Ethan exhaled slowly.
The first line of defense—held.
But this was only the beginning.
He stepped back half a pace.
A low-frequency command pulse rippled from the back of his Powered Combat Armor.
A moment later—
The horizon began to shift.
A massive Sky Fortress slowly rose from the direction of Emerald Castle's main city.
Then came a second.
A third.
A fourth…
One after another, steel giants broke through the cloud layer.
Their propulsion engines carved glowing trails through the sky.
This wasn't a scattered deployment.
This was—
A full-scale strategic formation.
After extensive upgrades and retrofits, the Sky Fortresses had been completely overhauled:
—Weapon module count more than doubled
—Core power systems switched to compressed energy reactors
—Ultimate Annihilation Cannons now charged in under a minute
—Total number of main Sky Fortresses: fifty
—Auxiliary mini-fortresses: mass-deployed
Which meant—
