Chapter 993: Air Superiority
If Ethan had known that the coalition’s army of nine million included ten thousand flying war mounts, even he might have felt a little less confident.
Leo’s mount alone was enough to turn heads. The tiger beneath him was covered in armor, its movements sharp and controlled as it prowled through the air. It wasn’t an ordinary flying mount; it was a true flying war mount, one capable of fighting alongside its rider in aerial combat.
’Leo’s doing pretty well for himself these days.’
Ethan kept the thought to himself; if he said it out loud, Leo’s ego would probably swell beyond repair. Instead, he turned toward Victor.
"Victor, how many of our people have flying war mounts?"
There was a huge difference between flying mounts and flying war mounts. Both could carry riders through the air, but war mounts were trained and bred for combat. They could coordinate with their owners, fight independently, and become a force multiplier on the battlefield, while ordinary flying mounts were little more than transportation.
"About one hundred ninety thousand," Victor replied quietly.
’Oh.’
Ethan nodded absentmindedly, but then the number actually registered. "What?" His voice jumped several octaves. "One hundred ninety thousand?"
"Yeah." Victor grinned.
"Flying war mounts?"
"Flying war mounts."
Ethan stared at him. "How is that even possible?" The Alliance had a little over four hundred thousand members in total, and almost half of them had flying war mounts?
"It shouldn’t be possible," Victor admitted. "That’s why it’s one of the guild’s biggest secrets. Only a handful of people know the full numbers. Everyone who obtained one signed a non-disclosure agreement, so they’re not allowed to tell anyone."
His voice was barely above a whisper. Even though only the Alliance’s inner circle stood on the war machine’s command deck, habits like that were hard to break.
"How did you even..." Ethan never finished the question, as a deep tremor suddenly rolled beneath his feet.
RUMBLE...
The gigantic war machine finally began to move.
Slowly.
The entire structure vibrated as its massive mechanisms came to life. Ethan looked over the edge, and Victor’s explanation died in his throat as everyone shifted their attention downward.
From two hundred meters above the ground, the players below looked like insects. More than four hundred thousand Alliance members stood in disciplined formations stretching across the landscape, surrounding the war machine on every side.
Front.
Rear.
Left.
Right.
The march had begun.
"Boss, those guys have started moving too. Over nine million of them."
Markham’s voice came from behind; someone had obviously fed him fresh information.
"Nine million..." Ethan repeated, then glanced back. "How do you know that?"
Markham was usually the last person anyone expected to be tracking military intelligence. Williams smirked immediately. "Probably got the information from his girlfriend." The look on his face made the implication obvious.
Several people laughed, but Ethan was the only one who looked confused. "Which girlfriend?" He turned toward Victor.
Victor’s wife, Celia, was the Alliance’s Honorary Leader; her in-game name was Tears of the Fallen.
"Not Celia," Victor said with visible exasperation. "The one from Blackridge."
Recognition flashed across Ethan’s face. "Wait... Xandria?"
Victor nodded, and Ethan shuddered. "The woman with the baby voice?"
The memory hit him instantly. The first time he’d met Xandria, he’d been stunned. Beautiful face. Great figure. Then she’d spoken, and that high-pitched, overly cute voice had completely destroyed the image. The contrast had been so jarring that he’d spent the rest of the conversation trying not to react, and every encounter afterward had been an exercise in endurance.
"And you’re actually into that?" Ethan asked Markham.
Markham rolled his eyes; he already knew exactly what Ethan was thinking. To be honest, he’d struggled with it himself at first. "Not anymore. Dr. Aldric fixed it. Minor procedure."
"Oh?" Ethan blinked. Apparently, a lot had happened while he was away; he hadn’t known Dr. Aldric could handle something like that.
"By the way, why isn’t the guild at full roster?"
The army advanced at a crawling pace. No matter how powerful the war machine became, speed remained its biggest weakness, and the entire force had to move at whatever pace the machine could maintain. With plenty of time before anything interesting happened, Ethan continued chatting.
"We are at full roster," Victor said. "We just kicked out forty thousand members recently."
Ethan raised an eyebrow, and Victor continued, "They’d been bought off by other guilds and the three regions. We identified them a long time ago but never acted because there wasn’t much point. This time was different. We couldn’t risk having them stab us in the back during a campaign, so we cleaned house before the march."
"Forty thousand spies?" Ethan laughed. "The three regions really weren’t holding back."
Buying the loyalty of forty thousand players couldn’t have been cheap.
His mood remained excellent; the revelation about the one hundred ninety thousand flying war mounts had already exceeded his expectations.
Air superiority.
That single advantage could decide an entire war. The only thing he didn’t know was how many flying war mounts the coalition possessed, but still, he wasn’t particularly worried.
The conversation eventually drifted back to the enemy’s numbers.
"Nine million six hundred thousand..." someone muttered nearby. "That’s a pretty huge gap."
Ethan glanced over. It was the Mad Engineer, currently operating the war machine’s control systems.
"Too many?" Ethan asked, then smiled. "I think it’s too few."
The response left everyone staring at him.
"Too few?" Victor frowned. "They’re over twenty times our size."
"Exactly." Ethan looked out toward the horizon. "The three regions have billions of players between them. Sending fewer than ten million to deal with us means they’re holding back."
That explanation only made the others more confused.
Before anyone could continue the discussion, a buzzing sound echoed from above.
WHIRRRRR...
Everyone looked up as several drone-like devices hovered overhead.
"WCC Radio." Ethan immediately spotted the familiar logo painted on the machines. "Did they pay for broadcasting rights?" he asked.
"No." Victor frowned. "Ever since the system gave them invulnerable equipment, they’ve become a lot more aggressive. Nobody can destroy their recording devices anymore."
"Tch."
Ethan’s expression darkened. Broadcasting the Alliance’s movements without permission was already pushing boundaries, and doing it while relying on invulnerability made it even more irritating. Still, there wasn’t much he could do about it, or at least, that was what he thought.
Then he heard another dismissive click of the tongue from behind him. Ethan turned and found the Mad Engineer standing there with a smug grin.
Immediately, Ethan’s eyes narrowed. "Got something to say?"
The Mad Engineer’s smile vanished.
Ethan folded his arms. "If you’ve got a solution, use it. If you don’t, stop standing there making noises at me."
The entire command deck went silent.
Ever since Ethan had arrived, he’d noticed how much the Mad Engineer had changed. The man who used to be humble had become increasingly arrogant over the past year; earlier, he’d practically been strutting around the deck as if he owned the place. Ethan had already been annoyed, and now he was done ignoring it.
"What, you think this is how you act when I’m not around?" Ethan continued. "Do I need to personally remind you how to behave?"
The Mad Engineer instantly straightened his back. He knew Ethan wasn’t joking, and if Ethan decided to follow through on a threat, nobody wanted to find out what that looked like.
More importantly, Ethan wasn’t wrong. Ever since reaching the Divine-tier Engineering, coupled with the hidden Demonic Engineer class, he’d slowly developed a superiority complex. People praised him everywhere he went, and without realizing it, he’d started looking down on others.
"Boss, my mistake." His tone immediately became respectful. "I’ll deal with it right now."
Only then did Ethan’s expression ease slightly.
The Mad Engineer quickly returned to his control panel and entered a series of commands. A compartment on the side of the war machine opened, and inside sat what looked like a compact launcher.
BZZZZT!
CRACKLE!
A bolt of white lightning shot into the sky. It struck the nearest drone, and the instant contact was made, arcs of electricity leaped from one drone to the next. Chain lightning spread through the entire formation.
One after another, the drones exploded into sparks and smoke. Pieces of burning metal fell from the sky, and moments later, every single broadcasting drone spiraled downward and crashed into the ground below.