Several hours later.
Booooong—!
The blast of a foghorn shook the waters off Weymouth.
“Crane Three, starboard side! Unload the armor first!”
“Ammo and fuel go to the Fourth Consolidation Point! Move it, double-time!”
The harbor churned without a moment’s rest. Seized cranes and unloading equipment ran at full capacity.
The grueling toil of groaning in the mudflats was over. A massive transport fleet of tens of thousands of tons docked at the solid concrete pier, spewing out monstrous quantities of supplies and troops.
With the Port of Weymouth fully opened, the war too gained acceleration.
The sea was a nonstop stream of ships shuttling back and forth, leaving not the slightest gap. In the surrounding waters, Imperial destroyers and submarine flotillas layered overlapping protective screens.
The sky was no different.
Fighter and bomber squadrons of the 109th, equipped with auxiliary fuel tanks, maintained air presence in round-the-clock shifts, preventing the Red Air Force from even hovering nearby.
The troops and materiel that had crossed the sea in this manner were immediately hurled to the front lines.
The landing beachheads, scattered in pockets and held with blood, gradually expanded until they eventually linked into a single massive front line traversing the southeast of Victoria Island.
“All-sector defensive line linkage confirmed! All forces, transition to offensive as of this hour!”
“Axis of advance: the capital, Londinium! Annihilate those red rat bastards!”
The command’s will was unwavering. Both the Imperial troops and the government-in-exile forces that had crossed the sea threw themselves into that massive war machine without hesitation.
To reclaim their lost homeland. For the glory of the Empire and His Imperial Majesty. And to punish those savage, red seedlings of revolution.
Without a moment’s respite, the soil of Victoria was dyed red with blood.
Of course, fortunately enough.
In that relentless current, my Yeager Brigade had been pushed slightly aside.
Our brigade and Sydney’s Intelligence Bureau had halted the advance and were currently stationed at the Port of Weymouth.
Securing the city’s public order and reorganizing the unit, while above all maintaining the vital supply lines.
That was the new mission assigned to us.
*
The harbor churned on without cease, but the hills on the city’s outskirts were eerily silent.
The western hills of the Weymouth city district.
Here, a large temporary cemetery had been established to bury the soldiers who had fallen on the Victoria coast over the past few days.
I climbed the hill, dragging my dust-caked combat boots.
I was heading toward a single white dot marked on the [Mini-Map].
At the edge of the hill where the sea wind blew fiercely, a familiar figure stood among rows of hastily erected white wooden crosses.
Trudge. Trudge.
At the sound of my footsteps, she slowly turned. Deep fatigue was visible beneath her lavender eyes, yet she stiffened her expression with effort and greeted me.
“Colonel Yeager. I thought you would be at the brigade command post. What brings you all the way out here?”
“I merely came to check if my men’s graves were dug properly. Surely it’s time you took a rest as well, Director.”
My gaze shifted to the cross before her.
“…Agents of the Intelligence Bureau?”
“Yes. They died drawing the enemy’s attention before we could enter the basement of City Hall.”
Sydney’s voice was flat, yet she could not hide the faint trembling of her clenched fist.
“They were my men. We crossed back and forth over the threshold of death together, driven by a single desire to reclaim the homeland. And yet, in the end, this is where they are buried in Weymouth.”
“…….”
‘Status Analysis.’
[Name: Sydney Wellesley]
[Status: Sleep-deprived, crushed by a sense of responsibility, self-loathing]
“I wonder if you are thinking something like this.”
I withdrew my gaze and stood beside her.
“‘If only I had been a bit more capable. If only I had not been caught off guard in Londinium back then. These men wouldn’t have had to die like dogs here.’”
Sydney’s shoulders flinched. Confusion bled through her poker face.
“…What is that supposed to mean.”
“Looks like I’ve struck a nerve.”
With my back to the row of cross-shaped gravestones, I looked down at her. The sea wind blowing in was wildly tossing the hem of my uniform and her neat blonde hair.
“I say this because the Bureau Director herself is wallowing in sentiment.”
“…Is it a crime to mourn the deaths of comrades?”
“Falling into self-pity before corpses is the stuff of third-rate theater. You aren’t mourning, Director. You are indulging in arrogance.”
Sydney jerked her head up. A faint anger gathered in her eyes.
“Arrogance, you say?”
“It is the height of arrogance. To think, ‘If only I had been a bit more competent, I could have saved them all.’ Don’t delude yourself. You are no omnipotent god.”
I continued, driving each word in like a dagger.
“The men buried under those graves didn’t die because you were incompetent. They simply reached their time to be expended and were ground into the massive meat grinder that is the battlefield, that’s all.”
“That’s—!”
“War.”
Sydney flinched, her shoulders trembling. Her eyes shook as she bit her lip.
I looked away from her toward the sea swelling gray in the distance, and spoke.
“It is a story from when I first wore the rank insignia of a second lieutenant and was thrown onto this damned battlefield.”
“…….”
“To be honest, I nearly pissed myself back then.”
At my confession, Sydney’s wavering gaze turned to me.
It was only natural. A completely ordinary citizen whose entire military experience consisted of a few years as a conscript, who was ground down by his workplace and workload and took refuge in games. That was me, immediately after the possession.
The only weapon I had been given was a colorful 2D [Mini-Map] floating in my mind.
In my head, I could sense how we needed to move. But what good was that? I was a mere second lieutenant with no authority to even give orders to subordinates, while shells that could blow my head off at any moment poured from the sky like rain.
No matter how clearly the [Mini-Map] showed me enemy positions, a lowly second lieutenant had no authority to change formations. I could only follow orders.
Blood and entrails I had never before seen spilled out before my eyes.
A hell where the limbs of peers I’d joked with just the day before were torn asunder.
I felt powerless. I despaired of myself. I seriously contemplated fleeing from everything. The only reason I didn’t simply lose my mind then and there… was sheer luck.
[Level Up!]
[You have acquired the skill ‘Indomitable Will (Lv.1)’.]
It was the very moment [Indomitable Will] activated for the first time.
My brain, frozen with terror, cooled. My heart, hammering as if it would burst, gradually settled. The system forcibly tethered my reason.
And straightaway, I was thrown into the battle of a nameless valley. It was a literal meat grinder. Shells fell, the mud clotted with blood, and from the neck of a subordinate running beside me, a fountain of blood sprayed—that was the battlefield.
“…….”
But I charged ahead like a madman and fired my gun. To survive. Relying on nothing but instinct, I crawled through the mud and killed them. The result was victory in the Valley Battle. And a field promotion to first lieutenant.
That was the first mark I left in this world.
Sydney listened to my story in silence. Though she seemed puzzled as to why I would suddenly bring up my days as a second lieutenant, she also seemed to feel a strange, indescribable sense of déjà vu.
And I knew.
Had I not possessed cheat skills like [Indomitable Will] and the [Mini-Map]. Had the absolute safety net known as the system not existed.
I knew for a fact that I would have been cowering in some corner of the trench, paralyzed by fear, only to be killed by a random shell.
That is why I understood all too well the limits of the ordinary people of this world, unlike myself.
“Director. I know. I know all too well how terrible it is to be swept into war with nothing but your bare, unaided mind in this godforsaken world.”
I turned my head and stared straight into Sydney’s eyes.
“That is why, after observing you all this time, I have reached only one conclusion.”
The sound of Sydney’s dry swallow rode the wind.
“You did not fail. It was a battle you could never have won from the very beginning.”
*
Those words were no consolation whatsoever.
As the Queen’s shadow, Sydney Wellesley had always lived a life where words were backed by results, and proof was forged through responsibility. Excuses were the exclusive domain of the incompetent.
Londinium had fallen. In the humiliation of fleeing to the New Continent with the Queen, she had cursed herself thousands of times.
If only I had rooted out the infiltrators a little faster. If only I had perceived Prime Minister Galichi’s ambition and seized Parliament by the collar sooner.
She had endured these past months in self-loathing that tore at her own heart. And yet.
‘You did not fail.’
Had an ordinary person uttered such words, Sydney would have snapped at them for insulting her sworn duty. But the fact that it was Colonel Max Yeager who had spoken them paralyzed her reason.
Symbol of miracles. Grim reaper of the battlefield. The monster who had taken impregnable Weymouth in just two days.
That overwhelmingly dominant figure was defining her defeat as an inevitability.
Sydney’s violet eyes trembled ever so slightly.
“…On what grounds.”
Sydney’s voice, climbing up her throat, scattered without a trace into the sea wind. She could only stare blankly with empty eyes at Max’s back as he turned and walked away.
He was already leaving.
Sydney bit her lip. She had no choice but to slowly chew over the words he had left behind.
Galichi and the Citizen Labor Party had been thorough. Was it ever possible, from the very beginning, to stop a military rebellion woven throughout the nation for years using the power of a single intelligence agency?
The moment martial law was declared and even the Capital Defense Forces turned traitor, the fate of the United Kingdom had already been sealed.
A very faint crack rang out from the massive lump of lead that had been crushing her chest.
‘You did not fail.’
It wasn’t because I was incompetent that our homeland fell.
The moment she arrived at that thought, Sydney bit her lower lip fiercely.
It was shameful.
It was the venomous resolve she had sustained through self-flagellation.
She had been terrified that she would collapse if she laid down even that guilt, so she had forced it upon herself and hung herself upon the cross.
And yet, Max Yeager had seen straight through it in an instant. He had dug into the fragile depths with devastating precision, and the shockwaves were still crashing through her.
The sea wind lashed her cheek.
Max Yeager’s silhouette soon vanished beyond the hill. Left alone, Sydney faced the harsh sea wind and thought.
That merciless man.
His attitude—trampling even the shallowest self-pity underfoot—was truly callous. That he couldn’t even offer a single kind word of comfort felt almost spiteful.
But beneath that cold exterior lay undeniable achievements: the salvation of countless Imperial soldiers.
Sydney herself had been among the beneficiaries.
In Weymouth. In Londinium.
Sydney recalled the moments she had trusted her back to him.
They had covered each other’s blind spots without keeping score. In a narrow, damp sewer, she had entrusted his back with her own life and that of the person most precious to her.
Her thoughts naturally drifted to their time in the Empire. To the days when she had hidden by his side, acting as a maid.
Back then, she had truly hated him. There were times she had wanted to plunge a dagger into that lecher’s heart and snuff out his life on the spot.
In hindsight, Sydney had always been like that. Hero of the Ashen Forest. Ghost of Rosenheim. From the very moment she first recognized Max Yeager’s existence and grasped his significance, she had done nothing but try to use him and keep him in check.
A cold-blooded creature without blood or tears. An utterly filthy scoundrel.
“……Impudent Imperial bastard.”
The words that slipped softly through Sydney’s red lips were a curse. But the tone was unlike before.
Sydney remained standing in place, staring endlessly beyond the hill where his figure had now completely vanished.
Because the path he walked—always so brazen as to be insufferable—no longer felt cold, for reasons she could not explain.