The Will to Live Is My Strongest Skill

Chapter 133: Window of Vulnerability

At a height of sixty meters above the ground, the wind feels different. I stood on the scaffolding surrounding the Town Hall spire and looked at Dornheim. The city was black. Only rare oil lamps in the windows, which we could not control, flickered.

All the energy produced by the Heart was now flowing through the main veins to us, into the Town Hall tower. Through Lumon, the city appeared to me as a huge schematic, where supersaturated azure pulsed through copper veins.

"Master Iron, the hair on my arms is standing on end," Darwin's voice over the intercom sounded strained.

"That's normal. Endure it. Check the grounding on the seventh circuit again."

I ran my palm along the copper handrail. A short blue spark jumped between my skin and the metal.

In my field of vision, in the corner, hung a Lumon system message: [STATUS: READINESS 96%. LENS TEMPERATURE: 42°C. SYNCHRONIZATION: STABLE].

I activated Lumon. It immediately became easier. The noise of the wind faded into the background, and the slight tremor in my hands disappeared.

In this state, I saw them.

At first, they were just shadows against the fading sunset. Twelve dots that slowly increased in size. They moved in a tight formation.

The Imperial Punitive Fleet.

When they approached to a distance of five miles, I could see them clearly. These were "Bastion" class battleships—hulls bound in dark metal, with scarlet crystals pulsing on their sides. In the center of the formation moved the "Golden Eye"—the flagship, which was one and a half times larger than the rest. Its shields shone with a thick, blood-red light.

And then it struck the city.

In the sky above the fleet, the "Silencers" flared.

I felt the Heart shudder.

[WARNING: EXTERNAL SUPPRESSION. GENERATION EFFICIENCY REDUCED BY 22%. CRITICAL RESONANCE IN PRIMARY CIRCUIT].

"Iron! It's stalling!" Elyria shouted. I heard her messing with the roots of the Iron Oak a floor below. "The Heart is resisting, it's in pain!"

"Hold it, Elyria!" I gripped the control panel, my fingers turning white. "Don't let the flow break! Lumon, switch to forced synchronization. Use my biorhythm as the reference frequency."

To keep the Heart from stopping in the area of effect of the "Silencers," I had to pass part of the flow through myself.

"Too early..." I rasped, looking at the approaching flagship. "Not yet time..."

The "Golden Eye" was slowly turning.

The flagship began a maneuver to get into position for the main volley. The stern shields began to flicker, redistributing energy to the bow guns and the deployment of the main crystal.

[TARGET LOCKED. WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY: 10... 9... 8...]

"Darwin! Pressure in the capacitors!" I shouted, barely moving my tongue.

"Master, the cable in the fourth sector! It's burning!" "We're going to blow everything up here!"

I looked down. Acrid smoke poured from under the scaffolding decking. The main trunk cable feeding the focusing lens of the "Thundermaker" was glowing red-hot.

"Elyria!"

In the same second, thick, knotted roots burst from the stonework of the tower. Elyria poured the sap of the Iron Oak into them, which acted as an ideal coolant.

[...5... 4... 3...]

"Now," I whispered.

My hands lay on the contactors. I gave a mental command to Lumon.

The air within a radius of ten meters from the top of the tower instantly turned into plasma. The only thing that saved us was that the "Thundermaker" was designed as a directional emitter.

The resonance impulse broke from the lens and plunged exactly into the stern of the "Golden Eye."

I saw the flagship's scarlet shield first ripple, and then begin to "drain" from the hull, turning into sparks. The ether crystals in the ship's engines, falling into resonance with our impulse, flared with a blinding purple light.

The huge carcass of the battleship shuddered. The bow pitched upward, and the stern began to slowly lower.

"Hit..." Darwin exhaled.

The remaining eleven ships of the fleet reacted instantly.

"Air!" I yelled, dropping to the scaffolding decking.

The first volley of magical guns passed above the tower, crashing into the residential quarter behind the Town Hall. Lumon instantly transmitted the damage data to me: three houses destroyed, auxiliary power line damaged.

"Walter! Begin!" I pressed the comm button.

"Copy. Militia, to battle! Aim for the boats!"

Small dots spilled from the sides of the battleships—the landing craft of the mages. They were descending, planning to land right on the city squares and capture key nodes.

Below, on the main street, an engine roared. The "Boar 2.0" rolled out of cover. Its new matte plating absorbed light, making the five-meter machine almost invisible. The rapid-fire cannons, which I had been refining for the past two weeks, mowed down the landing boats one after another.

"Darwin, take Elyria and go down to the generators!" I ordered, trying to get up.

"And you, master?"

"I need to retune the lens for the next shot. Quickly!"

The flagship "Golden Eye" meanwhile continued to fall. The ship slowly descended onto the coastal rocks, breaking pines and crushing its own decks.

Another projectile crashed into the base of the Town Hall. The tower swayed. I barely kept on my feet, clinging to the handrails.

[WARNING: TOWER STRUCTURAL INTEGRITY REDUCED BY 15%. COOLING SYSTEM DAMAGED].

Distance to the nearest ship — 3.4 miles. Probability of the next volley hitting the tower — 78%. Time until full recharge of capacitors — 120 seconds.

Too long, I thought. They will blow us apart sooner.

The process needed to be accelerated.

"Lumon. Remove all restrictions. Protocol 'Direct Access'."

[WARNING: RISK OF IRREVERSIBLE PERSONALITY DEGRADATION. SYNCHRONIZATION EXCEEDS SAFE THRESHOLD].

"Do as you're told."

I closed my eyes. In that moment, I became Dornheim.

Thousands of lives, thousands of fears, thousands of pulses.

One of the College's battleships, deciding that the tower was suppressed, came too close for aimed fire.

I "reached out a hand" and directed the flow.

The second impulse was weaker than the first, but much more accurate. It struck the battleship's central control crystal. The ship disintegrated.

For a moment, night turned into day. Debris of burning metal rained down on the suburbs, setting the dry grass on fire.

The remaining ships sharply backed away.

I sank to the floor of the tower, leaning my back against the red-hot casing of the capacitor.

"Master? Master Iron!"

I heard footsteps. They were running toward me.

"Iron, how are you?!" It was Wayland. He had come up here together with Albert.

Albert walked up to me, squatted down and shined a flashlight into my face. "No reaction to light. Iron, can you hear me?"

I slowly nodded.

"He is in deep shock," Albert stated, taking a syringe with some sedative from his bag. "Wayland, help me get him down. It's not safe here, the mages are about to start shelling from afar."

"What about the fleet?" I asked hoarsely when Albert injected the medicine.

"The flagship is on the rocks. One battleship is destroyed. The rest have retreated to the horizon."

The Will to Live Is My Strongest Skill

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