Submarine Hunt

While boiling flames and thick smoke choked the eastern front of Lion State, the West Polo Sea on the opposite side remained peaceful and serene. Three heavily loaded cargo ships sailed steadily across the water, their towering prows cleaving through wave after wave. Standing at the edge of the deck and facing the sea breeze, Henk wore an expression brimming with ambition. His sharp, upturned nose resembled the very prow cutting through the swell. He was, without question, a pure-blooded Wilante, born in Triumph City, the city of supreme glory and wealth. However, because Triumph City was far too crowded, he had followed his parents to the distant New World when he was still young, expanding Wilante territory on fresh soil. His father had been a Centurion. If everything had gone according to plan, Henk would have followed in his father's footsteps to become an honorable soldier and win glory on the battlefield. Unfortunately, as the saying went, a tiger father had sired a dog of a son. Henk was simply not cut out for war. He failed the Youth Army selections and the reserve officer exams one after another. Especially the Youth Army selection. He had not even survived until the second round, having been eliminated right at the initial physical examination. Out of numerous fitness tests, swimming was the only event where he had barely scraped together a passing grade. It turned out that even among a race born for battle, not every individual possessed a talent for fighting. Thoroughly disheartened, Henk had fallen into despair, numbing himself with alcohol day in and day out. It was not until one day, when a friend he made back in the youth training camp brought him a bottle of "Big Bird Spin Vodka" smuggled from the "Old World," that he suddenly jolted awake from his stupor— What kind of horse piss had he been drinking all this time? Beneath its sharp, burning bite lay a subtle sweetness capable of washing away all worries. From the moment he tasted it, he had become utterly captivated. Drinking any other liquor after that tasted utterly bland. Yet that stuff was produced far away in the Alliance. Even in Triumph City, getting a bottle was no easy task, as the finest supplies were largely monopolized by the Eastern Legion. Although its manufacturing process was not particularly complex and the ingredients were straightforward, the knockoffs produced by Triumph City distilleries always seemed to lack something. He knew what those counterfeits were missing. It was the thing that enchanted him most—that subtle, almost hallucinatory sweetness that could make a person forget all their worries. Determined to drink better in the future, Henk temporarily pulled himself out of his funk. First, he built a makeshift continuous distillation column, then began tinkering with brewing and refining distillation techniques inside his family's warehouse... To his surprise, after all that puttering around, he actually managed to recreate that exact "trouble-forgetting sweetness." In truth, the secret behind forgetting one's troubles lay in "a safe dosage of methanol." The distillers of Triumph City were obsessed with perfecting distillation methods, relentlessly pursuing the purest possible vodka and striving for peak quality, completely oblivious to what the lower-class Wilante actually needed. Commoners had no time to order custom cocktails in high-end restaurants and savor smooth, complex notes. What they needed was something that let them forget every waking misery, even if it left them with a splitting headache the next morning. And if it was cheap on top of that, so much the better, even if that happiness was not entirely healthy. Thanks to this "invention," Henk became a moderately famous liquor merchant on the east coast of the New World, turning vodka from an expensive import into something ordinary people could afford. If things had continued smoothly, he might have spent his whole life selling liquor, steadily growing his business to the point where he could even export his "Little Chick Vodka" back to distant Dawn City, letting those folks in the Alliance marvel at his quick-witted ingenuity. Regrettably, things rarely went according to plan. The profit margin on selling liquor was simply too thin. Although his Little Chick Vodka had been a hit for a while, it had only lasted a while. The barrier to entry in this trade was practically nonexistent. Since he could copy the Alliance's product, others could naturally copy his. Moreover, poaching workers from his distillery to Triumph City was vastly easier than poaching from the Alliance—a steamship ticket and a small house on the outskirts of Triumph City were enough to seal the deal. Seeing his business hit a bottleneck, Henk was forced, like most self-made Wilante men, to turn his gaze toward other, less cutthroat frontiers with brighter prospects. In the Legion, munitions were the only eternal business, and arms dealers held the highest status of all merchants. And by a stroke of luck, right around this time, the esteemed Grand Marshal opened another window for him. The Southern Legion was drumming up momentum for war! Although this war was nominally between the Xilan Empire and various rebel factions, thirty myriad-strong "mercenary" forces were extraordinary even in the annals of human civilization. Unsurprisingly, the Alliance had stepped onto the field as well. One could readily foresee that the Enterprise, the Academy, the Great Rift Valley, and all survivor factions across the eastern Old World would be drawn into this conflict. The domestic industry and shipping capacity of the Southern Legion were clearly insufficient to support the material demands of such a war on their own. Meanwhile, the Western Legion's territorial expansion had run into a wall, leaving vast amounts of unsellable weapons and ammunition piling up in their warehouses. Just then, the Western Legion and the Southern Legion signed a duty-free agreement for military supplies. Henk, catching wind of the opportunity, recognized the business potential immediately and staked his entire fortune on it. No one had reacted faster than him. Barring any accidents, he would likely become the first New World merchant to strike gold in Bolo Province... if one discounted the high-ranking elites who had gotten an early head start. Once he established himself as the largest private arms contractor in West Sail Port, he would use the opportunity to pitch his Little Chick Vodka to the local Wilante soldiers. He was certain they would fall in love with that irresistible sensation. In a way, it was a roundabout way of saving his distillery. A few white birds flew in from the distance, circling above the deck as if searching for a place to alight and rest. *Caw—* Listening to their rhythmic cries, Henk felt remarkably cheerful. "Seagulls! Haha, looks like we're almost at port!" Walking up beside him, the captain, whose skin was tanned a ruddy copper, grinned and held back a scoff. "Those are albatrosses, sir... and they appear to be mutants. You'd best not provoke them." They were still over twenty hours away from Bolo Province; the earliest they could make port would be noon tomorrow. Seeing how excited the man was, the captain easily guessed that this boss was taking his first ocean voyage. He couldn't even tell an albatross from a seagull. Henk paid the correction no mind, simply laughing it off to brush away the embarrassment. "Hahaha! Whatever they are, they're my lucky birds! Bring up some bread... make sure it's the near-expired kind." With that, he nudged the secretary beside him, sending the resigned man back down into the cabin. The captain grinned, finding this boss from the New World rather amusing. He had heard people from the New World were all like this—smoother and craftier than the Wilante of the Old World. Still, he had never lived there himself, so everything he knew came from hearsay. The captain's post had been arranged for him by a Southern Legion merchant. After a brief layover at a New World port, he had boarded this freighter bound for the Polo Sea. The deck remained peaceful and calm, matching the quiet sea. Idle sailors leaned against the railings to soak up the sun, flicked beer caps across boards to pass the time, or chatted about where to seek entertainment once they made port. At that moment, not a single soul noticed a periscope quietly breaking the surface of the water, watching them for a brief interval before slipping silently back under. Before the secretary sent to fetch the bread could return, Henk decided to head into the cabin to hurry him along. Just as he turned, he saw a great churn of bubbles surging out from the tumbling wake. Something was rapidly closing in on his freighter, and by the looks of it, the object was massive. Henk suddenly remembered a tale told by a drunken sailor bragging in a tavern before he boarded. Supposedly, in the distant Polo Sea and the Southern Sea, there lived a sea monster known as the Kraken. It was like a great dragon roaming the deep ocean, capable of flipping a thousand-ton freighter with ease. Even so, Henk was not particularly worried. His three freighters each displaced more than fifty thousand tons, and they were fitted with sonar to repel mutants. Watching the approaching "big fish," he leaned over the railing and called out in excitement. "What is that thing? A Kraken?" The captain chuckled at his words and walked over to Henk's side. "A Kraken wouldn't care about us. We have the sonar running—" Halfway through his sentence, the captain's face drained of color. He let out a terrified screech toward the deck behind them. "TORPEDO—!" He had never encountered such a thing and had no idea how to respond. Pure instinct took over as he ripped two life vests off the railing, chucking one at Henk and hurriedly pulling the other over himself. Almost at that very moment, a deafening roar erupted from beneath their feet. A torpedo slammed into the freighter's flank! Before destructive force potent enough to sink a warship, a mere fifty-thousand-ton cargo vessel was as fragile as a toothpick. With no chance to see what was happening to the other two freighters, Henk felt himself flung into the air, flipping over the railing before crashing into the sea with a heavy splash. It had unfolded so fast that terror had no time to set in before his consciousness went completely black... ... A few minutes earlier, beneath the surface of the sea. Inside the stern, steel-plated bridge of a vessel, a dozen uniformed officers stared grimly at holographic displays. Twenty-four hours ago, Commander Li Minghui had issued the order for Operation Kraken. They were to act as phantoms lurking beneath the West Polo Sea, ambushing transport ships ferrying munitions to West Sail Port. With the true capabilities of the enemy's warships still uncertain, this was the safest strategy. On one hand, it struck at the Southern Legion's logistics and stalled their forward momentum; on the other, it would force the Western Legion to deploy escorts, thereby exposing their true combat capabilities. "...Target search complete. Multiple 120-millimeter field guns identified. Cargo confirmed to be military munitions," the observer seated at the console said, glancing back at the captain with certainty in his voice. The submarine commander nodded impassively. Without hesitation, he picked up the communicator and issued the command. "All battle stations prepare! Send them to meet the Kraken!" A chorus of acknowledgments echoed through the comms channel. "Understood!" As the order went out, the crew of the nuclear attack submarine moved with the precision of a wound clockwork gear. Sonar locked onto the targets, the torpedo tubes flooded, and thick, black torpedoes shot out from the tubes like underwater harpoons, hurtling toward the defenseless cargo vessels. It was a battle without suspense. The enemy possessed no means of detecting them in the first place. They fired three torpedoes in total, every single one finding its mark. Watching the erupting fireballs and the steel hulls slowly sinking beneath the waves, no one on the bridge celebrated. The sunken vessels were not warships, after all. There was nothing worth celebrating in such a victory. Yet that did not mean they felt any remorse for their actions. Whatever the form or reason, once one joined a war, one had to be prepared to pay the price. Just as they were. They knew precisely what they were up against, and what fate awaited them if they were ever cornered by the enemy's warships... Once the targets were confirmed sinking, the captain immediately ordered the submarine to dive. Through coordinated maneuvering, the submarine slipped back into the oceanic depths, vanishing as though it had never existed. Meanwhile, in waters a dozen kilometers away, aboard a freighter packed with migrants. Hearing the distant rumble of explosions, Arman and the crew beside him froze on the deck. "...What was that?" Hearing his employer's question, the captain standing beside Arman furrowed his brow, speaking after a moment of uncertainty. "Three blasts... sounds like torpedoes." "You can tell just from that?" Arman glanced at him, surprised that the man possessed such an ear. "What else could it be? A mutant?" The captain shrugged helplessly. Seeing the worry etched on his boss's face, he lowered his voice in warning. "We'd better stay out of this... You know from experience, working around those big shots never ends well." Arman understood his point, but in the end he let out a sigh. "...The teachings of the Silver Moon Church forbid leaving drowning souls to die. Whatever happened, I have to go see if anyone survived. Of course, I won't force you all to risk your necks. I'll just take whoever's willing to come with me." If there were survivors, they had to be pulled from the water before the sea mutants caught their scent. Anticipating that his employer would say that, the captain sighed with a wry look. "I'd feel even worse letting you go alone. I'll take a few men and go with you." Without lingering, several diesel-powered lifeboats were lowered from the ship and sped toward the site of the blasts. By the time they reached the area, the raised prows of the cargo ships had mostly dipped below the surface, leaving behind only floating wreckage, debris, and scattered patches of burning oil slicked across the water. Arman had no idea what those three sinking freighters had been carrying, but fortunately, no secondary explosions followed. Spotting survivors drifting in the water, he immediately directed the crew to haul them onto the lifeboats, then cleared out of the perilous waters before the fire could spread... The Southern Legion wished to confine the war within Bolo Province, while the Western Legion hoped to stay behind the scenes and quietly rake in profits, but reality refused to follow their designs. Just like the wreckage strewn across West Sail Port's rail station and warehouse district, and the tanks blown apart across the central plains of Lion State, the three transports sent to the seabed alongside tens of millions of dinars in munitions were merely the beginning. At the same time Arman was pulling his drowning countrymen onto the boats, the five myriads led by Myriad Commander Ryan finally pushed into Reedpur County with murderous intent, placing them only a single step away from Lion City. The local terrain featured some of the few rolling hills on the entire plain, with several tributaries of the Everflowing River cutting across the land before emptying into a freshwater body known as Sunrise Lake. Like Sulak County, this Reedpur County was the fiefdom of an illustrious noble house. However, the current Viscount Reedpur had not been nearly as fortunate as the Viscount of Sulak. Back during the Heavenly King Rebellion, the previous viscount had been bound and beheaded by an uprising of serfs and tenant farmers, and his entire household slaughtered until only a few distant male heirs remained. Later, after Janusz died and the Heavenly King Army changed its banners to become the Bolo Republic, the family's lineage had been spared from total extinction. By selling off portions of their land and estates, they had managed to keep the sprawling farmlands from going completely to waste. Yet good times were short-lived. Just as the crops were finally sprouting, the Southern Legion launched their offensive. To defend Lion City, Myriad Commander Yudono waved his hand and committed one hundred thousand men from his two-hundred-thousand-strong garrison to the front. These grunts built fortifications and dug trenches, shoveling dirt back over the newly sprouted crops and ruining more than half the fields. Although compensation was promised, it came in the form of Bolo bills. Nobody knew if the currency was good for anything, or if the Bolo Republic would even survive the coming days. Yet the young Viscount Reedpur, who had inherited the title, understood the larger picture. He did not dare voice opposition, and even brought his household servants to help the soldiers. Conversely, several freemen who had received plots of land harbored deep resentment, though they prudently swallowed their grievances. Word had it that the Legion paid compensation in pure gold dinars, whereas Absaik was stingy toward his own people, brushing them off with worthless slips of paper. Still, such grumblings represented a minority; at least for now, most people accepted Absaik's leadership. Especially within the ranks of the military. Absaik was certainly no saint. Cunning, petty-minded, indecisive... every negative adjective could be leveled against him, but one thing had to be admitted: compared to Janusz, he was far more like a normal human being. In truth, that was already quite good—rare, even. The Bolo Republic never lacked for capable men, but strangely enough, those perched at the top of the pyramid were seldom normal. Under this united front, an intricate web of subterranean tunnels quickly spiderwebbed beneath the hills of Reedpur County. There were also hidden foxholes that had entrances but no exits. Carrying weapons and dry rations, soldiers crawled into them without looking back, fully prepared to fill those pits with their own flesh and blood. At the same time, the second shipment of Alliance aid reached the front lines. Among the new equipment delivered to the defenders, in addition to RPGs and recoilless rifles, was a supply of high-yield metallic hydrogen explosives and landmines. The latter, in particular, were potent enough to pose a lethal threat to the Legion's Conqueror 10 tanks if deployed properly! At the very least, they would not allow the Legion to take Lion City behind them without a vicious fight. ... Inside Lion City. Myriad Commander Yudono stared at the map laid across his command table, a lit cigarette pinched between his fingers, his brow heavily furrowed with worry. He had once served under Heavenly King Janusz. When Janusz marched on Tiandu, he had left Yudono behind in Lion City to hold the rear—or rather, to serve as a punching bag for the Legion's wrath. Back then, Yudono had thought himself a dead man. To his surprise, before the Legion could strike, Janusz died first, assassinated in the imperial palace hall of Tiandu by reformist officers. Afterward, Absaik joined forces with the other Heavenly Kings to purge Janusz's loyalists and rebrand the Heavenly King Army as the Bolo Republic. Yudono had followed the prevailing tide, leading his troops to pledge allegiance to the new regime, which had earned him a promotion. Though in his eyes, that promotion was practically indistinguishable from an order to march to his death, as a former subordinate of Janusz, he had little room for choice. When it came to offering a blood pledge of loyalty, the Bolo Republic was cut from the same cloth as the Heavenly King Army. He had a pledge of his own to deliver, and only by delivering it would he be counted as one of their own. And the task Absaik had handed him was to hold off the Southern Legion's offensive with the two hundred thousand troops garrisoned in Lion State. It was a mission bordering on the impossible. "...The Alliance's armored forces are moving toward our position. Word has it they're one of the Alliance's elite units. However, their numbers are limited, just a single regiment." "Additionally, the Tiger Army and the Black Panther Army have each dispatched an armored regiment, and a mechanized infantry division from Golden Gallon Port has arrived... They've already reached the southern edge of Reedpur County." Standing beside the command table, an officer in his early twenties delivered his report at rapid speed. Yet these favorable tidings did little to ease Yudono's knit brows. Three regiments barely amounted to a division. The Alliance's armored regiment was beyond question, but how much combat power the Black Panther and Tiger regiments possessed remained an unknown. Those warlords might not be willing to commit their full strength. As for the mechanized infantry division from Golden Gallon Port, they would answer to the Alliance, meaning he likely couldn't command them either. After staring at the map for a long while, Yudono sighed. "Relying on outsiders is never reliable. In the end, we can only depend on ourselves..." Steeling his resolve, he turned his gaze upon the officers standing before the command table. "Regardless, we have two hundred thousand men under our command, while the Wilante only have fifty thousand... This battle is on our home turf. Even if it costs us our lives, you will hold the line!" Mammoth State's strategy had been clever, but Lion State was not Dog State. Over a million residents of Lion City stood right behind them; even if they wished to retreat, there was nowhere left to run. This battle was unavoidable. Reading the unyielding resolve in their commander's eyes, the officers before the table snapped to attention, their right fists striking against the left side of their chests. "Yes, sir!"