Cursing the non-existent game master in her mind, Lin Yu forcibly shoved away the person pinning her down, then dizzily knelt on the ground.
A grenade must have detonated at an incredibly close range, leaving her disoriented and reeling from the blast. Fortunately, someone had tackled her to the ground, sparing her from the shrapnel.
“…Eh, why is there blood…”
She wiped away the blood that was dripping from her chin, yet found no wound from which it flowed.
Then, belatedly, she turned her head to look at the person who had been pinning her down. Her hand reached out, tracing the darkened chest of his military uniform.
It was warm, and wet, like someone had wet the bed.
But no one urinates on their chest, so what she felt was blood, freshly spilled from a wound.
“You… you’re injured again…”
The man lay supine, his eyes tightly shut, his brows deeply furrowed, his expression etched with apparent agony.
“I…”
‘Was this truly the third time he had saved her? Once in the courtroom, once at the train station, and now in the trench. If the incident in the shell crater was added to the tally, this would mark the fourth time she owed him a debt of gratitude.’
“Don’t you dare die like this, you idiot; I don’t want to owe you for a lifetime.”
Swiftly, she unfastened the buttons on his chest. Lin Yu tore open his blood-soaked white shirt, her fingers probing for the wound’s location.
Before she could even locate the source of the bleeding, a guttural Lanforthian cry rang out beside Lin Yu: [“For the Republic—”]
A Lanforthian soldier, clad in khaki uniform, had already vaulted into the trench, his rifle leveled, bayonet glinting, as he charged towards Lin Yu, who remained kneeling on the ground.
She stared blankly at the approaching figure, and it took a stunned two seconds before she remembered to dodge.
Thankfully, Lin Yu’s diminutive stature made her a difficult target for the bayonet’s tip. She rolled on the spot, narrowly evading the bayonet, then scrambled back two steps to the side of the previously wounded man.
The Lanforthian’s bayonet charge had been thwarted, his bayonet now lodged diagonally in the breastwork. He struggled, kicking at the earth to free the bayonet, only to stumble back against the rear wall from the sheer force of his effort.
This string of blunders afforded Lin Yu precious moments to react, allowing her to raise her rifle…
‘Eh? Where’s my rifle? Where did that long rifle go?’
The rifle she had clutched moments ago, having been suddenly tackled, now lay flat beside the severely wounded man, resting alongside his own rifle, a weapon that had claimed countless lives.
‘Ah, on the battlefield, one must always keep a firm grip on their rifle. Should it accidentally slip from one’s grasp, one would be plunged into such a terrible, desperate predicament.’
‘In her previous life, before she became a mercenary, she had even watched several battlefield survival videos. Those videos had stressed the importance of always keeping one’s rifle sling secured, for if one’s weapon became separated from them, the enemy would close in with a sinister grin and then, amidst mocking laughter, deliver a “GG” (Good Game).’
‘Had her previous life as a medic been too comfortable that she had forgotten everything? How utterly dreadful.’
Only one final gambit remained.
Steeling herself, Lin Yu raised her hands high and shouted, just as she had two months prior when she’d unexpectedly encountered Lanforthian enemy soldiers in a shell crater: [“I surrender—”]
‘Ho ho, a classic trick indeed. She hoped the same tactic would prove effective twice, and that the Lanforthians wouldn’t suddenly awaken some Saint Seiya physique (TL Note: A reference to the anime ‘Saint Seiya,’ where characters gain superhuman abilities and cosmic energy, implying an enemy who becomes inexplicably immune to a tactic).’
Even as she loudly proclaimed the Lanforthian phrase and raised her hands, the “foreign devil” remained steadfast, leveling his bayonet and lunging directly at her.
It was as if she were merely standing dumbly in place, utterly unmoving, as if the words she’d just spoken were not Lanforthian at all.
‘I’m done for. He knows I was merely feigning surrender. I’ll surely be stabbed through the chest, and then blood will gush forth, air will hiss out, and with a final, desperate kick, I’ll be reborn into the next world.’
‘…No, no, no, he’s simply seeing red, isn’t he? After all, having witnessed so many comrades fall during the charge, it’s only natural for him to disregard any surrender and stab an enemy soldier to death.’
‘In this alternate world, devoid of Geneva Conventions, it was best not to harbor illusions of saving one’s life simply by laying down arms.’
She braced for death, even as the bayonet poised to pierce her chest. Her fifteen-year-old life was about to be extinguished on this very battlefield, along with the man who had saved her countless times.
‘Perhaps this could be considered a form of repayment? If they died together, then in the next life, they would…’
‘No, no, no, no! Absolutely not! I refuse to reincarnate into the same world as this idiot in the next life!’
The despair of confronting death, coupled with the despair of encountering this imbecile again in the next life—these two despairs, superimposed upon each other, should have culminated in an even deeper, heavier, inescapable despair.
‘But why… did that Lanforthian soldier suddenly trip and fall flat? Had he, by some bizarre turn, awakened a peculiar physique?’
The towering enemy suddenly stumbled, collapsing face-first, his bayonet-fixed rifle clattering heavily to the ground as he lost his balance, at its closest point, merely half a meter from Lin Yu’s chest.
As her assailant fell, another blood-streaked figure rose from the ground, and like a god descended from heaven, raising a trench shovel high, brought it down with crushing force upon the Lanforthian’s nape.
With that single, decisive strike of the shovel, the Lanforthian ceased all movement, and Lin Yu, too, found herself out of immediate peril.
“What are you gawking at?! Grab your rifle! They’ve breached our lines! It’s hand-to-hand combat!”
He bent down, scooping up two rifles, and hurled the one Lin Yu had used towards her. She nearly fumbled the catch.
“I… I’m supposed to fight hand-to-hand?”
Before she could receive a reply, another khaki-clad figure vaulted into the trench, only to be instantly parried by his backhanded shovel swing and then shot in the chest with a rifle.
“Or should you surrender like you just did?! They won’t accept it!”
He unclipped a grenade from his waist, pulled the pin, and tossed it out. Several seconds later, Lanforthian screams and curses echoed.
Enemies were now pressing against the trench, flowing in like the cold wind through a window crack in winter, or like rainwater finding every crevice in a leaky roof. This was not a number he could repel with just a few shovel swings; it would require every living soldier to fight back with all their might—only then was there a sliver of hope for holding the line.
The left-flank position was relatively rudimentary, consisting of only two trenches spaced mere dozens of meters apart. Should this position fall, the second trench would be highly vulnerable to attack. If the Lanforthian army exploited the Diacla army’s retreat by maintaining a relentless advance, they could potentially overrun both trenches in a single charge.
At that point, the left flank would be completely lost, and the remaining right-flank position would be powerless to maintain absolute control over the bridge, granting the Lanforthians the initiative on the battlefield.
Indeed, the Diacla forces, disadvantaged in artillery, had been in a state of absolute passivity from the outset—the Lanforthians’ heavy artillery could easily destroy the bridge if they so chose.
Clutching her rifle tightly, Lin Yu returned to her previous firing position alongside him, aiming to reduce the enemy’s numbers through long-range fire as much as possible.
This was no longer merely about revenge; it was about ensuring her own survival.
If the overwhelming tide of Lanforthians were allowed to flood the trench, even if that idiot could swing his trench shovel hard enough to make sparks fly, he would surely be worn down and killed in a war of attrition.
As for herself, she would be shot or stabbed to death at the very first encounter with an enemy.
With this grim resolve, Lin Yu pulled the trigger, completing all her acts of vengeance: the four medic seniors, Commander Yang, Lieutenant Xia, and the wounded soldier who had died before her eyes.
Eight shots, seven hits; two rounds remained in the magazine. Any lives taken from this point onward would be purely out of selfish desperation to survive.
Crouching back behind cover to reload, she turned to the man beside her. “Is your injury serious?”
“Instead of worrying about others, you’d do well to take care of yourself.”
“You!”
This was the very advice she had given him before the shelling, to alleviate her own awkwardness, now returned to her word for word, a bitter taste in her mouth.
“To your right!”
He abruptly swung his rifle to her ear, the blossoming magic array directly blinding her face, a sensation as disorienting as a full-force flashbang.
The Lanforthian soldier on her right, who had just been about to charge into the trench, toppled stiffly, falling between the severed legs of the deceased casualty, sinking into the deepest sleep.
“Don’t get distracted! A few shrapnel wounds are nothing serious! You watch the right, I’ll watch the left—don’t let them break through!”
“Watch… watch…”
With her eyes swimming in blue light, Lin Yu covered them, utterly unable to distinguish right from left.
Even if she could, would such a paltry number of bullets be enough to repel all the enemies?
Death loomed before her, and Lin Yu deeply regretted her actions thus far. To risk her life just to say thank you—even she, who had grown indifferent to life, wouldn’t be so reckless.
Of course, she was far from the only one consumed by regret. Realizing the shelling had occurred before Lin Yu’s return, Liang Yu stood on tiptoes, peering anxiously forward, her heart clutched by an invisible hand.
“You came back safe last time; you’ll surely do so this time too…”
Liang Yu silently offered a blessing for Lin Yu.
Watching the battle from the rear through binoculars, the commander of the 104th Reserve Regiment also blessed her, along with all the soldiers defending the first trench.
In stark contrast, the Lanforthian commander cursed her to die on the spot, along with all the Diacla defenders.
Whether curses or blessings would prevail now depended on the Lanforthians’ will to attack.
Shouts of [“For the Republic!”] and “For His Majesty!” intertwined, mixed with explosions, wails, and the dull thud of bayonets piercing flesh.