Sophia Demiurge

Chapter 176: Air Strike

The general, named Fernando, shouted.

"YES!"

At the thought and confirmation of their first mission, the air force of Kamatayan grew excited, yet, their drills that was pounded into their minds until they are sick of it made it so that they are disciplined, they did not sound cacophonous when they shouted, their tone steady and their voice in unison.

"We, the manananggals, are known to be the remnants of god's failure alongside the tikbalangs, we are barely correct and during the last war that we have participated, even though we are properly utilized and is used as an air force like before, we can still feel the subconscious discrimination towards us! Our weaker brethren are disregarded without any kind of martial or civil duty, becoming dead weights as if they are useless, and even though we don't blame Lord Siginarugan, our creator of this predicament, we still want change! Change that never happened until our land, Thanatos, was sealed by that accursed elf!"

The general paused, satisfied with the eager, yet composed face of her soldiers, they shouted again in a harmonious unison.

"WE DID NOT!"

The general, Fernando, nodded at this solemnly, though she is honestly not that good with this kind of speech, making her cringe quite hard. She continued.

"However, now is different! Our Lady Sophia advocated for equality! Besides us, she has a proper city where people can live without being hindered by the different standard of living of the undeads! Not only that, but our weaker brethren have found their worth by being servants in the royal palace and messengers of the lady's direct commands! We have yearned to repay her kindness; we trained ourselves, forgetting our identity and becoming her aerial bombers, and today we will finally have a chance to repay her!"

The general paused, once again listening to the frenzied bellows of her soldiers. She then looked forward, flapped her wings as she took flight, and all of the soldiers who were hovering in the air looked at her from below.

"And that chance, we shall not squander! Come forth, soldiers of Sophia, let us once again trek the skies and destroy anyone who dares to stand on the opposite side of our lady's ambition!"

The soldiers, hearing this, also vigorously flapped their wings, with shouts that stated their eagerness and discipline, Fernando, alongside her soldiers soared towards the sky, scanned the surroundings using their eagle-like eyes, and as they homed to their enemy, they tapped the pentagram in the stomach part of their amor, causing it to glow and spat out a spherical copper construct, these are the bombs that they will drop to their enemies.

"CHARGE! SEEK AND DESTROY!"

Fernando ordered, as she did, the army of around a thousand mananangals who have found their new purpose in life blasted away, causing ripples in the air and disintegration of clouds as they disappeared from the top of the mountains they were in before, their distention is the route of escape of the white elves that are in the frontlines and are using the humans as a shield for their cowardly endeavor.

And their goal is to prove themselves worthy of their lady's trust.

__________

In the vast forest, in a place bordering the Tydings and Stardust Kingdoms, 3 captains who gave up flying with their staves with 150 elves, 50 warriors/close range class soldiers and 100 mages used their various magic circle buffs imbedded in their attires to transverse the forest quickly, their expressions solemn and filled with unconcealed indignation and anger, for they never thought that their generals, imbued with one of the lifeworks of their king, making schemes against enemies and allies alike, were obliterated just like that.

They never realized the disparity between organic and inorganic hero prospect were that big, given that their previous generation general were all hero prospects of various gods. They thought that the artificial ones were not that far off, but reality laid it bare that they will never be able to produce a very potent batch of generals, given their long lifespan and very low fertility rate.

They felt like this shouldn't be the case, the white elves felt like they should be in an advantage, after all, the one leading the first elven undead war is a prophet on par with their king, and they almost won, now that it was just a one year old child that somehow nabbed two wives and was able to gulp down information like exploding diarrhea, they lost horribly in just 4 days, necessitating them to activate their contingency plan and act like a scared dog, tucking their tails between their legs as they escape using humans as shield, the most dishonorable thing they have done in their 40 or 50 so years of life.

_Damn it... If those dark elves did not just rebel, then we would have won this war!_

Such were the sentiments of all the elves present, they have degraded as a civilization to the point were even their shortcomings are blamed to other people, the dark elves that they enslaved, their brethren that were supposed to be loyal to their kind, only if they were not oppressed and treated like beggars if they did not want to contribute to the economy as traders or if they did not participated in the frontline of wars.

Such a waste of manpower, such a waste of racial potential, and here are the sinners, still blaming the dark elves, saying that if only they are not attempting to escape their fate, only if they obediently chained themselves as slaves to the white elves, the superior and more beautiful of their kind, they would have won, such hypocrisy of biblical proportions seem to act as adrenaline as hey were able to transverse the whole of periphery of the Stardust territory and successfully enter the Tydings Kingdom, besides the buffs of course.

_Now we just have to reinforce the invader elves in the land of Tydings, they are now lacking of their strongest general, their king dead and their nobles are not that remarkable, this shall make the invasion easier, but we have to be more careful, the undead will surely be hot in pursuit, not unless Sophia got injured or better, died._

The thoughts of the captains were as such, vowing revenge and more vigilance against their adversary, however, just when their minds were to be steered clear of any thoughts and focus on their escape, they heard vigorous, almost violent sounds of flapping wings directly above them, all the elves' eyes constricted.

There was no an approaching sound!

The sound of wings abruptly emerged on top of them as if to mock their not so good intuition, the captains who are still running looked up, there they saw grey skinned women without their lower half with some rotten innards dangling in the severed part, in their back are bat-like wings and in their hands were ominous copper-made spheres that seems to emit a faint yet dense cluster of mana, there were no preludes needed, as if they have drilled the motions in their mind, the mananangals dropped the copper spheres as they glided away from the vicinity of the elves, though, as scholars, they knew that this maneuver is for another rounds of bombing, and indeed, they knew that the copper spheres were bombs.

"Disperse!"

All the elven captain shouted, the elves did so even without orders, all of their footwears glowed as a magic circle on the sole appeared on it, the circle blasted air that propelled all of the 150 soldiers alongside their captains from different location, dodging the epicenter of the spheres that just dropped when they were blasted off in random height, acceleration and velocity, the elven captains turned back, looking at the bombs, however, before they can even hurl orders, the copper bombs exploded in a storm of wind blades that immediately struck the warrior and mage elves in their back, not only that, a super condensed massive fireball accompanied these wind blades, creating forest fires that incinerated the elves, the latter effects of the bombs are more manageable, whilst the former rendered the target automatically dead.

The mages who are in the back took the brunt of this wild yet organized wind blades, some were capable enough to hastily conjure shields, making their status just moderately to severely injured, but the majority were either cut in half in slanted, horizontal or vertical forms whilst some had their heads cleaved from the neck or their brains slashed in two, there is no doubt about their death, blood, bones and flesh littered the place, some of them even taking their time in the air as they were hurled upwards before descending in a horror filled fashion.

It was a good thing that their captains were attentive; at a glance, they were able to calculate the power of the epicenter and formulate a plan to inform

"The epicenter's radius is about 50 meters in a circle, give or take 10 meters; in this range, going out unscathed is impossible! Everyone, we, the captains, will stall for time! Disperse in groups, everytime a bomb drops, make sure to synchronize your leap using the wind ejector, erect barriers in the sides of all the square formation, stack your barriers together, it doesn't matter how many of you will survive, just inform the elves in Tydings that Kamatayan have created an air force, they have been holding back this whole time!"

This orders were like a grim revelations, something that even the captains cannot accept, they have employed everything that they can, yet they were unable to march forward into the territory of the undeads and were forced to retreat, not knowing that the enemies were waiting for an opportunity to introduce their air force and make them have a grand entry is humiliating, as if they tripped on a pile of shit in the middle of a crowd, yet they also know the gravity of the situation, thus the remaining soldiers dispersed and created squares.

_Now the air force have to choose which of the three squares plus us the three captains they will chase, they does have sufficient numbers to disperse their formation and individually chase the three, but given that they have a very linear formation earlier, it is certain to conclude that these undeads were not organized until recently, mananangals are not part of the main force before and they were not given ample role despite their potential, but now, they will be a hi-_

The first captain, the one who hurled orders suddenly stopped his mulling, a sharp, piercing pain was felt from the middle of his forehead down to his brain and the back of his skull, making him look perplexed, he looked up as blood dripped in the middle divide of his eyes, the source of the blood is a black colored long object.

_Wha...?_

The captain looked forward, and their he saw the biggest mananangal of the air force earlier, she is alone, her three fingers from index to ring were outstretched with their nails extending for about 10 meters in length.

"Oh no... we... we are too desperate that we... we got easily deceived..."

One of the generals said, alarm evident on his face as the bombardment of the mananangals using their intricate and majestic aerial show started, such alternating positions were completely unnecessary, yet still, they did it as if to mock the three generals that now had their foreheads nailed with nails that has natural anesthetics.

Fernando's plan was very simple, create a barely passable aerial formation, making it a variable for the next decision of the enemy who needed a decisive way to mitigate their loses, basically making the air force look like a new bunch of soldiers that happens to fly and were experimented on by their queen, also the aerial show was orchestrated by her so that she can have a little fun as she watched the desparing face of the three captains.

Sophia and Fernando are sure to become friends or even "friends" if they gave it a shot, though Fernando is too shy to initiate.

It took an hour at the same time for the three elven units to be massacred and Fernando doesn't need to watch them personally, like it was said earlier, they are already capable enough to create a ceremonial aerial show on the spot, in an official war, them losing will make their heads lines up one by one in the chopping block, soon, the mananangals charged towards her position.

"Is it over?"

Fernando asked the three captains whom she had personally assigned, all of whom nodded.

"Alright then, let's go to our next raid target."

In their first order, they were given two tasks.

Bomb anyone who escapes.

And bomb the part of Tydings that has the greatest amount of elves.

The latter part of the first mission specifically states that only when the fight between Aerendil and Sophia will the bombings seize, this is so that the mananangals will have a chance to escape if Sophia was defeated and also so that they will be the anchor of the invasion of Tydings, the aerial soldiers believed that the former is universally impossible, thus they are preparing for the invasion.

Their lady said that it will be an easy invasion as a lot of humans will start to migrate, but still, they wanted to fell how to invade once more.

The Air Force did not even celebrated their first victory, they went and flew with haste and utmost discipline so that they shall not disappoint their queen.

The mission comes first, festivities come next.