CHAPTER 2 – The Foothold Towards Reims

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Battlemages.

The wet dream of human supremacists.

Humans that were capable of overcoming human limits, re-defining destruction, and just being badass in general.

In the past, mages were typically just seen as strong warriors, though good for fighting, weren’t actually used to their full potential due to the lack of technology.

It had not been until 1899 that complex mage formulas like shield spells and artillery bullet spells were introduced, thus making battlemages fairly new to the war game.

As such, over the course of the years where mages have been incorporated into the branches of armed forces, there were many troubles in finding out how to use them in the most effective way.

Planes hadn’t been developed enough to allow mage squads to paradrop behind enemy lines, and mages were also human with surprisingly human endurance, which is why they couldn’t have been used for complex doctrines like Blitzkrieg which hasn’t even been invented yet.

Battlemages could also be easily detected when using spells using mana detectors, making most of them unsuitable for stealth and infiltration missions.

As such, the most efficient method that was left available to whatever remained left of Mage land doctrine was to just simply place them in front of the infantry, and then have them charge along with the others to their deaths in No Man’s Land.

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March 25 1919, Reims, France, The French Front, Axel Rehder

Alex Rehder didn’t really have any ambitions.

Of course he had his wants and goals, but nothing outside of the realm of being too unrealistic for someone as basic as he was.

Simply put, he was just one of the millions of average joes who got dragged into the colossal mess that is the Weltkrieg by the demand of the country’s highest elite.

The front lines were helluva lot different from making farming, and it was a change that he wasn’t really all that suited to adapting for.

He was even having trouble just trying to stay upright while running due to the numerous potholes, the mud, and the shocks of the explosions all around him.

‘Run, just run, don’t think about anything else.’

French soldiers standing at the trenches, firing hails of bullets at them, throwing grenades, and shooting short-range shells at them simply did so without stopping.

Over the course of the 5 minutes the French started firing, Axel had already seen a few people reduced to a piece of flesh that couldn’t be recognized as humans anymore, tens of people dismembered, hundreds of people fall over dead as if they were never alive.

Despite long-range howitzers not being available to the French anymore, short-range cannons were still on the field, despite having severely limited ammunition.

And it just so happened that one of the said cannons started turning it’s muzzle straight towards Axel’s direction, the world seemed to have come a halt.

‘It’s coming …’

It had seemed like time had slowed down just enough so that he could see the bullets of the machine guns whizzing past through him, and then killing his fellow soldiers.

The explosion of spells and shells, flinging mud, dirt, and bodies around.

And the smell of death that wafted through the air of No Man’s Land.

‘Is this how I die?’

Axel was going to cry at that moment, but he realized something more important.

He remembered what time it was right where he stood, as well as the thing he cherished as his most prized possession in life.

‘I wonder where my daughter is right now?’

He wondered about the situation of his daughter, and what she might have been doing as of that moment.

‘Knowing her, she must still be sleeping on the cradle …’

His daughter was barely even less than a year old, meaning she would have nothing to do but sleep a lot.

‘That’s so nice …’

Axel wanted to sleep too, on such a comfy cradle, away from the worries of the cruel world.

‘What am I doing all the way out here?’  Was the last question that entered the mind of Axel.

“I want to sleep too …” Were the last words that Axel Rehder had uttered, before his brain matter scattered in different directions due to one of the few remaining cannons directly hitting his skull.

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March 25 1919, Reims, France, The French Front, Friedrich Wilhelm Victor August Ernst

Wilhelm was out of breath, terrified, and sweating horribly and wanted to barf already as he ran throughout No Man’s Land.

Though he wasn’t actually out of shape, that didn’t mean that he was quite fit either.

He slowed down halfway and the surrounding friendly forces went 50 yards ahead of him, which quite helped his chance for survival.

He barely pulled himself through sprinting 2 and half American football fields’ worth of distance, while his equipment was wearing him down.

And by some unknown miracle, he wasn’t somehow gunned down by French machine gunners or prioritized as a target even though he was clearly dressed as the enemy commander.

But he had no time to think about all of these things, because as was stated earlier, he finally made it to the other side.

‘One of them is coming!’ A French soldier made his way above the trenches for some unknown reason, possibly somehow mistaking the correct direction he should have retreated to.

But that didn’t matter, as Wilhelm emptied whatever contents his pistol had into the man, who then shortly after fell dead.

And with the manliest grunt he could muster, he jumped leapt forward into the French trenches, not bothering to check whatever was below.

And by sheer chance, he managed to land on a French soldier, which was quite unlucky.

“AAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!!!” Wilhelm tried to plunge his saber into the French soldier’s head, but unexpectedly the French soldier moved his head out of the way.

And even more unexpectedly, the French soldier doesn’t even try to counterattack, but instead kept shouting in French.

“Je me rends! J’abandonne!” The French soldier sounded like he was pleading, but Wilhelm didn’t really understand what he was saying and in turn didn’t care as he was fighting for his life.

‘Just shut up! Shut up and try to kill me so I don’t feel this shitty!’

Wilhelm was going to try to stick the sword into the Frenchman again, but as he pulled the sword out of the ground he suddenly felt a heavy shove on his right side, knocking him off the French soldier and into the mud of the trenches.

Wilhelm was going to try and get up to face the new attacker, but then softened up when he saw that it was only his friend, Johannes.

“They’ve surrendered.” Johannes said as he looked upon Wilhelm with a gaze which only held the feelings of pity inside it.

Wilhelm looked around, and just as Johannes said, French soldiers were already kneeling down on the floor with their hands up, even with German soldiers who only just got down to the trenches angrily pointing their rifles at them.

It was already over the moment the first German stepped foot on the severely undermanned French defenses.

“What the fuck?”

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March 25 1919, Reims, France, The French Front, Johannes von Schmidt

Johannes really didn’t expect that the battle would last only for so long, but as he interrogated the French prisoners it seemed that after the explosion happened at their rear, it seemed like most of their already severely undermanned front deserted in the midst of panic and confusion, since most of the high command seemed to have died in it, along with most, if not all of the French battlemages stationed along with ammunition and supplies.

Only the ones who didn’t know what were going on and the most reckless of new conscripts were left behind to face Wilhelm’s force, and as reality slowly sunk into them, they quickly surrendered after seeing the severity of the situation as it is, though not after inflicting quite a few casualties with whatever bullets and grenades they had left to the charging German army during the time they took to realize it.

“Your majesty, the situation has been stabilized.” Johannes looked upon the dirty appearance of Wilhelm, as he didn’t even bother to try and clean himself or conduct himself in the manners of a prince as he only wallowed.

“Your majesty?” Johannes tried to call out to Wilhelm, and sure enough he answered.

“Leave, I need some time to think.”

And instantly, just as Wilhelm ordered him to do, Johannes left the prince thinking about the things that he saw today, knowing that he would recover shortly and instead went to another place that piqued his interest.

Which was the cause of desertion, panic, and vital destruction to the defending French force.

‘She really did do it …’

Johannes looked around the ruined howtizers, craters, and fires still burning along with the recently placed embers and ash among what was left of concrete structures that looked to be like bunkers.

It was clear that what happened exactly looked to be like a big explosion that triggered a series of other smaller explosions which completely obliterated the French backline.

Charred corpses with their uniforms completely burnt off along with their flesh formed hellish-looking statues of dark skeletons, along with belongings of some of those soldiers somehow intact, which Johannes really wasn’t sure about.

‘I’ll at least make sure you are remembered as a hero …’ Johannes tried to think about how he would get the German newspaper to spread her name as propaganda for the German soldier who fearlessly charged into the French lines by herself, and cleared the way to Paris without support to at least extract whatever little morale he could from the German populace, but then he realized that he didn’t even know her name.

‘Goddammit …’

Johannes started to close his eyes and offer a small prayer, until the sound of rocks moving made him turn around with his rifle already aimed.

“Oisho.” And the person responsible for the noise …

Was the child, who had just risen from the ashes and debris like some sort of zombie who crawled its way out of a grave, sitting there, menacingly, trying to open a jar filled with what looked to be brown powder.

Menacingly.

“I found coffee.”

Coffee powder.

‘What?’ Johannes started questioning if what he was hearing was actually real.

The girl who just strolls over from one side of No Man’s Land to the other just obliterates it, survives a blast that killed everyone else in the area, and her first priority is getting coffee powder?

Johannes wanted to think about the absurd notion, but then girl’s sound of frustration and attempts at opening the jar couldn’t make him think straight.

“Hand it over.” Johannes said.

Strangely enough, Elina complied and handed it over to Johannes, and with a simple flip of the wrist the lid came off with a little *plop!*, and then giving it back to Elina.

“… we loosened it up for you.”

‘We?’ Johannes wondered if the girl … Elina was actually some sort of immigrant or at least the child of one who didn’t really know German all that much.

It would make sense though, just before the Weltkrieg broke out, Germany was the place to go as a cultural and economical powerhouse, taking her place among the great powers such as the United States, the United Kingdom, and France among many others.

Both people from German colonies, as well as people from places God knows where came to Germany seeing it as some sort of land of promise and golden opportunity.

And as the Weltkrieg broke out many of these people were forced to stay here, with the British naval blockade still on, if only partially, as well as the fact that Germany was surrounded by enemies on every side.

There was also the fact that the girl had the a very weird accent, which only reinforced his beliefs.

‘The fact that a foreigner had to voluntarily commit herself to our fight to ensure she didn’t starve to death …’ Johannes thought of it as nothing but shameful, but it didn’t really affect him all that much since the German Empire had already committed a lot of shameful things over the course of the war.

“By the way, you’ve never really introduced yourself, what’s your name peasant?” And before Johannes had forgotten, he asked for the girl’s name.

“Why do people always ask for names … it’s Elina.”

“Elina … you seriously all of this just for some grinded coffee beans?”

Johannes thoroughly considered himself as a normal person.

He believed in a religion, had somebody to marry back home, believed in the Kaiser’s divine right to rule, and offered up his services for his job like a normal human being.

He also understood that in some cases, people were willing to commit horrible acts of inhumanity for such trivial things like food or money.

He understood their situation,

But normally in those cases, people did it to survive, people did it because they had to.

That’s why he couldn’t understand the thought process of people risking their own lives for just something as trivial as coffee.

It made it look like Wilhelm struck a deal with the devil to clear his way to victory.

A deal which actually provided more benefits to the devil than just coffee which couldn’t be seen by the likes of mortal eyes.

Which made Johannes question he girl in his mind.

‘Are you the devil? Or are you just insane?’

Frankly, even if Johannes considered himself quite observant, he certainly wasn’t one of the people who could tell whether a person was just insane or actually a devil.

“Hey, don’t belittle this, this is what I fought for, this is victory that I am about to taste!”

Elina raised the jar filled with grinded coffee beans up into the air, not minding the fact that it was spilling all over.

And then with her bare fingers, still covered in dirt, she grabbed a handful of coffee powder and put it inside her mouth, which absolutely disgusted Johannes.

‘Yup, she’s insane.’

Though he didn’t say anything, because she was what made this victory possible.

Or at least he tried to, but when Elina licked her muddy fingers clean he just had to whisper something just quiet enough that Elina couldn’t hear.

‘Jesus christ, have some form at least.’

“How does it taste?”

And after the girl ate the rest of the remaining coffee powder, and wiped her mouth, she replied with …

“It’s bitter.”

The girl was basically saying that victory is the opposite of what it was supposed to feel like, which Johannes was normally going to disagree to …

But as Johannes looked around the charred landscape, the deformed pieces of nature, and the bodies that would never move again …

Johannes could only agree.

Kekw

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