Confirming that the flares were the key to guiding the Armored Airship's attack, Morin immediately climbed onto the wreckage of the downed 'Siegfried Type 1,' using both his hands and feet.
The narrow cockpit was filled with a pungent smell of oil mixed with other unknown gases. There were no joysticks or other control devices as Morin had imagined.
Other than some incomprehensible gauges and magic crystals, there were two glove-like objects suspended on either side of the pilot's seat.
And on the central axis of the pilot's seat, there were some metal protrusions, apparently used to connect to the pilot suit.
Morin searched the storage box below the pilot seat for a moment and quickly found a thick leather box.
He opened the box. Inside lay a signal pistol and several specialized flares.
The signal pistol's design was quite ordinary, with no noticeable difference in structure from the break-action signal pistols in his memory. However, the flares themselves looked unusual.
Their casings were much more refined than ordinary flares, with tiny, dense runes engraved on the warheads and brass shells, suggesting the use of arcane technology.
Morin broke open the barrel with a "click," inserted a flare from the rear, and closed the breech.
He carefully poked his head out from behind the building ruins that the Armored Knight had crashed into. The street below was a tableau of hell on earth.
The Britannian and Kingdom Army soldiers were charging forward like madmen, and the machine gun fire from the Saxon positions continuously licked at the charging crowd.
People fell every second, but others immediately filled the gaps.
"Morin, aim for the densest part of their formation!"
Ludwig leaned against the wreckage of the mech, enduring the sharp pain, guiding Morin to the target.
Morin nodded, then followed Ludwig's guidance, raised the muzzle, and fiercely pulled the trigger.
"Bang!"
After a crisp sound, the flare arced into the air, then suddenly burst open high above the Britannian attacking force.
It did not emit the dazzling bright light of an ordinary flare, but left a faint, shimmering field of blue light points in the air, like fireflies on a summer night, which slowly dissipated.
"Captain! Teutonic Knight Order attack guidance beacon detected!"
On the L30 Armored Airship in the sky, an observer lying prone by a transparent observation window loudly reported, staring intently at a huge lens in front of him.
Within the lens, an area in the smoke-shrouded city below was clearly marked by a flashing blue magical marker, extremely conspicuous.
"Calculate firing solutions! Transmit to all gun crews upon completion, fire at will!"
From the Captain's seat, a stern-faced middle-aged officer immediately issued the attack command.
A series of instructions were quickly relayed through the copper voice tubes in the bridge to the various gun positions and a separate small room on the airship's lower deck.
Inside the small room, several Saxon Arcane Engineers, wearing blue uniforms distinctly different from the other soldiers, immediately gathered around a complex instrument and began calculating the trajectory and firing solutions based on the position of the guidance beacon.
Complex, obscure runes flowed across a crystal panel in front of them, ultimately being translated into sets of numbers, which were instantly transmitted to the various turrets.
"Firing solutions locked! High-explosive shells loaded!"
"Commence attack!"
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
A dull artillery roar, like thunder rolling across the horizon, came from the sky.
On the airship's lower deck, the eight twin-barreled 203mm turrets simultaneously spat out flames of destruction.
Eight 203mm naval cannons fired in quick succession. The shells, shrieking as they tore through the air, accurately smashed into the street in front of Morin, which was packed with Britannian soldiers.
On the ground, the Britannian soldiers who were just moments ago madly charging had no time to realize what was happening before death rained down from the sky.
The violent explosions instantly covered the entire street. The earth trembled, and the buildings groaned.
The scorching blast wave, mixed with countless fragments and debris, formed a storm of death that shredded everything on the street.
Human bodies were as fragile as paper under this level of firepower saturation, instantly torn apart by the shockwave and shrapnel.
In just one volley, the tide-like charge came to an abrupt halt. The entire street had been transformed into a purgatory of blood and fire.
But this was only the beginning.
The next few volleys, adjusted by the various turrets, began to extend the fire deeper into the attacking forces' position. Simultaneously, the airship began to reduce speed while lowering its altitude.
As the airship continuously descended, it eventually hovered several hundred meters directly above the street.
Immediately following, rows of bomb bays beneath its lower deck opened up.
Heavy bombs, the size of propane tanks, were continuously dropped with the sound of "clank, clank" of mechanical locks, plunging into the dense smoke and dust created by the shelling below.
"Rumble, rumble, rumble—!"
An explosion even more intense than the previous shelling occurred.
The entire city seemed to shake under the successive blasts. Huge mushroom clouds mixed with black smoke billowed into the sky.
The brick and stone buildings lining both sides of the street collapsed in swathes, like building blocks struck by a giant hammer, burying countless soldiers who couldn't escape alive beneath the ruins.
After the shelling and bombing, the dense, hemispherical MG08 heavy machine gun turrets on the airship's lower deck began their attack.
Deadly whips of fire rained down from the sky, mercilessly strafing any target still moving on the ground.
The Britannian soldiers who had fortunately survived the previous bombardment were now completely broken.
They no longer cared about attacking and could not hear the screams of their officers.
The instinct for survival overwhelmed everything. Everyone was crying and screaming, scrambling to escape to the rear with no regard for anything else.
Morin, supporting Ludwig, hid behind the wreckage of the Armored Knight, staring blankly at the war behemoth constantly pouring fire from the sky, momentarily lost in thought.
This thing is too powerful, isn't it?
Isn't this just a goddamn cruiser hung in the sky?
Is this the strategic weapon of the Saxon Empire?
A war machine born from combining industrial might with arcane technology to this degree had a destructive power far exceeding his imagination.
And the load-carrying capacity of this Armored Airship, just by looking at it, was clearly far superior to the 'Zeppelin airships' Morin knew before he crossed over.
Setting aside the lower deck completely covered in armor, just those four twin-barreled 203mm turrets alone couldn't be light, let alone the sheer number of aerial bombs stored in the bomb bay.
At the same time, the massive air bladder above, upon close observation, clearly showed energy fluctuations similar to a magical shield, indicating that these air bladders were also protected.
Morin finally understood why the Saxon Empire could hold its own against the Holy Britannian Empire, the old world hegemon, despite being far behind in arcane proficiency.
If the Armored Airships maintained altitude and the mages couldn't pose a threat to them, ground forces truly seemed to have no effective way to deal with these aerial war behemoths.
These otherworld 'Germans' really had something special.
In contrast, the Germans from Morin's previous world turned Industry 4.0 into Industry 404…
Sigh, utterly incompetent.
The appearance of the Armored Airship was the final straw that completely crushed the morale of the Britannian Expeditionary Force and the Kingdom Army.
Within Seville, the attacking forces on every front were shaken to their core upon seeing the colossal, sky-obscuring behemoth.
The defenders' morale, in turn, received a massive boost, especially since the Armored Airship, while attacking, was also broadcasting the Saxon Empire's military anthem through multiple high-power public address systems…
As the defenders on all fronts began to counterattack, the attacking forces fell into a full-scale rout, fleeing desperately from the city that had cost them so much blood.
The flags of the Saxon Empire, bearing the yellow-and-black eagle, were finally raised once more over Seville's highest points.
Morin stared blankly at the rising banners, muttering after a long pause:
"It really is the flag of the Holy Roman Empire, isn't it?"
After leaving countless corpses on the street, the enemies attacking the City Hall defense line finally retreated completely.
The airship in the sky also ceased its heavy artillery and aerial bomb attacks, only occasionally using its machine guns to strafe stragglers during its circling passes.
Morin, with his mere twenty-odd surviving soldiers, emerged from the ruins.
He first sent a messenger to the rear position to summon medics and stretcher teams to transport Ludwig and the other wounded.
Then, he, Klaus, Bowman, and the others cautiously made their way toward the street that had been thoroughly plowed by fire.
They needed to clear the battlefield and confirm that no enemies had slipped away.
More importantly, they needed to confirm the fate of the High-Level Mage Eldridge.
The sight on the street caused even these veterans, who had endured a full day of bloody battle, to feel their stomachs churn.
The entire street was unrecognizable, littered with massive shell craters and collapsed buildings.
The Britannians and the Kingdom Army had left countless bodies on the street, and under the indiscriminate firepower saturation of the Armored Airship, hardly a single one was intact.
The air was thick with the stench of blood, gunpowder, and a certain kind of foul, burnt protein, all mixed together into a nauseating odor.
"Platoon Leader, over here!" a soldier suddenly called out from nearby.
Morin and Klaus immediately rushed over. Amidst a pile of scorched rubble, scattered scraps of fabric, whose once luxurious patterns were barely discernible, lay.
Next to the fabric, there was half a burnt staff, as well as some unidentifiable bodily tissues.
"It must be him."
Morin nodded, looking at the scraps of the mage's robe.
The High-Level Mage who had caused them so much trouble had ultimately failed to survive the earth-shattering barrage of fire.
Confirming Eldridge's death brought a wave of relief to Morin and the others, as the combat power the mage had previously demonstrated was simply too unreasonable.
Just as Morin was preparing to lead his men away, another soldier ran up, clutching a slightly smoke-stained small notebook.
"Platoon Leader, this was found nearby with some other robe fragments, take a look!"
(End of this Chapter)