Saga of Slime and Devil (Remake)

Vol 3 | Chapter 9 | ...and Blood!

When he had volunteered to fight in the Great War, this wasn't the war he was expecting. He had been promised a chance to fight for his country, to fight for the Unified States, against the evil regimes of Europe. Instead, he was forced into an unknown world with his comrades, enslaved by foreigners, and forced to fight a country they had never heard of for a nation they had an equally lacking amount of knowledge of.

Few wanted to fight in this war, yet none had a say in how or when they fought. All of them were bound to the will of the nation, to the will of the nation's magician, and if the nation willed them to fight a guerilla war in the dastardly forests of Jura, then they had no choice. The problem, however, lay in the fact that they were in enemy territory, an enemy territory they had no maps to study with, no communications besides their radios, and no hopes of allies to cooperate with. Moreover, it was a heavily forested one, making the travel extensively exhausting. Fighting against a well-prepared enemy in their home territory is hard enough, but add on terrain like a thick forest, and it quickly deteriorates into a disaster for any force without extensive scouting military support.

It was that military force that they now lacked. They were limited in number and extremely limited in supplies. Sure, Falmuth had been granted a whole military base to work with through means the soldiers didn't understand, but they lacked the industry to produce even a fraction of the supplies the soldiers used up regularly. Falmuth was, as its true military showed, still a medieval country without even the slightest amount of industrialization. With no industry, Falmuth had no means to support a prolonged war of their State scale, their guns unable to resupply beyond crudely-made bullets.

It had become fairly obvious to even the lowest of soldiers that Falmuth intended to obliterate Tempest in its first attack, no matter the costs. They hoped to quickly secure defense in the center of the city, funnel in troops through exploited and secured streets, fully occupy the city after eliminating its leadership, and finally, thoroughly eradicate its monster residents within hours. That plan had utterly failed, much to the expense of their already limited manpower, equipment, and resources, as men fell in pairs and trios to horrendous ambushes left, right, and center.

As not all hope was lost with the barriers still in effect, Falmuth still held the hope that a second assault from all angles would be sufficient to break its defenses. However, Tempest's sudden counter-offensive at sunrise had effectively crushed any hopes of victory in all but the most optimistic soldiers and generals, obliterating dozens in minutes.

Tempest was enough of a struggle to attack when they were weakened by the barrier, costing them thousands of bullets and dozens of tank rounds, but now they were completely beyond it, somehow having escaped it without issue. The might of Tempest's armies had effectively shattered whatever might have once existed on the front line, obliterating men and supplies alike.

The soldier leaned up behind a tree, glancing up into the sky above. The sun was now right at the top of the sky at its zenith, beating down upon him as his water canteen ran dry. The fighting had now gone on for a few hours, but it had felt like years to the young man. Though the initial retreat in the first hour of Tempest's counter-offensive had nearly collapsed their entire front, they had managed to put up a desperate defense deeper into the forest, fighting a constant guerilla war as territories changed hands by the minute. However, as the sounds of explosions and screams of pain and terror intensified over the front and he noticed the flying of mages overhead, he gained a dreadful feeling that the true offensive had only just begun.

Bullets whizzed past the tree where the soldier was hiding as he tightened his grip on his rifle. He only had so much ammo to use; their original offensive had used up a large amount of theirs, and they were left with barely anything. Unfortunately, it wasn't much, only what was left in his rifle. One magazine, that was all he had, and it wasn't even full. A lucky few may have found themselves with a few magazines but most soldiers would run out fairly quickly when encountering enemies. In the last hour alone, he had seen at least a dozen bayonet charges, none ending with any success, as he fled from tree to tree.