Emerald green flames accompanied the impact of the meteorites, bringing unprecedented despair and suffering to the imperial allied infantry.
A soldier who luckily remained outside the fire cloud witnessed a comrade being ignited by the green flames spreading from the ground. Afterward, he was rapidly engulfed by the fierce blaze without even a scream, only convulsing on the ground until becoming a charred skeleton.
This was hellfire that burned directly into the soul. During the prevalent era of the Church, it was considered a profane art that only a messenger of demons would use.
One imperial allied soldier after another was either directly struck into a bloody pulp by the meteorites from above, or burned to the point of wishing for death by the rampaging demonic fires.
Seeing the heavy casualties of soldiers in the distance, Saphirette curved her lips into a cruel smile, her tone growing increasingly frenzied and unlike her former self, as if infected by the aura of the deceased:
"Die! All of you die! Use your lives to gratify the great…"
Before she could finish, her spell was interrupted by several uranium-powered energy blasts fired from both sides.
The magic barrier dispersed to nullify the attacks. Saphirette hastily used the Snake Eye spell, turning one eye bloody red.
"One, two…at least over a hundred! When did…?"
To her surprise, she discovered over a hundred imperial allied soldiers had encircled and surrounded her position from both left and right, with reinforcements still streaming in.
The earlier attack came from the soldiers nearest to her firing bowguns from long range.
Saphirette furrowed her brows viciously as the flow of magic around her grew increasingly chaotic.
The earth began to tremble, dirt and grass thrust upwards by a tremendous force!
One after another, around thirty earth elemental guardians emerged, taking heavy steps towards Saphirette's flanks.
"Captain, we've identified traditional 5th-level elemental guardians."
The scout in the vanguard immediately reported to his superior.
The captain sneered coldly: "Like it's a thousand years ago when a grand mage could intimidate a nation? Second row, load disintegration shells to teach her a lesson!"
The prone imperial soldiers in the second row swiftly opened the breech of their bowguns, ejecting the iron scrap and nail payloads, and instead loading a glowing azure disintegration shell from their travel packs.
This was the nightmare of all spellcasters, yet ironically invented by the hands of mages themselves.
Aiming the reloaded bowguns at Saphirette 300 meters away - her small figure now obscured by the towering elemental guardians.
Whirrrr….BOOM!
The bowguns fired again! Part of the disintegration shell's payload was extracted by an alchemical glyph matrix, then propelled by uranium to launch a glowing blue-white energy orb that struck the elemental guardians precisely.
The supposedly impervious earth elementals immediately lost their footing.
The portions struck by the disintegration orbs began to crumble and rapidly spread across their entire bodies.
Within seconds, the elemental guardians had been dispersed, the magic sustaining their physical forms scattered into heaps of dirt on the ground.
The captain surveyed his troops' handiwork with satisfaction: "Load fire bombs, let's see if they work on that witch. I've heard the old cults used immolation against these deviants."
Just as the soldiers were unloading the disintegration rounds to swap fire bombs, the scout suddenly shouted a warning:
"Captain! It seems the enemy is preparing some kind of powerful spell! And it looks like they've already completed it!"
"What?!"
The captain quickly grabbed his eagle-eye monocular to observe.
Saphirette's body was now enveloped in a thick purple aura, her pointed witch's hat blown off to her feet, her hair longer than her petite body writhing like snakes.
Combined with her ferocious bared expression and sharp teeth, she resembled a demon's advent.
"Open fire! Open fire!"
The captain, realizing his misjudgement - those elemental guardians were just a distraction to buy time for this grand attack - frantically ordered his troops to eliminate the enemy.
Fireballs and uranium blasts poured from the bowgun barrels in a torrent. Soldiers who had just arrived also quickly found cover to join the concentrated barrage on their lone enemy.
Over a thousand shots merged into an energy barrage terrifying enough to daunt any living creature as it bore down on Saphirette!
But it was too late. A chilling tremor suddenly emanated from around the witch, then the purple miasma rapidly expanded outwards, consuming the allied forces' barrage without a trace.
As the purple haze dissipated, the scout immediately activated his eagle-eye ability to assess the situation.
"Captain…the enemy is completely unharmed, and her appearance has drastically changed!" he muttered in utter shock.
Saphirette was no longer a young girl.
A mature, voluptuous witch towered where she once stood, her height rivaling most grown men.
Twin pairs of curved horns crowned her head, purple scales covered her exposed, ample bosom, and a bewitching, sultry smile played across beautifully alien features - captivating enough to enrapture any man's soul.
"Fire! Full barrage!" the captain roared his order.
But the frontline imperial soldiers belonged to a different breed, their nerves governed only by gunpowder and death, suppressing all sensitivity and aesthetics beyond identifying friend or foe.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
One brilliant white uranium blast after another discharged with destructive power that could outshine the rising sun!
The witch merely scoffed derisively at this terrifying might before vanishing from the spot.
The bombardment powerful enough to crater half a village struck the bare earth, gouging a pit nearly five meters deep, yet the scout had already spotted the enemy's evasion.
"Captain! She's above!"
The scout hastily pushed his superior, pointing towards the smoke-shrouded sky.
Saphirette hovered aloft, a pair of gigantic wings unfurled from her back as she peered down at the allied soldiers sheltering behind trees, slopes and rocks.
"Hellfire."
Her purple lips softly uttered this incantation.
A premonition of danger suddenly welled up in the captain's gut, but before he could order a retreat, emerald flames raced in from above, heralding sheer hopelessness.
Erupting from Saphirette as the epicenter, the demonic inferno rapidly spread in all directions, igniting everything in its path as viridian firebrands wavered across the scorched earth.
As for the imperial soldiers caught within, they had already descended into frenzied self-mutilation from the anguish of their souls being incinerated, praying suicide might spare them this unbearable torment.
"How weak humans are," the witch murmured with feigned pity.
In the rear flanks…
"Sir, four bowgun platoons completely annihilated! Killed by some rapidly spreading green flames."
The scout dispassionately reported the frontline situation to the battalion commander.
"Range?" The commander tightly clenched his fist.
"Both platoons followed training doctrine, maintaining the optimal 300 to 500 meter bowgun range from the enemy. Some outermost supporting troops survived, so the radius is estimated around 500 meters."
The commander nodded grimly. "Prepare the mana cannons to attack."
The scout added, "But the enemy has taken to the air. Shall we call in the Griffon Squadron to force them back to the ground before engaging?"
"No need," the battalion commander smiled. "Better support has already arrived."
Just as Saphirette surveyed her surroundings, preparing to fly off and annihilate the enemies over a kilometer away, fireballs, ice spikes, and shadow bolts suddenly rained in from three different directions!
She immediately activated her magic barrier, the six spell attacks exploding against the deep blue magical shell before dissipating.
But right after, an purple dragon burst through the clouds above, frost emanating from its claws as golden vertical slits locked onto Saphirette within the magical dome through a transparent visor.
The witch suddenly felt a chill as tendrils of cold air began emerging around her.
In the next moment, an ice blossom bloomed within her force field!
Draconic spell: Frost Eruption!
The ice shards erupting in all directions effortlessly pierced through Saphirette's magical defenses, the abrupt force impaling her body as frost and mana ravaged the witch, sending her plummeting earthward unable to fly.
The other two purple dragons also descended, mercilessly unleashing 6th-level spells towards Saphirette's freefall trajectory.
Dark Supernova.
Frost Skewer.
Immolating Inferno.
Darkness, ice and fire alternated into a composite strike, hammering the witch with combined elemental fury rivaling Raphael's lase Breath!
Saphirette barely managed to counter, expending all her mana in a desperate barrage of Hellfires against the battle dragons' onslaught.
Finally hitting the ground, the devastating combo spell dissipated.
But before she could catch her breath, the surrounding earth was struck by a artillery shell, unleashing an unparalleled shockwave that flung her away as shrapnel and debris pelted deep into the witch's flesh like a hailstorm.
1,700 meters away, the battalion commander, receiving the scout's report of the battle dragons' strike, immediately ordered all field mana cannons to open fire.
The sturdy morverns stood obediently behind the cannons, towing lines attached without flinching at the deafening bombardment.
The artillerymen deftly adjusted elevation, fired, and cleared uranium residue from the breeches in a practiced cycle, quickly expending a whole mana crystal.
"Cease fire. Scout, assess the battlefield." the commander ordered.
Activating his eagle-eye ability again, the area had been completely leveled into a scorched plain shrouded in smoke like an alchemical industrial zone, black clouds blotting out the sun.
"Target…still alive, but appears to have reverted to her previous form."
Saphirette had returned to her young girl guise, no longer contemptuous as she hastily fled northward trailing blood from grievous wounds.
"She's headed towards Oakenburg city limits," the scout reported. "Heavily injured, leaving a trail of blood. Her magic must have been completely expended resisting our barrage."
The commander shook his head. "Don't wonder why those grand mages turned to purely academic pursuits instead of worldly affairs. If a thousand Tower Master level mages held the high ground, it would indeed be formidable. But trying to halt our advance on open plains is impossible."
Saphirette was alone - no matter how powerful, she could only cast spells one or two at a time.
Whereas the imperial legions never massed in a single group, but advanced in staggered squads. Artillery units moved under covering fire to optimum range before bombarding, followed by infantry charges.
The legions could inevitably maneuver to flank Saphirette from multiple sides.
More critically, the crystle cannons' maximum 5,000 meter range far exceeded any spell's area of effect. Only closing this short distance due to time constraints with the gap in their outer perimeter.
Studying the map, the commander saw they were nearing the outskirts, but intelligence had no updates on potential threats within.
"Infantry to take point, artillery to follow."
Not waiting for further orders, he decided to use the vanguard as bait to probe the enemy's deployments.
Soon this battalion consolidated with another on the right flank to continue advancing towards Oakenburg's city limits.
On the command airship, Cornet received the latest combat reports. Leaning back in a leather chair, one hand propping his chin as he read the hasty scribed dispatch on rosewood.
"Around 700 casualties…from a single enemy?"
Cornet glanced over it before looking up to question his adjutant.
"Marshal, this is no ordinary enemy - the imperial gold-rank wanted criminal Sinister Wing Witch Saphirette."
"Sinister Wing?" Cornet recalled his service with the allied legions, frequently ambushed by the notorious mercenary company raiding their supply trains. Whenever they tried encircling them, the enemy seemed to anticipate it like reading classified documents before slipping away.
"Heretic Wing operatives here…so they've joined the dragon? Pull the vanguard back immediately!"
He suddenly remembered Sinister Wing had more than just one such powerful individual, commanding over 10,000 mercenary troops.
Whereas the four battalions he deployed only totaled 8,000 men - now with losses.
But it was too late.
The vanguard infantry cautiously pushed through the foliage towards Oakenburg's outskirts, only to behold a nightmarish scene:
Over hundreds artillery breeches protruded from the ground trained on them, black pipelike extensions emerging to aim hollow maws their way.
Deathly silence, neither imperial troops nor the eerie cannons daring to act, only distant mocking caws of ravens echoing across the stillness.
KABOOM!
One of the ground-mounted breeches fired first, uranium-concentrated mana crystal unleashing its restrained power through the barrel in a torrent!
CRUNCH!
A hail of physical and energetic shrapnel swept through the front ranks, fragile bodies instantly pulverized into viscera by the overwhelming force.
Outlying soldiers had entire halves sheared off, one last flicker of awareness writhing limblessly on the ground. No longer a human with family, the spasming mess was but a neural system tormented by inhuman stimuli, its sole instinct to end this hell!
Allied troops witnessing their comrades' butchery immediately raised bowguns to retaliate, but the enemy's arcane cannons were hidden belowground, shrugging off the energy blasts unable to penetrate.
More of the buried artillery opened up, forcing the imperial soldiers into retreat.
But the narrow pipelike extensions began their own deadly reaping.
These were the extended dragonbreath artillery cannons - kobolds had preloaded Raphael's flame breath into the shafts and were now venting the searing fire!
In an instant, the entire plains and woodlands ignited in dragonfire imbued with the crimson dragon's magic, the infernal blaze rapidly engulfing the whole area, leaving the imperial troops nowhere to flee.
"Aaaggghhh!"
"Quick! Kill me! Kill me!"
Compared to Saphirette's hellfire or the human arcane cannons, Raphael's dragonbreath was almost "merciful".
At least it didn't immediately incinerate the victim's trachea, allowing them to scream and vent their anguish before dying, rather than choking in silence.
"Commander! The vanguard has been almost completely annihilated by the enemy's ambush!" the scout reported after assessing the scorching onslaught.
The commander furiously hurled his eagle-eye monocular aside, eyes reddening as he gave the grim order: "Retreat! Full retreat! Artillery battalions pull back first, honor guard covering flanks, infantry what's left to follow!"
They hastily fell back the way they came, but found their path cut off - previously empty defenses now opened concealed tunnels disgorging scores of kobolds!