Trenches, Guns, and Magic

Georg smiled and continued down the trench, chatting with the soldiers as he went.

"Where are you from?"

"Freiberg! Your Highness!"

"Freiberg... The spring water there is quite good. I drank it when I was a child."

Someone nearby couldn't help but stifle a laugh.

Georg walked up to another soldier and inspected the weapon in his hands.

"Is this submachine gun you're using from the new batch produced by Luger?"

"Yes, Your Highness! It was just issued last month!"

"Is it easy to use?"

"It's incredibly easy to use! Much handier than the old rifles, and the firepower is fierce."

The soldier spoke excitedly, "The big guys in the company say that with this, trench warfare is simply—"

Mid-sentence, he suddenly realized he was chatting with the Crown Prince and instinctively swallowed the rest of his thought.

Georg smiled and finished it for him: "Simply a matter of whoever shoots first wins?"

"Yes, yes, yes! Your Highness! Exactly!"

The surrounding soldiers all joined in the laughter.

As he walked past row after row of Stormtroopers, Georg noticed a phenomenon: the proportion of Junker nobility among these soldiers was higher than he expected.

Many of the junior officers in the Storm Assault Battalion bore the "von" prefix in their surnames—the Blüchers, the Steins, the Gneisenau...

These were the oldest Junker families in the Saxon Empire, many of whom were direct descendants of the old Dresden Black Eagle flag.

Georg quietly filed this detail away in his mind before stopping in front of a second lieutenant.

The officer looked quite young, likely in his early twenties.

His features were sharply defined on a standard "Saxon face," yet he still carried a trace of lingering boyishness. He wasn't particularly tall but looked very capable.

His posture at attention was flawless, but the irrepressible excitement in his eyes betrayed his age.

Looking at this young face, Georg was instantly reminded of the first time he met Morin.

That was back when the Kingdom of Aragon intervened in the civil war. Morin had just been recalled from the frontlines, his face still smudged with soot. But the indescribable look in his eyes had immediately etched itself into Georg's memory.

"What is your name?" the Crown Prince asked.

The second lieutenant straightened his back even further.

"Klaus von Stauffenberg, 2nd Company, 3rd Platoon Leader, 77th Infantry Division Storm Assault Battalion!"

Georg's eyebrows raised slightly.

"Stauffenberg?"

"Yes, Your Highness!"

"The Stauffenberg family of Bavaria?"

The second lieutenant's eyes lit up.

"Yes! Your Highness, my family is from Bavaria."

Georg looked at him and nodded. The history of the Stauffenberg family traced back to the 13th century. For generations, their ancestors had been church administrators, high-ranking government officials, or military generals. They were the quintessential "blue-blooded nobility"...

The oldest of the "old guard."

"A son of the Stauffenberg family, serving as a frontline platoon leader in a Storm Assault Battalion?"

Georg raised an eyebrow, half-joking, "In my impression, most noble scions like you would rather stay in my headquarters, pointing at maps and directing the world."

This joke immediately drew a roar of laughter from the surrounding soldiers.

In this trench where men could die at any moment, this kind of harmless banter actually helped close the distance between them.

Second Lieutenant Stauffenberg joined in the laughter, but quickly restrained it, his expression turning entirely serious.

"Your Highness, if everyone stayed in headquarters, we wouldn't win this war!"

The somewhat young second lieutenant spoke loudly. Immediately after, he did something Georg completely didn't expect.

He reached up, unbuttoned his uniform tunic, and carefully pulled a neatly folded piece of paper from an inside pocket close to his heart.

After unfolding the paper, Crown Prince Georg realized it was a black-and-white photograph clipped from a newspaper.

Although the edges were slightly frayed from repeated rubbing, the person in the photo was still clearly discernible.

Georg took a closer look and burst out laughing.

Because this photo was a half-body shot of Morin taken by a reporter during his appearance at the Semperoper in Dresden. In the photo, Morin, wearing a crisp uniform, gazed resolutely in another direction.

"This is..." Georg pointed at the photo, asking despite knowing the answer.

"This is Colonel Morin!"

Second Lieutenant Stauffenberg's tone carried undisguised excitement and admiration.

"Your Highness, I gave up the opportunity to serve on the General Staff and voluntarily applied to join the Storm Assault Battalion because I want to become an Imperial hero like Colonel Morin!"

The second lieutenant carefully refolded the photo, tucked it back into the pocket over his heart, and patted the spot.

"Colonel Morin proved that true honor is forged in muddy trenches with bayonets and bullets, not written in carpeted offices!"

Georg looked at this passionate young man, feeling quite moved.

He turned to the other soldiers and officers around him, unable to resist asking, "What about the rest of you? Do you feel the same way?"

The Stormtroopers in the trench nodded in agreement.

Some smiled sheepishly, then, imitating Stauffenberg, pulled photos of varying sizes from their pockets or helmet liners. They were universally photos of Morin, all from the Semperoper interview.

This was also the clearest recent photo of Morin available through public channels.

Crown Prince Georg watched these soldiers pulling out photos of Morin, a complex mix of emotions churning within him.

He was acutely aware of one fact— in the hearts of these frontline soldiers and officers, the name Friedrich von Morin had far surpassed the category of an "excellent officer."

These men carrying Morin's photo might not just be idolizing a powerful spellcaster or a war hero.

It was because Morin did what they believed was "most right."

A second lieutenant fresh out of the military academy had fought his way across both the Eastern and Western Fronts in less than a year.

From a single man to an entire unit, the equipment and tactics of his instruction unit were promoted across the entire army. Submachine guns, assault rigs, storm assault tactics...

Almost every single thing that changed the way frontline soldiers fought was connected to him.

More importantly, he always charged at the very front.

In the armies of this era, higher-ranking officers generally stayed in rear command posts, which was standard practice.

Morin, charging enemy lines and taking artillery fire alongside the soldiers... frankly speaking, was not what a normal commander should look like.

But the problem was, to these young soldiers of the Storm Assault Battalions, the story of Morin fighting on the frontlines was clearly far more inspiring than someone strategizing from the rear.

Georg quickly weighed this in his mind.

This "personality cult" style of morale boosting was naturally a good thing in the present.

The Empire needed a benchmark figure like Morin to rally the army's spirit, especially while the war raged on.

But looking at it from a longer-term perspective...

Crown Prince Georg temporarily suppressed the thought. Leaving aside his relationship with Morin, now was not the time to consider such matters.

The Belgrade fortress complexes hadn't been taken yet, and the war in the Balkans was not over...

What he needed was the combat will of these soldiers, not to get bogged down in political maneuvering before the attack commenced.

Thinking of this, Georg took a deep breath. Following the flow, he drew the sword at his waist and raised it high.

"Soldiers of the Empire!"

Georg's voice echoed in the trench, overpowering everyone else's.

"The Empire sees your courage! I, too, see your determination!"

He pointed the tip of his sword out of the trench, toward the fortress in the darkness.

"The Empire hopes that every single one of you can become a hero like Colonel Morin!"

"If we have thousands of Colonel Morins in our army, then no enemy in this world can stop our march!"

Georg's words were like a drop of water falling into boiling oil, instantly igniting the entire trench.

"Honor is my life!"

Second Lieutenant Stauffenberg raised his submachine gun and roared impulsively.

"For the Empire! For His Majesty the Emperor! For His Highness the Crown Prince!"

The cheers spread down both sides of the trench, eventually coalescing into a unified, echoing roar.

Feeling the hot-blooded passion surging from the soldiers, Georg admitted his own heart rate had picked up considerably. He even felt an urge to grab a submachine gun and charge alongside these men.

In this moment, he finally experienced firsthand just how inspiring Morin's actions were to the frontline soldiers...

After concluding his inspection, he nodded to the soldiers before him, turned, and walked back along the trench.

Nobelsdorff followed the Crown Prince's footsteps, and the two, along with other accompanying officers, left the jump-off position under the escort of the General's Guard.

At 3:45 AM, Crown Prince Georg and his entourage arrived at the temporary firing position of the "Odin III" armored train. Several command officers of the Fifth Army were already waiting there.

The massive body of the "Odin III" crouched on the tracks like a centipede. On the main gun car, the barrel of the "Gungnir" twelve-stage accelerating magitech cannon was raised high, pointing toward the night sky over Belgrade.

The commander of the armored train stepped forward immediately upon seeing the Crown Prince arrive.

"Your Highness! 'Odin III' has completed all firing preparations and is ready to fire at any time!"

Georg nodded and walked to a temporary observation post a short distance from the armored train.

Several large telescopes and an optical rangefinder were set up here. Behind them, a simple shelter housed a map table and some communication equipment.

Georg and the present officers all pulled out their pocket watches. The hands began to tick forward, the second hand advancing tick by tick.

"Three minutes left..." Georg said softly.

No one answered; everyone was waiting.

One minute.

Thirty seconds.

Ten seconds.

When the hour hands on multiple pocket watches hit the number 4 simultaneously, Crown Prince Georg looked up toward the armored train.

"'Gungnir' firing preparations complete!"

"Magitech circuit charging normal!"

"Target confirmed! Temporary designation: Belgrade Northwest Fortress Complex, Fortress No. 1!"

The armored train commander's orders followed swiftly, echoing through the carriages via the speaking tube system.

"'Gungnir,' fire!"

"BOOM——!"

A blinding light erupted from the muzzle of the "Gungnir." The twelve acceleration runes completed their energy transfer in an instant, propelling the heavy radiant crystal reaction shell out of the barrel at an unimaginable speed.

The shell traced a nearly vertical parabolic arc across the pre-dawn sky, vanishing into the darkness.

Over twenty seconds later.

On the distant horizon, an incredibly harsh sphere of light suddenly appeared.

The sphere of light rapidly expanded to an astonishing size the moment it detonated. The searing white light illuminated the distant horizon, as if someone had forcibly torn open a rift to the sun in that direction.

Georg immediately raised his binoculars, staring intently at that spot.

As the sphere of light gradually faded, a column of black smoke slowly rose from the location of the Belgrade outer fortress complex.

Immediately following, several muffled explosions rolled in from the distance—the ammunition depots inside the fortress had detonated in a chain reaction.

The secondary explosions blew several more orange-red fireballs out of the black smoke. Rubble and building debris were launched high into the air.

"Is the accuracy really that high? A first-round hit?" Georg lowered his binoculars and spoke briefly.

Hearing this, the Chief of Staff asked the armored train officers a few quick questions, then ran back to the Crown Prince to answer: "Your Highness, it should be due to the large blast radius. It appears the actual impact point was slightly behind the target."

Immediately, "Odin III" began reloading for the next round.

The magitech circuits recharged, and firing preparations were completed in under three minutes.

The second radiant crystal reaction shell was loaded into the chamber.

"Gungnir, fire!"

Another streak of light arced across the sky.

This time, it landed in a different sector of the Belgrade outer fortress complex, scoring a direct hit on a medium-sized fort built into a hillside.

Just like the "Odin," the lead ship of the Odin-class armored trains, when it knocked on the gates of Paris.

The "Odin III" also utilized plunging fire from a distance of 13 kilometers, allowing the radiant crystal reaction shells to drop onto the enemy fortresses in a near-vertical strike, causing far more direct devastation.

Georg watched the second mushroom cloud rise in the distance and couldn't help but sigh in admiration.

"Sir Friedrich was right. We really do need these 'big tubes'."

The instant the first modified radiant crystal reaction shell detonated, the Serbian defenders in the Belgrade outer fortress complex thought the sky had fallen.

That blinding sphere of light expanded to an absurd size directly above "Fortress No. 1"—which was actually Fort 12 of this complex. The intense heat and shockwave uprooted all surface facilities within a radius of several dozen meters.

When the light faded, all that remained of the relatively small Fort 12 was a steaming crater.

At the nearest position, Fort 11, and the surrounding trenches, the defenders' first reaction wasn't even fear...

Because before their brains could process the emotion of fear, the light from the explosion struck them temporarily blind.

Several soldiers stationed behind windows and firing slits instinctively clutched their eyes, tumbling to the ground in darkness. The afterimage of that white sphere burned into their retinas, refusing to fade no matter how hard they rubbed.

"Dear God... what was that thing?!"

A sergeant squatted at the bottom of a trench near the fort, blinking his tearing eyes hard.

A comrade beside him gathered his courage, peeked his head out of the trench for a glance, and shrank back, his face stark white.

"'Fort 12' is gone."

"What the fuck do you mean 'gone'?"

"It's just gone! The whole thing is gone! There's only a crater left on the ground!"

Before the defenders could digest this reality, the second attack arrived.

The radiant crystal reaction shell landed in a different direction outside their line of sight, but the tremor from the explosion traveled through the ground. The floor beneath their feet shook violently for two seconds, nearly knocking many off their feet.

"Almighty Lord..."

Some Serbian soldiers began crossing themselves, silently reciting Orthodox prayers.

But the content of their prayers was remarkably uniform: Don't let our position be next.

Meanwhile, the situation inside the Garrison Command of the Belgrade outer fortress complex was no better.

Several communication lines were severed after the first strike, making contact between the various forts, main strongholds, and trench lines intermittent.

The gray-bearded Garrison Commander, along with his officers, was trying to figure out what exactly had happened.

"'Fort 12'! 'Fort 12', respond!"

The communications soldier shouted into the telephone receiver for a long time, receiving only static in return.

"'Fort 12' is not responding, General."

The Garrison Commander's face turned livid.

"Fort 12" wasn't a small outpost; it was a concrete fortress with a complete defense system, garrisoned by two reinforced infantry companies and some artillery units.

And now it was just gone?

"'Fort 11' reporting!"

The communications soldier finally connected another line.

"The observer at 'Fort 11' says he saw only a massive crater where 'Fort 12' used to be... containing only unrecognizable debris."

The Garrison Commander fell completely silent.

After a few seconds, he asked, "Were any units from the 'Special Engineer Regiment 0' deployed in the destroyed fort?"

A staff officer checked the roster, his expression growing even grimmer.

"'Fort 12' and 'Fort 11' each had 35 Vukodlak deployed. The batch at 'Fort 12'... should all be dead."

The Garrison Commander slammed his fist hard onto the table. In the garrison's operational plan, these supernatural units were supposed to be their "trump cards."

Once Saxon infantry breached the interior of the fortress complex, these Vukodlak were expected to inflict massive casualties on the enemy in close-quarters combat.

But now, they had been turned to ash before even catching a glimpse of the enemy.

At that moment, the third radiant crystal reaction shell landed.

The entire Garrison Command shook with it, and a shower of dust rained down from the ceiling.

"What kind of weapon are the Saxons using?! Can our artillery return fire?!"

The Garrison Commander looked at the staff officer beside him.

"General, the artillery observation post says they've roughly determined the direction of the Saxon attack, but... the problem is, those things are falling too fast. They're dropping almost vertically from the sky."

"Dropping vertically?"

"Yes. The observers say the angle of impact of those shells is near 90 degrees; it's not a standard curved trajectory."

While the two were speaking, the fourth radiant crystal reaction shell hit.

Followed closely by the fifth, the sixth...

The "Odin III" armored train's bombardment continued.

But the Fifth Army's attack went far beyond just that.

The moment the third radiant crystal reaction shell fell, the Fifth Army's conventional artillery positions also unleashed their roar.

Hundreds, thousands of artillery pieces of various calibers fired simultaneously. The flames erupting from the muzzles linked together into a sea of fire, illuminating the pre-dawn sky as bright as day.

The muffled booms of the cannons converged into a continuous, heart-pounding thunder.

As one of the commanders at the forefront of tactical innovation in the Imperial Army, Crown Prince Georg possessed an intuition for air-ground coordination and firepower utilization remarkably similar to Morin's.

During the few days they waited for the armored trains to get into position, the Fifth Army hadn't been idle. They fully utilized the massive aviation corps at their disposal.

Every day, scores of reconnaissance planes circled the skies above Belgrade...

Although the Serbians tried to drive them away with anti-aircraft fire, the Saxon pilots braved the danger, capturing vast amounts of high-definition aerial photographs.

Through analyzing these photos, the Fifth Army's staff officers almost completely mapped out the defensive deployments of the Belgrade outer garrison.

Not just the specific structures of the fortress complexes, but also the hidden communication trenches, ammunition dumps, reserve assembly areas...

...as well as the identified defensive seams and salients.

Now, these high-value targets marked on the map were all translated into cold firing parameters in the hands of the artillerymen.

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Dense clusters of shells rained down on the Serbian positions like a torrential downpour.

While conventional artillery couldn't destroy a fortress with a single shot like an armored train, their terrifying rate of fire and coverage area brought equally devastating destruction to the defenders.

Communication trenches were collapsed, trapping reinforcements halfway; ammunition dumps were detonated, triggering chain reactions; exposed machine gun nests were blown sky-high, men and guns alike.

The outer defensive line north of Belgrade was instantly engulfed in a sea of fire.

On a high vantage point, Crown Prince Georg held his binoculars, watching the boiling land in the distance.

The firing rate of the "Odin III" armored train had begun to slow down by now.

Such tremendously powerful magitech weapons placed an immense burden on the barrel and magitech circuits. After continuous firing, forced cooling and temporary maintenance were mandatory.

But even so, "Odin III" had fired a full 14 modified radiant crystal reaction shells.

These 14 shells acted like 14 swords of divine punishment falling from the sky, precisely smashing the key nodes of the fortress complexes defending Belgrade.

Those sturdy forts that had once caused the Austro-Hungarian army to leave mountains of corpses were now nothing more than piles of smoking ruins.

As the first rays of morning sun pierced the clouds and illuminated the devastated battlefield, the Saxon artillery fire began to extend.

The barrage crept toward the Serbian depth defenses, clearing space for the infantry to charge.

"Tweeet——! Tweeeeet——!"

The sound of assault whistles echoed from all the Fifth Army's jump-off positions.

Across the front line, the soldiers of the Storm Assault Battalions vaulted silently from their trenches like agile cheetahs.

They rapidly dispersed into small combat teams, using the terrain for cover, and charged toward the shattered Serbian positions at breakneck speed.

Simultaneously, the Armored Knights attached to the Fifth Army surged from their camouflaged pits near the trenches, launching their assault in coordination with the infantry.

The battle had actually lost all suspense the moment the radiant crystal reaction shells first landed.