Supreme Viking System-Chapter 94 - 93: Testing

The sea was calm.

That was the first thing Anders noticed as the fleet slid out of the morning haze—no wind worth naming, no whitecaps, just a gray-blue skin stretched tight beneath the keels of the war galleons. Calm seas made for clean data. Clean variables. Clean death.

He stood on the foredeck of the Salted Bear, hands clasped behind his back, cloak snapping softly against his calves as the engines beneath the deck thumped in a steady, patient rhythm. Steam hissed through valves like something breathing in its sleep.

Ahead lay the port city.

Stone piers. Timber warehouses. Fishing boats moored shoulder to shoulder. A lighthouse tower rising like a finger daring the sea to answer. Smoke curled lazily from hearths—breakfast fires, not alarms. No walls. No prepared defenses. Just the confidence of a place that believed distance and custom still mattered.

Anders did not call it a raid.

He did not call it conquest.

"This is a test," he said quietly.

The officers nearest him nodded, though their throats worked when they swallowed. Everyone here knew what sat bolted into the galleons’ flanks. They had helped build them. They had tested pressure seals and release valves and recoil dampers. But none of them had seen the cannons fire at a living city.

Below deck, pressure gauges crept upward.

Compressed air. Reinforced chambers. Steel barrels sleeved and braced until they hummed faintly under strain.

No powder.

No flame.

No thunder as the old world understood it.

Only stored violence waiting to be told where to go.

"Range," Anders said.

"Optimal," came the reply.

He raised one hand.

Not dramatically. Not like a king.

Like an engineer signing off on a calculation.

"Fire."

The first volley did not roar.

It exhaled.

A deep, concussive thoom rolled across the water, wrong in the ear—too smooth, too contained. The air itself seemed to buckle outward from the galleons as iron shot screamed free, not trailing smoke, not arcing like thrown stones, but flying straight and fast and merciless.

The docks did not crack.

They came apart.

Stone exploded into white shards and dust, the pier vanishing in a heartbeat as if erased by a careless hand. Ships moored alongside were lifted bodily from the water, slammed sideways into one another, masts snapping like kindling. A warehouse wall disintegrated inward, the roof collapsing a half-second later in a cough of splinters.

There was a pause.

A single, stunned breath where the city tried to understand what had just happened.

Then bells began to ring—late, panicked, overlapping. Shouts rose from the harbor. Men ran without direction, eyes searching for smoke that was not there, for fire that had not announced itself.

Anders watched without blinking.

"Reload cycle?" he asked.

"Nominal."

"Pressure loss?"

"Minimal."

He nodded once.

"Second volley. Adjust left two degrees."

The cannons breathed again.

This time the lighthouse vanished from the waist up.

Not toppled. Not burned.

Gone.

The upper half of the stone tower simply ceased to exist, the remaining stump shedding rubble into the surf like a broken tooth. The psychological break rippled faster than the shockwave—defenders fled the harbor en masse, abandoning positions they had not even finished taking.

Only then did Anders lift his gaze inland.

"Land teams," he said. "Advance."

From the tree line beyond the city, figures moved.

Dragon Lance crews.

They advanced in disciplined files, shield bearers flanking each operator, bolt men moving with practiced economy to cover angles. The lances themselves were carried like sacred burdens—long, heavy, metal-bodied weapons with fuel lines running back to reinforced tanks worn like iron spines.

The first ignition came with a rising whine, then a roar that was unmistakably alive.

Fire did not bloom.

It poured.

A sustained lance of white-hot flame reached out and touched the nearest warehouse. The structure ignited instantly, not catching but becoming fire—timbers flashing, roof sagging, walls collapsing inward as if the building had been hollow all along.

Men screamed.

Not burned yet—just the realization, the sound of understanding arriving too late.

Anders watched fuel readouts, operator posture, heat shimmer along the lance’s path. He called corrections calmly, voice cutting through chaos with surgical precision.

"Shorten burst. You’re wasting heat."

"Left team—fan, don’t spear."

"Shield line forward. Keep spacing."

The second cannon volley hit as the Dragon Lance teams reached the city’s edge.

Sea and land spoke together.

A knot of defenders tried to rally in the market square. They raised shields. They shouted old oaths. They died where they stood as iron shot tore through the square and flame followed, erasing the idea of formation entirely.

Escape routes burned.

Alleys collapsed.

The city did not fall.

It dissolved.

Within an hour, resistance ended—not with surrender, but with absence. There was no one left who believed fighting mattered.

Anders came ashore once the flames settled into a low, crackling roar.

He walked through the ruins with Magnus at his side, boots crunching over pulverized stone and charred beams. Dock chains lay melted into blackened curves. A ship’s anchor had fused halfway into the pier, iron softened and reshaped by heat it was never meant to feel.

Magnus swallowed. "Effective," he said, because that was the word his role required.

"Yes," Anders replied. "Too effective."

They stopped at the edge of the harbor where the water lapped quietly against wreckage. Survivors—those who had fled inland or hidden—were being gathered under guard. No looting. No celebration. Just containment.

Anders stepped forward.

"This city was not punished," he said, voice carrying easily over the ruins. "It was measured."

Faces stared back at him—soot-streaked, hollow-eyed, shaking.

"Remember that."

He turned away without waiting for a response.

That night, from the deck of the Salted Bear, Anders looked out over the burning port. The flames reflected in the water like a second, inverted city—one already dead.

Behind him, scribes updated doctrine.

Ship cannons soften.

Dragon lances advance.

Iron Wolf fortresses follow.

Walls were obsolete now.

Distance was a lie.

The old rules had not been broken—they had been rendered irrelevant.

Anders did not feel triumph. 𝘧𝓇ℯ𝑒𝓌𝑒𝑏𝓃𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘭.𝒸ℴ𝓂

He felt confirmation.

The test was complete.

And already, he was thinking about the next one.