Lord Wolte drove backwards from the guard emplacement he was in and took a turn. As if someone had pressed on his accelerator pedal, heavily dense smoke came out of his exhaust. The back of his ‘butt’ transformed into a pair of supercharger turbine engines, the ones generally used for aeroplanes.
The moment he released his clutch, his threads burst out from the front and his metal wheels slid across the side of the bridge as he smashed himself into the sea. All of this and he still had continued to fire at the Giants to let them think it was some accident.
As the only one to break the emplacement, Lord Wolte was briefly considered to be the most vulnerable. The Giants did not miss his abnormal behaviour and quickly sent a giant ballista his way which nearly hit him on his sides but in the end, only managed to break one of his back wheels. (Evidently, the ballista almost caused him to lose his balance if not for the fact that he was able to shift his own weight.)
“Tsk! Pesky Giants! You shall pay for this soon enough!” Wolte gritted his teeth and continued his dive into the treacherous sea right under the sky bridge. He became the butt of the jokes as the Giants praised him as ‘the only defender with half a brain realising that protecting this bridge was futile’.
“Everyone should just jump down into the sea and save yourselves! We might not even hurt you!” The Giants taunted the cultivators as the morale of the demons inadvertently increased.
Yet, the rest of Dark Templars knew that their Lord was not suicidal. They kept their mouths shut and took the opportunity to attack when they were distracted. Oh, but they relished the wait for the last laugh once their saviour would appear once again to punish all of them.
As Lord Wolte submerged himself into the Deep Sea, he was not prepared for what he saw with his eyes. The Deep Ones including a somewhat drowsy Mr Derpy were having fun redecorating the Pandjilla. It was to the point that the bored Mr Derpy even started to grant some magical energy to the waiting Pandjilla, strengthening him until one of his subordinates made him aware that Lord Wolte was sinking down.
“Wolte! Have you come to visit me?!” Mr Derpy asked as he flapped his fins a little too enthusiastically, causing some disturbance on the sea’s surface. (The same Deep Ones Mage cautiously requested him to quieten down to prevent any further suspicion.)
“Hahaha, Dagen! It’s always a joy to see you! I’d love to stay and chat, but sadly things up there are a bit more hectic than down here. I have come to conduct some business with you.” Wolte ‘spoke’ with bubbles coming out of his mouth.
“Oh, oh! How about I connect a live line to you like how we did before this stupid skirmish? I assume you are transforming, right?” Mr Derpy immediately suggested, and Wolte agreed without the slightest hesitation.
In fact, he knew how gullible Derpy was and had always tried to use him as much as the old man could. (Why would he say no to a living magic battery willing to provide him with the energy to maintain his ultimate form?!)
“Dagen, for your generosity, I shall share my line of sight as well as a cannon for you to control!” The submerging tank agreed, and Derpy was over the top. He did not expect the old Duke to be kind enough to let him see this time around, let alone control one of his cannons.
Wolte quickly used this excuse to increase his consumption of the living breathing magical battery. There was no way he would leave Derpy alone after tasting his magical energies. (Besides, Mr Derpy was a little restless after consuming an entire island sized turtle. So, this after-meal entertainment became a win-win situation for both parties.)
“All right! Here goes! Witness the Grand Wolte transform right in front of your eyes!” The Demon Patron of Dark Templars announced with much fanfare to a clapping Derpy and his subordinates as tank parts started to fall out as if his skin was peeling away.
All that was left was a wrapped cocoon which was continuously rotating and growing larger in size. Slowly but surely, the cocoon began to rise to the surface of the sea, and when it stopped spinning, Derpy sent a tentacle of some sort and pierced into the cocoon.
Soon, the shell broke and dissipated in the water as a metal pointed shape appeared protruding out of it. With a large splash that was visible from the far end of their sight, A bulk of the demon armies temporarily stopped their fight to see what was happening. (The demons could not believe there were so many disruptions in a single battle.)
Eventually, the entire vessel became visible from the sky bridge. “Is…that a ship?” Earl Barbatos asked no one in particular as he heard a loud, long honking sound beyond the shoreline. He was just as surprised as his allies and enemies by the emergence of a metal ship. Those from Jin’s world could vaguely tell it was not just a regular ship. Its size, its magnitude and the ferocity of its cannons lay along with the platform.
Its was one hella big battlecruiser!
The more astute Royal Snake soldiers who had been in the navy nearly had their jaws drop when they took a closer look at the battlecruiser through their binoculars. Some were just amazed that Jin could replicate it.
“DID YOU HE SERIOUSLY REPLICATE THE WHOLE THING?!” One of the soldiers with Navy experience had his mouth left open aghast.
“Holy shit, I think he did. Someone pinch me, I must be dreaming!” His pal joined in with the fanboying, but their companions around them had no idea what it was. Sure it was awesome to look at, but was it seriously this impressive that the two of them nearly drooled?
“What is it? Why are you all so amazed by it?” Someone finally asked them, awakening them from their stupor.
“You might not know this, but Russia’s leader during the Cold War loved battlecruisers. One day he demanded the military to build one that would put all others to shame. His engineers followed this order to the letter, yet the resulting blueprint was simply absurdly impossible to create from a nautical engineering standpoint. All they ever managed to build had been the platform, yet they subsequently scrapped it. Still among us, sea dogs all who had seen the blueprint as part of our education could never forget it. THAT is the rumoured ship that was once abandoned by the Russians.”
The Stalingrad.
“What’s so special about that?” His pals asked with more interest incited within them. They explained how it was heavily inspired by the heavy battlecruisers Yamato and Musashi which had been considered the Legends of Battlecruisers back during World War Two.
Powered with nuclear energy, its design was supposedly able to hold even more main cannons, and their anti-air would have been top-notch. There were also rumours that in an actual creation there would be anti-submarine technology built within the ship, allowing it to transcend to become the Emperor of the seas.
“From what we heard and read previously after the war was over, some enthusiastic engineers had made another iteration of the initial blueprint designs where they designed an internal hangar within the ship’s cargo hold. It would allow it to operate similar to an aircraft carrier. Personally, I believe the idea was scrapped since it was more likely once the pilot took off, it could never come back again due to the lack of space.”
“Shouldn’t be a problem if you have those Land Hover kind of technology! Hahaha!”
“Man, that would be a fantasy come true. I wish I could board the ship! It would be a dream come true!”
“Perhaps, that is already happening right now!” The soldiers exclaimed with excitement as they anticipated what the Stalingrad would do. Obviously, Lord Wolte did not know his appearance had already granted him some fanboys. (unknowingly increasing his numbers of casual worshippers)
What would those two say, if they knew that all Lord Wolte had cared about was that his final form would be a majestic ship. He had found this massive ship as part of his transformation and merely copied the design the System had extracted from the Abyss Web.
Perhaps they would not care about the reason how it came to be… as long as they could fire some shots on this baby!
