Chapter 1: You Go Hold Off an Enemy Two Hundred Times Our Size! |
"Ah! My eyes! My eyes are—glug glug glug..."
Lelouch woke up to a burning agony in his eyes.
He was just about to cry for help when a wave crashed over him. Bitter, salty seawater flooded his nose and mouth, cutting off his screams.
Teetering on the edge of life and death, he felt an unimaginable burst of adrenaline surge through him. Choking violently on the water, he struggled to his feet.
Tears streamed uncontrollably from his seawater-scoured eyes, and his vision gradually began to clear.
He found himself standing on a beach engulfed in artillery fire.
As far as he could see, there was nothing but ruined buildings, shattered piers, destroyed equipment, mangled corpses, and smoking gas canisters.
"Corporal Lelouch? You're still alive? Take cover! The enemy ships are still firing!"
Still completely disoriented, Lelouch spotted a soldier prone in a crater ahead, waving and shouting at him.
He felt no pain as he tumbled into the dirt—only the total numbness of an adrenaline rush.
The moment he hit the ground, a 6-inch naval shell slammed into the mudflat he had just been standing on, blasting a geyser of mud and sand over ten meters into the air.
Fortunately, he was gasping for air with his mouth wide open, keeping his Eustachian tubes fully open and saving his eardrums from rupturing. Even so, the sheer concussive force left his blood roiling violently.
Everything felt too real. Had he crossed over into another world?
The soldier next to him was also peppered with mud, but he seemed used to it. He dusted off his gray uniform, pulled out some damp matches and a captured Gilneas cigarette, lit it, and handed it over.
"It's great that you're still alive, Squad Leader! I thought the tear gas got you too! Your left eye is terrifyingly red. Remember to get it checked at the hospital after this is over."
Lelouch took a few deep breaths, the ominous feeling in his chest growing stronger by the second.
He was originally an electrical engineer and a military history buff who loved playing Hearts of Iron after work. Last night, as usual, he had stayed up late playing a fan-made World War I scenario mod.
To get the mod approved on the Steam Workshop, the creator had deliberately censored many of the more extreme elements. Neither side in the conflict had unlocked poison gas technology, and there were no madmen repeatedly violating the laws of war. In short, it was a world similar to real history, but much tamer.
Later, Lelouch's eyes had started hurting as he played. He hadn't even turned off his computer before slumping over his desk and falling into a deep sleep.
When the pain in his eyes woke him up again, he found himself transported onto a live battlefield.
Looking at his surroundings—everyone wearing gray uniforms, no steel helmets, wielding Gewehr 98 Rifles—it looked exactly like the First World War.
He just wanted to play a game! He never asked to risk his life in person!
But things had already come to this, and he had no choice. The enemy's artillery and gas didn't listen to reason. He had to figure out how to survive first!
From this moment on, he had to adapt to his new identity!
Lelouch sat there in a daze, sifting through his memories for a long while. It wasn't until the half-smoked Gilneas burned his fingers that he winced, shook his hand, and asked with a final shred of desperate hope, "That gas made me a little dizzy. Could you tell me where we are, and who we're fighting?"
The soldier didn't think much of it and answered everything he asked.
After a brief conversation, Lelouch learned that the man's name was Klose, a Superior Private.
Just like him, Klose belonged to the wire-laying platoon of the communications battalion, directly subordinate to the Demania 6th Army.
The current time was the afternoon of October 25, 1914.
This was Nieuwpoort in the Kingdom of Belgin. Twenty kilometers to the west lay the border city of Dunkirk in Francia.
The World War had already been raging for three months.
During the first two months of the war, the Empire had attempted to execute the griffin plan to quickly defeat their old rival, Francia, but they had failed, bogged down by the enemy at the Meuse River.
Subsequently, both armies had pushed north, attempting to outflank each other in a war of movement. It wasn't until both sides reached the sea and completely ran out of room to maneuver that the conflict devolved into trench warfare.
Today was supposedly the final day of the race to the sea, because the endless expanse of the North Sea was right in front of them.
The town was currently defended by an allied Cavalry Reconnaissance Company and their communications platoon.
The cavalry company had arrived the night before and secured the town. The communications platoon had only been temporarily reassigned here this morning to rush-repair the telegraph cables.
To the west of the town were the Franks, and to the east were the remnants of the Belgin army, retreating west along the coastal highway after evacuating Antwerp.
"As long as we can use this town to cut off the coastal highway and hold out until reinforcements arrive, the Belgin army will be completely wiped out!" Klose's eyes gleamed with a thirst for military glory as he said this.
But Lelouch's vision went black.
His last shred of hope withered and died.
He had brushed up on World War I history while gaming last night, so he knew for a fact that Belgin was never completely wiped off the map during the war, nor was its army totally annihilated.
Because historically, this blocking action at Nieuwpoort was a failure.
Caught in a pincer attack by an enemy force two hundred times their size, the defenders were entirely wiped out in a single day.
Belgin's last three remaining divisions launched a rabid, desperate suicide charge. In the end, they successfully broke through to Dunkirk, trampling over the corpses of the Demania defenders.
If he didn't do something, he was going to die here too.
Feeling the blood rush to his head, Lelouch frantically grabbed Klose by the shoulders and shook him.
"The higher-ups expect this handful of people to hold out until reinforcements arrive? That's insane! Does division command think we're gods? We're all going to die here! Klose, take me to see the commander! I have something important to report!"
Klose looked troubled. "Squad Leader, you were never this cowardly before. Besides, Platoon Leader Hanks was already killed in action."
"Then take me to the reconnaissance company's headquarters!" Lelouch demanded.
"Alright, you're the ranking officer. You call the shots."
Klose sighed, hunched over, and scrambled out of the crater. He jogged through the artillery fire, with Lelouch trailing right behind him.
...
The company headquarters was located next to a bombed-out mill on the western side of town. Along the way, allied soldiers could be seen fiercely resisting the enemy, using whatever building ruins they could find as cover.
Lelouch sprinted for several minutes. Just as he reached the final intersection before the headquarters, bullets zipped across the street. He stumbled back in fright, not daring to run across the open road straight into machine-gun fire.
A captain across the street noticed the commotion and shouted angrily, "Everyone find cover where you are! Stay put!"
Left with no other option, Lelouch ducked behind a broken wall. Alongside Klose, he raised his rifle and fired blindly through the gaps in the bricks.
Before he crossed over, he had played a lot of live-action battle royale games. After working the bolt action for a while, his anxiety faded slightly, and he gradually adapted to the rifle's recoil.
The Francia soldiers were still wearing the bright red military trousers from the line-infantry tactics of fifty years ago. They were incredibly conspicuous as they charged straight down the main street into the town.
It only took Lelouch two clips to kill an enemy.
Seeing a massive hole punched through the enemy's chest with blood and flesh splattering everywhere, Lelouch's heart rate spiked to two hundred, his palms sweating profusely.
Yet he completely failed to register this, continuing to fire his weapon mechanically.
After an indeterminate number of shots, his sweaty grip slipped. The rifle's recoil jolted the slick stock out of his hands, slamming it into his cheek. The pain made him see stars.
But all his comrades were too busy killing the enemy to pay him any attention.
There were a massive number of Franks. They pushed closer and closer, practically overrunning more than half the street.
But then, the tide of the battle turned.
An allied mortar, after a series of missed high-angle shots, finally scored a direct hit on the enemy's Hotchkiss Heavy Machine Gun position.
The moment the enemy heavy machine gun fell silent, the pressure on the defenders significantly lessened.
Seizing the opportunity, the captain roared, "All units, fire at will! The enemy is just a mob of cowards afraid of death! If we can just hold out through today, the Belgin army is finished!"
"Drive back the Franks! Annihilate the Belgin forces!" The soldiers in the trenches roared with immense morale, firing with everything they had.
Two brilliantly camouflaged MG 08 Heavy Machine Guns, which had been lying in ambush amidst the rubble on the street corner, opened fire simultaneously. They formed a deadly crossfire, mowing down swaths of enemies on the main street.
The enemy finally broke. Hordes of soldiers scattered in a blind panic, leaving behind over a hundred red-trousered corpses in front of the defensive lines.
Seeing the fighting temporarily subside, Lelouch seized the moment to sprint across the intersection, making a beeline for the captain.
The captain eyed his swollen cheek with a trace of disdain. "You're a technical non-commissioned officer, aren't you? Never killed a man before? Hand slipped while firing your weapon?"
Lelouch didn't try to defend himself. He simply saluted. "Corporal Lelouch Hunter, wire-laying platoon, communications battalion, directly subordinate to the 6th Army."
"Captain Hans Andrie, 12th Division reconnaissance company, 6th Army," the captain replied, before demanding, "Is the telegraph cable that broke last night repaired yet?"
"We ran into a firefight the moment we arrived," Lelouch said. "We haven't had time to fix it. Platoon Leader Hanks was killed in action, and the other squad leaders were knocked out by the gas."
Andri shook his head in frustration. "So, a corporal is calling the shots for the communications platoon now? Speak quickly if you have something to say. I'm busy, and the enemy is only going to get more rabid."
Lelouch leaned in and whispered, "Captain, we need to prepare immediately. It's impossible for us to hold this town."
Andri's expression darkened. He hissed menacingly, "If you had said that just a bit louder, I'd have executed you right now for damaging morale!
"There are a lot of enemies, sure, but they can can't all reach the battlefield at once. As long as the division's main force arrives tonight, victory will still belong to the Empire!"
Lelouch scratched his head anxiously and sighed in a low voice. "But based on what we saw on our way here this morning, the 12th Division probably isn't going to make it."
Andri flared up. "Impossible! I just contacted the rear via Radio Set at noon. Division command is only thirty kilometers away. They can't cover that in half a day's forced march?"
Seeing that Andri's anger was on the verge of slipping out of control, Lelouch didn't have time to flesh out a more convincing lie. He could only take a massive gamble and state it as absolute fact:
"But this morning, when we crossed the Yser River to the south, we saw Belgin troops planting explosives on the riverbanks from a distance! They definitely plan to blow the dikes and cut off our reinforcements if their breakout fails!
"Belgin is a low-lying country; the elevation on both sides of the Yser River is below sea level! The moment they blow the dikes and the seawater rushes in, it'll turn into a flood zone over a dozen kilometers wide!"
The moment Lelouch said this, not only was Captain Andri utterly stunned, but even Klose, who had come with him, widened his eyes in shock.
When they had arrived this morning, they had indeed seen Belgin troop movements downstream along the Yser River, but they absolutely had not seen anyone "planting explosives on the riverbanks."
How could they have seen something like that from so far away? Since they couldn't see it clearly, this claim was entirely fabricated.
Klose knew his squad leader was lying.
Of course Lelouch was lying, but he absolutely had to, because he knew the plot—
In the later years of the Great War, the northern part of Belgin remained a perpetual swamp, preventing both sides from launching effective offensives there. And the root cause of all this was that on the final day of the race to the sea campaign, the Belgin army blew the dikes to release the seawater and block the enemy.
Because of this massive flood, the 12th Division's main force never reached the sea, but were bogged down and drowned out halfway there. As a result, the division's directly subordinate reconnaissance company, which had arrived here ahead of time, was caught in a pincer attack and annihilated.
Faced with Lelouch's sensational claim, Captain Andri instinctively snapped back, "That's impossible! We merely want to pass through Belgin territory to fight Francia! We don't even have any deep-seated hatred for them! Would they really choose to destroy their own homeland and die together with us just to stop us? They would drown their own civilians on both sides of the river! Do they have no sense of military honor?"
Lelouch felt a headache coming on. It was incredibly difficult to convince a traditional military officer like Captain Andri of something like this.
The main problem was the extreme lack of time. He didn't have a second to explain. He could only pull Klose over forcefully and shoot him a pointed look. "Tell the captain. Didn't you see all of this with your own eyes?"
A cold sweat broke out on Klose's forehead. Was he really going to help his squad leader lie to an allied company commander?
In the end, looking at his squad leader's blood-red, gas-burned left eye and recalling the life-and-death bonds they had forged in battle, Klose couldn't help but waver. 'The squad leader must have a reason for lying!'
Gritting his teeth, he testified, "I swear on my honor as a soldier, I also saw the enemy tampering with the dikes at the time."
Ultimately, he wasn't used to lying, so when the words left his mouth, he swapped "planting explosives" for "tampering with."
Andri finally bought into it a little, the blood rushing to his head as he rapidly began formulating countermeasures.
"Then what do we do? What's our next move?"
Lelouch had already thought this through. Seeing the captain yield, he suggested, "Sir, I need to borrow the reconnaissance company's Radio Set! The most important thing right now is to broadcast an indiscriminate warning to all allied units within communications range!
"Tell those who have already crossed the Yser River to abandon their heavy equipment and launch a forced march at full speed! Those who haven't crossed yet need to fall back immediately and find high ground to hold their positions.
"The Belgin forces probably haven't blown the dikes yet, but they could do it at any second. Once they do, the water will flood the entire river valley within half an hour, and the water levels will rise to sea level within two hours!"
Captain Andri felt that this made sense, but he was still worried and pressed further, "And what if the intelligence is wrong, or you misjudged what you saw?
"If the enemy doesn't blow the dikes, you'll be the one delaying the reinforcements' arrival! And you'll cause the loss of our reinforcements' supply trains!"
Lelouch met his gaze, his eyes earnest and resolute. "If there is no flood, our army will easily secure this combat zone. The equipment can be left behind temporarily and picked up again in a few days.
"But if there is a flood, the losses will be catastrophic! If you, as the reconnaissance company commander, fail to spot a massive hazard on the entire army's line of advance, you'll be waiting for a military tribunal to shoot you!"
Andri couldn't help but shudder. After weighing the options, he decided that for the safety of all their comrades in the division, it was better to be safe than sorry.
Gritting his teeth, he ordered, "You men, take Corporal Lelouch to the transmission room immediately! I authorize him to broadcast a warning to all nearby allied units under the name of the 12th Division reconnaissance company!"
