Editing City Series:Volume6a Chapter8 (section)

===Part 4===

The battle grew intense from the word go.

The V-0 was more than 100 yards long and it spewed bullets from the diffusion Kunst Eyes on its upper surface to attack the Grösse Panzer approaching from head on.

The V-0 had been originally built as the same model of ship as Silber.

It was a strategic transport ship capable of ultra-high-speed movement. It was loaded with divine spell explosives, its autopilot would take it to the target, and its weapons would automatically intercept any unexpected attacks it encountered on the way.

It was an unmanned auto-ramming ship.

A total of 48 freezing rounds loudly burst from the six Eyes on its upper surface.

Luft Fang responded by drawing its sword. Ether flowed through the drawn sword and the Ober Emblem affected it just like the Panzer itself. Light raced along the steel of the blade and it transformed into solidified light.

Electricity erupted from the blade like a mini-waterfall.

The fang jutting out into the sky was truly a bolt of lightning.

A horizontal swing of that lightning instantly vaporized the freezing rounds.

The electrification sent smoke into the salty air and the Luft Fang flew forward through that.

Their relative speeds instantly brought the giant ship right in front of it.

The V-0 was flying just off the ocean surface to avoid detection. It was less than 50 yards up. At that altitude, no enemy could fly below it to attack from there.

That was because the slightest maneuvering mistake would mean crashing.

But the Luft Fang did not hesitate to accelerate even more with its wings.

It flew forward.

The V-0 responded by firing again. The unmanned auto-ramming ship fired a much denser barrage toward the approaching Luft Fang.

The Luft Fang flapped the blue and yellow wings on its back.

With a roar, the forward-moving Luft Fang flew upwards.

A moment later, a white cloud burst in an explosion of air.

The barrage of bullets passed by below the Luft Fang.

The steel ship was now dead ahead, so the Luft Fang twisted its body to stand upright in midair. It swung down the lightning sword with its right arm while slightly applying its brakes.

The wind whipped up and the V-0 passed by the Luft Fang.

The Luft Fang used that movement to let its line of light slice into the V-0’s top surface from front to back.

Sparks flew and the wind roared.

The Luft Fang immediately circled behind the V-0 and resumed accelerating so it would not be left behind.

Two of the Kunst Eyes on top of the V-0 had burst into flames.

But this did no damage to the ship itself. A line had been burnt into its upper armor, but the attack had not reached the internal structure.

The way the armor panels burnt away suggested the armor was designed to automatically detach from within when it self-destructed. It was tough on the outside but fragile on the inside.

Its transport ship design worked well as a bomb.

The Luft Fang repeatedly accelerated to make up for its reduced speed and the distance between them.

The V-0’s side Kunst Eyes began to fire backwards.

A barrage of freezing rounds flew behind it, but a few of them flew straight down toward the ocean.

Once those freezing rounds hit the water, the pillars of water were transformed into hunks of ice that were then shattered by the V-0’s shockwave.

Chunks of ice as large as several feet long flew through the air. Crashing into one of those would be devastating, so they effectively sealed off that area of the sky.

The Luft Fang spread its main wings toward the cold and starry sky. It was preparing to accelerate.

The atmosphere warped and the air behind it grew distorted.

Then the Luft Fang flew along a course that avoided both the barrage of bullets and the ice pillars.

It flew down to skim just above the ocean.

It was oriented face down with its chest just barely avoiding the tops of the waves.

The wings on its back caused it to fall down chest first.

Its main wings flapped, its side wings spread to improve stability, and its small wings made minute adjustments to correct its angle.

The Luft Fang prevented itself from falling while flying ever forward.

Back behind its feet, the waves burst up into the air.

This was the pitch-black airspace of the Arctic Ocean.

The Luft Fang caught the darkness on its wings to race through the sky.

It slipped below the ice pillars launched upwards by the V-0.

It made a slight course correction to the left so it would pass below the V-0.

It flew right on in.

The great pressure of the atmosphere and the wall of air pressure from the V-0 were right in front of it.

It opened its mouth and roared.

The cry of man and machine sounded like a lion’s roar.

[[Image:City_v06a_303.jpg|thumb]]

The lion never ceased accelerating while it roared.

The shockwave produced by a strike of its sword shattered and negated the wall of air in front of it.

The Luft Fang flew forward. It moved to the starless darkness of the shadow cast by the V-0.

It flew right below the V-0.

The giant ship produced a rumbling of air that slammed into the Luft Fang and threatened to shatter its wings.

But the ether light coming from the wings solidly preserved the wings and allowed it to continue fighting.

It looked straight ahead.

Even after accumulating so much speed, it worked to fly even faster.

A black craft was visible ahead in the gap between the V-0 and the ocean.

That was the König Pseudo-Drach.

Bullets flew toward the black craft from the top of the V-0.

The König Pseudo-Drach was a diversion meant to protect the Luft Fang.

For a brief moment, the Luft Fang reduced its acceleration.

But a moment later, it fearlessly spread its wings. Even with that ceiling so low overhead, it spread its 6 yellow wings toward the sky.

It soared.

The wings produced a metallic sound.

It built up pressure.

The spread wings gathered air.

And it moved forward with a roar.

That one sound continued on and on and on.

It shot forward like it had kicked off the ocean surface. The explosion of air it produced caused even the massive V-0 to shake.

But the Luft Fang’s flight did not end there.

It shot out from below the ship and ascended while slicing through the ship’s boxy nose with its lightning sword.

The ocean was split by the shaking of the air as it ascended and waves burst up into the sky.

Before the spray could reach it, the Luft Fang moved up above the V-0.

It twisted around to change direction and face the V-0.

The ship focused its bullets on it.

An unmanned barrage was fired on the giant that had ears of its own and could race freely through the sky.

The Luft Fang was currently rotating around with its large wings, so it could not fully avoid the high-speed barrage of noise and light.

The flame bullets hit, producing deafening explosions.

The noise reverberated off into the distance while components flew from the Luft Fang.

Threads of fire seemed to grow out from the black explosion and metal parts flew along after them.

The V-0 did not stop firing.

It tried to fly right through the explosive flames spread out before it.

But then a few of the components, which had become little more than flying fireballs, did something somewhat different.

Most of them were falling down to the ocean and would be blown away once hit by the wall of air created by the V-0’s movement, but some of the fire flew perpendicularly out to the right of the V-0.

About 30 yards to the V-0’s starboard, the Luft Fang hung in the sky.

Its left arm had been destroyed and was spewing smoke, but its Ober Emblem was still active.

Bluish-white ether light drew out a large 3D object in the space between the explosive flames and the Luft Fang.

The orientation of that space had been instantaneously reversed.

The V-0 reflexively fired all its Kunst Eyes toward the Luft Fang, but then the König Pseudo-Drach flew forward from behind the Luft Fang.

Schweitzer was standing up in the canopy-less cockpit.

<The Hero abandons no one.>

Schweitzer returned his right arm to the controls.

The Luft Fang flapped its wings in response.

It flew in a beautiful arc up above the incoming barrage.

It held its lightning sword at its hip and flew straight toward the V-0.