Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom Boom

If the Patriot IV Ballistic Missile had emotions, it would surely have felt smug. It was now truly the center of everyone's attention.

Under the terrified, stunned gazes of seventeen thousand people staring upward with their mouths agape, it plunged headfirst into the seven-story soldiers' dormitory.

At that moment, time itself seemed to stretch out, lifting everyone's hearts to their throats. They were too choked to make a sound, their eyes wide with horror.

The sky, the ground, the air currents—all seemed to take an eternity to raise their hearts to their throats. The whole world fell silent for an instant.

Then the expected explosion unfolded before them.

The seven-story soldiers' dormitory cracked first, then its concrete walls shattered into dust. The process was too fast for the human eye to perceive.

What they saw first was the seven-story dormitory suddenly turning into dust that billowed across the sky. Then, the thermal energy of thirty tons of explosives gathered into an irregular fireball that rose upward, mingling with the swirling dust.

The irregular fireball burned through all the dust, then its kinetic force shoved outward, hurling the larger surviving chunks of stone, metal, steel, and even earth from the ground wildly in every direction. A gale-like shockwave surged outward, driving the dust ahead of it.

The tremendous sound shook heaven and earth, blasting straight into their heads.

Everyone felt the ground beneath their feet trembling violently, as though the earth itself were about to be overturned. Only after they saw the scene did the sound arrive a fraction later, accompanied by the gale-force shockwave. It blew the hats off countless soldiers and pressed their clothes tightly against their bodies.

The intense light and earth-shaking roar made the soldiers squint tightly, raising their hands to shield themselves from the glare. Sand and black smoke churned through the sky, shaking them to their cores.

Because the soldiers' dormitory stood on the far side of the military base, many soldiers had the fortune—or misfortune—of witnessing the entire scene from beginning to end. It left them speechless.

They were frightened stiff, their ears ringing as they temporarily lost their hearing.

What was going on? Their own missile had turned around and fired at their own people?

The place where they slept had been blown away. Once the flames faded, only thick black smoke rose into the sky. Within the enormous black crater, there was no trace whatsoever that a seven-story dormitory had ever stood there.

"What happened?"

"Enemy attack??"

"Are those Soviet bears starting a war?"

"That was our own missile!!"

The soldiers were truly terrified and panicked, staring at one another. They had all seen it: the missile had launched from their own base, then made an impossible sharp turn and destroyed the soldiers' dormitory, blasting out a huge crater. Even several nearby buildings had been shaken into tilting and cracking by the tremors, reduced to the appearance of ruins.

Majors, lieutenant colonels, and colonels leading their units searched for an explanation. In the end, they found it among a group of soldiers who should have been at the command center, as well as Brigadier General Kagel, whose face had turned utterly dreadful.

The base's network infrastructure had been hacked!

Those who heard the news on the spot felt as if they had been struck by lightning.

This was too serious, too disastrous, and too absurd.

How could a military base's systems be controlled so easily? Missiles with ten-thousand-ton yields, uncontrolled without the command center, inevitably brought to mind tragedies like those on Japan's two islands.

Instinctively, they stiffly turned their heads toward the missile silos.

The missile just now had been the one with the smallest yield. There were still missiles dozens or even hundreds of times more powerful, with ten-thousand-ton yields, waiting to launch.

As though confirming their dreadful premonition.

Rumble...

The ground began trembling again, and dust quivered as it bounced.

The seventy-ton-yield Annihilator III missile rose into the sky before them with a thunderous roar, its tail flames blazing red and white.

The terror brought by the thirty-ton-yield missile had not yet subsided, and now another seventy-ton-yield Annihilator III was launching. The soldiers holding guns let their barrels droop, their mouths fell open, their eyes bulged wide, and their hearts skipped a beat.

This missile...

Under the gaze of everyone, it left a white trail across the sky, then began to turn!!

Brigadier General Kagel was terrified out of his wits and roared hoarsely, "Run!!"

"Everyone evacuate the base!"

"All soldiers, flee the base!!"

Brigadier General Kagel roared until his face was forced crimson, as though he were squeezing all the blood into it.

He was both shocked and enraged. He poured every ounce of strength into his hoarse shout, his throat burning as if it were about to burst.

This alien wanted to destroy all seventeen thousand soldiers here!

He also had the ability to destroy this base—or rather, he could destroy it with ease.

"Bastard."

Brigadier General Kagel bared his teeth, his eyes red with rage. From deep in his burning throat came a low growl, like a maddened beast with bloodshot eyes fighting for its life.

Seventeen thousand lives—his soldiers—were going to be destroyed by him just like that! Such a sacrifice would be utterly meaningless!

Brigadier General Kagel clenched his teeth so hard they nearly shattered. His fury bit his gums until they bled, blood trickling from the corner of his mouth.

Brigadier General Kagel's voice was thunderous, shouted with enough force to make his throat go hoarse. Its message carried into the minds of every soldier.

In an instant, the entire military base erupted into chaos. Every soldier wore an expression of disbelief and terror.

Their own missile was about to come down and strike their own troops?

"Has the commander gone mad?"

"Run!!"

"That pig of a commander, what the hell is he doing!!"

"Why are they using missiles to attack the base!!"

"Son of a bitch, fuck!"

"Move!"

The terrified soldiers exploded into motion, cursing their officers in crude fury.

They had sounded the call to gather them here and equipped them with the finest gear, missiles, and tanks. Yet before they had fought any enemy, their own missiles were going to fall from the sky and bomb the soldiers assembled here.

How infuriating. How utterly fucked up.

The soldiers cursed as they fled in terror, desperately trying to escape the area.

The seventy-ton-yield Annihilator III missile above them hung like the Sword of Damocles, ready to fall.

Those who reacted quickly had already scrambled onto vehicles—jeeps or missile transporters. Any vehicle faster than running was immediately packed with people. The drivers charged about wildly, crashing through everything without caring whether anyone else lived or died.

Those who failed to get on a vehicle ran on foot, fleeing in blind panic. From time to time, they cast terrified glances behind them at the missile in the sky, which had already completed a sharp turn and was descending toward this place.

Yet just as the soldiers were fleeing the military base in a frenzy.

Boom boom boom boom!

A continuous series of missile tail flames suddenly erupted. These were not the Sword of Damocles in the sky, but vehicle-mounted missiles fired from the soldiers' own vehicles.

In an instant, nearly seventy vehicle-mounted surface-to-surface and surface-to-air missiles shot toward areas where the crowds were most concentrated.

The terrified, panicked soldiers were blasted into the air, wailing and screaming as severed limbs flew everywhere.

Missile transporters exploded. Jeeps exploded. Countless people were blown away.

The military base instantly became ruins, as gruesome as a battlefield of hell. Black smoke, severed limbs, and the stench of blood assaulted everyone's senses, driving them mad. Nearly several thousand people were deafened by missiles exploding at close range.

The brutality of war was once again laid bare. Missile shockwaves and shrapnel made nearly a thousand soldiers howl in agony. In only an instant, several hundred had already died.

A soldier grabbed Brigadier General Kagel by the arm, trying to pull him away, but Kagel angrily shook him off.

"I'll kill him!!!"

The seventy-ton-yield Annihilator III missile also descended upon the white Laboratory Building, exploding with a heaven-shaking blast.