Having said what he needed to say, Lucas let go of Tina’s hand and made his way over to the Sunchaser’s bridge, leaving the young princess to mull over his words and her own thoughts. He also left Eris and Yuki behind so they could be together with Christina.
Lucas had no idea how long it would take for the last rescue party to reach the Sunchaser, and there was nothing he could do to speed up their pace, so he instead focused on things he could control.
Arriving on the bridge, Lucas imdiately engaged in a slightly heated discussion with Captain Gage.
"I’m sorry, but no matter how much you insist, I just don’t think its possible!"
"You ’think’ it’s not possible? That doesn’t an it’s absolutely impossible, right?"
"Well... I suppose... but if we do what you’re suggesting, there’s a chance the ship will be crippled, or even explode!"
"I’d rather not do this either, but I still think it’s better to have the option available."
"The risks are too high. If anything goes wrong, our chances of surviving will decrease dramatically!"
"I’m only proposing this as a last resort. We won’t use it if we don’t have to, but if we do have to, it will be because the alternative is certain death!"
Needless to say, the two couldn’t co to an agreent regarding this issue, and it didn’t seem like the matter would be settled anyti soon.
Lana Gage had imnse respect for Lucas, and not just because he was Marquess Balfour’s First Disciple.
Over the past 8 days, Lucas had repeatedly proven his competence and ingenuity. He had planned, organized, and executed multiple complex operations involving massive amounts of personnel and logistics. However, when it ca to military matters, Captain Gage still saw him as a sowhat naïve child who didn’t know what he was talking about.
From Lucas’ perspective, Lana was too narrow-minded and inflexible, unable or unwilling to think outside the box even when that was exactly what was called for, like in their current predicant.
After arguing back and forth like this for a while, Lucas finally decided to take a step back and proposed, "Can you at least change the Wind Burst Array’s state from ’off’ to ’idle’ and partially charge it? That will save us several seconds of ti if we really do end up needing it."
Knitting her brow, Captain Gage was still reluctant to agree to this for many reasons, but considering the circumstances, she ultimately nodded.
Lucas’ plan was to have the Wind Burst Array ready to be used the mont the Sunchaser took-off, allowing them to remain on the ground for longer while also being able to make a quick getaway if needed.
This would require the Wind Burst Array to not only be online, but also fully powered so it could be engaged right away.
Lana, on the other hand, was worried that such an unorthodox usage of the Wind Burst Array would cause damage to the Sunchaser’s Propulsion Array. This could result in anything from a decrease in the ship’s maximum speed, to the Sunchaser being torn apart and exploding.
The Wind Burst Array was designed to give the Sunchaser a large, instantaneous boost in speed by rapidly injecting World Qi into the Skyship’s Propulsion Array. Not only did this put a lot of stress on said Array, though, it also significantly strained the ship’s structural integrity.
For these reasons, the Wind Burst Array was normally only used when a Skyship was already flying near its normal maximum velocity. At top speed, the jolt from the Wind Burst Array caused far less shock to both the ship and its propulsion system.
The compromise the two settled on was to have the Wind Burst Array in an active state, but only partially charge it. Doing this would put so additional load on the Propulsion Array and consu so additional World Qi, but those were minor issues.
It was thinking so that Captain Gage finally relented, hoping that there would be no need to really follow through with this crazy plan.
Just as Lucas and Captain Gage were about to split up to finish their respective tasks, a chorus of shouts sounded from the Sunchaser’s deck, drawing both of their attentions.
.....
"We have wounded here! We need help getting them aboard!"
"Clear the ramp! Clear the ramp!"
"Make so space! There’re still another 30 people down here!"
Limping over to the gathering crowd, Lucas was able to spot several new faces scrambling up the Sunchaser’s boarding ramp.
The search party had returned, and with far more people than he had expected.
Given the intensity of the Spatial Storm and just how much of Redwood Town had been whisked away, Lucas had expected the search party to find at most a dozen or so survivors, but there was clearly so 40 plus people in the group which had just arrived.
The teams which Commander Levins had deployed were standard Squads of 10. That ant that a group of over 30 people had sohow managed to avoid being sucked into the Spatial Tears.
Maybe they found a way to detect the disturbances in space? Lucas thought to himself, not that it mattered right now. What did matter was getting everyone aboard the Sunchaser and taking off as soon as possible.
"Defence teams! Help the wounded out of the wagons and up the ramps! Everyone else, back up and stay out of the way!" Lucas quickly shouted.
There were others who could have taken charge of the situation, but Lucas beat them all to the punch. Fortunately, everyone had gotten sowhat used to the young boy directing things and his instructions made sense, so no one raised any objections.
Double checking to make sure the Sunchaser could accommodate everyone, Lucas breathed a sigh of relief as there seed to be just enough room.
It was an odd feeling being relieved that more people hadn’t managed to avoid the Spatial Tears and remain in Redwood Town, but right now, it was working in their favour.
If there had been even another 20 survivors, they simply wouldn’t have been able to air-lift everyone out.
There was no way for anyone in the Four Mortal Realms to even think about escaping a Seventh Order Beast, so being left behind in Redwood Town right now was essentially a death sentence.
Ironically, the people who had been sucked into the Spatial Storm and dropped into that tropical paradise were probably much safer now than Lucas and the others around him; after all, the ruler of that domain had been whisked several tens of thousands of kilotres away to the Great Western Forest.
Shaking off these distracting thoughts, and seeing a bit of order being restored, Lucas estimated that it would take at most another 2 minutes to get everyone aboard, so he made his way over to the ship’s railing and shouted, "Tartan Squad! Take off and head south as planned!"
Each of the 12 Tartans had long ago been fully loaded with 3 people, their maximum carrying capacity. This was done in order to free up as much room on the Sunchaser as possible as it was far simpler to cram many people onto the Skyship than it was to get them to climb onto the flying beasts.
Now that Lucas was certain everyone else could fit onto the Sunchaser, there was no reason for the Tartans and their riders to remain, so he decided to send them off in advance.
The Aerial Cavalry all signaled their acknowledgnt before flicking their reins and commanding their mounts to ascend into the sky.
Lucas watched the 12 Tartans rise up and then turn south-east before returning his attention to his imdiate surroundings. Just as he was about to call out to Lana to prepare for take-off as well, though, he paused when he saw a deep frown on the Captain’s face.
At first, Lucas was confused, but when he noticed the direction she was staring, he also turned his eyes west and quickly realized what she was worried about.
In the scramble to get everyone onto the ship and evacuate, Lucas had stopped paying attention to the ongoing battle, but now that he was focusing on it once more, he realized that the sounds of combat, which had been so noticeable just seconds ago, had disappeared.
Lucas’ first thought was that the fight had ended. It had been about 5 minutes since the first explosion sounded, the sa length of ti Commander Levins said he would be able to last for, but from the pulses of aura Lucas was still sensing from that general area, it didn’t seem like things were over just yet.
Even with his sowhat damaged Soul Sense, it was impossible for Lucas to miss the enormous aura of the Seventh Order Beast, but he could also clearly sense another powerful Life Aura nearby to it.
Obviously, this second aura had to belong to Commander Levins, but sothing about it was strange.
The aura of a human Spirit Initiate was generally stable and controlled, even if they were in the midst of a fierce battle; but right now, old man Hubert’s aura was flaring wildly.
What’s more, his aura was rapidly increasing, surging well beyond what a High-Rank Spirit Initiate should be capable of emitting.
Tilting his head, Lucas wondered just what the old man was doing, but before he could figure anything out, Hubert Levin’s aura seed to reach so kind of critical limit, and then...
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