The Returner

Chapter 430: There’s a nuke headed this way? (5)

“A... bird?” (Liu Jing)

This was an unexpected situation no one could have imagined.

Liu Jing already knew that the ICBM was ‘flying’ in, but this... This wasn’t even some bizarre cartoon, so why was a bird carrying a nuclear missile? Who could have even dreamed up of such a thing?

It was then, Liu Jing snapped wide awake from his stupor.

Sure, it certainly was a bizarre spectacle to behold.

Lengthy, wiggling tentacles extended from the bird’s claws clutching onto the missile and tightly wrapped around the weapon’s body. His naked eyes being able to spot that meant that the missile would soon fly past him in an instant.

“Fire!”

This was the reason why training was a frightening thing.

He was fully aware of the possibility of him dying without an intact corpse if he attacked the nuke at a close range and caused it to explode.

Hesitation? Of course he felt it.

However, the moment he heard the cry of ‘Fire!’ ringing in his ears, his fingers were already depressing the launch button even before he had time to notice his own actions – as if he was a meticulously crafted trigger merely doing what it was supposed to do in the first place.

Psuhhhhh....

Along with the sounds of something separating, Liu Jing’s eyes caught the sight of an air-to-air missile flying towards the monster bird in the distance.

‘I, I need to break away!’ (Liu Jing)

Liu Jing immediately freaked out and even before the order was issued, he jerked the control stick to the left and escaped from the area as fast as he could.

The initial order had been carried out, and the only remaining thing now was pure confusion. After the other pilots launched their missiles, their tension briefly went haywire and the moment Liu Jing attempted to break away from the formation and leave, they all followed suit and broke away as well.

Honestly speaking, though, it was all a meaningless act.

If they were successful, then no matter how quickly they escaped from the area, they would still die. But if the attack was a failure, then there was no need to escape, anyway. Human instincts never rarely operated that way, though.

KWA-BOOOOM! BOOOOM!!!

Loud, clear explosions rang out.

Despite Liu Jing flying quicker than the speed of sound, the explosion noises resounded out loudly which could only mean that the distance between the target and the pilots were much closer than he imagined.

And also...

‘We failed.’ (Liu Jing)

In that moment of realisation, Liu Jing felt hollow as well as greatly relieved. Indeed, being able to hear those explosion noises indicated that the mission so far was a failure. If the attack was a success, then he’d be a dead man long before he could hear or sense the explosions.

– “You sons of b*tches! Maintain the formation!”

The roar of the flight leader snapped Liu Jing’s mind back to reality.

‘...You want to maintain the formation in this situation? Crazy b*stard.’ (Liu Jing)

The mission wasn’t over yet. Not just his twelfth division, but other squadrons were on standby right behind them, too.

If the squadron behind Liu Jing’s group succeeded in the mission, then the nuke would go off and everyone would be dead. Surely the leader must’ve understood that fact as well, yet seeing how he was still trying unnecessarily to maintain the formation, Liu Jing couldn’t help but realise once more how being a rigid, by-the-book soldier was actually a rather inefficient beast at the core.

‘Well, I’m not that much different, am I?’ (Liu Jing)

What a sorrowful thing it was, because Liu Jing was already heading towards the location of the flight leader right after hearing the command. Even before his head could think, his body ended up responding first.

– “It’s not over yet. Cycle to the rear of the formation and prepare for the second wave.”

“Wake the hell up, man!” (Liu Jing)

Even if the ICBM’s flight speed was abnormal, no one knew when it’d detonate. Currently, well over two hundred planes had been mobilised to protect Beijing’s airspace, so when a squadron consisting of twelve planes took turns to attack the nuke, a quick, dirty math suggested that over fifteen rounds of attacks had to be carried out first before Liu Jing got his second turn. Yet, he needed to wait that long and attempt the second wave?

It’d be a miracle for Beijing to not get blown up in the meantime.

It wasn’t as if every fighter plane rushed in at the same time to bombard the target. The tactic this time was to be on standby in consideration of the detonation radius, yet the stupid leader wanted to go back and wait?

For a moment there, Liu Jing felt this compulsion to dissect the head of the flight leader. He wanted to find out what kind of a brain you’d need to say something like that.

“F*ck.” (Liu Jing)

Even though such thoughts filled up his head, Liu Jing felt utterly disgusted by himself after seeing how he was currently following the leading plane to return to the back of the formation.

KWA-BOOOOM!!!

More explosion noises continued to resound out.

‘Why am I keep hearing the explosions?’ (Liu Jing)

Instantly, Liu Jing realised that something was wrong.

It wasn’t as if every single attack had failed since the explosions were still going off to signal that the air-to-air missiles were indeed hitting their target. The problem here was the ICBM not blowing up, obviously.

‘Is that monster bird blocking everything?’ (Liu Jing)

The one to lift up Liu Jing’s confusion was about to make its appearance, however.

*

“Have they shot it down yet?” (Xu Cheng)

Xu Cheng asked in an urgent voice, but the adjutant could only shake his head with a gloomy expression.

“They are successfully hitting the target, but unable to stop it, sir. It’s not working at all.” (adjutant)

“Hit it with everything we got!” (Xu Cheng)

“Sir?” (adjutant)

Xu Cheng roared out at the top of his voice.

“Don’t just rely on the fighter planes, use everything in our arsenal to stop that missile! Fire anti-air rockets or whatever! I don’t care how, just stop that thing! Make the fighters charge in if they have to!” (Xu Cheng)

“S-sir, please calm down.” (adjutant)

“You think I can calm down?!” (Xu Cheng)

Xu Cheng continued to roar out, half of his reasoning already long gone by now. Panic and fear were alternating unsightly in his expression.

“If we can’t stop it, we’ll all die! You’ll die! I’ll die! And every single soul living in and around Beijing will die, too! Don’t you understand what that even means?!” (Xu Cheng)

The adjutant began trembling as well.

Beijing would be destroyed.

Those words finally sunk in. Here was an event that not even their deaths would be enough to prevent.

‘We should’ve listened to Christopher McLaren’s advice.’ (adjutant)

Only then did he realise how stupid it was to blindly attack an enemy with unknown abilities and also, the reason why other nations hadn’t deployed nukes yet – because, this tactic wouldn’t have worked in the first place.

Unfortunately, regret would always be too late no matter how quickly it came.

“W-what should we do, sir?” (adjutant)

“What do you mean, what?! Find and deploy every single method we have at our disposal and shoot it down! Don’t you get what I’m saying here?!” (Xu Cheng)

Although Xu Cheng was saying all these things, he too was feeling lost as well.

Every single method?

The remote detonation didn’t work. Bombardment with fighter planes also didn’t work. So what other options did they have left, anyway?

“The ABM! What about the ABM?!” (Xu Cheng) [1]

“It’s impossible to target the ICBM, sir. Before the fighters intercepted the missile, we already tried to deploy the ABMs, but...” (adjutant)

“I told you to hit the d*mn thing with every single rocket we have! Now isn’t the time not to use them just because it didn’t work a second ago, you fool! Deploy all the ABMs and create an air defence net or something!” (Xu Cheng)

“Y-yes, sir!” ((adjutant)

It was right then, an urgent voice called out to them.

“Sir! The target! The target is transforming!”

“What was that?” (Xu Cheng)

Xu Cheng quickly turned his head towards the large monitor and saw the black monster bird with its claws buried into the side of the ICBM, which had become a familiar sight by now. But then, the monster bird suddenly began writhing about before its body size shrunk down. And then, its silhouette morphed into that of a human.

Although not an exact facsimile of a person, it was still a lot closer when compared to the appearance of a bird from a second ago. Maybe it’d be more correct to call it a half-man, half-bird creature now.

“T-t-that, isn’t that...?” (Xu Cheng)

It was so pitch-black.

The half-man, half-bird creature’s body maintained the black colour, perhaps owing to the fact that it used to be that large black monster bird in the first place. However, its new silhouette happened to be something that Xu Cheng was familiar with.

Because it looked exactly the same as the demon king that appeared in Sichuan, the one filmed and confirmed many times by the satellites.

The monster bird, no, the existence that should now be referred to as the demon king, stood upright and proudly above the airborne ICBM. Then, it ever so slightly turned its head and locked eyes with Xu Cheng.

‘Is that demon looking back at me?’ (Xu Cheng)

It was unknown whether or not the demon king knew about Xu Cheng staring at it, but no doubt the creature was already fully aware of it being filmed right now.

This demon king, or more correctly the copy of the creature, was looking in the direction of the spy satellite filming from above, after all.

What was it trying to do?

Xu Cheng was merely looking at it through the monitor, yet he felt his whole body freeze up. He couldn’t even think about doing something to all that cold sweat trickling down his spine.

‘Just what else does it want to do?!’ (Xu Cheng)

Xu Cheng realised immediately that no matter what the demon king was planning to do here, it’d definitely not be a good thing and his heart began madly pounding away.

*

“Hmm...” (Araksis)

Araksis stared at all the fighter planes maintaining a huge formation with a pair of deeply intrigued eyes.

“This species called humans, they really do defy one’s logic, don’t they?” (Araksis)

This wasn’t the demon king’s first time witnessing the fighter planes, but it still felt quite amazed every time it saw one.

Even Berafe, boasting a highly-developed magic-based civilisation, found it extremely difficult to float things in the air using Mana. Yet the humans of this world that couldn’t use any magic still somehow found a way to make those heavy lumps of steel fly in the sky.

It wasn’t merely ‘flying’ either, but the lumps of steel could accelerate past the speed of sound and even spit out flames, too.

“Humans...” (Araksis)

Humans that did learn magic could never hope to even scratch a demon king. However, the fact still remained that those humans would still be stronger than humans of this world. Just one decent archmage entering this world would make him or her the strongest person here.

However, the humans of this world evolved in the direction of enhancing the combat strengths of their species rather than themselves individually. A good example would be the nuclear warhead currently trapped below the demon king’s feet – this one weapon alone could exhibit the level of destructive power that no demon king could even imitate.

“How amusing, indeed. For sure, humans are an amusing bunch.” (Araksis)

The fact that they could develop so differently just because they found themselves in a different environment... Maybe that was the strongest point of humanity.

“However...” (Araksis)

It was truly unfortunate that the end of these amusing creatures had already been set in stone.

But, so what?

Just like how humans existed in Berafe as well as on this Earth, it was possible to find more signs of humanity elsewhere when searching through countless dimensions out there.

“And that’s why...” (Araksis)

Araksis ever so slightly raised its hand forward.

Since it was currently in an assimilated state with the monster bird, the demon king couldn’t use all of its powers, but dealing with these mobs of trash only required one-tenth of its overall strength. No, maybe even that was still over the top.

The demon king’s hand seemed to scrunch up into a sphere for a moment there, then black shadows in the shapes of small birds suddenly exploded out from it.

“It’s time to show it to them.” (Araksis)

...To show them how pathetic those lumps of steel with no Mana in them were. To show them that it was futile to place their faith in these objects.

These smaller monster birds flying up from Araksis’s hand scattered in every direction.

A portion of these ‘birds’ paired up in twos and flew directly towards the fighter planes, while the rest descended towards the ground.

“What the hell is going on here?!” (Liu Jing)

Liu Jing stared at the small birds flying in towards his group with a deeply pale complexion.

These birds were small enough to be seen as ‘adorable’ in some ways, but when considering where they originated from, no sane person would ever use such an adjective to describe these things.

The same thing also applied to the end result, as well.

KWA-BOOOOM!!!!!

A fighter plane colliding against the small bird was suddenly enveloped in a massive fireball.

Liu Jing’s brows shot up so violently that the skin nearly tore off.

This was not on the level of mere ‘bird strikes’. Even if those black birds possessed an unimaginable level of density and impact force, a single collision shouldn’t cause an explosion vicious enough to destroy a fighter plane without leaving behind any scraps of recognisable debris.

“T-they are bombs?!” (Liu Jing)

He couldn’t fully understand how it was possible, but at this point in time, he must assume that each of these black birds was actually a powerful explosive capable of destroying a fighter plane completely.

And these ‘explosives’ were freely flying around like actual birds to approach the Chinese fighter planes.

‘N-no, wait a f*cking minute!’ (Liu Jing)

A small black bird was also flying in towards Liu Jing’s plane like some kind of a miniature grim reaper. And even before he could respond somehow, the bird attached itself to the front of the plane and blew up.

KWA-BOOOOM!

< 430. There’s a nuke headed this way? -5 > Fin.

(TL: ABM in [1] refers to “anti-ballistic missile”.)

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