05:00:03 a.m.
An invisible force churned the clouds above Sighing Fortress.
If anyone had aimed a high-powered telescope straight overhead at that moment, they would have seen a sight that would suffocate anyone with trypophobia-two thousand black dots folding their wings in perfect unison and plunging vertically toward the ground.
Within three seconds, gravitational acceleration pushed their speed to the limit.
The air compressed and tore apart, producing the sound Ola could never get enough of as it streamed past Stuka's mounting rack.
"Woooo-!!!"
It began as a low drone, like distant, muffled thunder, but soon grew shrill and piercing.
The fortress barracks.
A soldier who had just gotten up to relieve himself was fastening his belt when the piercing shriek made him shudder, splashing urine onto his trouser cuffs. He looked up blankly, searching for its source.
"A dragon? Is it a dragon?"
His companion woke with a start on his straw bedding, grabbed a spear, and rushed out of the barracks, his face filled with fear of the unknown.
It was not just the barracks. Warhorses in the stables began neighing and stamping; sentries on the towers covered their ears and stared in terror at the black shapes falling from the sky. Even the rats hiding in the sewers trembled at this whistle of death.
In that single second, the entire fortress erupted into panic.
The clouds burst apart as two thousand Stukas folded their wings and plunged toward the ground like a meteor shower.
Three thousand meters, two thousand, one thousand.
Ola felt the gale dragging his skin backward, almost pulling his features out of place. Yet excitement burned in his cloudy eyes-what veteran who had served in Sea Land for ten years could resist breaching Sighing Fortress, supposedly "impregnable"?
*[Boss, aren't we flying a little too