196: Chapter 196 A 10,000-meter airborne drop smashes into scrap metal! A single shot wipes out the screen with a devastating, dimensional attack.

The underground base.

The red alarm lights in the command center were still spinning frantically.

The countdown on the main screen ticked to 00:15.

The air was thick enough to feel like lead.

No one spoke; only the sound of Tohdoh's finger joints cracking as he gripped his sword hilt could be heard.

Kaname Ohgi was drenched in sweat, staring fixedly at the dense clusters of red dots on the screen.

Over ten thousand mechs and one hundred warships had the ground above them completely sealed off.

"ZERO, are we really not going to break through?"

Kaname Ohgi swallowed hard, his voice wavering.

Lelouch didn't respond.

He braced his hands on the console, his eyes beneath the mask fixed on the ticking numbers.

00:10.

00:09.

Just as the numbers jumped to 00:05.

Boom—!

The entire underground base shook violently.

The alloy ceiling, dozens of meters thick above them, emitted a teeth-grinding sound of distortion as vast amounts of dust showered down.

The communications officers at the console were nearly shaken out of their chairs.

"What's going on? Did the bunker-buster missile launch early?"

Tohdoh drew his katana.

"It's not a bunker-buster!"

A communications officer shouted while pointing at the screen, his voice cracking, "Look at the radar!"

Everyone looked up.

On the tactical map on the main screen, the previously solid mass of red dots suddenly had a large gap in the center.

Over a dozen red dots representing Imperial heavy warships vanished without warning.

Immediately after, a series of shrill screams erupted from the intercepted Imperial public communication channel.

"Enemy attack! From above!"

"Shields not responding! Evasive maneuvers—"

The screaming abruptly ceased.

The external battlefield.

The Imperial front-line command position.

Hundreds of heavy-duty mechs held their guns, their muzzles aimed directly at the entrance of the underground base below.

The front-line commander sat inside a heavy command mech, his hand already resting on the launch button for the bunker-buster missile.

Suddenly, the clouds above were forcibly torn apart by a violent air current.

A massive object, jet-black with dark gold magic patterns flowing across its surface, plummeted downwards with terrifying kinetic energy.

Ten thousand meters high.

Free fall.

There was no deceleration, not even the anti-gravity wings were deployed.

Bang!

The demonized gawain mech slammed violently into the center of the command position.

The ground within a radius of several kilometers collapsed instantly.

That heavy command mech, along with the commander inside, was crushed by the demonized gawain's massive mechanical foot into a scrap metal pancake less than ten centimeters thick.

Violent shockwaves, mixed with hundreds of tons of soil and armor fragments, swept outwards in a ring in all directions.

The hundreds of Imperial mechs nearby were like cardboard boxes caught in a hurricane; they were instantly tossed into the air and smashed into the distant ruins, reduced to piles of scrap metal.

The entire encirclement was forcibly smashed open, leaving a massive gap.

The dust settled.

The demonized gawain slowly stood upright.

In the cockpit, Yu Feng crossed his legs and pulled out a lighter.

Click.

He lit a premium cigar.

"This method of landing is actually quite fuel-efficient," he remarked nonchalantly as he exhaled a puff of smoke.

The Imperial forces on the perimeter were in complete chaos.

"What kind of monster is that?!"

"It's the commander! The commander has been crushed!"

The vice-commander roared frantically from a warship in the rear: "Focus fire! I don't care what it is, turn it into a sieve!"

The remaining mechs simultaneously turned their muzzles.

The main cannons of the warships in the sky also lit up with blinding light.

Rumble!

Deafening explosions merged into one continuous roar.

A sky full of heavy armor-piercing shells, micro-missiles, and high-frequency particle blades poured down like a torrential rain upon the demonized gawain.

The various colors of the explosions lit up half the sky.

The barrage of fire lasted for a full half-minute.

"Cease fire!"

The vice-commander stared intently at the screen, "Is the target confirmed destroyed?"

The thick smoke cleared.

The demonized gawain stood in place, completely unscathed.

The dark gold magic patterns flowing on the surface of its body hadn't even changed their flickering frequency.

Those armor-piercing shells, capable of tearing through aircraft carrier plating, didn't even leave a white mark when they hit it.

"Is that all the firepower you have?"

Yu Feng flicked the ash from his cigar, his voice broadcasting across the entire battlefield through the mech's speakers.

"It's too weak to even scratch me."

He couldn't be bothered with small talk and pressed the red button on the console.

Both shoulders.

Plasma Annihilation Cannons.

The infinite interstellar power source, purified by the magic energy furnace, instantly output its energy.

Hiss—!

Two crimson beams, a hundred meters in diameter, emitted a shriek that seemed to tear through space as they fired explosively.

Without any charging process, they fired at full capacity.

The crimson beams swept horizontally across the ground.

The Imperial mech groups in their path didn't even have the chance to explode.

As long as they were grazed by the beams, even specialized alloy armor weighing tens of tons would be vaporized at the molecular level in an instant.

The beams pushed forward, piercing directly through the dozen heavy warships hovering in mid-air.

The warships' deflector shields were like paper; they shattered instantly.

The massive hulls melted and disintegrated in the sky, turning into a rain of molten iron that crashed onto the ground.

In just over ten seconds.

Three thousand Imperial mechs and a dozen heavy warships were completely evaporated from this world.

The previously airtight encirclement had been forcibly carved out, creating a massive vacuum zone.

The underground base.

The command center was deathly silent.

Everyone stared with mouths agape at the enemy casualty data plummeting on the screen.

Three thousand red dots had been cleared in an instant.

Kaname Ohgi's legs gave out, and he slumped into his chair, clutching his head with both hands: "My god... what kind of weapon is that?"

Tohdoh's hand, gripping his sword, was trembling.

It wasn't fear; it was extreme excitement.

"Destroying three thousand mechs in one strike—this isn't tactics, this is divine punishment," Tohdoh muttered to himself.

Kallen stood behind Lelouch, pumping her fist excitedly.

She was all too familiar with that sense of oppressive, dimensional-level dominance.

"I told you he could handle it!"

Kallen's eyes were filled with fanaticism.

Those new members who had been filled with despair and were even preparing to surrender were now all pressed against the screens, watching that black mech with eyes full of worship, almost like they were looking at a deity.

Lelouch exhaled a long breath.

His tense back finally relaxed.

Although he had long witnessed Yu Feng's monstrous combat power, every time he saw it, this completely unreasonable aesthetic of violence still made his scalp tingle.

"Notify all squads."

Lelouch tapped the console, his voice returning to its steady tone.

"Prepare to counterattack. Follow behind that mech and mop up the remaining enemies."

The external battlefield.

The morale of the Imperial army had completely collapsed.

The mech pilots in the front row frantically pulled their joysticks, attempting to turn and flee.

The formation was in complete disarray, with units trampling over each other.

In the sky, a transformable mech with a special paint job hovered below the clouds.

Gino, the Third Knight of the Round, sat in the cockpit of the [Tristan], the relaxed smile on his face long gone.

"Vaporizing three thousand mechs in one shot? That's impossible!"

Gino looked at the red warning flashing on his tactical panel and slammed his fist onto the console.

As a Knight of the Round, the empire's top combat force, how could he tolerate someone slaughtering the Imperial army right under his nose?

"Connect the power core! Forcefully disable the limiters!"

Gino's eyes turned red, and he immediately activated the Tristan's overclocking mode.

The thrusters on the back of the mech spewed blinding blue light.

The Tristan folded and transformed in mid-air, turning into a high-mobility fighter, its speed instantly breaking the sound barrier.

"No matter how thick your armor is, as long as I sever your main control nerves, you're just scrap metal!"

Gino streaked through the air, leaving a golden trail of light.

He wove through the flying debris, circling directly into the demonized gawain's blind spot.

The Tristan transformed back into its mech form, drawing two high-frequency vibration beam swords with both hands, and lunged straight for the Gawain's cockpit.

"Die!" Gino roared.

Inside the cockpit of the demonized gawain.

Yu Feng didn't even turn his head.

The red dot flashing on the tactical radar was as slow as a crawling turtle in his eyes.

"So many flies."

Yu Feng held his cigar, not bothering to reach for the joystick.

Within him, his S-rank exclusive ability [Divine Power] erupted directly.

There were no earth-shattering energy fluctuations.

It was just that, centered on the demonized gawain, the space within a thousand-meter radius suddenly twisted in a bizarre way.

The underlying laws of physics were forcibly rewritten at that moment.

Gino's Tristan was less than fifty meters from the Gawain.

Suddenly.

The mech halted abruptly in mid-air.

The thrusters were still firing at full power, the engine was roaring madly, but the entire body could not move forward even an inch.

It was as if a flying insect had crashed into solidified cement.

It was completely welded in place.

"What's going on?! Move! Move, damn it!"

Gino frantically pushed and pulled the joystick, sweating profusely.

Every joint of the mech emitted a groaning sound of being overwhelmed.

His pride and joy, his super-high mobility, had become completely useless in the face of this dimensional-level spatial lockdown.

Yu Feng took a slow, deliberate puff of his cigar.

With a thought.

The demonized gawain slowly turned around and raised its massive mechanical hand.

The palm opened.

Without any fancy moves, it simply swatted out like it was swatting a fly.

Bang—!

A crisp sound of metal bursting echoed through the air.

The Tristan's shield didn't even last for a tenth of a second before shattering into a sky full of light particles.

The mech's chest armor was heavily dented, and a burst of sparks exploded from its internal precision components.

The entire mech, like a kite with a broken string, was swatted away for hundreds of meters by that slap, crashing violently into the distant ruins.

Gino spat out a mouthful of blood in the cockpit and passed out instantly.

The Imperial army's last pillar of morale, the Third Knight of the Round, had been killed in one hit.

The remaining Imperial mechs completely lost the will to resist; they dropped their weapons and fled in panic.

Yu Feng didn't bother chasing the deserters.

He looked at the smoking scrap metal covering the ground, and his eyes lit up.

"Thousands of tons of high-dimensional alloy, plus the power cores of those warships—this haul is rich."

Yu Feng activated the automatic collection function of his Portable Space.

A massive void rift slowly opened in the sky.

A tremendous suction force swept across the entire battlefield.

The specialized alloy remaining after the evaporation, the wreckage of thousands of mechs, and the micro-power matrices of the warships all flew toward the sky like iron filings attracted to a magnet, continuously being pulled into the space.

These were excellent materials for upgrading the star destroyer to the ninth tier.

While collecting the scrap, Yu Feng pressed his communicator.

"Lelouch."

The communication connected.

"I've cleared the outside. Bring your people out to mop up, and grab some prisoners while you're at it."

The underground base.

Lelouch let out a long sigh of relief as he listened to the voice on the communicator.

He turned to look at the people in the command center.

"The crisis is averted. All squads, proceed according to the original plan: assault from the main entrance and take control of the perimeter positions."

Kaname Ohgi and Tohdoh immediately took orders and rushed out with their men.

Kallen also ran toward the hangar, preparing to pilot the guren mk-ii out to help.

The command center instantly emptied by more than half.

Only Lelouch remained, standing before the main console, bringing up the base's internal damage control system to prepare to re-establish the defense network.

Just as he pressed the enter key.

The red alarm throughout the entire underground base suddenly emitted an extremely sharp screeching sound.

It wasn't an outer perimeter alarm.

It was the core zone!

Lelouch snapped his head up to look at the tactical screen above.

On the screen, a red dot moving at extreme speed had somehow already passed through all the outer defense lines and appeared directly at the lowest level of the base.

That was the abandoned entrance to the underground sewage pipes.

"How is that possible?"

Lelouch's pupils constricted.

High-frequency sensor minefields had been set up outside the gate of that entrance; it was impossible for anyone to infiltrate silently.

Boom—!

The floor one level below the command center suddenly exploded.

Huge chunks of alloy mixed with sewage directly flipped over the entire main console.

A seventh-generation mech, pure white with mud still staining its armor, forced its way up from below, shattering the floor and leaping into the command center.

Lancelot Conqueror.

The crystallization of the empire's latest technology, equipped with energy wings and an overclocking shield.

The mech had just landed, and the two high-frequency vibration swords in its right hand had already popped out.

Suzaku sat in the cockpit, his eyes blood-red.

Taking advantage of the main army outside drawing attention, he used the Lancelot's stealth capabilities to forcibly cut through the gate from the sewage pipes and crept all the way here.

"ZERO!"

Suzaku looked at the figure wearing the black mask, his roar blasting through the speakers.

"Today, I will definitely avenge Euphemia!"

The energy wings on the back of the Lancelot spewed blinding red light.

The dozen-ton mech instantly erupted with terrifying acceleration, brandishing its high-frequency vibration swords as it lunged straight at Lelouch behind the main console.

The Lancelot's sudden arrival was without warning.

In the cockpit, Suzaku's breathing was heavy, his eyes fixed on the figure wearing the black mask.

The flames of revenge were almost burning out of his chest.

Euphemia had been framed in a live broadcast because of this man, his Imperial brother Schneizel had had his leg broken, and the entire empire was mocking the Britannian royal family.

And the source of all this was the ZERO hiding behind the mask before him.

"Die!"

Suzaku shrieked, maneuvering the Lancelot to charge with full force.

The high-frequency vibration sword sliced through the air, piercing straight for Lelouch's heart with a shrill whistle.

Just at this critical moment.

The roar of a mech engine came from the corridor outside the command center.

A crimson-painted mech smashed through the alloy wall and rushed into the command center at extreme speed.

The crimson mech's arm blocked horizontally in front of the Lancelot's sword tip, forcefully parrying the fatal blow.

Clang!

The tremendous sound of metal colliding made people's eardrums ache.

A large chunk of the crimson mech's right arm armor was sliced off, sending sparks flying everywhere.

guren mk-ii.

"Suzaku, stop!"

Kallen's voice blasted through the speakers, carrying uncontrollable anger.

The Lancelot was jolted back two steps.

Suzaku steadied his mech, staring intently at the crimson figure blocking his path.

"Kallen? Why are you here!"

Suzaku's voice was full of disbelief.

Kallen didn't answer.

She maneuvered the guren mk-ii to turn around, facing Lelouch.

"ZERO, are you okay?"

Lelouch stood behind the main console, looking at the suddenly appeared Kallen, his eyes complex.

"I'm fine."

Seeing this scene, the anger in Suzaku's chest burned even brighter.

He violently drew his other high-frequency vibration sword, wielding both, and slashed toward the side of the guren mk-ii.

"Kallen! How much longer are you going to be deceived by this liar!"

Kallen maneuvered the guren mk-ii to dodge one sword, and with her other hand, she grabbed the Lancelot's blade.

Crimson radiation waves instantly erupted, burning the blade of the high-frequency vibration sword red-hot.

"Liar? What are you talking about?"

Kallen gritted her teeth.

"Are you still playing dumb?"

Suzaku launched a series of attacks like a madman, every sword strike carrying the determination to kill Kallen.

"This ZERO is not a resistance leader at all!"