Chapter 521 A Corner of the War, What Are We Fighting For?

In times of war.

The lives of Mortals are as insignificant as weeds. In comparison, even an Imperial Knight wielding Extraordinary Power is merely a slightly hardier weed.

—

No one could have predicted that this civil war within the Imperial Administrative Region would be even more brutal than the fight against the great enemy from the Void Realm.

In the small Thirty-First War Zone alone, each side dropped over ten thousand high-yield bombs, each one capable of obliterating three football fields with ease.

The number of smaller artillery shells was simply beyond count.

By the end, the entire region’s land had been plowed over.

The direct result was that in this vast plain on the southeastern coast of the Kodier World’s Northern Continent, every square meter of soil contained more shrapnel than sand and gravel.

Even the bodies of fallen soldiers could not be buried or burned in time. Under the relentless, ground-scouring bombardments, they were turned into a rain of blood and a paste of flesh, mixing with the black, ashen mud to become one with the earth again.

As one of the cogs in the war machine, Senior NCO Strick, covered in mud and blood, desperately dug a trench with a shovel under the pouring rain.

This soldier of the Third Combined Infantry Legion had gone from a new recruit with less than a day of service to a senior NCO in just six short days.

If things went as planned and his letter of appointment could be delivered to the front line before he was killed in action, in one hour he would become the company commander of the Seventeenth Company of the Iron Blood Corps.

Hearing the roar of a Combat Boat screaming overhead.

The senior NCO’s body went rigid. He threw down his shovel and dove to the ground, heedless of any sharp shrapnel hidden in the mud. Like a maggot, he desperately scrambled toward the unfinished trench.

His comrades around him all followed his example, scrambling and crawling as they fled into the trench.

No matter how he had shouted "For the Emperor!" before enlisting, no matter how he had fantasized about achieving great deeds, at this moment, the young soldier had only one thought in his head: ’Mom, I want to go home.’

A Demon’s Magic was certainly terrifying, but a soldier’s direct experience of it was far less visceral than the violence of steel and gunpowder.

And now.

Aside from skulking around and taking potshots from the trenches every day, his world was nothing but the endless roar of artillery.

He heard from some old-timers that a month ago, there were still head-on clashes and charges in this war zone. But a month later, never mind the defending forces like them—he suspected the rebels on the other side weren’t seeing any soldiers either, only shells.

Even though Strick was a new soldier, he could vaguely sense that this internal conflict in the Administrative Region, having started as a low-intensity struggle, was now careening toward an out-of-control Abyss, with both sides flooring the gas pedal and hurtling full-speed ahead!

However, he was just a low-level soldier.

Until he received orders to retreat, his mission was to hold the line.

If he dared to pull back on his own and desert, the company’s political commissar would put a bullet in him long before an enemy bomb found its mark.

Hiding in the earth-shaking dugout, with dirt and sand constantly falling on him, Strick curled up where he was. He turned his head to look at the political commissar loading his pistol and shrank back a little in fear.

He knew that behind that low wall, deserters must be kneeling.

Unfortunately, the sound of artillery drowned everything out; he could not hear the deserters’ cries and pleas for mercy.

All he could see was the political commissar’s finger pulling the trigger. Then, after the executions were finished, he watched the man light a cigarette and walk over to the wall alone.

Before long, his fellow soldiers dragged three bodies out from behind the low wall, pulling them to the dugout’s entrance, ready to burn and bury them on the spot once the air raid was over.

It was also at this moment.

A terrifying question formed in the mind of the soldier who had once sworn to prove his Loyalty to the Emperor with his blood: ’What are we even fighting for?’

His social standing didn’t grant him access to the world of politics, but he wasn’t an idiot.

Because no matter who the ruler was, it wouldn’t have much to do with his life. In the end, the higher-ups fought to the death for power and profit, but the reality on the ground was one farmer’s son killing another farmer’s son.

At this thought, any fighting spirit or sense of glory he’d felt from his promotion to senior NCO in just six days vanished without a trace.

Strick wanted to ask his political commissar, but he feared being suspected of a lack of Loyalty and could only bury the question deep inside.

An unknown amount of time passed.

When the artillery fire finally began to die down, the company political commissar, identifiable by his large-brimmed cap and dark blue military greatcoat, immediately urged them to return to the surface and prepare for the enemy’s inevitable offensive.

In the crowd, Strick’s eyes met the commissar’s. Guilt-ridden, he quickly looked away, ducked his head, and hurried outside.

The officers of the Iron Blood Corps, the Imperial Knights commanding the battle—no matter how cold-blooded they were, they were all distant, abstract figures to Strick.

But the company’s political commissar was different.

Strick was genuinely terrified of him.

Word was that Political Commissar Ivanek wasn’t just a veteran temporarily reassigned from the Verne Front Line; he had also greatly distinguished himself in the defense of Verne’s Stereoscopic City.

A true, battle-hardened veteran.

Compared to an acting commander like him, the political commissar was the true heart and soul of the Seventeenth Company.

The moment he stepped out of the dugout, the acrid smell of gunpowder smoke hanging in the air nearly choked him breathless. He leaned against the wall, racked by a violent coughing fit. A new recruit sitting opposite him tossed him a cigarette.

"Don’t look so down, Chief. Your appointment as company commander has got to be on its way."

Clearly, after six days of survival on the battlefield, the young soldier Strick had become the most senior veteran in the Seventeenth Company.