I Became a Witch and Started an Industrial Revolution

The Griffin Knight Order, caught completely off guard, did not last long before its formation collapsed. With morale shattered, the surviving squads scattered in every direction. Among them, the dragon squad, being the most conspicuous target, was wiped out to the last man.

The Vanguard fighters paid no attention to the fleeing remnants. After briefly reforming their formation, they headed straight toward the main Allied force.

Their objective had always been the elite vanguard of the Allied Army. The Griffin Knight Order had merely happened to run into the gun barrel. Cleaning up the battlefield was a menial task better left to the Zero fighters following behind.

The massive army below had barely recovered from the chaos caused by the widespread bombardment of solidified gasoline bombs. Before they could extinguish the raging inferno that had split the center of their formation, another Alliance air raid descended upon them.

Enraged, Ashadron ordered the two Saint-level powerhouses who had been directing the firefighting efforts to attack immediately.

He wanted those annoying swarms of flies erased from existence.

The two Saints had already grown thoroughly frustrated by the relentless harassment.

The diving Vanguard fighter formation had flown directly into their sights.

The sky a thousand meters above the aircraft darkened until it resembled black ink.

Oppressive flashes of lightning flickered continuously within the storm clouds, creating an atmosphere that sent chills down one's spine. Countless arcs of electricity crisscrossed through the clouds amid deafening thunder.

One bolt of lightning after another struck toward the Vanguard fighters.

The brilliant flashes illuminated everything around them, as though the noisy world had been frozen in place by an unseen hand.

Only the endless roar of thunder continued to echo deafeningly in everyone's ears.

The torrential rainfall concentrated in front of the ground forces poured down like the Heavenly River itself had overturned.

Within moments, it gathered into an enormous muddy waterspout, carrying earth, shattered rocks, and torn vegetation as it charged toward the fighter formation.

At that very moment—

The faint shield enveloping the Vanguard fighters suddenly blazed with brilliant light.

The large Magitech Engines integrated into the rear section of over a thousand heavy fighters began operating at full output.

The previously translucent shield rapidly crystallized, sealing the apocalyptic world outside beyond its shimmering barrier.

Countless bolts of lightning struck against the shield.

Ripples spread across its surface like stones falling into a lake, while the violent elemental energy contained within the lightning was dispersed layer by layer and redirected away.

Meanwhile, the chaotic elemental storm carried by the waterspout below was likewise blocked by the shield.

As the pilots pushed their throttles fully forward and the engines reached maximum output, the fighters successfully escaped the waterspout's tremendous pulling force.

"What's going on? They can use a group shield like a Mage Corps as well? Weren't we told they barely had any mages...?"

Ashadron stared blankly for a brief moment at the swarm of steel birds that remained completely unmoved amid the lightning storm.

As the storm gradually subsided, the Vanguard fighters, still circling overhead, reorganized into squad formations before opening fire freely upon the army below.

Dense volleys of rockets descended like meteor showers upon the Allied forces.

Once independent attacks commenced, the shield system also switched into an individual aircraft mode.

The shield now conformed tightly to each aircraft's fuselage like an aerodynamic fairing, greatly reducing structural stress while making the fighters considerably more maneuverable.

At the same time, by intertwining themselves directly with the Allied formations below, they prevented the Saints from freely launching large-scale area bombardment spells.

The Saints could only search for opportunities to carry out precise targeted kills.

The Allied Army, however, was far from helpless.

Countless magical attacks surged upward toward the fighters.

Towering giants condensed enormous masses of hardened earth and stone between their hands before roaring as they hurled them into the sky.

One Vanguard fighter failed to evade in time and was struck directly.

Its wing snapped clean off as black smoke poured from the aircraft.

Spinning uncontrollably, it crashed into the army below, erupting in a violent explosion.

Under the command of their Legion Commander, the Archer Legion launched volley after volley of magical arrows.

Their firepower rivaled that of anti-aircraft guns, and numerous Vanguard fighters were blown apart under their concentrated attacks.

Even more fighters simply adjusted their noses downward and unleashed their full firepower.

Dense tracer rounds swept across the battlefield over and over like torrential rain, plowing through the ground and stirring up an iron storm of explosions, blood, and shredded flesh.

Before the high-frequency storm of steel unleashed by the Vulcan cannons and the large-caliber bullets fired from the four DShK heavy machine guns, all lives were equal.

Whether it was thick-skinned magical beast mounts or the heavily armored knights riding upon them—

Both suffered equally fatal blows.

Meanwhile, several fully loaded squadrons within the formation simultaneously turned toward the gigantic flying fortress located at the heart of the rear formation.

Massive salvos of rockets blanketed the Guardian Knight Legion protecting the fortress.

Ashadron watched the explosions not far away with a grim expression.

He could even feel the scorching heat carried by the shockwaves through the air.

Every sensation reminded him that nowhere here remained safe.

Fortunately, the defensive forces surrounding him were exceptionally strong.

Several bombing runs by the fighters had all been intercepted.

Moreover, as time passed, more intact legions from the rear arrived on the battlefield, unleashing large-scale synchronized fusion attacks toward the aircraft overhead.

The fires ignited by the solidified gasoline bombs gradually began to die out.

The fighter losses quickly started to climb.

Without the slightest hesitation, the commander immediately ordered a withdrawal.

The remaining several hundred Vanguard fighters climbed rapidly, accelerated away from the battlefield, and broke contact, leaving behind nothing but a landscape of devastation.

As the war progressed, technology also continued to evolve.

The Composite Shield had already undergone dozens of generations of refinement since the elves first developed it.

Its efficiency had now reached roughly seventy percent of that of an individual shield generator.

The thousand heavy fighters converted from bombers naturally possessed exceptional payload capacity.

The shield generators they carried were full-sized versions that had never undergone miniaturization, each weighing over two tons.

More than a thousand shield generators continuously supplied magical power to reinforce the collective barrier.

With countless shield fields layered and nested together in this manner, the resulting group shield could withstand not merely an enraged strike from a Saint-level powerhouse—

Even a full-powered assault was insufficient to prevent them from surviving long enough to escape under sustained magical bombardment.

This was precisely why Mitia had insisted on restructuring the industrial sector and placing such heavy emphasis on armored mechanization.

Whether it was the Air Force or heavily mechanized armored corps, both could deploy large shield generators at extremely high density.

A force composed of a thousand aircraft—

Or a thousand medium and heavy tanks together with large armored vehicles—

Possessed shield strength and density that far surpassed those of a fully staffed 50,000-man Mechanized Infantry Corps.

Naturally, organizing an offensive on such a scale also placed tremendous strain upon the Alliance's logistics system.

For this massive Vanguard-class fighter air raid alone, every military airfield across three states had entered weeks of continuous full-capacity operation well in advance.

Military supplies and ammunition had to be assembled.

Aircraft ammunition stores had to be loaded.

Every fighter underwent inspections and repairs.

Pilots conducted intensive training and adapted to the new operational command system and formation doctrines.

Even so, of the more than 1,500 Vanguard-class Heavy Fighters available, fewer than 1,300 actually took off fully fueled and armed with rockets on the day of the operation.

Several dozen more suffered various malfunctions and were forced to return before reaching the battlefield.

The operational readiness of the Armored Corps was even lower than that of the Air Force.

Its long-standing doctrine emphasized large-scale production and replacing damaged vehicles with newly manufactured ones rather than repairing them, thereby reducing combat losses.

As a result, both services required enormous logistics organizations to sustain operations.

By comparison, the Army clearly offered far greater cost-effectiveness while placing much less pressure on the military-industrial system.

The differing priorities that nations assigned to each military branch largely stemmed from this comprehensive consideration.

Mitia, however, preferred an even heavier mechanized military model.

To support that vision, the Alliance's military-industrial experts could only continue searching for ways to reduce equipment failure rates.

For example, components with consistently high failure rates would be redesigned and optimized.

At the same time, equipment would be manufactured using modular component packages, allowing defective sections to be replaced directly on-site whenever a malfunction occurred.

Faulty modules that could not be repaired quickly would simply be sent back to specialized factories in the rear for maintenance.

The drawback was that such an approach required a complete foundational redesign and optimization of existing heavy weapons platforms.

Production lines and manufacturing standards would also need to be overhauled in order to simplify production.

As a result—

For the time being, the entire concept remained confined to paper discussions.

The project had yet to move beyond the planning stage.

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