Trenches, Guns, and Magic

Before the Romanian soldiers could react, a blinding white light erupted overhead.

All the searchlights on the belly of the L15 armored airship clicked on simultaneously. Several thick beams of light stabbed straight down, illuminating the entire ridge and the pass between them as bright as day.

The Romanian soldiers who had just climbed out of their tunnels and trenches to man their defensive positions instinctively threw their hands up to shield their eyes from the intense glare. Some even thought an artillery shell had detonated an ammunition dump.

Meanwhile, at an altitude of over 1,700 meters.

In the cargo bay of the L15 armored airship, Morin was clinging to the frontal main armor of the “Siegfried Mark I, Modified” piloted by Ludwig, his hands death-gripping the grab handles provided on the edge of the armor plate.

The high-altitude wind was like a knife carrying bursts of freezing air, slapping against his face relentlessly.

Even though Morin was wearing flight goggles, they only ensured he could keep his eyes open. Furthermore, the effectiveness of these early goggles was truly limited, with wind constantly seeping in through the gaps.

“Friedrich… Friedrich! This thing is swaying!”

Ludwig’s voice came from the external speakers on the Armored Knight’s chest cavity, carrying a distinct note of panic.

At this moment, the cargo bay floor beneath the Armored Knight was fully open. The 18-ton steel giant dangled in mid-air, suspended entirely by the mechanical securing mechanism above it.

A turbulent air current hit the airship’s gas envelope, causing the entire hull to tilt slightly. The mechanical securing mechanism emitted the groaning sound of twisting metal, and the Armored Knight swayed with it.

Morin’s body swayed as well, but his arm strength, enhanced by the modification potion, made him feel as if he were welded to the outer armor; he couldn’t be thrown off.

He grinned widely at the front main armor of the Armored Knight—in “Sympathetic State,” Ludwig could acquire a panoramic view of the outside world directly through the armor, so Morin knew very well the other could see his expression.

“Leave everything to me, just relax!”

Morin opened his mouth and shouted.

But the howling of the high-altitude wind was too loud; the simple sound pickup devices on the Armored Knight’s shell couldn’t catch his voice at all.

So from Ludwig’s perspective, the scene became this—Morin clinging to the front of the Armored Knight, flashing an eerie smile while muttering something unintelligible.

“What are you saying? I can’t f*cking hear you!”

Ludwig shouted until his voice almost cracked, but Morin had no time for him now.

He turned his head, glancing at the crewmen standing inside the guardrails on both sides responsible for operating the securing mechanism, and made an “OK” gesture—thumb and index finger forming a circle, the other three fingers extended.

The thumbs-up gesture hadn’t yet become popular in Europa in this era.

However, this circle gesture had long been universally understood across European nations due to telegraphy and trade with the North American colonies.

The crewmen on both sides assisting with the airdrop returned the same gesture.

The signal lights inside the cargo bay flickered on. The dark red glow quieted everyone down.

Morin took advantage of these few seconds of preparation time to glance downward.

Under the beams of the searchlights, the outline of the pass position was crystal clear—trenches, bunkers, artillery emplacements… even more intuitive than what he saw on the system map.

Simultaneously, in the observation gondola beneath the airship, Chief Gunnery Officer Lieutenant Gray was staring down at the illuminated pass position through thickened glass.

Compared to the independent fire control rooms equipped on specialized combat airships, the fire control room on the L15, a converted assault airship, was vastly simplified and directly merged with the observation gondola.

The space was suffocatingly cramped; Lieutenant Gray was practically curled up in his seat operating the controls.

“Gunnery Chief in position! Target area confirmed!”

He grabbed the voice tube and shouted to the bridge.

In the research conducted by the “Advanced Combat Technology Research Department” of the Air Force General Staff, the theory of laying down suppressive fire to “clear the LZ” (Landing Zone) prior to an armored airship airdrop, providing a better landing area for the airborne units, had already been proposed.

Therefore, the L15 armored airship, acting as a tactical verification unit, naturally undertook the task of theoretical validation.

Although not equipped with heavy firepower, Captain Andreas’s voice soon echoed back into the observation gondola: “All guns fire at will! Suppress ground targets!”

Lieutenant Gray turned to another voice tube on the fire control console, issuing orders to all gun emplacements on the underside of the armored airship:

“All underside gun emplacements, attention—fire at will! I repeat—fire at will!”

“Heavy machine guns prioritize covering the trench lines; autocannons concentrate fire on machine gun positions illuminated by searchlights!”

Shortly after the order was given, several twin-linked MG08 heavy machine gun turrets positioned beneath the airship opened fire almost simultaneously.

Tracer rounds poured down from an altitude of over a thousand meters, drawing dense red lines of light in the night sky, intertwining with the white beams of the searchlights.

At this altitude, the accuracy of heavy machine guns was significantly reduced.

But the gunners employed a saturation fire tactic—two MG08s fired in long bursts, sweeping the barrage from one end of the trench to the other, and then back again.

In the face of probability, some bullets would always find their targets.

Some 7.92mm bullets fired almost vertically into the open trenches. Romanian soldiers were hit without any cover, and screams rose and fell in succession.

Meanwhile, the gunners of the twin-linked 20mm Becker autocannons, following Lieutenant Gray’s guidance, concentrated their fire on several machine gun positions illuminated by the searchlights.

The twenty-round magazines of the Becker autocannons indeed limited sustained firepower, requiring manual replacement after emptying a magazine. But Lieutenant Gray, taking this into account, had already arranged for grouped, alternating fire in advance.

“Gun emplacements one and three, fire first! Emplacements two and four, stand by!”

From the observation gondola, Lieutenant Gray kept his eyes on the impact effects below while constantly correcting his orders.

“Emplacement one, correct left! Emplacement three, good—reload! Emplacements two and four, take over firing!”

After three rounds of burst fire, several Romanian machine gun positions were left in a mess. Sandbags shattered and scattered; soldiers hit directly by the 20mm autocannon shells were torn apart on the spot, leaving not even a complete corpse.

Several heavy machine gun positions originally attempting to fire down the mountain were quickly silenced.

At this moment, the L15 armored airship in the sky finally reached the airdrop position. The red light in the cargo bay blinked rapidly.

The crewmen completed their final preparations; the quick-release buckles on the securing mechanisms were in a standby-to-release state.

Morin took a deep breath and looked down one more time.

On the pass position illuminated by searchlights, the Romanians were fleeing in all directions in chaos.

Immediately after, the heavy machine guns and autocannons ceased firing simultaneously, leaving a clear airspace. The signal light in the cargo bay also changed from red to green.

“Drop!”

The operators in the cargo bay pulled down three sets of quick-release levers simultaneously.

The crisp sound of metal clashing rang out in succession as the three “Siegfried Mark I, Modified” units detached from their securing mechanisms simultaneously.

The Armored Knight Morin was clinging to dropped suddenly—free-fall had begun.

“Ahhh—if I fall to my death, even as a ghost I won’t agree to you and Patricia being together!”

Ludwig couldn’t help but scream inside his cockpit.

The pilots of the other two Armored Knights weren’t faring much better. Despite being battle-hardened Teutonic Knights, experiencing free-fall inside an eighteen-ton steel machine was completely different from riding a roller coaster.

The sound of the wind instantly turned into a shriek.

Morin’s hair was flattened against his scalp by the airflow. Even with flight goggles, his eyes were blown so hard he could barely keep them open.

The altitude they were dropped from was 1,700 meters. The distance to the pass position, sitting at an elevation of over 1,000 meters, was just over 600 meters. Thus, the entire descent process wasn’t long; in fact, it could be said to be extremely fast.

Therefore, Morin had already completed his spellcasting preparations before the airdrop—four white feathers grasped in his hand trembled wildly in the violent airflow.

One second, two seconds, three seconds—

That was enough.

Morin’s lips began moving rapidly. The syllables of the incantation miraculously weren’t torn apart by the wind; they were even clearly audible in his own ears.

[Feather Fall] activate!

Mana poured from Morin’s body, instantly covering the Armored Knight he was clinging to, as well as the other two steel giants falling simultaneously on either side.

The instant the spell took effect, Ludwig clearly felt the change inside the cockpit.

That sensation of falling, which gave his bladder a peculiar feeling, rapidly subsided in an incredible linear fashion.

The eighteen-ton Armored Knights decelerated from a rapid plunge to a feather-like descent within less than three seconds.

By the last few dozen meters, Ludwig finally felt that bizarre sense of weightlessness.

Looking down through the panoramic vision of the “Sympathetic State,” he could clearly see the Romanian soldiers on the pass position, heads thrown back, mouths wide open.

Their faces were etched with disbelief.

“Boom!”

“Boom!”

“Boom!”

Three muffled but not violent sounds of impact rang out. The mechanical feet of the three Armored Knights smashed three shallow craters into the pass position.

Despite the deceleration of [Feather Fall], the impact of an eighteen-ton total combat weight landing on the position still kicked up a massive amount of scree and dust.

At the very last moment before landing, Morin leaped from the Armored Knight, shedding the residual impact force with a roll, and ended up in a stable half-crouch beside the foot of Ludwig’s “Siegfried Mark I, Modified.”

When he straightened up, the submachine gun in his hands was already leveled.

In a trench less than twenty meters ahead of him, over a dozen Romanian soldiers were staring dumbfounded at the three steel giants standing tall on the pass. Their cognitive frameworks completely collapsed in that instant.

When Lieutenant Colonel Popescu rushed out of the command bunker, he ran right into this scene. He had never made any preparations to fight Armored Knights on a mountain pass position.

Not because of negligence, but because in the eyes of most people, this was common sense.

During border frictions with the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the other side had also tried deploying Armored Knights, attempting to rely on the natural enemy of infantry to capture the pass.

But these ten-plus-ton steel giants simply couldn’t maneuver normally on narrow mountain paths. After two consecutive Austro-Hungarian Armored Knights tumbled off cliffs and were completely destroyed…

This became the consensus of all mountain defense commanders on both sides.

But now, three Saxon Imperial Armored Knights had bypassed all mountain roads and defense lines, dropping straight down from the sky.

“Holy Mother Mary…”

This was the only phrase Lieutenant Colonel Popescu could squeeze from his throat at this moment. He then grabbed his adjutant and rushed toward a concealed tunnel at the rear of the position.

“No matter what, we cannot let the enemy pass through here!”

“Da-da-da-da-da!”

The MG08 heavy machine gun mounted under the mechanical arm of an Armored Knight opened fire first.

At such close range with a flat trajectory, the dense barrage instantly swept across the nearest section of the trench.

The closest Romanian soldiers had no time to dodge, falling in swathes to the ground.

Those further away scrambled frantically into the trenches, but the commanding height of the Armored Knights turned the trenches into a semi-open shooting gallery.

Morin also raised his left hand. A red signal flare tore through the night sky, blooming into a blood-red light above the pass.

Halfway up the mountain, the allied troops charging towards the pass all saw this signal flare.

The moment the red signal flare rose, the assault troops halfway up the mountain boiled over.

The soldiers of the instruction unit instantly understood the meaning of that signal flare—the Commander was already on the pass.

“Charge with me!”

Rommel and the others, who were leading men upward, felt a surge of adrenaline. Waving their hands, they accelerated and sprinted wildly upward.

And the soldiers behind them, equally pumped up, howled and followed suit.

The speed at which these soldiers ran was absurdly fast. On the steep scree slope, they were surprisingly not much slower than sprinting on flat ground.

The Guard soldiers incorporated into the combat order followed closely behind the instruction unit.

They managed to maintain formation at first, but it didn’t take long for them to realize that the instruction unit troops ahead weren’t “charging”; they were practically racing for their lives.

A few Guard NCOs who considered their stamina not bad began panting heavily, their feet slipping on the scree slope.

“What’s going on! We’re all in the Guard Corps, what the hell are those guys in front eating?”

First Lieutenant Werner of the Guard, who was attacking alongside the troops, cursed while running upward desperately. His military boots crushed a loose piece of rock, and he almost tumbled.

Another Guard captain beside him grabbed his arm and pulled him up. The two exchanged a glance, both seeing an indescribable expression on the other’s face.

It was a bit embarrassing…

Not embarrassing in front of the enemy—but embarrassing in front of their allies.

Werner gritted his teeth, turned his head, and roared at the Guard soldiers behind him.

“We are all Guardsmen! Run! Don’t lose all our face!”

That roar actually worked.

The Guard soldiers also got competitive, every single one of them risking their lives to charge upward.

The assault speed of both units increased. Looking from afar, the pitch-black mountain slope was dotted with dancing points of light—torches and flashlights—and these points of light were surging toward the pass at an astonishing speed.

At this moment, on several other axes of attack, the Austro-Hungarian mountain troops also saw the red signal flare rising from the pass.

Colonel Holzer stood behind a protruding rock halfway up the mountain, looking through binoculars toward the pass.

The muzzle flashes of those three Armored Knights firing were exceptionally conspicuous in the dark night.

The officers of the 2nd Kaiserjäger Regiment behind him, listening to the deafening battle cries from other attack directions and watching those points of light clearly accelerating, all had somewhat complicated expressions on their faces.

The 2nd Battalion Commander lowered his binoculars, sighing softly.

“The Saxons… how on earth do they train soldiers like this?”

Colonel Holzer didn’t answer his question.

But the thoughts churning in this Austro-Hungarian colonel’s mind were actually the same as those of every officer present… If the Austro-Hungarian troops had this kind of drive, would the war have turned out this badly?

“Stop standing around.”

Colonel Holzer put away his binoculars and drew his pistol from his waist.

“Send orders: the entire regiment accelerates its advance—coordinate with the Saxons to take the pass!”

On the pass position, the battle had reached a white-hot stage… or rather, it had directly entered a one-sided state.

The other two Armored Knights, following the tasks previously assigned by Morin, were suppressing the Romanian defenders on the position.

The eighteen-ton steel giants marched with heavy steps, moving laterally along the trench lines.

Every few steps, the twin-linked MG08s on their mechanical arms would spray a burst into the trenches, sending sandbags and dirt flying everywhere.

Any Romanian soldier who attempted to lean out and organize a counterattack would be covered in a hail of bullets the next second.

Even more fatally, these two Armored Knights consciously covered several communication trenches leading to the forward positions with their firepower.

This meant the Romanian defenders couldn’t reinforce the front lines—the resistance faced by the charging allied infantry would be drastically weakened.

Meanwhile, Morin was currently crouching near the foot of the third Armored Knight piloted by Ludwig. The two coordinated their attack toward the artillery positions and command post at the rear of the pass.

With every step the nearly six-meter-tall steel giant took, the surrounding ground trembled.

The Romanian soldiers hiding in the trenches only dared to turtle their heads. Listening to the increasingly close metallic footsteps, the rifles in their hands shook uncontrollably.

Ludwig advanced with the Armored Knight for about fifty meters. Ahead appeared a zigzagging communication trench and several semi-buried bunkers.

Morin rolled out from the cover of the Armored Knight.

His speed was incredibly fast. With just a light push of his toes against the gravel ground, he sprang forward six or seven meters.

His submachine gun opened fire while he was moving.

“Da-da-da—”

A short burst swept across the lip of the communication trench. An officer who popped his head up in the trench was taken down before he could even fire his gun.

Morin rushed to the edge of the communication trench and leaped down without hesitation.

There were four or five Romanian soldiers still in the trench.

Inside the narrow communication bunker, the remaining men reacted. Some drew their pistols, while others attempted to lunge for their rifles.

But the reaction speed advantage granted by the modification potion made Morin’s performance in this close-quarters firefight “crushing-tier.” He could even execute “pre-firing” in face-to-face situations.

While tumbling in from the trench opening, he had already completed his aim in mid-air, pulling the trigger the moment he landed.

Three seconds later, the trench fell silent.

Morin flicked away the empty magazine. The [Mage Hand] had already grabbed a fresh magazine from his chest rig in advance, inserting it into the magwell almost without interruption. The entire sequence of movements was smooth and seamless.

He looked back to confirm Ludwig’s Armored Knight had caught up, took a running start to vault out of the trench, and, using the massive body of the Armored Knight for cover, rapidly approached the next trench.

Ludwig watched all this through the panoramic vision in his cockpit.

The wide-angle view provided by the “Sympathetic State” allowed him to track every single one of Morin’s movements.

But the problem was that Morin’s movement speed was too fast.

Or rather, it could no longer be simply described as “fast.”

That man’s method of movement completely defied Ludwig’s understanding of the limits of human kinetics.

Vaulting out of the trench, shooting, reloading, rolling to evade, sliding, and shooting again—there was almost no pause between the entire sequence of actions; it was fluid to an uncomfortable degree.

The panoramic vision of the Armored Knight’s “Sympathetic State” inherently possessed a slight lag. It was perfectly fine for tracking normal infantry movement, but Morin’s physical capabilities, enhanced by the modification potion, had far exceeded human limits.

Therefore, his figure appeared stuttering in Ludwig’s panoramic view, like a strip of movie film missing frames.

One second Morin was on the left side of the trench, and the next second he darted behind a sandbag bunker, the movement process in between almost completely missing.

In that instant, a thought that sent chills down his spine suddenly popped into Ludwig’s head.

If Morin’s speed were any faster… would even an Armored Knight fail to react in time?

He was a battle-hardened Teutonic Knight; he knew all too well what that meant.

Currently, the biggest advantages of an Armored Knight were the flexibility of a humanoid weapon and the survivability brought by heavy armor. But if there existed a target fast enough that an Armored Knight couldn’t track it, and it was also a “high-threat mage unit”… then those advantages ceased to exist.

“Friedrich…” Ludwig called out over the loudspeaker.

Morin had just darted out from behind a piece of cover and was loading a new flare into his flare gun. Hearing Ludwig’s voice, he looked up.

“What’s wrong?”

“When you were running that fast just now… do you know I almost lost track of you?”

“Lost track of me?” Morin said while holstering the flare gun. “It shouldn’t be that bad, right?”

“Your movement speed is so fast it’s causing lag in my sympathetic vision.”

Ludwig’s voice came through the loudspeaker, clearly audible between the gaps in artillery explosions.

“Well then, I’m pretty damn awesome!”

Morin didn’t have time to talk to Ludwig right now, because he had already flanked the side of the second trench.

This section of the trench was clearly the main corridor connecting to the command bunker; there were far more people inside than before.

Morin didn’t jump in directly.

He pulled a grenade from his waist, unscrewed the cap, pulled the cord, counted for two seconds, and tossed it in.

“Boom!”

The explosion echoed in the trench, scattering clods of dirt and scree everywhere.

Immediately following, Morin rushed in. Pressing the stock into his shoulder pocket to completely control the submachine gun’s recoil, he slid forward while precisely delivering the remaining bullets in the magazine into the chests or heads of target after target.

The mud underfoot made his slide significantly longer than anticipated. By the time he stopped, there was no one left standing around him.

He casually grabbed two somewhat outdated spherical grenades from a fallen Romanian sergeant, swapped magazines, vaulted out of the trench, and continued forward.

Just then, a frantically firing strongpoint appeared in Morin’s field of vision.

It was a large fire bunker built with sandbags and timber. Inside were at least multiple heavy machine guns and a large number of Romanian soldiers actively firing.

Their firing direction wasn’t towards Morin, but towards the allied infantry charging halfway up the mountain.

From this angle, that heavy machine gun was laying down enfilading fire on the main climbing route leading to the pass. If this strongpoint wasn’t eliminated, the troops charging up would suffer heavy losses.

But the construction of this bunker was too sturdy. Submachine gun rounds couldn’t penetrate those logs and sandbags, and it wasn’t on Morin and Ludwig’s planned route.

Fortunately… they weren’t the only ones fighting.

Morin drew his flare gun and fired a white signal flare toward the fire bunker.

The white ball of light burst open above the bunker, illuminating that area brightly.

The L15 armored airship in the sky had already decelerated and lowered its altitude, hovering less than 300 meters from the pass.

In the observation gondola, Chief Gunnery Officer Lieutenant Gray immediately noticed that white signal flare.

“White signal flare! Target marked!”

Lieutenant Gray quickly confirmed the target location through the observation window, then grabbed the voice tube.

“All gun emplacements, attention! Focus fire on the location marked by the white signal flare!”

The twin-linked MG08 heavy machine guns and 20mm Becker autocannons turned almost simultaneously, pouring an overwhelming rain of bullets from the sky.

The shooting accuracy still couldn’t be considered great, but under this kind of concentrated saturation fire, the dispersion of impact points conversely became an advantage.

Within a radius of twenty or thirty meters around the location marked by the white signal flare, explosions of bullets and autocannon shells erupted everywhere.

That large fire bunker took direct hits from at least a dozen 20mm autocannon shells.

The logs were blown to pieces, the sandbags were torn open like rags, and the men and heavy machine guns inside were reduced to a pile of scrap metal and mangled flesh. The incessant chatter of the machine guns came to an abrupt halt.

Morin looked up at the massive dark shadow in the sky, then turned around and continued pushing toward the artillery positions at the rear of the defense line.

Ludwig’s Armored Knight followed closely behind, its heavy footsteps crunching over trenches and the remains of bunkers, crushing everything in its path.

In the subsequent process of one man and one machine clearing out the rear artillery positions, they met with almost no decent resistance.

These Romanian artillerymen at the rear of the pass position never expected enemies to slaughter their way through from the depth of their own defenses.

Twelve 65mm mountain guns and a few heavy artillery pieces originally intended to be a “secret weapon,” along with piles of ammunition, were left behind as the remaining artillerymen scattered like birds and beasts after Ludwig’s Armored Knight kicked over the first mountain gun.

But Morin didn’t pursue those routed artillerymen.

Because before the battle commenced, he had already extracted the most likely locations for the entrances to the mountain demolition tunnels from the mouths of those experienced Austro-Hungarian mountain veterans.

These tunnels were the true threat to this offensive.

The mountain blasting during the day had already proven that even if the explosives in just one tunnel were detonated, half a mountain slope, along with the troops on it, could be buried.

And right now, thousands of allied infantry were charging towards the pass from all directions.

If the Romanians detonated other pre-buried tunnel explosives at this time, it would be a massacre.

This was also the main reason Morin personally made the jump.

He bypassed the remains of several destroyed fortifications and moved rapidly along the eastern edge of the pass position.

According to the descriptions of those Austro-Hungarian veterans, behind a rock face on the east side of the pass lay a camouflaged tunnel entrance, which was the main access to the demolition chamber inside the mountain.

Ludwig’s Armored Knight followed slightly further back, but the terrain on the east side became increasingly rugged, even featuring drop-offs several meters high. This complex terrain made it impossible for an Armored Knight to pass through easily.

“I might not be able to get through,” Ludwig shouted through the loudspeaker.

Morin waved at him, signaling him to provide fire cover from his current position, intending to go over alone first to assess the situation.

It wasn’t that he was being overly confident, but since landing, aside from four [Feather Fall] spells, he had only used one [Mage Armor] and [Darkvision].

Right now, the spells loaded in his spell slots could be considered quite abundant…

But just then, Morin noticed an anomaly.

On the system map, a string of small points of light was moving rapidly, and the direction they were moving was exactly toward the tunnel entrance he had marked in advance on the system map to find.

Seeing this, Morin took a few strides, climbed atop Ludwig’s Armored Knight, and looked in that direction.

Under [Darkvision] and his own significantly enhanced night vision, Morin saw that in the dim firelight, about twenty or thirty figures were scrambling up the mountain on the east side of the pass using their hands and feet.

Many of them were dressed as combat engineers, carrying large leather backpacks and entrenching tools.

“Crap, someone really is going to trigger a mountain blast. Are these people crazy? Blasting on their own pass position…”

Seeing that the path between himself and this section of the mountain was too rugged, and interspersed with some depth positions, making a quick breakthrough impossible, Morin gritted his teeth and jumped directly onto one of the mechanical arms of the “Siegfried Mark I, Modified.”

“Ludwig, Protocol Three! Throw me over!”