“Why has it become like this…”
A Britannian Captain located in the middle section of the communication trench was currently desperately clinging to the mud-covered trench wall, his voice becoming shrill and distorted out of extreme fear.
Right above his head, that agonizing sound of mechanical operation and the roar of heavy machine guns hadn’t stopped.
“Sir! We can’t get out! The people behind are blocking the way, and the front is full of corpses!”
A blood-covered messenger crawled over crying. His left arm was already missing, and blood was still gushing out from the stump.
Before this Captain could say anything, a whip of fire happened to sweep over.
Without any suspense, machine-gun bullets directly pierced through his and that messenger’s bodies, conveniently blowing away one of their heads.
And up above, Ludwig didn’t even notice that he had just killed an officer.
For him right now, those squirming khaki figures below made no difference.
They were all targets.
“Da-da-da—”
The Armored Knight piloted by Ludwig once again spewed out two long tongues of fire, completely scattering a Britannian squad attempting to regroup at the corner of the communication trench.
After confirming there wasn’t a single living enemy in his line of sight, he stopped firing.
That communication trench below, originally packed with Britannian soldiers, had now become a steaming dead end.
Those instruction unit soldiers who arrived subsequently were stepping on corpses giving him a thumbs-up, then continuing to push forward rapidly.
Watching this scene, a strange expression couldn’t help but surface on Ludwig’s face hidden deep in the cockpit.
Morin was very right, this is what war should look like.
Not that kind of duel between knight lords for so-called honor, but pure, efficient firepower coverage.
But this also meant that the lives of these ordinary soldiers completely became a consumable and a number…
Just as he was preparing to maneuver this steel giant to stride forward and continue clearing the next section of the trench, Morin’s familiar voice suddenly rang in his ear.
“Calling Lieutenant Colonel Ludwig! Can you hear me!”
Ludwig, stunned for a moment, immediately reacted. He adjusted the “Synchro Operation System” between himself and the Armored Knight to the “Half-Synchro” state.
Following his command, that wonderful feeling of “human-machine integration” with the Armored Knight and vision covering 180 degrees around the machine’s body instantly receded.
Replacing it was that narrow temporary observation window in front of his eyes, and that seat under his butt that became increasingly uncomfortable due to sitting for a long time.
At the same time, the Armored Knight’s mechanical arms, which originally moved synchronously with his body’s swaying, also locked in their current positions.
Ludwig looked toward the direction of Morin’s voice, which was a wire basket in the cockpit used for holding a canteen and rations.
He reached out and grabbed that palm-sized magitech communicator from inside—this was one of the four sub-units of the “Portable Magitech Communication Device.”
According to Morin’s previous arrangement, these four sub-units were placed in the battalion headquarters of the three infantry battalions and in Ludwig’s hands.
Because the artillery battalion was temporarily under the unified command of the Army Group Artillery, and normally Morin also acted with the Regimental Headquarters… him being put in solitary confinement was completely an accident.
As an Armored Knight pilot, Ludwig was also physically modified to possess magical affinity, so he was also the only person among the four sub-unit holders who could have a two-way conversation with Morin.
When Morin stuffed it to him before, he said it was a “rare item still in the testing phase” made by his younger sister Patricia.
At that time, Ludwig still felt this little gadget might be unreliable, but never expected it could actually ring now.
“I can hear you, very clearly! Is this Morin?”
Ludwig shouted loudly at that inscription-covered device.
“It’s me.”
On the other end of the magitech device, Morin’s voice sounded somewhat noisy, seemingly in a state of running in the wind, but his speaking speed was extremely fast and clear.
“Stop bullying the infantry there. Take your men and immediately move to the defense zone of the 1st Battalion! The coordinates are area 33-K, which is the east side of that blasted oak tree.”
“1st Battalion?”
Ludwig glanced at a military map hanging on the other side of the cockpit, then found the grid Morin mentioned.
“Isn’t it still a stalemate over there? I just broke through here…”
“Never mind the stalemate, big guys have arrived over there.”
“The Britannians’ three Armored Knights just broke through the temporary defense line formed by the 93rd Infantry Regiment, and next they are going to tear a hole in the 1st Battalion’s defense line… Our infantry can’t do anything about those things.”
Ludwig’s heart jumped.
Britannian Armored Knights?
“Understood! I’ll be right there!”
After ending the communication, Ludwig switched the “Synchro Operation System” back to the “Full-Synchro” state again.
As his optic nerves reconnected with multiple observation crystals on the Armored Knight, he felt his body become heavy again, and that sense of power controlling everything surged back into him.
“All units, attention! Cease fire!”
Ludwig took a deep breath, turned on the onboard loudspeaker, and his voice spread across the noisy battlefield through external speakers.
“Follow me! Turn right! We have proper work to do!”
The roaring sound increased again.
The three “Siegfried Type 1s” painted in dark gray, covered in mud and gunpowder smoke, gave up the pursuit of those fish that slipped through the net under their feet.
They turned their heavy bodies and, with ground-shattering steps, sprinted wildly toward the left-wing position where the 1st Battalion was located.
What is the concept of an eighteen-ton steel body charging at full speed?
That is a small-scale earthquake.
Along the way, whether it was Saxon soldiers or Britannian soldiers, upon feeling the increasingly violent trembling of the ground, subconsciously stopped their movements and looked in terror at these three war machines roaring past.
Muddy water was stomped flying everywhere by the giant soles that had been “adaptively modified” to increase ground contact. Some corpses lying on the ground were directly stomped deep into the mud, their shapes no longer distinguishable.
During the rapid march, a thought involuntarily popped into Ludwig’s mind:
How did that kid Morin know?
Under normal circumstances, shouldn’t he have just come out of the confinement cell and be near the third defense line?
From that position, let alone clearly seeing the specific situation of the 1st Battalion’s defense zone, even the sounds of gunfire and artillery there should sound like a blur.
But Morin’s tone just now was as certain as if he were currently floating above the 1st Battalion’s position, observing with a magnifying glass.
He even reported the exact number and models of the enemy machines clearly.
The All-Knowing and All-Seeing Eye…?
Ludwig thought of an absurd saying that had occasionally reached him during this time since coming to the instruction unit, circulating privately only among the veterans.
It was said that the young Lieutenant Colonel had a pair of eyes that could see through the battlefield; no enemy movement could escape his gaze.
At first, Ludwig only took this as those grunts bragging, or some kind of blind worship for their commander. But now, this almost eerie intelligence capability made him have to re-examine this saying.
That man… seemed to really be floating in the clouds, looking down at this huge chessboard.
“Could this kid actually be some kind of God’s Chosen? This is too outrageous… Aren’t these things just deceptive legends of the Church?”
However, when those three huge figures appeared in Ludwig’s field of vision two minutes later, his attention returned to the battlefield.
Those were three Armored Knights painted holy white, with gold and red Plantagenet coats of arms painted on their breastplates.
Even on this muddy, filthy battlefield, the machines of the Order of the Garter still maintained that “aristocratic neatness.”
Their mechanical arms also didn’t hold ranged weapons, but still gripped the iconic “Knight’s Lances” and tower shields.
At this moment, these three “St. George Type 3s,” relying on their heavy armor and forcefully withstanding the firepower of the 1st Battalion soldiers, were like three white chisels trying to chisel through the Saxons’ defense line.
Small arms fire and stick grenades smashing against their tower shields exploded into balls of firelight, but this did not stop their advancing pace.
“Finally meet again, Order of the Garter…”
Ludwig narrowed his eyes.
At the same time, the three white machines opposite also stopped their movements almost simultaneously.
That was a kind of sensation that only occurred between their own kind.
On a battlefield full of infantry, equally tall, equally heavily armored Armored Knights were like two ferocious beasts suddenly encountering each other in a dark forest.
Even though there were hundreds or thousands of infantry around shooting at each other with rifles, at this moment, for these six pilots, those insignificant humans had disappeared from their vision.
What remained were only opponents of the same weight class as themselves.
“Attack!”
The three gray “Siegfried Type 1s” took the lead in charging, and the three Armored Knights of the Order of the Garter also quickly started striding.
Six machines rapidly approached each other on the muddy No Man’s Land.
The distance rapidly shortened.
For a moment, the warring soldiers from both sides even stopped invariably and looked at the steel giants striding past above the communication trenches.
Ludwig at this time didn’t know how many infantry around were staring at him. All his energy was on the three charging Armored Knights of the Order of the Garter ahead.
And he also noticed that the weapon resembling a “Knight’s Lance” in the opponent’s hands was not simple—it actually looked somewhat similar to the “Shaped-Charge Armor-Piercing Weapon” they themselves equipped.
News Ludwig had learned previously flashed through his mind, that the Britannians had obtained a complete shaped-charge armor-piercing weapon through an ambush.
In his heart, he roughly guessed this was probably the weapon the other party had imitated…
Although they had long been prepared, and the Armored Knights had also undergone emergency modifications, Ludwig still felt somewhat nervous.
After all, their Teutonic Knights had previously finally gained a dominant position in battles with the Order of the Garter with great difficulty through this cross-era weapon.
But now, the enemy also possessed this weapon. The battle seemed to have returned to testing the pilots’ technical and tactical levels, as well as the performance of the Armored Knights themselves…
“Damn it… I just hope this set of ‘Spaced Armor’ on me can really work now.”
Ludwig stared fixedly at those three increasingly close white Grim Reapers ahead, his Adam’s apple rolling up and down with difficulty.
“Fuck… this thing seems to have been invented by Morin too. That guy better not have screwed me!”
(End of Chapter)