Second Sergeant, Wilhelm von Habsburg, Russiva Imperial Year 782 Month 3, Day 9, No Man's Land, Deutsche Imperial Army

Wilhelm looked at the figure of his 2nd Adjutant on the ground.

He wondered what could she be feeling, What face was she making under her hair?

Was it a face full of Anger? Frustration? Grief? Or maybe all three?

He saw what happend earlier, but couldn't intervene.

'She spoke up about her thoughts to Liutenant Colonel Radnitzer after he already gave the order to move out, knowing that it could potentially endanger her position in the army.' Wilhelm let his thoughts run.

'Is this really what the Empery should be doing?' Wilhelm asked himself.

Reichel Schwertspinne was not even 18 yet, Does the Empery really have to enlist child soldiers? Moreso young women?

Wilhelm had serious doubts about the abilities of a soldier who had not reached adulthood yet, much less a soldier who has never been to Officer School.

Wilhelm then remembered the words of Chlust from earlier this morning.

'Lance Corporal may have not come of age as an adult yet, But out of everybody in this camp she is the one that thinks the most mature. She may look cold and apathetic, but that's just her way of saying she cares about her own people.'

His thoughts were interrupted by Reichel's raspy, and almost metallic voice.

"Yes...sir..." The young girl said, as she looked up to the sky while moving her hair out of her place.

Reichel had put up a beautiful smile on her face, It was her signature smile that would move both men and women to at least gasp when shown the extravagant aesthetics of herself.

It was a cheery smile, of an innocent playful girl who you'd never think made a living by turning people into corpses.

*gulp*

But why?

Why was his body hair standing on edge?

Why had the colour of his skin, which had been lightly tanned from his days in the Officer School, turned a shade paler?

Why were his knees, which were used to running laps from endurance training, shaking so feebly?

And why, Why did he feel a tight pain in his chest, As if somebody had grabbed his heart and was tightly squeezing it?

"Sergeant Habsburg." Reichel called out to him, in the same metallic voice that she used earlier.

'!?' Wilhelm almost screamed out when he saw Reichel, Or more specifically what was around her.

In ever direction, There was a black haze that seemed to loom over her. The black haze floated on the ground and seemed to be clinging to her figure. Another figure formed itself from the haze, adopting more colours than just the black it started with.

Colours formed inside the haze, until it had the recognizable shape of a human. It had the same ebony and jet black hair as Reichel, It had the same ruby and blood coloured eyes as Reichel, and all the other facial features mimicked Reichel's looks perfectly.

If he ignored that she didn't have the same scar underneath Reichel's left eye, It was like he was staring into a mirror-perfect image of Reichel.

The mirror-perfect haze model of Reichel seemed to be licking at her with her gaze, and when Reichel seemed to be oblivious of how the haze was looking at her as if she were some form of food.

'Reichel, Watch out!' He wanted to scream, But it felt like there was an immense pressure building up in his lungs that prevented any air from coming out, or coming in.

Suddenly, as if realizing the presence of Wilhelm, the mirror-projection of Reina turned her gaze towards Wilhelm. And after a few moments of her eyeing Wilhelm, He finally realized what that look means.

His hairs stood even more at edge, and cold sweat dripped down his neck.

He was being seen as food, as sustenance.

And just when he was about to pass out from fear, The haze's smile seemed to get more...soft. It manipulated his fear and cast it away, making Wilhelm be able to look at it like a normal human.

The haze brought up her index finger to her perfect lips, which needed no cosmetics to bring out their true beauty.

'Shush.' The haze seemed to say, as she moved her lips, but no sound came out.

"Sergeant Habsburg?"

Wilhelm was brought out of the trance by the familiar sound of Reichel's voice, the girl was now fully standing and her hair was once again arranged into a neat ponytail on the back of her head.

It seemed like Wilhelm had been in a daze, and he was unable to focus on his surroundings during that time.

'Who was that?...What was that?' As Wilhelm thought about the scene that happend earlier he could not help but think of those questions.

'Was it real? Or was my mind playing tricks on me?' Wilhelm started to question his sanity.

"Adjutant Reichel, You wouldn't have happend to see a beautiful black-haired lady around here haven't you?"

"..."

"What?"

"Sergeant Habsburg, With all due respect, Even if I like compliments I would prefer if you didn't flirt like this out in the open and start acting like a real soldier. People might get the wrong idea." Reichel said with a scowl, after she reverted her expression back to its normal and unreadable state.

'Crap! Now that you think about it that did sound like I was hitting on her!'

"Ah Adjutant Schwertspinne, I..."

'...apologize.' is what what he was about to say, but Reichel had already seperated from him with a formidable distance in such a short amount of time.

"Ah wait!" Wilhelm said, as he ran off to chase after Reichel.

And just like that, Wilhelm had forgotten about the mysterious haze that enveloped Reichel earlier.

---

A force was taken to survey Urganschoft and possibly if there are enemies remaining, engage.

At first Lt Colonel Radnitzer wanted to take all of the 6,000 troops from the camp to march to Urganschoft, but after more than just a few complaints he was eventually forced to move with 2,500 soldiers as the other authorities in the Sturm army camp thought that Urganschoft could be a diversion to attack the Sturm army camp while they were away.

And left with 2,500 men instead of the full might of the Sturm army camp he marched on to the village of Urganschoft, which was 2 hours away from the Sturm army camp on foot.

This was a military movement unknown and unsupervised by the will of the General Staff back in the Empery's capital of Beirlien, it was a movement that could potentially provoke another country which was a right not given to the reaches of a Lt General, However it is stated that the Lt General can act to defend the Empery's borders, which was what Lt General Radnitzer was taking advantage of.

---

Lots of panting could be heard all around Wilhelm, It was the recruits of the Sturm army camp who only knew how to walk around inside their own camp at night time.

These recruits only knew how to waste away using the people's taxes, and had no combat experience and could only barely hold a weapon straight. They had the minimum amount of any kind of training and were very much almost useless in a fight against a professional army.

Wilhelm did not expect much from these people, seeing their incompetence encompasses what the Army usually allows.

'Well even if they're like that we'll at least have numbers in our list of advantages.'

With the Czuch Union's forces being spread so thin already in their Northern War Thatre against the Polski Confederacy, it was estimated that there would only be less that 1,500 soldiers that were actually on the borders of No Man's Land.

Wilhelm looked back to see his squadmates who were in the back and marching along with the rest of the army.

None of them were slowing down on their march, each of them were as lively as the moment they set foot out into No Man's Land from the army camp.

---

And finally, The village of Urganschoft came into view....or what was left of it.

"Spread out and investigate!" Lt Colonel Radnitzer said as he also got off his horse.

The houses were burnt down to the ground, ashen and only remained a shell of their former glory.

Bodies were all over the place, The ground was soaked with blood as if this place had been a slaughterhouse instead of an actual battlefield, and none of the corpses were exactly at their pristine condition.

Bisected torsos and strewn limbs, as well as gouged out eyes made the recruits shiver in fear and almost vomit again. They now knew how lucky the messenger was to have died with his face at least intact.

There were multiple corpses of people who died while trying to crawl away, and numerous bodies were draped over across each other, meaning that people had also died by trampling over each other in an attempt to escape.

'What army...would do this?' Wilhelm found himself dizzy and sick as well.

None of the houses had any roofs, they had all came crashing down when the fire ravaged everything in sight.

'It's only been 6 hours since the attack...right!?' Wilhelm found himself unable to accept that such massive damage could occur in under 7 hours.

But the truth was right in front of him.

"!?"

Wilhelm's ability to keep his breakfast inside his belly was truly tested, when a corpse that was just as disturbing as the others yet more of sentimental value to him came into view.

It was the corpse of a mother huddling something next to a burnt wood wall, her face horribly disfigured.

The mother’s back was a field of bruises, cuts, and wounds. Her spine horribly disfigured, bent out of shape from excess force, likely applied by the crude clubs of hobgoblins. It arched from side to side as if a hideous snake had crawled into her skin and died inside. Her dislocated shoulders led to two red arms wrapped around a blanket with a horribly elliptical shape, the skin long gone, torn away alongside chunks of her arm.

"No...don't tell me..." Wilhelm was desperately pleading that it was not the scene he imagined inside the depths of his mind.

But all those hopes were broken down when Reichel casually strided towards the corpse's arms and opened up the bloodied blanket that the mother was holding in her arms.

Underneath her arms, her child's face was painted with the dull maroon of blood, but as evidenced by the few cuts on his face, it belonged to the mother. On that sheet of red were two clean lines where tears had run through, going from his eyes to his distorted mouth, stuck forever screaming. In all likelihood, he had died from shock before the monsters reached him. The sight of the two combined was like a twisted sculpture rather than the remains of human beings.

This gruesome scene almost made Wilhelm scream, and he turned away from the sight and found Reichel staring at him with contempt and disgust.

"Sergeant Habsburg."

"Yes?"

"Why are you looking away?"

"What?"

"I said, Why are you looking away?"

"..."

"I see."

Reichel approached the mutilated corpse and took its mutilated hand, the bones from the fingers were all bent in the wrong direction and blood could been seen from the parts where the bones protruded themselves from.

"Lance Corporal...What are you doing?"

"Sergeant Habsburg, have you ever heard of the phrase 'There is a story behind every corpse?'" Reichel asked Wilhelm, as she ignored his gaze which was boiling in fury at Reichel's disrespect for the dead.

"Look at her hand, You see how the fingers are all bent in the wrong direction and how bones are showing through the skin?" Reichel showed off the hand and emphasized it. Which angered Wilhelm even more.

'Even if you're not an adult yet...No it's that you're an adult yet that you shouldn't be doing this kind of thing!' He wanted to shout at Reichel and reprimand her, but something was stopping his voice from coming out.

"She was beaten and bashed with a club, as she was sitting here by the wall. She raised up her hand to try and stop the club from connecting with her body but the assailant showed no signs of stopping."

'Stop....' Wilhelm wanted to plead with Reichel to make her stop showing him these things, but again his voice couldn't come out.

"Now look at her head, Look at how her head is deformed and caved in, and how the walls are slightly pink. You know what this is called? This is called brain matter." Reichel said as she emotionlessly grabbed a pink chunk of flesh that was stuck on the wooden wall along with blood and skull fragments.

"And look at how her jaw was dislocated and broken." Reichel said, as she picked off broken teeth on the ground while Wilhelm stared at the girl's malformed face.

"Now look at her eyes." Reichel said, as she opened one of the corpse's eyelid slowly, and it fell down to the grass floor with a light thud.

"You can hear it can't you? You can hear it inside your head. You can imagine how the scene played out. You're imagining how the attacker brutally kept hitting her as she was on the floor, begging to be stopped while she only wanted to live and survive, You can see how the attacker was tired of the girl's screams and pleads for halt were stopped as the attacker mercilessly hit her jaw with a club to stop her from making any noise, and you can see how the ruthless infidel didn't like the look in her eye which looked at him with scorn, so he aimed for the eyes before lastly finishing it off with more strikes at the top of her head." Reichel said, as she put the corpse's hand down.

'STOP!' Wilhelm basically tried to scream at this point, to which he found himself suddenly choking on his own breath of air.

It was exactly as Reichel said.

Wilhelm was imagining the gruesome scene playing in his mind, The screams of this young innocent girl slowly being muffled with the sound of blunt metal hitting the fragile structure of her body over and over again as she pleaded and begged for him to stop. And finally when the young girl finally realized that she was going to die right there she put up one last show of resistance, looking at her attacker with scorn and hateful eyes. And finally as the hobgoblin smiled with sadism and a satisfied look, he finally put an end to the woman's pain by dealing lethal, yet numerous but slow strikes to make sure she doesn't die in one hit to prolong her suffering as long as possible before she finally passed on from this cruel world.

Cursing the Emperor and his army for not being able to protect her, to protect her newborn child, to protect this village, and everything she loved from being burnt down to the ground.

Finally Wilhelm couldn't take it anymore.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!" Wilhelm suddenly found himself gripped by fear and struck by the hammer of reality.

'T-This is war!?' he was screaming internally with his conscience full of fear, disgust and anger.

He fell on his hind and found himself hyperventilating to get more air inside his lungs, What he had been shown was only the tip of the iceberg when it came to the horrors of war.

Realizing that, he came to have second thoughts on his employment of a soldier.

'I'm not cut out for this I'm not cut out for this I'm not cut out for this I'm not cut out for this...' Those words kept repeating themselves inside his own head like a broken record.

"Sergeant Habsburg." Until his thoughts were interrupted by Reichel.

Wilhelm moved his eyes to gaze at Reichel, whose figure seemed to be towering over him despite her little size.

"You are a good man." She said as she passed beside him.

"But that's exactly why..."

"...you're not cut out for this." Reichel said as she picked up one of the burnt pieces of wooden, after then nodding and placing the wooden board over her head.

Those six words broke everything Wilhelm thought he knew about war, as the tears he was trying to hold back freely flowed on his cheeks and the to the blood-soaked ground.

'What was everything I learned for then?'

"Shields!" She shouted out loud, and then the rest of her squadmates did the same after picking up some other wooden boards on the ground, while Veit was left with a confused look.

'What is she...doing?' Wilhelm asked himself, as he looked up towards the bright sky of the Deutsche Empery.

The bright blue sky, riddled with clouds...and shadows created by arrows.