“Ammunition! We need ammunition!”
“Damn it! I’m out!”
“We have extra over here! Hold on—I’m coming!”
“…Tch. The machine guns are finished.”
“Artillery! More shells!”
A little over an hour had passed since the battle began.
The Kingdom of Lunoa held an overwhelming advantage. We were fighting from concealment in trenches, while the enemy had approached in a dense formation that made an ideal target. Of course we were winning.
But we had a problem of our own: an overwhelming shortage of supplies.
At first, there had been only forty of us. Soldiers who retreated later joined us and turned the position into a respectable defensive line, but they had fled in a panic. They brought almost no supplies and little artillery. Most of their ammunition and guns had been abandoned in the trenches just ahead of us.
“Lord Noah… We can’t continue this all-out attack. The supply unit—”
“No. Rejected. We’ll destroy the enemy force here and now.”
Even under those conditions, I had ordered a general attack that would expend every supply we possessed.
“B-But we’re already at our limit. The enemy has reorganized and begun digging trenches. They have more artillery than we do. We can’t commit any more supplies—”
“…It must be about time for me to go.”
“What…?”
I took up my rifle and as much ammunition as I could carry, preparing to leave immediately.
“I’ll go forward.”
“What!? W-What are you saying!?”
“It’s a noble’s honor, isn’t it? I’ll be going, then.”
Ignoring Colonel Kernel’s baffled cries, I leapt out of the trench.
I activated non-attribute magic to strengthen my body.
With one hard kick against the ground, I launched myself forward.
“Haha! I’m glad I trained properly from childhood!”
That single step carried me a hundred meters.
“Some idiot is charging us! Fire!”
Though shaken, the Friez soldiers aimed their rifles at me and reached for their triggers.
“Too slow!”
Before they could fire, my magic activated.
The ground rose.
“Wah!?”
“W-What’s this!?”
The trenches the Friez army had worked so hard to dig surged upward under my magic, exposing them all at once.
“…I wonder how far I can dominate this battlefield.”
Anti-magic barriers were deployed as domes rising from the ground.
That arrangement was supposed to protect against offensive magic from every direction. But a dome couldn’t stop an attack from beneath the earth.
In other words, anti-magic barriers had never been operated with earth magic in mind.
“Die.”
I aimed my rifle at an enemy soldier thrown off balance by the sudden movement of the ground and pulled the trigger.
“Aah!?”
I had aimed for his head, but the bullet struck a little lower and tore through his face.
Blood burst from it as he screamed and crouched down.
“…Ah.”
That wouldn’t kill him yet.
Almost reflexively, I fired three more rounds into the same man.
“Aaaah!?”
Bent forward, he convulsed with the first shot. The second should have killed him, yet he raised his face; with the third, he stared straight at me before collapsing to the ground.
“…Haha.”
It truly was different when I could see the other person’s face.
I had killed a man.
Seeing it with my own eyes made my body stiffen.
“Guh!?”
I had stopped in the middle of the enemy position. A bullet tore through my abdomen.
“…I’m grateful for that!”
It was hot.
The searing pain burned away my useless sentimentality.
I kept pulling the trigger and took the life of another soldier.
“Kill that fool!”
“Useless!”
I used earth magic to raise a wall and stop the bullets coming from behind.
“My name is Noah! I’m Noah Willard, heir to the Marquis of Willard!”
Enemies surrounded me on every side.
Standing among them, I shouted toward my own troops some distance away.
“Follow me! Kill the enemy!”
The enemy trenches had been returned to bare ground.
Their restored formation had been broken once more.
“Waaaaah!?”
As at the beginning, Lunoa’s bullets steadily tore into the Friez army.
Amid the gunfire, I used earth magic and killed enemy soldiers one after another by myself.
“W-Wait!”
Charging recklessly forward, I suddenly found myself before a man wearing an enemy officer’s insignia.
“W-We… surren—”
“Die!”
He spoke in Lunoa’s language, but I cut off his words by shooting him dead.
“…Hah… hah… hah…”
If they surrendered and became prisoners, we would have a duty to protect them.
We didn’t have time for that.
“Kill them!”
I shouted.
“Kill the enemy! But don’t pursue anyone who runs! Let them go! And we’ll advance! Out of the trenches and forward! We’ll retake our old position!”
I shouted and pulled the trigger.
Blood sprayed, and what had once been a person fell to the ground.
“Why are we here? What did we come to do? To invade! Into the Kingdom of Friez—to the capital, Norn! Don’t stop! Forward!”
“Raaaaaaaaah!”
The soldiers around me answered my cry amid the frenzy of falling bodies.
“Hah… hah… hah…”
People fell.
Friez and Lunoa soldiers alike fell without distinction.
“…Not yet.”
I wouldn’t kill those who fled.
I repeated those words in the language of Friez. One enemy soldier clung to the promise and ran, and then the army’s discipline collapsed all at once.
The Friez force broke apart.
“Now, advance! Forward!”
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