Castle of Black Iron

Seeing the black spots drawing closer to him in a manner which was completely different than that of gliders, Zhang Tie knew that they were wing demons.

If it was another driver of the glider, at the sight of those wing demons, he would instantly turn around and escape. However, Zhang Tie was different. He didn’t escape; instead, he sped up towards those black spots.

In a few minutes, Zhang Tie had seen clearly those wing demons.

They were three humanoid bats, who were similar to the legendary vampires. However, being different from vampire whose look had been beautified, besides having a pair of huge wings, wing demons looked lean all over. They had long limbs and a bat’s head. With a green face and grim fangs, they looked pretty terrifying.

As it was Zhang Tie’s first time to fight this kind of living beings, he was not sure that he could kill them. In order to ensure that he could give a severe blow to them, Zhang Tie played a trick. After flying for a while, Zhang Tie felt an ascending thermal current. Therefore, he cut into the ascending thermal current and kept ascending rapidly with the strength of the thermal current.

The three wing demons thought that Zhang Tie was going to escape; therefore, they followed after Zhang Tie.

Wing demons could fly very fast. A LV 9 wing demon could reach 7,000 to 8,000 m in the sky while their speed could reach more than 200 km/h. Average airships and gliders could hardly escape from wing demons.

After ascending by about 1,000 m, the three wing demons separated. It seemed that they wanted to outflank Zhang Tie. The distance between them and Zhang Tie was also gradually narrowed.

Zhang Tie sneered. With one hand on the driving handle, he took out of a palm bolt from the cockpit of the glider by another hand.

Before the Catastrophe, after human beings invented the airplane, the first air battle between humans was a duel between pilots using pistols. This time, Zhang Tie felt returning to the first air battle before the Catastrophe. However, he was not using a pistol but a palm bolt. His opponent was not human, but wing demons.

"Gua..." with a jarring shrill, two wing demons charged at him from two sides in front his glider. In a split second, their distance had been narrowed from hundreds of meters to just 100 m.

In 0.1 second, Zhang Tie released two palm bolts, splitting the grim heads of the two wing demons into pieces at once. When two blood mists spurted in the sky, the sonic booms caused by the two palm bolts sounded.

Closely after that, the two wing demons fell down from over 4,000 m in the sky.

Zhang Tie rapidly penetrated through the two blood mists. While inclining his glider to one side, Zhang Tie caught sight of the last wing demon who caught up with him from the rear side. With another palm bolt, Zhang Tie boomed that wing demon’s head from over 200 m away. After its huge wings flapped twice weakly, it fell down from the sky like a broken bag.

Zhang Tie let out a deep sigh. Wing demons were not that difficult to deal with. In the beginning, he was still worried about that if wing demons had the powerful body and pervert defensive power like that of iron-armored demons, plus their rapid moving speed, he could hardly give them a fatal blow with his palm bolt in the environment of sharp airflow and heavy wind. Therefore, he chose to ascend. In such a height, even if the wing demons were wounded and fell down, they would also lose their lives.

After realizing the real fighting strength of wing demons, Zhang Tie became reassured. These LV 9 wing demons were not good at defense. Within 200 m, these LV 9 wing demons were irresistible to his palm bolt.

Thus, Zhang Tie became thrilled.

At this moment, the glider was still in the ascending thermal current. Zhang Tie kept ascending in the thermal current.

Zhang Tie found it very simple to drive a glider. Actually, it was just a game in and out an ascending airflow. The ascending airflow was like an elevator. Sitting in the elevator, the glider would reach a new height. Additionally, the higher it was, the cooler it would be, the faster the thermal current would ascend. Therefore, the higher the glider was, the faster it would ascend in the thermal current.

After reaching a certain height, the glider could come out of the elevator of the ascending thermal current from the top of the bubble. When in descending, he could gain a momentum. Zhang Tie felt that each 1 km he descended, the glider could fly 50-100 m forward.

When he descended to a certain height and encountered another ascending thermal current, he could take an elevator once again; after gaining another momentum, he could fly freely for another while in the sky. Of course, the actual flight required very agile manipulations of ascending thermal currents and various airflow. When you descended, you had to find an ascending thermal current and came out of the thermal current after reaching a height. Everything was determined by your flight intention and your driving skill.

Theoretically, a glider could keep flying 100 years in this way. Of course, even if a glider could fly so long in the air, nobody could stand it.

Honestly, it was just a game of height and speed in and out ascending thermal current.

Zhang Tie liked this feeling of freedom brought by speed and height. When flying in the sky, he felt cooler than running on the land and swimming in the ocean.

Driving the glider, Zhang Tie felt like becoming a happy and free eagle. Sometimes, he turned into a light stick of feather. Putting everything under his feet, he penetrated through the clouds and floated in the wind without any weight. Treating the horizon as his direction, the land as his cradle, Zhang Tie was deeply fascinated by that feel.

The data on the altimeter of the cockpit of the glider refreshed rapidly. After reaching over 6,000 m which was the top of the ascending thermal current, Zhang Tie flew out of the thermal current.

At this moment, the north wind started in the sky. Zhang Tie turned his glider in an agile way to make it vertical to the direction of the north wind. He didn’t continue to fly towards the demon’s area in the north; instead, he flew eastward.

The place where he met wing demons was over 200 km away from the Crystal Battle Fortress. It was already in the middle of the Selnes Theater of Operations. Now that he could meet wing demons here, he would probably meet more wing demons on both east and west of this route. Therefore, Zhang Tie didn’t continue to fly northward; instead, he prepared to patrol along this route and killed some more wing demons.

A LV 9 guy who dared to enter the area which was under the control of demon corps on the first day was too careless. For the sake of his life, Zhang Tie found it necessary to try the fighting strength of his enemy.

Only after 10 minutes, Zhang Tie had seen another two wing demons. They were flying 2,000 m below him. They were monitoring the woods below them as they could not imagine that Zhang Tie was above them.

At the sight of the two wing demons, Zhang Tie instantly pushed forward the driving handle, causing the glider to lower its head and dive towards the two wing demons like how an eagle charged towards its prey. On the halfway, Zhang Tie felt a descending airflow, which would always be avoided by other drivers; however, Zhang Tie didn’t care about it at all. He directly cut into the descending airflow and accelerated towards the two wing demons.

It was just like taking an elevator for Zhang Tie.

Until Zhang Tie penetrated through the thin clouds and narrowed the distance between him and the two wing demons to 500 m was he found by the two wing demons. Closely after that, the two wing demons turned around and charged back towards Zhang Tie...

Because Zhang Tie was diving towards them, with the advantage in height, Zhang Tie had a sharper momentum. Zhang Tie almost had already launched his palm bolts when the two wing demons turned around.

About 500 m away, when the two sonic booms sounded, the two wing demons’ heads spurted into blood mists at the same time as they fell down...

Zhang Tie’s glider drilled out of the descending airflow. After flying over the woods, he hovered there for a few seconds before entering an ascending airflow which was caused by the terrain...

...

A human hunting team was hiding in the crowns of those top trees. When they saw the two wing demons were shot down by a human glider, they could not believe in their eyes.

After a short while, the wing demons’ corpses fell in the woods. The hunting team soon rushed towards there. Watching their bloody heads, a tough man with a thick mustache and camouflage face drew in a cold breath.

"They were indeed shot down by that glider. That’s amazing! How did he do that?"

"Yeah, we’ve not heard about such a No.1 figure in our theater of operations." another guy replied with an amazed look, "How could a member of the airship troop kill a wing demon as easily as hunting a prey?"

"Leave out of here right now. Take the two corpses." Reinhardt drilled out of the 1.8 m high brushwood as he lifted a bloody head of a wing demon, "Perhaps some countries or clans have already found out the method to deal with wing demons. That’s a very important intelligence. We need to report this intelligence to the headquarters of the empire and the allied forces..."