Chapter 316: Fear

The air‑filter system of the building's underground bunker emitted a sickly hum, and General William Crawford didn't even notice his coffee cup falling to the floor. The thermal‑imaging hologram was rewriting humanity's weapons history—the core temperature of the Sunflare Burst was locked at ninety million degrees Celsius, twenty‑seven times the core temperature of the Hiroshima atomic bomb.

"This is impossible," the technician Davis's voice sounded like a rooster with its throat clutched. "Our sensors were burned out—seven sets—in ten microseconds."

Ma Ge Li Te Tilden's nails dug deep into the edge of the oak table, and the pen that had signed the Non‑Proliferation Treaty three days earlier slipped from her trembling fingers. In the surveillance feed, a three‑kilometre‑wide glass plain refracted a rainbow‑like spectrum, each facet as precise as a Swiss watch component.

For the first time, humanity on Earth witnessed what a spell could achieve when empowered by the high‑dimensional force of divinity.

The divinity of the Sun God reacted chemically with the Sunflare Burst, elevating the spell to an almost impossible level.

Even Naimi Xisi himself was startled by the spell's power; it had unquestionably reached the level of a Legendary spell, its might truly terrifyingly astonishing.

"Gentlemen," CIA Director Robert Kane lifted his fogged glasses. "We have just witnessed a tenth‑of‑a‑second energy release on the Sun's surface."

His fingertip swiped across the tablet, pulling up comparative data: "The yield is three times that of the Tsar Bomba, yet there is no radioactive fallout, no shock‑wave contamination."

Crawford suddenly thrust a tactical dagger through the electronic screen, and the blade sparked as it pierced the simulated image of the glass plain.

"So what?" his roar made the bullet‑proof glass hum. "That beast still needs to sleep! Order the 7th Fleet, the Ticonderoga‑class cruiser's—"

"General!" the chief technologist shrieked, pulling up a new display. It showed detection results of the energy contained within the dragon's body.

"According to calculations, the dragon's internal energy source barely diminished after this attack; preliminary estimates suggest the same explosion could be released at least two hundred more times before it affects the energy sustaining its life characteristics."

The operations room fell into dead silence. Kane's Adam's apple rolled up and down three times before he managed to speak: "That means it can unleash two such attacks per minute, lasting two hours."

Ma Ge Li Te suddenly seized the pen and scribbled calculations on the back of a photocopy of the Declaration of Independence: "Two hours is enough to plow the North American continent into a checkerboard."

"Cease all offensives immediately!" National Security Deputy Advisor Howard kicked his chair over. "Our nuclear arsenal is nothing but children's firecrackers before it!"

Crawford drew his pistol and slapped it on the table; the engraved barrel of the Colt Python reflected his twisted face. "Retreat? Wait for that monster to turn the Stars and Stripes into its foot‑rag?"

While they argued, the remaining troops continued to surge forward against the dragon in wave after wave, only to meet a similar fate.

The dragon above the desert roared a curse like a deity; five force‑field fingers, shimmering with pale gold ripples, surged up from the ground amid the sandstorm, resembling ancient beast skeletons suspended in amber.

The Eight‑Ring Enchantment Spell 【Biggbi Diamond Fist】 seized the armored vehicle column, and Sergeant Tom heard the mournful creak of metal fatigue—sixteen Bradley IFVs collapsed like tin‑foil toys flattened by children, their gun barrels twisted into Gothic‑style arches.

A kilometer‑high force‑field palm suddenly unfurled, steel wreckage reassembled at three hundred metres altitude, molten armor droplets hanging like metallic stalactites. A loader's corpse was molded by the field into a comical marionette, its charred limbs tap‑dancing until its skull burst into fireworks under the heat.

Then another incantation formed; the Eight‑Ring Enchantment Spell 【Crazy Emblem】 materialized silently in the air. As the Juan Ce Long's wing membrane expanded in the stratosphere, a two‑kilometre‑wide blood‑colored Rune appeared over the Mojave Desert.

It was the 【Crazy Holy Emblem】 written in Abyssal script, each stroke's bend pulsing with eerie crimson radiance.

When the 101st Air Assault Brigade's Apache fleet closed in, the Rune suddenly fractured into seventy‑two inverted crosses, embedding into each helicopter's optical sight like tombstones.

Pilot 'Cowboy's' breath formed white vapor inside his anti‑G suit; he had just locked onto the dragon‑wing root when his helmet display was suddenly stained blood‑red. The HUD's ally icon twisted into a tentacled totem, and over the radio a wingman's manic howl rang out: "Jesus! The long‑range aircraft turned into a flesh‑and‑blood helicopter!"

Pilot code‑named 'Viper 1', Jim Carter, saw a different infernal tableau: every Apache rotor had become a blood‑dripping scythe, missile rails swarmed with compound‑eye insects. When he pulled the cannon trigger, a 30 mm depleted‑uranium armor‑piercing round turned his retina into a locust swarm.

"Eliminate the infected!" Jim screamed into his headset; the ammunition belt shredded the right‑hand wingman into burning wreckage. When the downed pilot ejected, his parachute appeared to him as an inverted‑world vine, so the Gulf War veteran drew his survival knife, cut the cord, and hurled himself toward the desert like a human cannonball.

The Pentagon's surveillance screens were suddenly flooded with blood‑colored code. Technician Davis pulled up brain‑wave data and found every pilot's alpha and omega waves perfectly synchronized, as if bound by invisible neural chains. In a secured channel recording, twelve distinct voices chanted the death verses of the Epic of Gilgamesh in ancient Sumerian.

"Their amygdalae have been amplified seventeen‑fold in activity," the bioweapon consultant's voice trembled. "That's equivalent to a sustained state of extreme fear, yet the prefrontal cortex shows… euphoria?"

The hologram abruptly switched to a cockpit view. Ma Ge Li Te Tilden saw her own reflection at the centre of the Crazy Holy Emblem, her eyeballs replaced by rotating d20 dice, each face engraved with the numbers of fallen soldiers.

"Ah!!! Ah!!!!!!"

Tilden screamed, collapsing to the floor, clawing fiercely at her own eye sockets with sharp nails; while others tried to restrain her, she had already ripped both of her eyeballs out alive!

!

Two black‑blonde blood‑filled hollows stared at everyone in a grotesquely morbid way, sitting motionless on the ground, giggling foolishly.

Seeing that even the mere sight of that Rune on a screen caused such terror, the remaining personnel immediately roared to shut down communications.

But it was too late; many staff in the command room had already gone mad, literally digging out their own eyeballs.

Director Kane, with trembling fingers, pulled up comparative data: "This is two thousand times the effect of our latest mk‑84 nerve‑gas prototype." The holographic chart showed the Crazy Holy Emblem's influence radius reaching an astonishing twelve kilometres, far exceeding the shock‑wave range of a B61 nuclear bomb.

The general roared: "Cease all visual‑contact combat immediately! That thing can spread madness through optical sensors!"

The command room fell silent, a mood spreading wordlessly among everyone.

Fear.

(End of Chapter)