No one in the Imperial Army's Penal Corps is without a story.
It means most people who end up here have a good reason.
"Lord, embrace me, grant me the courage to live tomorrow, lead me with light...!"
The cramped trench was so quiet one could hardly believe it held thousands of men. In the eerie silence that precedes battle, only a rookie's recited prayer echoed alone.
Click.
"You crazy bastard. You're reaching for a cigarette at a time like this?"
"Yeah, tastes freaking great."
Imperial Army 998th Penal Corps, 1st Company, 1st Platoon Leader Yan Verkut.
Despite his terrified subordinate's gaze, he calmly lit his cigarette.
"Get to your positions! To your positions!"
Soldiers trying to back away from the trench wall under the coming battle's terror got a boot from the company commander. The commander, with his greasy hair and flabby cheeks, had never seen the front lines. Only Yan, cigarette between his lips, knew that.
"You there!"
"Y-yes, sir!"
The rookie reciting the prayer answered nervously to the commander's shout. The commander shoved a rifle into his hands and yelled.
"If any of these bastards tries to come back into this trench, shoot them! Got it?!"
"Y-yes?"
The rookie voiced doubt at an order to shoot allies.
The price for that doubt was savage.
"Has this retard got a dick in his ear?!"
Smack!
A beating as natural as breathing.
When the commander grabbed his collar and shook him, the rookie looked ready to cry.
"Anyone coming back to the trench is to be killed on sight! Understand?!"
"Y-yes, sir, aaaaah!!!"
The commander flung the screaming rookie away and turned his gaze to Yan.
"Tch, that insufferable bastard...!"
The commander ground his teeth at the sight of Yan calmly smoking before battle, but he did nothing.
Rank is one thing; the army runs on seniority.
No one in the penal corps had served longer than that man.
"Lock and load, all!"
At the order the men slammed magazines into their rifles.
With a clack, thousands of bolt-action rifles chambered rounds.
"Anyone who runs during battle won't even be counted as dead! If you bastards don't die here, your families will be dragged here under collective responsibility! Fight to the end and die! Got it?!"
"Yes, sir!!!"
"Re~ally fine speech, asshole."
The commander ordering them to go out and die while invoking their families.
A sight seen only in penal units.
An assault without plan or meaning.
Possible only because the penal corps existed to exhaust enemy mana.
"All units, prepare to charge!!!"
The commander raised one hand high, a whistle clenched between his teeth. Yan stubbed his cigarette in a hole dug into the trench wall and straightened his rifle.
And the next moment.
Bweeeeeeeeeeeep!!!
With the whistle's blast the battle began.
"Waaaaaah!!!"
Roars filled the battlefield.
Soldiers leapt over the trench and ran like madmen.
And at the same time, enemy mana cannons and machine-gun fire rained down and swallowed them. After a while the soldiers' voices had turned from roars to screams.
Boom!
"Aaaaah!!!"
"Don't run! Charge! Keep charging!"
Each mana shell killed dozens. Yet among the thousands who charged, some reached the enemy trench.
Ten days of feeding reinforcements into the breach. The enemy was at their limit of exhaustion.
"Kyeeek?! Left trench breached! Humans coming in!"
The voice from the machine-gun nest belonged to a green-skinned demihuman.
Clothes that barely covered the crotch. A small demihuman no taller than a child.
A goblin, the lowest caste of the Elf Kingdom.
"Kyeeek?!"
While swiveling his machine gun to plug the collapsing line, a bullet struck the goblin's temple. While the others froze at their comrade's sudden death, a human in brown fatigues jumped into the nest and fired his pistol wildly.
It was Yan.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
After quickly killing the three defenders, he examined their light machine gun. He loaded the full belt of ammo, then surveyed the trench.
Unlike the zig-zag human trench built against collapse, the goblin trench was almost straight.
"Everyone's exposed in the trench. Dumb bastards."
With that mutter Yan opened fire on the clustered goblins.
Ratatatatat!!!
Goblins, startled by fire from an unexpected direction, began to be mowed down.
It wasn't even his gun.
He poured bullets until the barrel glowed, and the whole section of trench was suppressed.
"Platoon Leader Yan broke through! Into the trench!"
"Waaaaaah!!!"
After ten days the battle seemed finally to bear fruit.
In strength and stamina goblins were no match for humans.
Even less so with guns in hand.
Soldiers poured through the breach and gleefully butchered the goblins; the fight looked almost over.
At that moment.
Thud.
A footfall.
Loud enough to be mistaken for a shell landing.
Then again.
Thud.
The ground shook; soldiers in the trench froze. Joy flooded the goblins' faces; despair showed on the humans'.
Through the smoke of artillery fire, their giant forms appeared.
Matte-green armor.
In one hand an assault cannon-or a heavy machine gun.
Bodies over five times the height of a man.
Bearing the Elf Kingdom's crest like a cloak, they looked like armored knights.
"Why are those things here on the frontier?!"
A soldier shouting was swallowed by shadow. Looking up, he saw a massive foot.
"Ah, aaaaah...!"
And then.
Crunch!
The armored colossus began to trample the soldiers.
"Elf Kingdom colossus! Everyone fall back!"
"Contact the artillery! Call the knights!"
- Goblins! We have arrived! Counterattack!
"Kyeeeeeeek!!!"
The knights' voices over loudspeakers boomed across the battlefield. Overwhelmed soldiers began to flee in panic, and reinvigorated goblins fired wildly and charged.
"Fall back! Fall back!!!"
Soldiers screaming like mad as they run for their lives.
Yan glanced back and forth between those fleeing soldiers and the colossus above his own head, clenching his fist tight.
This battle was another defeat.
Even when thousands of men gathered over ten days push through that hail of bullets and break the trenches, once those giants appear the trenches have to be abandoned without resistance.
"Shit..."
Cursing under his breath, Yan set down the machine gun he'd been holding and threw himself flat on the ground.
He couldn't draw the thing's attention here.
He didn't want to be a hero.
He just wanted to survive.
Tudududududududu!!!
The colossus's rotary cannon spewed fire at the fleeing soldiers. It was nothing like a machine-gun burst. A mere graze by the fragments tore off limbs; a direct hit obliterated the body so completely nothing remained.
"Gyaaaaaaah!!!"
"No, mom... Mom! I don't wanna die!!!"
"My arm-somebody find my arm...!"
The screams of the wounded echoed everywhere, but only for a moment.
- Primitive wretches who can't even handle mana!
Along with the elf knight's shout, rotary-cannon rounds exploded and erased the wounded without a trace.
One man clutched his severed arm, searching for a medic.
Another scooped the entrails spilling from his belly.
Another had only an arm clutching scripture, a shoulder, and a head left, mouth still gaping.
But once the attack passed, they were merely pieces of flesh hanging on the wire and obstacles. There was no way to know who had belonged to whom.
"Hey, Yan..."
At the familiar voice, Yan turned and saw someone crawling toward him.
The non-com he'd bickered with over a cigarette moments ago.
Both legs already gone, he dragged himself here with his one remaining arm. Half his jaw had been ground away; he was a miserable sight.
Any new recruit would have vomited on the spot.
"Kill... me..."
A plea born of unbearable pain.
Yan slowly shook his head.
If he fired now, he risked being spotted.
He had no reason to take that kind of risk for a comrade he'd met only today.
"My... legs..."
The wait was not long.
A spent rotary-cannon shell fell on the man's writhing body.
A wet pop-and his body burst.
It was a nauseating sight, yet Yan's expression didn't change. Reacting to every little thing had become too exhausting.
About thirty minutes passed.
A flag signalled the battle's end, and chaplains from both sides began collecting the dead.
"Ugh! Uweeegh?!"
Ordinary soldiers-who'd never seen a corpse before conscription-started vomiting at the sight of the aftermath.
A battlefield drenched in blood and gore.
Rising calmly from the pile of corpses, Yan began walking toward the Imperial trench.
"Survived again..."
"This time he hid among the corpses? Used his own buddies' bodies as cover?"
"Crazy bastard... how many times is this now?"
Survive two years on the battlefield and people respect you.
Survive four and they fear you; survive six and they dread you. Yan had been here over ten.
Thud.
Back in the trench, he looked too wretched to behold. The cigarette he'd left behind had gone cold.
"Shit, wasted one."
With genuine regret he pulled out the nearly empty pack and lit up.
This was his 999th battle.
The daily life of Yan Verkut, conscripted into the Penal Corps at fourteen, ten years ago.
"Yan! Yan Verkut! Did you finally die?!"
"Aw, for fuck's sake..."
Grimacing at the voice calling him, Yan quietly raised a hand.
A trench coat swollen as if his guts would burst.
The company commander who'd just sent the men charging.
"Hah, you crawled back alive. Barely human, though."
The commander asked curtly, as if the thousands who'd died on his order meant nothing.
Yan answered in a weary voice.
"Could I get some rest? I just got back..."
"Rest in the Penal Corps?! You do what you're told!"
"As you can see, I'm not exactly presentable."
The commander ground his teeth again at the casual defiance, then sighed and tossed something.
"This is..."
Not rations-hand-rolled cigarettes.
A luxury no Penal Corpsman without pay could obtain.
"Rally in two hours at the convoy truck! I'll sign your pass-wash up!"
"I'm out of uniforms."
"Sergeant Glen bought it! Pull one from the corpse pile!"
"Understood."
Not a single complaint. Tough bastard.
With that thought the commander turned away. The dried blood crusting Yan's body, the stench, and those eyes were too hard to bear.
Thump. Thump.
Footsteps from behind made some soldiers flinch.
They'd just seen the carnage.
Yan lifted his head at the sound.
"Whoa... what the hell is that."
A massive silver colossus bearing the Imperial seal was approaching the base.