Chapter 29: Such a Wonderful Beginning?

The 24th Division Commander, General José Sanjurjo, was a man with very good sleeping habits. While the cannons roared outside Seville, he was still sound asleep, caught up in his mistress’s embrace.

It wasn’t until his Chief of Staff burst into the small, detached house he had personally ‘requisitioned,’ roughly waking him from his mistress’s arms, that the Royal Army Division Commander learned the enemy had launched an offensive. When the Chief of Staff informed him that 70% of their outlying artillery positions had been hit by precise enemy fire, the General completely froze.

He violently shoved his mistress off the bed and leaped up, his face filled with disbelief. “What did you say?! Seventy percent of the Aetherium Crystal Cannon emplacements are gone?!”

“Yes, General. The enemy’s fire was too accurate. And for some reason, they had extremely thorough intelligence on the locations of our Aetherium Crystal Cannon positions…”

Sanjurjo felt a wave of dizziness wash over him. His original plan was to retreat into Seville, forcing the enemy’s main force to cluster for a frontal assault. Then, he would use the powerful anti-cluster capability of the Aetherium Crystal Cannons to inflict massive casualties on them—a tactic that had achieved great success against the National Army and the International Brigades on other fronts. The Britannians had also assured Sanjurjo that even the Saxon infantry would suffer heavy losses when faced with Aetherium Crystal Cannon bombardments.

What the Britannians hadn’t mentioned was that the Saxon artillery would not be suppressed.

Now, just as the battle began, his most vital heavy fire support had been severely crippled. Sanjurjo felt completely lost about what to do next.

He forced himself to calm down, practically roaring at his Chief of Staff: “Relay my order! All units immediately move to their designated positions! Organize the defense as planned! The enemy must not be allowed to approach Seville!”

The Chief of Staff nodded, about to say something, when the room door was violently flung open again. A messenger scrambled inside, his voice thick with tears. “General! It’s bad! The enemy’s main ground forces are attacking our entire southeast defensive line!”

As the whistle of the final shell faded into the distance, a sharp bugle call for the charge sliced through the brief calm of the battlefield.

“All Company, Attack!” Captain Hauser’s roar sounded across the 3rd Company’s position. Immediately after, massed figures in field gray uniforms leaped out from behind the dirt mounds and shell craters. The 1st Battalion’s three companies spread out into multiple skirmish lines, with each soldier maintaining a distance of four to five paces from the next. The entire formation, like a thin gray thread, surged toward the smoking plateau ahead.

On this front outside Seville, an army of 20,000 troops—comprising three infantry brigades, two cavalry regiments from the Saxon Expeditionary Force, the International Brigades, and the National Army—participated in this offensive.

The 1st Battalion of the 32nd Regiment, where Morin was, was merely one tactical unit in this massive attack. Looking across the entire horizon, soldiers were streaming forward. The shouts, the officers’ commands, and the heavy thud of boots merged into a unique symphony of war.

Morin was one note in this symphony. This was the first time since his arrival in this world that he had personally taken part in a charge of such scale. Under the military technology and rules of his previous life, charges of this size were long extinct.

Up until his transmigration, Morin’s career plan was to graduate from the military academy, undergo rigorous training in the military, solidify his professional skills, and eventually, command the Blue Star’s strongest heavy combined arms battalion on a grand battlefield.

But why was he now charging across an unfamiliar battlefield, holding a long, heavy, old-fashioned rifle, risking a bullet at any moment? And wearing that damn, non-protective, and stuffy spiked helmet?

He tightly gripped his rifle, his heart pounding furiously in his chest, unsure if the feeling was rage, nervousness, or excitement.

On the system map in the upper-left corner of his vision, countless blue arrows representing the 16th Infantry Brigade and its allies moved like a giant comb, sweeping the land outside Seville. The 32nd Infantry Regiment was positioned on the extreme left flank of the entire brigade, and their 1st Battalion was on the extreme left of the regiment. The 1st Battalion, already having suffered casualties, was tasked with assaulting one of the Aetherium Crystal Cannon emplacements previously targeted by the artillery.

The effectiveness of the 105mm howitzers was immediately apparent; the advance up the plateau met almost no meaningful resistance. On the shattered artillery position, twisted corpses of Royal Army soldiers and weapons blown into pieces were scattered everywhere. The air was thick with the acrid smell of gunpowder, dirt, and blood.

Morin led the 3rd Platoon to tread on the soft, scorched earth, quickly occupying the position that had just belonged to the enemy. The Aetherium Crystal Cannons that had once seemed so formidable were now just piles of twisted, smoking metal, posing no threat.

Morin cautiously moved to the side of the plateau facing Seville, and his field of view widened dramatically. Aided by the system map, he could clearly see the entire battlefield situation. This was his first time witnessing what an offensive launched by 20,000 troops looked like on a wide front.

In the center, the Saxon Army’s 16th Infantry Brigade’s three infantry regiments, arranged shoulder-to-shoulder as the main attacking force, had already stabbed directly into the Royal Army’s defense line like a sharp dagger.

About six hundred meters to the left of the 1st Battalion’s position, another force was launching an equally fierce attack. It was the soldiers of the International Brigades. Their uniforms were mismatched, and their equipment consisted mostly of outdated rifles supplied by the Saxon Empire. They lacked the fire support of heavy machine guns or mortars.

Yet, their fighting will was astonishingly tenacious. Facing the Royal Army’s defense lines, they were pushing forward almost entirely with sheer willpower and flesh and blood. After only a brief exchange of fire, they launched a reckless charge, using bayonets and shovels to drive back the numerically superior enemy in fierce hand-to-hand combat.

“All companies, attention! Establish defensive lines in place! Hold this high ground!” Just as Morin felt a rush of excitement from watching the International Brigades’ fierce attack, Battalion Commander Major Thomas’s order was quickly relayed to every company via messengers.

This decision was completely in line with the current Saxon military doctrine. This plateau offered excellent visibility, overlooking a large area, making it a crucial spot for artillery observation and fire support. It was a position that had to be firmly controlled, as artillery could later be deployed here to shell the entirety of Seville.

The soldiers immediately got to work, quickly constructing makeshift fortifications using existing shell craters, discarded crates, and sandbags.

But a strong sense of unease rose in Morin’s heart. He knew that their previous reconnaissance could not possibly have marked all the enemy’s artillery positions. Therefore, no matter how effective the counter-battery fire had been, it was highly likely that not all of the enemy’s long-range fire support had been destroyed.

Since this was the Royal Army’s former Aetherium Crystal Cannon emplacement, the enemy undoubtedly had precise coordinates and geographical information for this high ground. Now that the Saxons occupied it, if the surviving enemy artillerymen weren’t fools, their next target would inevitably be this very location.

And with the 1st Battalion now concentrating virtually all its strength in this small, exposed area… they might as well have painted ‘Bomb Me Now’ on their position.

(End of Chapter 29)