"Direction three o'clock!"
"Detected demon army in formation!"
"Number is about five thousand!"
"They are approaching quickly, with a large number of flying units!"
...
"Notify the artillery, order the units to indiscriminately bombard the targeted area!"
"Continue sending unmanned reconnaissance drones for guidance!"
...
"Sir! The reconnaissance drone has been shot down again!"
"We cannot guide the bombardment precisely!"
...
"Then forget precision!"
"Cover them with fire!"
"We have enough weapons!"
...
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Explosions echoed endlessly.
When the demon army appeared under Nastir's command, General Ross felt a threat, but only a slight one.
"Don't worry," he said coldly. "It's only five thousand demons. They won't even withstand our first wave of bombardment."
Ross was confident in his words. During the last crisis with Ultron, Skynet had destroyed all nuclear weapons, but that posed no problem to him. Nukes were not the only deadly weapons available.
There were other substitutes: napalm, cluster bombs, and white phosphorus.
Especially white phosphorus.
They called it Hellfire. General Ross's favorite weapon.
When released from the air in large quantities, it turned into a fiery rain, a sight like iron trees bursting into thousands of silver flowers. Beautiful to look at, but terrifyingly deadly.
Because white phosphorus, when burning, reached temperatures up to 1000°C.
In its range, there were no survivors. If even a single droplet touched the body, it would continue to burn until flesh and bone were completely consumed. The pain was unimaginable, and escape impossible.
"Hm…" Ross exhaled slowly. "A fiery rain of a thousand degrees… we'll see if the demons can endure this burning."
His gaze was fixed on the horizon as cannons, rockets, and missiles fired one after another behind him.
The roar of projectiles tore through the sky, then disappeared in the distance, piercing the arcs of the hellish sky and crashing down on their targets.
Boom!
Explosions rang out without end, and the ground shook harder than ever before.
"Vulture formation has reached position!"
"Commence bombardment of the target!"
The warships that had passed through the portal also joined the attack. They hovered high above the battlefield, firing rockets from their belly launchers, one after another.
The density of fire was terrifying.
On Earth, such an attack could flatten a medium-sized city in an instant, turning it to dust and ashes.
The surface would be plowed by explosions, and everything underground, even worms and maggots, would be blown out and burned.
In hell itself, the effect of such a violent bombardment looked even more frightening.
Nastir's army was surrounded by a sea of fire.
Sight could not penetrate beyond the fiery clouds and thick black smoke.
"Haha!" soldiers laughed, watching the hell before them. "Burn, damned demons!"
"John, let me remind you, we are still in hell."
"Oh yeah, I forgot… so what do I say then?"
"Say: 'Die, demons!'"
"That's right!"
"Die, demons!"
American soldiers looked at the fire with smiles on their faces.
For them, bombardment meant certain victory. There was no need for hand-to-hand combat, for maneuvering, or unnecessary risk.
Just fire, destroy the enemy, return home, and receive a medal.
One word described their feeling: satisfaction.
"It truly is a blessing to serve under General Ross," said one soldier, looking at him with admiration. In his heart he added: "Following you is our greatest fortune."
But the smiles quickly disappeared.
"What are these things doing?"
"I don't know."
"But these things are quite comfortable to wear on the body."
"Superb, like the last time we saw snowflakes."
Rushing toward the front, Nastir and the other flying demons were the first to break free of the fire.
The white phosphorus bombs, of which General Ross was so proud, became as cold as snowflakes in their mouths.
Not surprising…
After all, all these demons bathed in magma pools of 1200 degrees.
A white phosphorus bomb, burning at barely 1000 degrees, felt cold to them.
As for napalm and thermobaric bombs, which relied on explosive combustion as their main destructive means, to the demons they were even more trivial.
It wasn't that human weapons were weak, on the contrary, but due to the demonic nature, their resilience made it all seem almost useless.
"Kill!"
"First destroy their metal machines!"
The group of flying demons, who had escaped beyond the range of bombardment, under Nastir's command immediately directed their attack at General Ross's armored formation.
The demons roared, armed with weapons of demonic steel, spears, and pitchforks.
They charged from the air!
"Anti-aircraft guns!"
"Shoot them down!"
Under Ross's command, the aerial weapons opened fire.
Patriot missiles, Stryker anti-aircraft vehicles, Bradley fighting vehicles, the entire column of armor thundered together.
Soldiers on the perimeter defense line mounted machine guns and anti-aircraft cannons.
They opened fire at the sky.
Anti-aircraft shells, rockets, and armor-piercing munitions created a dense web of firepower.
The sky was sealed to the point of impenetrability.
"Roar——!"
"Break through from the perimeter!"
Realizing it was impossible to charge directly from the air, Nastir roared and dove in a sharp arc.
He dodged one blockade of fire after another, then swooped straight down onto General Ross's front defense line.
The other flying demons immediately followed his example.
They folded their wings and plunged downward like steel piercing the sky.
During the dive, the weaker among them were struck. Anti-aircraft guns and laser weapons tore through them, turning them into bloody chunks of flesh that fell like birds with broken wings.
Although demons were immune to ordinary munitions and incendiary weapons, they could not withstand hits from large-caliber shells with depleted uranium, nor laser beams that seared their skin and flesh.
But they were not stupid. They knew that if they stayed in the air, they would become easy targets.
All of them descended and landed directly on General Ross's perimeter defense line.
"Oh, damn it!"
"Oh, God!"
The American soldiers holding the outermost front line immediately fell into chaos.
They were the first target.
In battle doctrines, it was often said: The Air Force is first in strength, the Navy second, the Army third, and the Marines fourth.
On the periphery were the ground troops and marines, the weaker unit, more poorly armed.
Their heaviest weapon was the old Browning M2 heavy machine gun, nearly a century old.
Besides that, they had bazookas, Stingers, and other light portable weapons.
But such means were almost useless when demons broke into close range.
They didn't even have time to use them.
"In the name of Satan!"
"Kill them all!"
Nastir was the first to break through the line.
The demonic steel pitchfork in his hand pierced through the bodies of two soldiers in a single thrust.
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