The six of them, Morin included, pedaled their bicycles and soon left the bounds of San Isidro Village.
The aftertaste of that energizing drink still lingered in his mouth, a scorched bitterness that made him want to stick out his tongue every so often.
He had truly never drunk coffee this awful.
The country road was bumpy and uneven. The wheels crunched over gravel and clods of dirt, creaking as they went. As Morin rode, he kept part of his attention fixed on the small map in the upper-left corner of his vision.
Perhaps because he had seen the information on the military map back at headquarters, Morin’s own “system map” had also updated its data.
The area ahead, all the way to Seville, could now be viewed in detail, though it was still covered by a translucent layer of “fog of war.”
As they advanced, that fog of war representing unknown roads slowly receded outward with them at its center, revealing clearer details of the terrain.
It was a strange feeling, like playing a real-time strategy game and personally controlling a scout unit to explore the map.
“Don’t just keep your heads down and rush along!” Morin lowered his voice and reminded the men behind him. “Look at the woods on both sides of the road, and the high ground. If anything seems off, tell me at once!”
“Yes, sir!” Corporal Baumann responded immediately.
The others also raised their heads one after another, vigilantly scanning their surroundings.
They merely thought this was a routine order born of their platoon leader’s caution, unaware that every one of their gazes was providing Morin with valuable information, refreshing the contents of the small map.
From the previous battle, Morin had already roughly figured out how this “system map” updated its information.
That was: any unit that appeared within an allied soldier’s field of vision would be displayed on the map, regardless of whether that allied soldier had noticed it or recognized it.
See? In terms of being a “cheat,” the system map really did its job rather well.
And the first objective of Morin’s group on this trip was the next village marked on the map, called Alcolea.
Morin’s plan was to first scout around the outskirts of the village. If it was safe, they would go in and take a look around, while also letting this hastily assembled reconnaissance team get used to working together.
After that, they would decide based on the situation whether to scout in the direction of Seville.
Perhaps their luck was good. The journey was peaceful, and they did not even run into a ghost.
When they were still more than two hundred meters from Alcolea Village, Morin raised a hand and made a gesture. Everyone immediately understood and slowed to a stop.
“Dismount. Push them. Find a place to hide them.”
They pushed their bicycles into a dense patch of woods by the roadside, carefully laid them down behind some bushes, then used a few branches and fallen leaves for simple camouflage.
“Everyone remember this position.” Morin pointed at a withered tree not far away that looked as if it had been split by lightning. “We’ll be withdrawing back here later!”
He unscrewed his canteen and took a sip, gesturing for the others to seize the time to hydrate as well.
After a brief rest, the six of them held their rifles and, in a loose formation, began to creep toward the village.
Morin walked at the very front. His eyes moved back and forth between the village entrance and the surrounding houses, while his finger rested habitually on the trigger guard.
He glanced back and found that Corporal Baumann and the other soldiers all had their index fingers on their triggers, looking ready to open fire at any moment.
His heart tightened at once, and he hurriedly made a gesture for everyone to stop.
“Take your fingers off the triggers and put them on the guards! All of you, remember that!”
He spoke sternly in a breathy whisper. “I don’t want some bastard to slip and fire by accident, hit me in the ass, or expose all of us!”
Hearing Morin’s words, the soldiers were somewhat unused to it, but they immediately did as told.
Keeping close to the shadows of the earthen walls, the group carefully slipped into the village.
Unexpectedly, the village was perfectly peaceful.
Several children were chasing and playing on the dirt road. Not far away, by the well, women were washing clothes and chatting. They could even see a few old people sitting at their doorways, lazily basking in the sun.
There was not the slightest shadow of war here, as if they had intruded upon a paradise isolated from the world.
This abnormal calm raised Morin’s vigilance to its highest level.
He decided to find a villager and ask about the situation. This could also be considered a form of “civil reconnaissance” within the subject of scouting.
Morin gave Corporal Baumann a look. The latter understood and stepped forward to stop an old farmer who was passing by with a hoe over his shoulder.
Unexpectedly, when the old farmer saw these gun-carrying soldiers, apart from some surprise, he did not seem particularly frightened.
Corporal Baumann pointed in the direction of Seville, then made a few hand gestures, his mouth spitting out several words that were not in the Saxon tongue.
The old farmer looked at this tall foreign soldier, his face full of blankness and confusion. He muttered something in another language, waving both hands repeatedly.
“Sir, he doesn’t understand the Aragonese I’m speaking,” Corporal Baumann said helplessly, turning back.
“Are you sure what you’re speaking is Aragonese?”
“...”
Morin frowned, then looked at the others.
The group all shook their heads, indicating that aside from a few officers in the platoon who could manage some simple conversation, ordinary soldiers like them did not know Aragonese.
Now this was troublesome.
Just as Morin was about to give up and first walk around the village to see if there were any other clues, the old farmer said a long string of words to him.
Something strange happened.
This time, the old farmer’s hurried and unfamiliar syllables, the instant they entered Morin’s ears, seemed to be automatically translated. He actually understood the man completely.
“If you’re looking for those soldiers in black uniforms, they left quite a while ago...”
Morin froze.
He subconsciously opened his mouth, and a stream of fluent Aragonese came out.
“Old fellow, you mean there were soldiers in black uniforms in the village before?”
As soon as the words left his mouth, not only did the old farmer opposite him freeze, Morin himself froze as well. Even Corporal Baumann and the others behind him widened their eyes.
“Eh, Second Lieutenant, don’t you speak Aragonese after all...?”
Immediately afterward, a massive jumble of memory fragments surged into his mind.
In Dresden, the capital of the Saxon Empire, inside a brilliantly lit banquet hall, the original owner of this body was holding a wineglass, flirting in fluent Aragonese with an Aragonese noble young lady who had come to Saxony to study.
At some art salon, he was discussing the latest paintings with a painter’s wife in Gaulish.
There was even a holiday in Vienna, where he used the local language, clumsy but sufficient to seduce a maid.
So it turned out that the original owner of this body—the fellow General Mackensen had evaluated as “a man whose bones had been softened by alcohol”—
in order to hunt for romantic conquests at the banquets and salons of various countries’ high society during peacetime, had actually put real effort into learning so many foreign languages.
To that playboy, language was not knowledge. It was a key leading to tender pleasures of different charms.
“Damn, this guy was a talent...”
In his heart, Morin silently gave the original owner a thumbs-up.
Though his motives had been impure, this skill, in the current situation, was practically divine.
“You can speak our language?”
After hearing such fluent Aragonese, the old farmer also became somewhat surprised.
“A little.”
Morin collected himself and continued asking in Aragonese:
“So, do you know how many of those soldiers in black there were, and which direction they went?”
“It was about an hour ago. Several hundred of them, more or less, passed by from the east end of the village. They were making a terrible racket, and they even stole quite a few chickens from the village!”
The old farmer raised his wrinkled hand and pointed in the direction of Seville. “They went that way.”
Having obtained the key information, Morin then kindly asked a few more questions about the village and the surrounding terrain.
The old farmer answered them one by one.
Finally, Morin had Corporal Baumann hand over an unfinished piece of black bread and stuffed it into the old farmer’s hands.
“Sorry to have troubled you, old fellow.”
With that, he led the men swiftly out of the village.
Back at the bicycle hiding spot in the woods, Corporal Baumann could no longer hold back—of course, not because of the bread.
He leaned over, his face full of admiration.
“Sir, you actually know Aragonese? My God, how did you learn it?”
Morin could hardly say he had learned it to pick up women, so he could only clear his throat and put on an inscrutable expression.
“Just a little, just a little. A required course at the military academy, that’s all.”
He casually made up a line, then immediately changed the subject, his expression turning serious.
“The situation has changed. A Kingdom army unit of several hundred men left here just an hour ago, heading in the direction of Seville.”
Morin spread out the simple map and pointed to a spot on it.
“But right now, we don’t know whether they returned directly to Seville, or whether they intend to set up an ambush on the outskirts. So we still need to scout a little farther ahead.”