On the other side, he could see a line of tanks pointing their muzzles at him.
(More than enough to play with, huh? This is where we come in!)
(That’s right. I’m sure Sir Rimuru will love watching this.)
Gobta and Ranga gave each other contented nods. So they began.
Without further hesitation, Gobta dived through the burned-out wall of tanks, wholly unafraid of the vast forces awaiting him. Then he ran across the battlefield with all his might. He exceeded the speed of sound, making it impossible for the imperials to follow with the naked eye.
“Just you see what Ranga and I have been working on in training! How long can you keep up with us, huh? Dance…with Wolves!!”
A dark gale rushed across the battlefield. With it, a destructive sonic boom slammed itself against the tank troops.
The shock wave included the magical effect of the Storm of Destruction skill. Gradually, the storm grew to a tornado, a Dragonstorm of Destruction whose well-calculated movements were honed for maximum enemy casualties. That was Dance with Wolves, Gobta’s fearsome anti-army annihilator.
And with that, one corner of the battlefield had effectively collapsed.
As Gobta was beginning his rampage on the ground, changes were also occurring in the sky. It was the Third Corps, led by Gabil.
………
……
…
Following Benimaru’s order, Gabil and his team had been providing cover for the Goblin Riders. Once that became too difficult, they moved on to the next mission, never panicking. In other words, they were part of the same “pretend to lose” strategy Gobta was in on.
The strategy was to make the enemy play their trump cards by maintaining a stalemate while making it look like they were about to lose. It was a pretty wild idea—but Benimaru ordered it nonetheless, not looking concerned at all, and Gobta and Gabil accepted it without a second thought. If things got really dangerous for Gabil, they had permission to evacuate—only after they helped Gobta’s force retreat, of course. Gabil didn’t think that would be necessary, though. After all, despite all his protests, Gobta was still smirking at the idea of executing this op.
Gabil thought he could learn a lot from Gobta’s brashness, but as it turned out, they were quite similar in many ways. Even in this state of affairs, he was still looking to shoot down an airship if he could. As long as he could maintain the stalemate without too much effort, he didn’t see a problem with inflicting some damage on his opponent.
That was the idea behind their aerial approach, but the enemy turned out to be stronger than he thought. Their corps’ magic didn’t work, and the Wyvern Riders’ fireball attacks were similarly blocked. With their air dominance now gone, Gabil’s team was at a distinct disadvantage.
Our role is to attract the airships’ attention. If we fought with all our might without minding the consequences, it’s not impossible to bring them down, but…
Yes, Gabil and the rest of Team Hiryu might have been able to break through the airships’ defenses. But doing that would make it impossible to continue the mission…and so Gabil decided now was the time for patience.
Thus he followed Benimaru’s orders, gladly accepting the role of a sitting duck in the air. The problem with this was the Wyvern Riders and their lack of durability. They might’ve been the elites from the Blue Numbers, but they hadn’t evolved into dragonewts the way Gabil and his corps had. Their magic resistance was low, and if they were caught up in a large-scale magical attack, they’d be brutally shot down.
So Gabil decided to ask the Wyvern Riders to withdraw.
“Lady Ultima, I have a favor to ask.”
“What is it?”
“I wish to have us continue our ‘pretend-to-lose’ strategy…but I am thinking about upping the performance.”
“Upping the performance?”
“Yes. If we keep flitting around like this, I’m not sure the enemy will ever let their guards down. Therefore, I’d like to have Team Hiryu leave itself more open to magic attacks.”
“Hmm… A very interesting idea. So what do you really want?”
“Well, as I see it, now is the perfect opportunity to build our resistances a little. Not even a direct hit will kill us, likely. We have plenty of recovery potions, so I thought I could put on a nice show of being battered and bruised, while we tested out our endurance against them.”
Ultima laughed out loud at this wild idea. The rest of Team Hiryu looked less than enthusiastic.
“Are you serious, General?!”
“Sir Gabil can be rather…simple sometimes, can’t he?”
“Do we have to try that right now? That’s what I want to say…”
Gabil pretended not to hear the rising complaints.
“Well, all right! I’ll allow it! Sounds like fun, besides,” said Ultima.
“My thanks to you. Now, if you could, I’d like your group to take their leave.”
He wanted Ultima, the observer, to lead the Wyvern Riders away to safety. Gabil and Team Hiryu alone would then launch a de facto suicide strike on the airships.
“If this kills me, I’m gonna haunt you in the afterlife!”
“Wish you hadn’t thought of this experiment…”
“This is definitely something he’ll be pissed about later…”
Groans and scowls were prevalent across the faces of the force, but Gabil still paid them no mind. Although they liked to gripe, their enthusiasm and excitement were still bubbling up to the surface.
So Team Hiryu decided to engage in some impromptu magical endurance training.
All this happened, by the way, as Rimuru was looking on, fretting to himself. When he found out the truth later, he almost had a conniption on the spot, shouting to high heaven at Gabil and his aides. More than a few Team Hiryu members predicted this well in advance, but the fact that they went with it anyway indicated that Gabil, their superior officer, was maybe becoming a bad influence on them.
Anyway, this was much of the reason why Gabil and his force took so much damage from the magic the airships spat out.
………
……
…
And now Gabil heard Rimuru’s order in his mind.
“Listen to me!” he shouted, oblivious to how worried Rimuru was about this experiment. “The training time is over! Now it is time to turn these skies into a graveyard!”
His troops were beyond excited. Gabil himself was brimming with joy.
“Fortunately, the inexperienced among us have evacuated with Lady Ultima. It’s only us here now, and it’s no problem if we get a little reckless!”
This goading didn’t quite get the reaction he intended.
“Reckless? I’d rather fight like hell than go through that ‘endurance training’ again!”
“Yeah, yeah! And it’s not the first time Sir Gabil’s been reckless with our lives!”
Gabil’s face turned red. “Silence!” he shouted. “Just get on with it, all of you! Follow me and give me your full strength!”
Seeing Gabil embarrass himself like that made all the troops who saw it grin a little.
“Well, so be it. You guys stop fooling around, too. Let’s just step up and get on with what we’re told.”
“Yeah, yeah. We’re not about to say no to the general, no…”
“No way! Sir Gabil, give us your orders!”
Hearing that, Gabil nodded, satisfied. Then he sized up the Flying Combat Corps fighting against them and asked a shouted question.
“Who are the champions of the skies?”
“““It is us, Team Hiryu!!”””
The mood had changed with Gabil. His team answered up to it.
“That’s right. We have to get rid of those who pollute our sky. That is the will of Sir Rimuru! He has given his royal decree, and so you must do everything in your power! All of it. Don’t think about anything else!”
“““Yeah!!”””
Gabil’s order held special meaning for Team Hiryu. It meant far more than simply trying harder…
“Don’t let your consciousness slip away from you, all right? All troops, enter Dragon Body!!”
The members of Team Hiryu sprang up at once. This was Dragon Body, their secret weapon and ultimate finisher. Not only did it increase their fighting power to an overwhelming degree, but it also increased their ferocity, making it more difficult to control themselves. If it consumed their sense of self, they would become rampaging monsters.
They had stashed away that ability up until now, precisely because it became difficult to control all their destructive impulses. Gabil had thus invited Middray to lecture them on control training, but their success rate hadn’t been too stellar with it so far.
Still, use it they must. Rimuru had ordered them to give it their all, and so they had no reason to hesitate.
“…Dragon Mode!!”
All at once, Team Hiryu unleashed their true force. Their muscles swelled up, and the purple scales that covered them turned jet-black. They became thicker, more flexible, and several times tougher-skinned—and along with that, their heights also went up around 20 percent, taking in the surrounding magicules to construct new bodies for themselves.
With this mega-boost in mass and volume, their offensive and defensive forces had also leaped forward. They were, needless to say, incomparable to how they were pre-transformation. And as for the most important part, their consciousnesses… If they were to lose that, they’d be nothing more than pure manifestations of power, but no one on Team Hiryu lost it. Every single one did a magnificent job keeping ahold of themselves.