From the moment she stepped aboard the airship, Teresa had been sweating nervously into her palms, doing everything she could to minimize her presence.
Yet no matter how hard she tried to shrink into the background, that man's gaze still settled upon her.
"Teresa."
Hearing her name called, Teresa instinctively straightened her spine, forcing a calm smile onto her face. Her stammering voice, however, betrayed the panic within.
"Ad—Administrator, sir, do you have any orders for me?"
"It's been two weeks. I'd like to hear your thoughts on your work."
Seeing the consort faltering and at a loss for words, Chu Guang continued patiently, "No need to be nervous. It doesn't matter if you don't have profound insights. Just give me a simple summary of what you do every day."
"In—in the morning, after getting up, I first—"
"Regarding your work."
Interrupted in her frantic rambling, Teresa flushed scarlet and hurriedly corrected herself. "Yes! Well, Mr. Ma Ban had me assist the quartermaster in Warehouse 3 with auditing the inventory ledgers. It's mainly checking whether incoming and outgoing supplies balance out..."
Though she had been clumsy at first, she had quickly grown proficient. She described the challenges she encountered, the colleagues she befriended, and several ideas for improvement—all presented in detail without dragging on.
Chu Guang gave her an approving nod.
It seemed Ma Ban had trained her well. Managing a warehouse was one of the best ways to temper someone; the role required dealing with nearly every frontline post.
From a single broom to a bag of bricks or a cart of cement, only someone who could manage such granular trifles could lay the groundwork to oversee a vastly larger organization later.
Of course, what he looked forward to most was having her interact with the common people while participating in grassroots labor.
Just as he had told her before, this knowledge and experience would come in handy sooner or later.
Chu Guang then turned to Prince Samer. "You should already have the result you hoped for. Until the war ends, I will provide a place of rest for you and your men. If you're interested, you may take part in the work at the refugee camp. If not, I won't force you."
Samer bowed respectfully at once. "Thank you for offering me this opportunity. I am willing. I want to learn how you rebuild your homes."
Whether out of a desire to understand the Alliance or to curry favor with the suzerain state, he felt he had to accept.
Watching the young prince, Chu Guang nodded in satisfaction.
Not bad; the lad had potential.
In truth, since the Alliance had granted asylum to the Honey Badger royal family, they were guests in principle, and he was obligated to provide them with basic living supplies.
Still, wouldn't it be a shame to waste free labor?
Ma Ban was always complaining to him that the refugee camp couldn't recruit staff with decent literacy. Now, a ready-made one had walked right up to their doorstep.
Besides, for the young man himself, it was also a great opportunity for growth.
"Teresa, take him under your wing," Chu Guang said, looking at the figurehead consort.
"Yes, my lord."
Teresa inclined her head submissively. Samer, standing off to the side, knitted his brows slightly.
"My lord, may I ask in what capacity the consort of the Falcon Kingdom remains here?"
"I am his cap—"
Teresa blurted out instinctively, but Chu Guang cut her off before she could finish.
"She is someone liberated by the Alliance."
Hearing that, her face filled with astonishment.
Samer, standing nearby, was equally taken aback. He asked instinctively, "Liberated means...?"
"Exactly what it sounds like. In the eyes of the Alliance, whether they are residents of Oasis 3 or Oasis 2, they are all victims of this turmoil."
Chu Guang glanced out the floor-to-ceiling window at the yellow sand hovering over the horizon like a boiling sea of fire.
"We will go and liberate them."
...
Deep within Sunset Province, the yellow sand sweeping across the horizon churned like molten magma from hell.
It blocked out the sun and sky, leaving no light to penetrate.
Macklen could no longer remember how many times he had run into this wretched weather. He only knew that these miserable days were finally coming to an end.
This was the western frontier of Oasis No. 9. The Legion's frontline command post lay just ahead.
He and his men were just a short distance away—
"Halt! Who goes there?"
A shout rang out from the distance. A soldier advanced through the sandstorm from the encampment gate, rifle raised.
"Idiot! Lower your damn rifle! Look closely at who the hell I am!"
Glaring at the dumbfounded sentry, Macklen cursed, swatted the rifle barrel aside with one hand, and seized the soldier's collar with the other.
"Go fetch Griffin for me!"
"I'm right here."
A voice sounded from nearby. Macklen shoved the sentry away and squinted at the man standing by the camp gates.
Black leather boots, a dark blue military greatcoat, and shoulder boards bearing three stars. The figure standing there was none other than the Legion's commander-in-chief in Sunset Province—General Griffin.
With his sunken cheekbones, hooked nose, and hawk-like eyes, he looked less like a battle-hardened tough guy and more like a cunning fox.
Macklen despised that face.
He despised the man even more.
"You still have the nerve to come back?"
Griffin stared in astonishment at the disheveled man before him, his raised eyebrow betraying an ambiguous mix of surprise and mockery.
Before Macklen could speak, Griffin continued in an unhurried drawl, "Losing the Heart of Iron to a bunch of natives, a horde of forest savages... I thought you'd have killed yourself out of shame by now."
A flash of fury flared in Macklen's eyes, but he gritted his teeth and swallowed it down, his voice low and heavy.
"They were no natives! We ran into Enterprise reinforcements! I know what you want to say, but that's the truth. The Enterprise sent more than one relief force, and we bumped into the second! Don't think you can shirk your responsibility either—you were the one who ordered me to redeploy to southern River Valley Province!"
"Yes, I gave the order. I ordered you to intercept that injured employee, not to go head-to-head with the Enterprise. Now look what happened. Those cowards on the eastern coast have been provoked into a frenzy. My informants in the Free States tell me they've built an airbase on the south bank of the Tianshui tributary, and planes are landing there every couple of days."
Griffin glared at Macklen, his eyes narrowing to slits until the tip of his nose was almost poking into Macklen's nostrils.
"...And I've spent two nights trying to wrap my head around it. Even if you encountered an Enterprise relief force, how in the world did you let them hijack an airship that massive—an airship protected by energy shields?"
Macklen's expression froze. Yet he was not crushed by Griffin's presence. Narrowing his eyes to match, he snapped back without holding anything back.
"Don't pin the blame on me! We already seized the Pioneer. Did you really think there was a shred of possibility for peaceful coexistence between us and the Enterprise? Spare me! The war started long ago! It has nothing to do with my strategy in southern River Valley Province. If you want to tally the score, it was your redundant orders that caused this!"
"You still haven't answered me. How did you lose that airship?"
"I'll give my explanation to Air Force Command. I'm under no obligation to submit battle reports to the Army!"
The two argued tooth and nail, though only one of them was red in the face.
The adjutants, staff officers, and other subordinates standing behind General Macklen kept their mouths shut, standing there in awkward silence.
The officers behind General Griffin likewise said nothing, pretending they heard nothing at all.
"...Enough! Stop barking at me. What about Oasis No. 9? Still haven't taken it?" Unable to endure the grilling any longer, Macklen forcefully changed the subject, trying to use his rival's incompetence to excuse his own defeat.
Griffin merely smiled faintly, tossing back a biting sneer.
"If your airship had redeployed according to my instructions, we would already be holding a military parade in the Lion Kingdom's royal palace."
Before Macklen could explode, Griffin spared the pathetic clown a shred of dignity and dropped the subject, continuing in a dry, indifferent tone, "The frontline fighting is deadlocked. Our military presence in Sunset Province is somewhat thin, so we can't offer much support to the Falcon Kingdom. The Retinue Army has decent combat strength, but they have to divert troops to occupy Oasis 3."
General Macklen scoffed dismissively, "We have no need for those rabble in Oasis 3. I suggest rounding them up and liquidating them en masse, then bringing more obedient slaves from the west to fill the labor void. That way, we can free up more troops and concentrate our strength to crush Oasis No. 9!"
"The Army doesn't need your commands. You'd better stick to commanding that airship of yours," Griffin sneered at him. "We don't need the rabble there, but we need the grain they produce. Only with grain can we support more troops, and only then can the west side of the Great Desert send more reinforcements."
Mass liquidation?
How could it be that simple?
Never mind a million people—even slaughtering a million pigs would take until next year.
As for moving slaves in from the west, that was certainly possible, but large-scale population transfers took time as well.
Though both belonged to the hawk faction, there were divisions within the Legion's leadership regarding how to handle the inhabitants of occupied territories.
Some advocated slaughtering those who resisted and breaking those who surrendered into slaves. Others favored using local powers for indirect rule, such as propping up puppets.
Under identical educational conditions, a slave maintained at a bare-minimum living standard typically generated only 0.1 to 0.3 times the value of a freeman, depending on the labor. It often took over a dozen slaves to support a single military serviceman.
Vassals, however, were different.
Even under maximum exploitation, they could sustain over 0.5 times the productivity.
This wasn't based on theoretical science, but on the Legion's hard-won practical experience across various occupied zones.
Griffin looked down from the bottom of his heart on the aristocratic faction that championed slavery.
His own territory used a hybrid system of wage labor and slavery; the poor souls receiving wages worked far harder than the servants in his manors.
Still...
He held only command authority. At most, he could execute subordinate officers who disobeyed orders, but he had no right to punish this idiot who had technically carried out his directives.
And just as Macklen had pointed out, as the commander who issued the order, Griffin would bear joint responsibility if the Marshal's Internal Affairs Bureau or the military court came looking for answers.
At that thought, Griffin felt even more annoyed.
"Tomorrow, I'll arrange vehicles for you. Take your men and stay over in Oasis 2."
Oasis 2 was the territory of the Falcon Kingdom and the Legion's backyard in Sunset Province.
There, fine wine, endless fruit, and servants offered up by the Falcon royal family awaited them.
Griffin didn't want to see this man again; he just wanted him as far away from his sight as possible.
To his surprise, however, the man who had fled back with his tail between his legs refused to comply.
"This war isn't over yet. Don't even think about kicking me out," Macklen said, glaring at Griffin, enunciating each word with venom. "Don't think of sending me away. I'm not going anywhere."
Once shoved to the rear, he would lose any chance to redeem his failure, left with nothing to do but wait for Internal Affairs to slap a transfer order across his face.
More importantly, he had sworn an oath.
He would settle this score with his own two hands.
He would use the blood of every wasteland scavenger in southern River Valley Province to appease the souls of his fallen soldiers.
Griffin narrowed his eyes at Macklen.
"Your troops have been wiped out. What use is keeping you here?"
Macklen kept a steady expression. "The Heart of Iron is in the Enterprise's hands now. If they've already figured out how to operate it, you're going to have serious trouble. Only I know how to counter it."
Hearing that, Griffin's expression shifted slightly. He swept a hurried glance over the officers behind Macklen and asked urgently, "Didn't you evacuate with your personnel?"
Facing that murderous glare, Macklen showed a flicker of embarrassment, but pushed forward anyway.
"...Finod went missing. It happened too suddenly; he was outside the airship and missed the last flight out. That man is a logistics officer. He probably knows how to fly the thing."
Finod had never been a frontline combatant, and his temperament was practically the opposite of Rachel's. If given the chance to surrender, he would never put up resistance.
Macklen was over ninety percent certain that as long as the Alliance captured him, they would find a way to pry the airship's operating procedures from his mouth.
Griffin drew a deep breath, taking quite a while to regain his composure.
He had already prepared himself to face Enterprise aircraft, but he hadn't anticipated that he would have to face not just Enterprise planes, but also his own 400-millimeter main guns.
"...I'll give you a cohort of a thousand men. Your job is to keep that airship tied down. I will request more reinforcements from the rear."
Macklen replied bluntly, "Not enough. Give me ten thousand men, plus the equipment needed to fight an airship. I know you can't stand me, but right now we're grasshoppers tied to the same string. You know what I mean."
Griffin stared at him for a long moment before squeezing out an answer through gritted teeth.
"Fine..."
...
At the same time, along the northern front of Oasis No. 9, a howling sandstorm had just swept past.
The yellow sand blotting out the sun and sky had sounded like the furious roar of the Spirit of the Sand Sea.
"Fuck... I thought I was a goner."
Crawling out of a sand dune, Battlefield Guy searched with difficulty for a moment before finding an arm buried in the sand and hauling Korwei out from underneath.
Choking on the grit in his mouth, Korwei wiped his lips, a look of lingering panic on his face.
"Thanks."
"Don't mention it. I'm just glad you're all right, sir," Battlefield Guy said with an expression of steadfast loyalty.
Nearly a week had passed since leaving the borders of the Golden Lizard Kingdom. Over the course of these three weeks, he had grown increasingly adept at playing the undercover agent.
Patting his brother's shoulder, Korwei gazed ahead, a hint of joy breaking through his tightly furrowed brow.
"We're here!"
Ahead lay the encampment of the Legion's frontline troops. Though he didn't know the unit's designation, the flag fluttering there was unmistakable.
Adan's caravan, which had been separated from them in the sandstorm, gradually caught up as well.
Judging by their battered appearance, they had clearly endured their share of hardship.
They had even lost one of their covered wagons, and scattered rifles now hung strapped across the camels' backs.
"You two all right?" Adan called out, leading a camel from the front.
"We're fine, haha! Thanks to the protection of the Spirit of the Sand Sea!" Korwei laughed heartily and waved for them to come closer.
As the sandstorm cleared, the military camp in the distance evidently noticed them.
Led by a decurion, a ten-man squad marched toward them.
"I am a centurion under Captain Rachel of the Heart of Iron's Air Marines. My name is Korwei. Here are my papers and dog tag." Watching the approaching decurion, Korwei took the initiative to identify himself, presenting his credentials.
The soldiers exchanged glances. The decurion at the front frowned, took the documents, glanced over them, and looked back at Korwei with a hint of suspicion in his eyes.
"The Heart of Iron? Weren't you supposed to be on a mission in southern River Valley Province?"
As frontline troops engaged in combat with the Lion Kingdom, they had no knowledge of developments in other theaters.
Korwei did not answer the inquiry directly, responding in a strictly businesslike manner, "An unexpected incident occurred there. For details, ask your superiors. Right now, I need to see your commanding officer."
The decurion pressed no further. He nodded, handed back the dog tag, and kept the documents.
"I need to verify your identity. Will you wait here, or come with me to the camp?"
"To the camp, of course. Are we supposed to stand here eating sand?" Korwei said impatiently.
After inspecting Korwei's papers, the decurion checked the credentials of Adan, the accompanying merchant. Upon seeing the purchase order, he cleared the party to proceed.
Following the squad, the group made their way toward the nearby military camp.
From the moment he stepped into the base, Battlefield Guy quietly observed the layout.
Unlike the camps he had seen in Sunset Province, there were very few concrete fortifications here. Instead, walls built from stacked rectangular sandbags took their place.
This kind of field camp was quite common in reality. Such sandbags offered decent resistance against explosives and blast waves, serving as a substitute for concrete while allowing for easy redeployment.
Nearly every wall had bomb shelters dug behind it. Camouflage netting in desert tones covered the firing positions and watchtowers, beneath which rested pitch-black heavy machine guns—judging by the look, likely the 20-millimeter variant.
All in all, it was a fairly standard military outpost, capable of accommodating roughly five hundred to a thousand men.
What surprised Battlefield Guy wasn't the layout, but the fact that he actually spotted a mutant in the camp!
It was undeniably a mutant.
Though its skin wasn't green, but a dull grayish-black, and a thick beard covered its chin, the hideous face was almost identical to the mutants Battlefield Guy had seen on 76th Street in Qingquan City...
If the earlier mutants looked like orcs, these looked more like trolls...
The mutant glanced at him, revealing blood-red gums, then lumbered toward the camp gates with heavy, swaying steps.
These mutants evidently didn't live with the Legion soldiers, but had set up a separate encampment beside the main base.
Understandably, no one wanted to live alongside man-eating brutes.
Watching the figure disappear beyond the gates, Battlefield Guy frowned and asked, "...A mutant?"
Following his gaze, Korwei smiled. "A mutant mercenary from the Great Desert. Those beasts don't have much between the ears, but they fight like hell. They can charge right into heavy machine gun fire, and even if their legs get blown off, they can grow them back. Tough as leather, unpicky eaters—born cannon fodder."
To think the Legion had recruited mutants into their service...
"Why is their skin grayish-black?" Battlefield Guy asked, puzzled. "The ones I saw on the border between River Valley Province and Jinchuan Province were all green-skinned."
Korwei said nonchalantly, "The locals in the Falcon Kingdom claim they were cursed by the Spirit of the Sand Sea, but honestly, it's just a subspecies branch—probably caused by radiation in the Great Desert. Who cares where they came from? As long as they're useful, that's all that matters."
Battlefield Guy nodded numbly, surprised yet quietly thrilled.
Gray-black mutants...
This intelligence was huge!
Then again, playing an undercover agent felt remarkably easy.
Practically all he had to do was feign ignorance and ask, and this fellow would boastfully spill every last detail.
To be frank, with the guy baring his soul to this extent, Battlefield Guy was starting to feel a little guilty.
Following Korwei deeper into the camp, the musing Battlefield Guy soon made another discovery.
Inside an open-doored warehouse, several engineers were squatting in front of a tank he had never seen before, tightening bolts.
Feigning curiosity, Battlefield Guy gestured toward the tanks in the warehouse. "What kind of tanks are those?"
"The Conqueror 10 Mark II, mounted with a 150-millimeter heavy howitzer—essentially a self-propelled gun. The one next to it is the Mark III, with the turret swapped for an eight-barrel anti-aircraft machine gun. Though meant for air defense, the Lion Kingdom doesn't have an air force, so it's usually pushed to the front to support the infantry."
Looking at the tanks in the warehouse, Korwei narrowed his eyes, pride gleaming within them.
"...This time, our opponents include the Enterprise. Word is the Legion plans to send over a batch of Conqueror 11 tanks."
Battlefield Guy immediately picked up on his words. "What are those?"
Korwei suspected nothing. He merely glanced back to gauge their distance from the merchant Adan, then whispered, "A new heavy tank designed by the Triumph City Army Equipment Research Institute specifically to counter Gauss weaponry. I've only heard bits and pieces, so don't go spreading this around... Supposedly, its armor is insanely tough; regular hard-core armor-piercing rounds and electromagnetic mass projectiles struggle to penetrate it. Very expensive, though.
"There are also pre-war stockpiles, like the 'Prowler' tank equipped with Meissner effect armor. These are all special treats we've prepared for the Enterprise... They probably never expected that equipment from two hundred years ago would still be operational."
Ordinary survivor settlements could produce shaped-charge warheads at best, and the Conqueror 10's spaced armor was more than sufficient to stop molten metal jets.
Against the ultra-high-velocity steel flechettes fired by Gauss weapons, however, spaced armor fell a bit short.
As Korwei rattled on with animated enthusiasm, Battlefield Guy's head buzzed as he memorized every word.
You truly realize how little you know only when you need it.
Casual conversation wasn't too difficult, but he couldn't make heads or tails of some of the technical jargon. Unable to ask too many detailed follow-ups, he could only memorize the sounds phonetically, planning to discuss them with the other players on the forum once he logged off.
At this thought, Battlefield Guy felt no small amount of regret.
That was the price of being uneducated. If only he'd learned from Fang Chang and memorized a few more terms beforehand!
Seeing that Korwei seemed to be winding down, Battlefield Guy quickly fed him another cue to keep him talking.
"Do our tanks not have any weaknesses, then?"
"Of course they do. The Conqueror series' weaknesses are mainly concentrated on the roof and the undercarriage, so those two areas have to be carefully protected. Especially the undercarriage—the armor near the escape hatch is relatively thin, and it sits right next to the transmission components."
At this point, Korwei's tone shifted, and he chuckled. "Speaking of which, I heard the Alliance has a kind of drone specifically designed to burrow under tank bellies. It gave that Bone Chewer tribe a world of grief."
Battlefield Guy's heart tightened, but he nodded. "Yeah... I think I've heard of that too."
Seeing his buddy's nervous expression, Korwei chuckled and patted his shoulder. "No need to worry. That gimmick only works against brainless marauders. All we need to do is hang a curtain under the tank's belly to tangle the drone's rotors, or install a deflector plate."
A bomb was only effective if detonated directly beneath the chassis.
If it went off against the turret or the hull, that bit of blast wave would barely tickle their tanks.
Battlefield Guy nodded as if half-understanding, quietly committing all these details to memory.
The group waited for a short while in the open clearing.
Just as Battlefield Guy had finished getting a solid grasp of the layout, an officer approached from nearby and halted in front of Korwei.
"Your identity has been verified. We will arrange transport to take you to the command post."
A smile of relief spread across Korwei's face, and he returned a military salute.
Adan, trailing close behind, stepped up to offer his congratulations. "Congratulations, Mr. Korwei. You'll be reunited with your unit soon."
"Thank you for your help. I won't forget this favor," Korwei said, shaking his hand. "What are your plans now?"
Adan thought for a moment and smiled. "Once the logistics officer here completes the supply handover, I'll probably hit the road for the next run. The Lion Kingdom shouldn't last more than two months. While the war is still going, I intend to do a few more deals."
"Looks like we part ways here," Korwei said with a smile, extending his right hand. "Still, I believe there will be a place for you in this land blessed by the sunset's glow. Until we meet again."
A look of pleasant surprise flashed across Adan's face, and he clasped Korwei's right hand with a shake. "From your lips to the heavens. Until we meet again!"
While Korwei bid farewell to Adan, Battlefield Guy was looking around in every direction, searching for an excuse to go take a dump so he could log off.
New equipment arriving from the rear, mutant mercenaries from the Great Desert...
Such explosive intel.
This post was definitely going viral!
Chapter 425