A day later, music was played loudly by an orchestra of two hundred musicians (All of New Warfang and surroundings cities probably heard them).

"Everyone!" My voice came through a loudspeaker from an announcer's booth "Let us welcome back our returning heroes!".

The heavy, steel doors slowly opened and revealed the incoming army, most, if not all, however, were marching at a slow pace. At first, I thought they were just trying to march at a consistent pace but… that wasn't why… When I looked at some of their faces, I could tell their morale was considerably low than the last time I saw them. As the soldiers continued to march, trucks were revealed with at least three hundred body bags. When the soldiers came to a halt, their friends and family bolted to them and frantically looked for some of their members. Like the rest of the people, I got off my seat and started to look for John, worried if he made it out alive or not. After ten minutes of searching, I thought my fears were confirmed until I finally found him talking to the rest.

"Glad you're back, John." I welcomed.

He nodded and looked to his siblings "Now if you'll excuse me, I have to put my gear where it belongs…" He excused himself and went with the other soldiers to the base with a grim look on his face.

"What was that all about?" I asked.

"We're not sure, we found him maybe a minute before you did. I asked him how the battle went but he just frowned and shook his head."Answered Maria "I think it has something to do with those trucks"

"No kidding, Sherlock…" grumbled Stix.

I looked at the bags… I have a pretty good feeling it didn't go as well as I hoped it would. Families were reunited but unfortunately… a large majority wouldn't be.

When John came back to the house, we prodded him with questions about "What happened out there?" or "Why were there so many body bags" in hindsight, this was a horrible idea but we wanted to know so badly!

"Alright! That's enough!" He snapped "You want me to tell you what happened? Fine! But you better listen well because there is no way I'm going to repeat myself!" He sat on the couch, clutching the right armrest. "When the railgun salvo was fired, we planted explosives on the lower parts of their walls, blew them up and engaged the enemy. The thing was, there was no one to engage. Their wall defenses were completely shut down but you would think the enemy would be waiting for us on the other side, but no. The whole place was empty! As far as we could see anyway...I had multiple squads search each and every building, they couldn't have evacuated, we had the entire place surrounded and even if they did, we would have seen some sort of sign. The next thing I heard was several beeps and every building was blown to bits which injured several of my men and possibly killed a few. To make matters worse, we were quickly being engulfed by a toxic, thick, green fog. I had everyone put their gas masks on as soon as possible but the fog was hurting my eyes, obscuring my vision and making my lungs feel like they were burning. I couldn't even see what was a foot in front of me but as I groped around my pack I managed to find it but before I could put it on I felt a giant pain on my knee and felt being thrown to the ground. All I saw was an object heading straight to my face, I barely dodged it, kicked the person off me and gave the direction of the attacked two bullets to what I assume was the chest area. I lost my mask and I groped around the ground to find it; I did find one but when I put it on, It was almost clear and I could breathe fresh air again. I looked around and saw dragon slayers sneaking up on my men and attacking them, some were rather small though. I heard gunshots, war cries and cries of pain and anguish all around me and through the chaos of the battle, I didn't focus too much on what the enemy looked like and made my attacks; shooting down any slayer I saw. When I looked up, the dragons were in the air, trying to fan out the gas; the slayers noticed this and began shooting at them. I know dragons have incredibly good eyesight but I don't even think they could see too clearly who was shooting at them. They shot their breath weapons at the general area but I decided to make it a bit easier for them to shoot any slayer who saw them. 'All units!' I shouted 'When you take out the slayer attacking you, make sure to grab their mask!' I'm not sure if that helped or not but I had to do something.

Thirty minutes later I saw my men actually fighting the slayers and not just spraying their ammo in different directions; while some had slayer gas masks, others didn't have one on so I took a risk and took off the mask. It was much clearer but my lungs still felt like they were burning so I put the mask back down. Soon enough I ran out of ammo for my rifle so I switched to my pistol, and as much as I tried to conserve it, I used all my ammunition and lost my bayonet somewhere so I drew my sword. Around an hour later I dragon slayer grabbed and threw me down and was about to finish me off with a gunshot to the head but a soldier saw this, bolted to him, kicked him in the groin, knee'd his stomach, punched his liver, face and throat. The slayer fell and never got back up. He lent me a hand which I took and he told me I didn't need that mask anymore so I took it off and he was right, all was clear, I could breath properly and my eyes didn't hurt. I threw it away but the man that helped me wasn't there anymore and saw no sign of him when I looked around. There were more important things at hand, obviously, so I didn't look for him long.

The slayers that remained saw that their plan didn't work so they all lined up in the back with whatever weapon they had and rushed at us. We let out our battle cry as loud as we could 'Gott Mit Uns!' and while some of us stood our ground as they probably had ammo to shoot, those of us with no ammo and relied on our melee weapons, charged and met them at midway. A slayer tried to cut me but I bound my sword against his, parried and cut deep into his neck. Another tried to mace me but I dodged and used that opportunity to stab into his jugular. Other slayers were attacked by the dragons who were in the air, some of them were turned into pincushions by earth spikes or icicles, others were flattened by boulders, some were electrocuted and some of them had their skin melt from their bones. Thirty minutes passed and the Skyforce was victorious; we took no prisoners. Even then, however, some of my soldiers dropped dead due to the toxic fog, even a few dragons; all foaming around the mouth. But that wasn't the worst part!" John immediately stood up "Enoch! Do you remember when I joked about the enemy sending babies to fight us!?"

"Yeah?..." I answered, not wanting to know what he was going to say next.

"When I looked at the bodies, some of the bodies belonged to children! Let me repeat CHILDREN!" He shook m with tears in his eyes. While Maria and Jane covered their mouths, the others almost threw up. "Through the chaos, I mistook slayers who I thought had some growth problems to children ages ten through sixteen! Another thing! When I removed some of the masks, I recognized some of those faces. They were people of our country! They were Unitarians! So not only have we killed children but we also killed our own people! Now, do you see why I didn't want to tell you this!?" After saying that he stormed off to his room. Jane was about to tell him to wait but Jake gently put his hand on her shoulder and shook his head.

Scumbags… I thought How could they do this!?

While John made it pretty clear that they killed everyone inside, he didn't specify that he eliminated all of them in one single attack, I had to make sure so I went outside to talk to some other officers who were at the battle. After a few unsuccessful attempts having my officers tell me about it (understandably), I found only one who told me the aftermath. His name was Noah Ford, a first lieutenant. I told him that John told me about the actual battle, I just wanted to hear what happened after it.

Noah sighed "Well," he started "We did eliminate every slayer inside the fortress, but I don't think that was the entire dragonslayer population."

"How so?" I asked.

"Well, for one thing, the army seemed a bit smaller than the entire population. We also made a second and third scan around the place and we stumbled upon a lever, just in case if it was another gas explosion, we put on our masks and pulled it, thankfully there was no gas or explosions but a staircase was revealed to underground trenches. We still kept the masks on just in case and stepped into it; surprisingly it was well lit. Careful of any traps, we scouted and found quite a few things."

"Like what?"

"It was a map of Unitatis Terra with every village and town in the country. Along with plans of escape. What they did was that they went to surrounding villages and convinced them to join them and fight against us. They trained a few eight hundred former citizens which included boys of young age. A day before the attack, the majority of them left, leaving the eight hundred and some of their own to fight us. Their plan was to stay underground until the explosions went off, put on gas masks and kill us. The children were to be the first ones to come out and were taught only one thing: How to kill, that and they were of smaller stature so they would be harder for us to see. If the gas were to dissipate, they were to make a line and make a final push. Which we all know how that ended."

"Did you find anything else? Like where they're located or which village they'll try next?"

"Unfortunately, no. A lot of things seem to have been burned to ashes, those must've been things they forgot to destroy. The only thing we could find was a singed piece of paper with the word 'well'"

"Alright, thanks for the information. I know it must've been hard for you to go back there."

Noah nodded and was about to turn away.

"Oh, by the way, you guys brought the map, right? Where'd you guys put it?"

"In the war room."

As I looked at the map for anything that was well shaped but I couldn't find anything, as for the Slayers, they could have been anywhere. Unitatis Terra is roughly about half of the size of Africa so it would be pretty hard to find their exact location. For all I knew, they could have become a bit nomadic and kept switching their locations to confuse us. To combat any dragon slayers convincing my people, however, I issued an order that battalions must be stationed in each town and village to build defenses and stay there for a time to make sure that nothing happens to them a few days later.