Editing City Series:Volume6c Chapter7 (section)

===Part 7===

Rose immediately changed the shape of the Requiem’s defense field she had just altered to protect against the burning enemy warship falling toward the ship. She focused on stopping the power flying her way.

<The Requiem march shall not be defiled.>

She had ordered an evacuation, so the escape boats were trying to leave from the bottom of the ship.

The city of Cologne was below it as well. One small but nearly-untouched portion of the city remained below.

So Rose did not hesitate.

She fully eliminated the defense field on the Requiem’s upper surface and directed all of its power into the umbrella that protected its bottom side.

The rest occurred over a series of moments.

First, the enemy aerial warship crashed down on the starboard aircraft carrier’s connection point.

The heavy impact caused the half-mile warship to shake and list to the side a bit.

The enemy aerial warship exploded and shattered the Requiem’s armor with a sound like a splitting bell. A few of the connecting frames broke and the tremor propagated across the rest of the Requiem.

The Kurz Babel bullet struck at the same moment.

It started just as light. Then as an impact.

It hit the Requiem’s starboard side at a diagonal angle, tearing through the #2 aircraft carrier and the #4 landing ship and piercing through to the lower central #5 ship as well.

A hole with a diameter of more than 7 yards was torn from the colossal aerial warship’s right collarbone to its gut. The power of the attack was released into the area around the hole.

The hole rapidly spread further, producing explosions.

The attack collided with the Requiem’s inertial control force and the defense field opened below it.

As powerful as the attack was, the Requiem’s solid construction and defense field kept the attack from spreading downwards. All of the force was directed upwards causing the Requiem to rupture skywards.

The atmosphere burst over a wide area and the sky glowed bright.

The sky itself split and changed color. Even with the air blasted away, a soundless tremor radiated outwards. Ten or so of the bombers and three of the aerial warships in the sky above were torn apart instantly.

The Kurz Babel had scored a direct hit.

But the Requiem remained afloat within the storm-like winds. Its upper armor had mostly been stripped away and the #1 ship that formed the bridge was crushed in like a giant club had smashed into it from the left.

The starboard aircraft carrier was gone and the #2 ship behind that was badly damaged. The central #5 ship had taken a fair amount of damage as well.

Conversely, the port aircraft carrier was only bent to the right and the #2 ship behind it was only mildly damaged.

As for the crucial cannon…

<The Requiem-singing dragon’s fangs remain unbroken.>

Its armor had been stripped away, but the barrel had miraculously retained its shape.

Rose stood at the end of that barrel, but the image of her and her white dress was faint and fading fast.

The city below was still safe. She had not fully eliminated the force of that attack, so she could see some damage from that and the winds it had caused. But…

“It fared much better than the surrounding areas.”

Most of Cologne was gone.

Everything outside what the Requiem had protected was little more than city streets with a crater torn into them by the powerful shockwave. The crater had a radius of about a mile and was about 200 yards deep. Cement, rebar, and other remnants of buildings were piled up at the bottom of the crater.

The area protected by the Requiem appeared to stand on a raised platform at the center of the crater.

Past the crater, all the buildings had collapsed in a strip of destruction extending north to south. The Rhine was outside the range of the explosions, but it was flooding its banks and the trees in the nearby mountains had lost all their leaves. The attack from the Kurz Babel had added to the damage done by the bombing. The city had been destroyed a second time.

Everything had been destroyed outside of what she had directly protected. But…

“This is the beginning of a war.”

With that, she began to dance. She twirled, swung her arms, smiled, and swept her hands forward.

A moment later, the Requiem fired its Babel Kanone for the second time that day.

She knew where the enemy was located. She only had to follow the ballistic path back to them.

Unlike the bullet-based Kurz Babel used by the Allies, the Requiem’s Babel Kanone accelerated and stretched the bullet’s power within the long barrel to form a beam instead. The beam of light stretched across approximately four miles and sent out a powerful shockwave as it was launched.