Chapter 575: Boarding
[V6C105 – Sorrow of a Silent Parting]
Qianye’s emotional stir sent the two into a lapse of silence.
The massive landing fleet crawled on through the void. Several ambushes appeared along the way, but the assailants were mostly small squadrons and their fighting power couldn’t compare to the first arachne fleet.
Even so, the series of assaults caused the landing fleet to lose a dozen or so airships. Again, thousands of soldiers were put to eternal sleep in the cold void. However, the Evernight side’s losses were even worse than the empire’s—this reached a point where no more ambush squadrons appeared toward the last day.
The journey appeared fairly long. Even the high-speed corvette Qianye was on had been refueled when the floating continent finally appeared in the extremes of his vision.
Gazing over from the bridge, the void landmass, at the moment, was nothing more than a speck of light the size of a fingernail. In truth, it was a large continent of seven provinces. Even though the continent had already come into vision, it still took the landing fleet half a day’s time to approach it.
Specks of fire could be seen occasionally in the distant darkness of the void. Qianye learned from Zhao Yuying that the imperial fleet was fighting the Evernight Council’s allied fleet, and that each burst of light signified the explosion of a battleship. Only the explosions of large battleships could be seen over such distances. The destruction of lighter vessels could only be seen by people like Qianye who possessed extraordinary vision.
Even so, Qianye had seen over a dozen fireballs within a short period of time. It would seem that the battle situation in the distance was exceptionally fierce.
At this moment, the imperial guide airship issued a light signal. An alarm immediately rang out on the corvette as the captain roared in his hoarse voice, “All hands to battle stations! We’re going to charge through the warzone and perform a forced landing!”
The corvette immediately broke into a clamor as the resting crew jumped up and ran to their posts. At the bridge, Zhao Yuying arrived beside the captain and stood there gazing into the distant void. Meanwhile, Qianye left the bridge and headed toward the turret where he belonged.
Like a flock of startled birds, the barely organized imperial landing fleet quickly dispersed and darted toward the floating continent. At this moment, almost all of the transport ships were accelerating at the fastest speed possible. This made evident the performance levels of each ship—the ones at the fore were more or less able to catch up with the guide ships, while those lagging at the rear were no different from sluggish cargo vessels. In truth, most of them really were cargo ships that had been slightly modified.
The turret’s view window had undergone simple repairs, but the tear above was still there. Through the window, Qianye could see numerous Evernight airships swarm over like sharks drawn to blood.
There were many imperial battleships following this group of sharks, but they weren’t in a rush to obstruct the enemies. They merely roamed around the periphery instead, launching fierce attacks from time to time.
The imperial landing fleet immediately became a chaotic mess. The transport captains steered away with all their might to avoid the incoming swarm of bloodthirsty enemies, all the while cursing at the imperial fleet. Some desperate transports released large clouds of steam in an attempt to hide their tracks. However, things in the void were different from the continents. How effective could a steam cloud be amidst the vast emptiness?
Zhao Yuying, on the other hand, wasn’t one to stand around and watch the liveliness. The corvette spun around lightly, locked onto a vampire battleship, and charged right over. That vampire battleship was slender, elegant, and almost one and a half times the length of the Zhao clan ship—apparently, it was a destroyer class vessel. Even so, Zhao Yuying still engaged it without the slightest worry. She kept teaching Qianye how serious fleet battles were, but she was the craziest one on the battlefield.
Thousands of meters away, the vampire destroyer’s twin cannon turrets rumbled at the same time and fired two rocket-sized ballista bolts. Moreover, the shots were fired from the left and right, slightly restricting the corvette’s evasive maneuvers.
Just this method alone proved that the operator of the enemy ship wasn’t simple. Additionally, the vampire destroyer was still approaching rapidly. The corvette was now in a precarious situation against an enemy that outclassed it in both armor and firepower.
The vampire destroyer could even board them because the enemy captain, as well as their warriors, held the level advantage.
However, this Zhao clan corvette happened to be an exception. With both Qianye and Zhao Yuying present, even the crew of a cruiser or battleship would find it difficult to hold the advantage.
The corvette deftly evaded the enemy volley, but this maneuver unwittingly brought the two vessels closer. Meanwhile, the vampire destroyer sped up deliberately after stopping its primary cannons, clearly about to board.
Qianye aimed several times at the destroyer’s critical points, but knowing Zhao Yuying’s intentions, he had no choice but to hold back. A couple of shots weren’t enough to destroy the opponent, but it might anger them and cause them to stop trying to capture the vessel.
After a brief chase, the corvette was locked onto by the vampire destroyer’s anchor guns. Numerous grappling hooks flew out soon afterward—the steel cables tightened with a buzz as the destroyer pulled the corvette in and bound the vessel to itself.
All of a sudden, a sword pierced through the cabin door where the two ships were connected. The blade then circled around the door and practically sawed it off. The thick, sturdy cabin doors flew out and fell to the floor with a loud boom.
An arrogant-looking vampire elder appeared at the cabin door, a viscount as denoted by the decorations on his uniform. He was followed by ten vampire warriors equipped with heavy armor and axes. In this narrow space, each of them looked like a fortress made of steel.
The vampire viscount laughed coldly after boarding. “I might let you live as slaves in my castle if you lay down your weapons and surrender immediately. Otherwise…”
He hadn’t even finished speaking when his eyes suddenly went wide!
Zhao Yuying suddenly walked out from a passage and raised Mountain Splitter to his chest. At this moment, the brilliance gathering at the cannon’s muzzle even caused his blood core to tremble!
Zhao Yuying’s movements weren’t fast, but the vampire viscount still couldn’t react in time. He watched as the cannon shell, suffused with an aura of death, emerge from the muzzle in a flash of light. He wanted to run but it felt as though his legs were submerged in a swamp. He lifted one leg with great difficulty, but the projectile had reached his chest before he could even put it down.
With a loud boom, a gaping hole appeared on the cabin wall as well as on the vampire’s body.
Zhao Yuying didn’t hold back at all and only stopped after firing several rounds in one go.
When the origin tempest dispersed, one could see that the boarding point on the corvette had more or less been blasted apart. The damage on the destroyer was even more terrifying—it looked as if it had taken a blast from a cruiser.
Amidst the rubble, the vampire viscount’s upper body had disappeared and several corpses were scattered around him. These vampire assault warriors simply had no way of enduring the might of Mountain Splitter, especially since the hand cannon’s damage was greatly amplified in this enclosed space.
Inside the vampire destroyer, the captain was sitting with a glass of red wine in hand and gazing at another battlefield. The current boarding procedure was but a negligible matter to him. A corvette’s captain would, according to his experience, be a rank-nine fighter at most. The person he had sent was his aide, a third-rank viscount from a family with a long history. The latter was even accompanied by six high-ranking warriors who specialized in melee combat. How could they not win?
When the abrupt explosion took place, it was far beyond the captain’s imaginations. Under the fierce swinging, the wine in his glass spilled out and stained his intricately crafted suit.
“Goddammit!” He stood up while cursing furiously, curious as to what had just happened.
But then he walked over to the window and almost fainted when he saw the massive hole in the airship’s side. He soon came to and roared, “Rider, that trash. What the hell is he doing?!”
With a defect of this degree, it would be lucky if they could return to Twilight Continent in one piece, much less do battle. It turned out that capturing an imperial corvette had destroyed the captain’s dreams of harvesting military honors and great riches.
“W-What’s going on?” The vampire captain’s hands couldn’t help but tremble, so much so that he didn’t even notice the wine was spilling onto his body.
It was at this time that Qianye’s voice arrived from behind him. “Simple, you provoked someone you can’t afford to.”
“Who goes there?!” The vampire captain turned around just in time to see the window in front shatter as a slender figure walked into the bridge as though he had trod through the void.
The metallic goblet fell to the floor with a clang as the captain’s hands trembled uncontrollably. That was a shiver coming from the depths of his blood core—for a brief moment, the captain felt as though he had seen a prince.
Qianye stood silently in front of the captain, the floor beside him littered with corpses. Even the captain himself had no idea how his subordinates had collapsed.
Qianye’s eyes grew increasingly mysterious as he gazed at the captain—much like a bottomless abyss. The blood and qi of this vampire was completely visible to him, and there was simply no secret to speak of.
“A second-rank viscount.” Qianye felt that the hadn’t faced a second-rank viscount seriously since the bloody battle.
“You should address me as excellency. Call me Your Excellency Phillips.”
“Dear Mr. Phillips, a mere second-rank viscount has no right to call himself an excellency, at least not in front of me.”
Phillips was furious. “You’re insulting the dignity of an ancient clan!”
“Ancient clan? Too bad you’re not from the twelve.”
Phillips drew his sword with a clang. “I’ll use your blood to wash away your rudeness!”