenders with faces of despair, agony, and pain.

The commander gazed down on the aftermath, thick purple fog engulfing a portion of the battlefield. It seemed sufficient to take out a few thousand enemies and create a breakthrough point for their tanks to flank and blitz all the way to the heart of the enemy mainland uncontested. "471st, we'll go for a second run, a little deeper, hit their second line of defense," he ordered, as their formation began to converge once more, their noses directed to the east, towards the Doric Commonwealth's second line of defense.

The Annonrial formation sped up as they zeroed in on their next target at an incredible rate. Suddenly, several dots with burning yellow flames rose in the sky. Instinctively, he reached for the radio, wanting to ask about the situation. Due to the lack of a terrain mapping system, they were blind in this sector for some unknown reasons. They didn't know their warning systems were also all dead in the water.

Boom

Then the first Mach 3.5 Vietnam War-era S-75's V-750 missiles effortlessly slammed towards the second formation on the left, pulverizing the Galleria into thousands of debris and a cloud of burning smoke in the sky. And, for the first time, the entire network of SEADF air defense systems in Philades finally came to life, as three batteries of S-75 fired at the incoming formation. After two days of restraint, the strategic surface-to-air missiles caught the Annonrial formation by surprise.

"Break! Break! Defensive maneuvers!" shouted the commander as he desperately pulled his controls, swinging it to the left as he barrelled down towards the incoming missiles. "They never said there's an ASEAN defense network here!" he immediately concluded, identifying the perpetrators. He knew that Duro didn't have any equivalents, and the TDGs were deemed a direct military unit, thus coined as the same.

"Fuck! It's changing angles! It's still on my—Zzz..."

"Leave this airspace!"

"Mayday! Mayday! I'm going down!"

He didn't have time to think about whether ASEAN casually handed arrows of lights or advanced air defense systems to TDGs as he joined others in their desperate quest to dodge menacing Mach 3 missiles. The chatter on the Mana comms added to the nerve-wracking factor of their precarious situation.

Furthermore, they discovered additional malfunctions along the way – even their IFF was not working, the terrain mapping system and the early warning system were dead. This confusion overwhelmed him, and the realization struck as he gritted his teeth. "This! A trap!" he shouted in frustration as they were attacked by high G maneuvers, groaning in response to their ordeal. It seemed that somehow their enemies could block and make their systems malfunction, an unknown factor for him. The existence of equivalents to jamming was unknown for them. While Ravernal and upper management of Annonrials might have knowledge of such equivalents, for normal personnel like him, there was no way of knowing, as most of these magical interference system types were still in the theoretical stage, in dust at the warehouse, in an abandoned prototype stage, or simply hadn't left the drawing board.