The shield that had already been teetering on the edge of collapse was the first to go, rapidly followed by the hull collapsing inwards, metal and glass being pulled towards a single point. The bridge.

Rath had already been leaping forward, immense paw swiping to tear open the Dreadnought’s side, only to miss with a hilarious look of surprise on its face. And the various grapples that had been tying it down dropped away as the parts they’d grabbed onto vanished.

After barely a second, the process completed, leaving just the Captain floating there in midair, seemingly unprotected.

A paw the size of his torso tried to slap him out of the air.

And he caught it on his arms, crossed before his chest, metal coming into existence to wrap him in armor as shields flared to life.

Most of his [Skills] focussed on passive buffs, empowering every aspect of his ship and crew, with a handful of situational cooldown [Skills] like [Bullet Hell]. Together with his powerful ship, they made him a force to be reckoned with.

But this singular [Skill], [Union], was what made him an S-Ranker.

Using it discharged all mana capacitors, robbed him of his crewmembers’ supplementary [Skills] and he only had twenty shots for each main gun and ten thousand for each CWIS before the reloading process got real long, but it also gave him unparalleled mobility and flexibility.

The force of the paw strike shattered the mana shield and sent him flying, softly glowing powder covering his arms, but the claws just left scratches and Rath’s plague didn’t bother him anymore.

Behind him, the first destroyer exploded as it was overwhelmed. The Arizona had excellent point defense and the Bunker Hill was serving as the base for several S-Rankers, but the smaller ships were too exposed.

He could go help with that, but that would leave Rath free to engage, and that would just make things worse.

“Captain Stone, keep Rath occupied as long as possible without risking losing your ship.”

And the Rear Admiral agreed, apparently.

Stone brought his spin to a halt by engaging the ship’s flight ability. Normally, even someone with as big a mana pool as a military officer usually had would not be able to lift a twenty thousand ton battleship, but right now, he was just lifting his own body and the lightweight layer of mithril armor he’d called onto his body.

He thrust both palms towards the leonine [Raid Boss], causing the barrels of his ship’s main guns to manifest there, while the outside of his arms and legs were covered in light guns, and he unleashed everything the ship had at the vessel.

Each manifested main gun fired, and was replaced by another, identical, barrel in short order, the full roster of twenty guns left intact being rotated through every five seconds.

Four shells a second could cause one hell of a lot of damage, not to mention the devastation the smaller guns could cause at point-blank range.

He slightly shifted the aim of his right hand to blow apart the ground before Rath while he used his left to detonate a “napalm” round straight into the demon’s eyes, blinding it and causing it to slip into the newly dug hole.

Two more rounds of the alchemical incendiary, commonly referred to as Napalm despite this being highly inaccurate, fell into the hole and began melting the supernaturally durable ice to keep that fucker trapped.

And then, he unleashed everything else at his disposal at point-blank range, every round punching him deeper and deeper into the hole. A round flashed into Rath’s mouth, detonating deep within his guts, and that was the beginning of the end.

He cut off the CWIS at a thousand rounds left per gun and still had either two or three shells for each big gun by the time Rath died.

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One [Raid Boss] down, two if you counted Furfur, the General of Cocytus had been so badly beaten down that the Dutchman would likely kill him at least once, and Iammax was on his second of three lives as well.

What next?

Iammax needed to go, once he went down, they could open up the range again.

The other ships in the fleet had already taken not insignificant damage by now, with three destroyers destroyed, the Arizona having lost one of its main turrets and several smaller guns and the side of the Bunker Hill was just one huge scorch mark.

He tried asking for permission to do something “stupid”, but Hayes was too busy, which really wasn’t good. Admirals were there for the big picture stuff, if one was literally unable to acknowledge the commanding officer of a full third of his capital ship strength, that meant that stuff was really fucking bad.

Which he took as tacit permission to try something. “Stupid stunt” was a more accurate name than he’d have liked, but if it worked, he would likely just get a few reprimands and an “ataboy” under the table.

He lifted his body skywards until he was over five kilometers above the battlefield, and cancelled [Union].

The HMS Dreadnought, twenty-thousand tons of steel and exotic metals, manifested around him, with all flight arrays completely out of power. In other words, it dropped like a stone. Right on the head of the Demon King of War.

There weren’t nearly as many [Skills] enhancing the ship being used as a projectile as there were the guns, but still, twenty thousand tons, five kilometers up.

[Crew of One] let him operate various systems at a vastly reduced efficacy, which included discharging the launchers for the depth charges, whose decent he could accelerate.

They struck first, cracking the ground and ensuring that the Dreadnought would not splatter against fully solid ground, and a split-second after it, the ship came down with a resounding crunch.

The ground shattered, and both a badly mangled Iammax, countless ice shards, and one HMS Dreadnought plowed into the ocean.

It. Was. Perfect. The ship was, after all, capable of being briefly submerged and traveling underwater, it had gone straight under the ice and was now free to travel to where the others were. And Iammax was so badly mangled that he couldn’t retaliate, but wouldn’t die just yet, giving the Dreadnought a little time to get away.

Of course, underwater travel required mana, for which he needed the crew. The crew he’d just evacuated onto the other two capital ships. But the only reason he’d felt comfortable doing that was because the XO could get everyone back onto the ship in a flash.

The crew reappeared at their duty stations and mana began to flow, the ship mere seconds from being able to retreat.

And then, Iammax did the utterly unexpected. He called his sword into his hand, reversed his grip, and thrust it into his heart through one of the holes in his armor. And then, he was just fine, fully regenerated.

He kicked against the icy surface and hurled himself at the Dreadnought, bringing his sword around in a devastating slash that opened the vessel up from bow to stern, a massive gash in its size.

The XO began to report on the damage, but Stone was already largely aware of it.

They needed to get the hell out of there.

A torpedo from the nearest sub knocked Iammax clear of the ship, granting them that window of opportunity.

Being able to travel underwater was not the same as being able to fight effectively while submerged, sadly, but Iammax should have the same trouble countering the submarines until he escaped the ocean. Either way, the Dreadnought needed to retreat.

Stone shook his head as he observed Iammax’s attempts to run. [Union] and the subsequent usage of his ship as a kinetic projectile had been some of their last trump cards. And they still needed to kill that asshole one final time.

After a minute of nervous travel, the Dreadnought resurfaced beside the Arizona and began to fire all guns that still worked, picking off the last grapples.

That should reset the battle, with the demons out on the ice and the fleet out on the ocean.

But that’s when their missing [Raid Boss] made an appearance, also fully regenerated, while the Dutchman fled to the rest of the fleet.

A hasty report from Jones confirmed that, yes, they’d killed the General of Cocytus once, but still meant that they needed to, essentially, get three more kills. One with the king, and two with the General.

With a badly battered Dreadnought that would have likely sunk without its crew’s [Skills], most cooldown [Skills] spent, and overall, them not being particularly fresh while their foes had been fully restored by their deaths.

“Dreadnought, pull back.”

The order from the Admiral almost made Stone jump, startling him nearly as badly as the arrival of reinforcements. Carrier groups were slow to move, sure, but a carrier’s main method of force projection was its air wing. And there were airbases in range as well.

One by one, the airstrikes began to hit, primarily focusing on wiping out the minion army, then keeping the General hemmed in, and finally, taking down Iammax.

Planes went down to ice spears and flame bolts, sure, and the reloading cycle was atrociously long, but Iammax and the General of Cocytus were facing a decent chunk of the world, with more and more nations dispatching their air forces to tear the demonic invaders apart.

They’d win in time.

But any feelings of celebration or jubilation were smothered when the Doctor reported the strike team’s findings.