Chapter 21

Love Lies Ahead

It was raining in Brittany.

Pitter-patter.

It was raining in Brittany.

Pitter-patter.

The Kingdom of Fontaine had dispatched a hundred thousand ground troops to launch an assault on the fortress defense line of Brittany on the western front of the Albion Empire.

Every line of defense was a main assault; there were no feints.

The Albion Empire had been making progress throughout the war, and so had the Kingdom of Fontaine. War was one of the fastest periods of human advancement. The Kingdom of Fontaine had once again iterated its tactics, adopting rapid response and maneuver strategies.

Taking advantage of the Albion Empire’s rotation system, Fontaine quickly mobilized its maneuver units to strike the weaker points of the enemy’s defense line, avoiding prolonged battles of attrition as much as possible. These mobile units were lightly equipped and fast-moving, capable of swiftly cutting through the front line to disrupt the Empire’s strategic rhythm.

Such tactics were unique to the Kingdom of Fontaine. They relied heavily on reconnaissance and rapid feedback from intelligence. Once reconnaissance or intelligence went wrong, the scattered units would face utter annihilation.

The Albion Empire used Dragon Cavalry.

The Kingdom of Fontaine used Gryphon Cavalry. Compared to the Dragon Cavalry, they were weaker in strength and endurance, but their advantage lay in numbers. With a vast number of Gryphon Cavalry handling reconnaissance and intelligence, the Kingdom of Fontaine was able to execute its rapid response and maneuver strategies.

General Asfled ordered Major Stewart and his squad to compete with the Gryphon Cavalry Regiment of the Kingdom of Fontaine for air supremacy.

He immediately deployed all newly organized reserve forces to the battlefield.

The battle had reached a point far beyond what either the Albion Empire or the Kingdom of Fontaine could bear. All of the Empire’s accumulated resources had been exhausted. Perhaps the financial system could hold out a while longer, but the Empire’s manpower could last no more than two years.

That was, in a sense, a kind of hope.

If they could hold on for another two years, the war would inevitably come to an end.

From an outsider’s perspective, it seemed as though the Kingdom of Fontaine and the Albion Empire were hand in hand, marching straight into hell.

They could not even afford the price of victory.

Let alone defeat.

The Apennine Peninsula’s refusal to lend money to Albion or Fontaine was understandable. In this war that had lasted thirty-three years, there were no winners—only losers, and those who lost even more miserably.

Throughout the months-long Battle of Brittany,

it not only destroyed people’s bodies but also their souls.

War distorted everyone—and even Ning Luo was no exception. As the head of the Military Dispatch Division, Ning Luo had to ensure that the army’s deployment ran without error, which inevitably led him into conflict with officers of all levels.

Generally speaking,

Ning Luo would choose the most violent and efficient method of resolution.

That earned him the title of the Tyrant of Brittany. General Sussex and General Gosling were right— in Ning Luo’s eyes, people’s lives were nothing more than numbers and symbols. But as Ning Luo had told General Sussex, the cost of such coldness was winning this war.

So many had already died; one more or one less no longer seemed to make any difference.

If they couldn't win,

then everyone had died for nothing.

The one thing worth being grateful for was that the Rotation System had at least proven to be executable. The entire imperial army had been fully mobilized, and with it, the Empire's finances had been squeezed to the limit. From originally allocating a third of its revenue, to half, and then to two-thirds—nearly all was now spent on war.

But that was considered good news.

By the end of September, ten thousand new recruits had been sent to the battlefield. They were the last batch.

General Allenby informed General Asfled that there were no more reinforcements to send.

October.

Fontaine launched the Troy Offensive.

Albion launched the Ambella Offensive.

The September battles had nearly drained both nations of their elite forces. Most junior officers had been replaced, and the Albion Empire was almost scraping soldiers out of its teeth each day to launch irregular counterattacks against Fontaine's exhausted forces.

At this point in the war, everything seemed to be left to fate.

Before such a colossal war effort, manpower had become insignificant. And it seemed fate still stood with the Albion Empire.

It was still raining in Brittany.

The entire Brittany defense line had turned from mud into a swamp, which completely neutralized Fontaine’s rapid response and maneuver tactics.

If September had been the bloodiest stage of the Brittany campaign, then October became a test of the human spirit at its absolute limit. Even with the Rotation System in place, the pressure was too much to bear. Whether for the Empire or for Fontaine, both sides teetered on the brink of collapse.

Marshal François Gabriel de La Dormoy, Chief of Staff of the Kingdom of Fontaine’s Army, earned himself a new nickname.

The Butcher of Brittany.

By the time November arrived,

General Asfled finally received good news. General Butler from the Eastern Front reported a breakthrough. This meant the Kingdom of Fontaine would have to redeploy forces to defend the east, and the Albion Empire could once again allocate more troops to Brittany.

The Kingdom of Fontaine was reaching its breaking point.

On November 10th, 1063,

Marshal Dormoy issued another offensive order.

Fontaine’s Western Front Army had been entirely drained of manpower. If another offensive were launched, it could trigger mutiny. To prevent that, Marshal Dormoy restructured the kingdom’s forces, splitting the Western Front Army into two separate corps to launch a final assault on Brittany.

General Asfled believed Marshal Dormoy had gone mad.

Perhaps everyone in this war had gone mad.

And yet,

on November 11th,

perhaps as God’s final mercy upon the earth, it began to snow in Brittany.

Heavy snow.

So heavy, it seemed to bury all the sins of the land beneath it.

November 12th, 1063.

Marshal François Gabriel de La Dormoy, Chief of Staff of the Kingdom of Fontaine’s Army, announced a full retreat of the front line to the Samat River. All forces across the line were to shift from offense to defense.

He submitted his letter of resignation to the King of Fontaine.

The next day,

François Gabriel de La Dormoy took his own life.

This also marked the end of—

the most brutal, most blood-soaked campaign in human history to date. A campaign that stood for the absolute limits of human strength and intelligence, showcasing to the entire world the finest slaughtering techniques mankind had ever developed.

The Brittany Campaign, which had lasted six months, was over.

It began in madness and ended with a snowfall.

...

November 15th, 1063.

The Empire conferred upon Chief of General Staff Wilkes Pe Asfled the rank of Marshal, and awarded him the Grand Silver Dragon Cross—a medal specially created for him, and the highest honor in its class. He became the fourth Marshal of the Army since the war began.

As a Chief of Staff appointed in a moment of crisis, he held the collapsing Brittany defense line together. He recognized talent and entrusted power to Second Lieutenant Ning Luo, winning a war that had once seemed unwinnable.

He no longer needed to think about things like so-called family honor.

His name would be remembered forever in the Empire’s history—

and this land would remember the name of Marshal Asfled.

And yet,

Marshal Asfled did not join in the cheering of the soldiers at the Brittany fortress. The soldiers were not cheering for victory in the Brittany Campaign.

They were just grateful to have survived.

For most of the soldiers, what they felt was not joy but resignation and relief. After so many had died, they were the ones who were still alive.

Marshal Asfled stayed alone in his small room, quietly drinking.

A drink to all those who had died on this land.

May your souls find peace.

A drink to Marshal Dormoy. If Dormoy had not died in this war, then Asfled would have. Marshal Asfled felt a touch of loneliness. Despite knowing each other so well, he had never even met Dormoy in person.

Perhaps next time, it would be his turn to die.

.........

...

Personnel transferred from the Central Army Group had taken over much of the work in Brittany.

Many senior officers in Brittany were now able to return home for Christmas. Even those who didn’t want to go, or had nowhere to return to—like Marshal Asfled—could at least take this time to rest a little.

Only the Military Dispatch Division remained constantly at work.

It wasn’t that the Military Dispatch Division didn’t want to rest.

It was because its head, Second Lieutenant Ning Luo, was still working. The title “Tyrant of Brittany” hadn’t come out of nowhere—if Ning Luo didn’t rest, then no one else dared to either. No one even dared to ask.

Only Priscilla dared to ask.

She was walking alongside Ning Luo through the long corridors of Brittany, where wounded and exhausted soldiers lined both sides.

Priscilla asked,

“Now that we’ve held Brittany, don’t you feel happy?”

“I knew it already.”

Even before the Brittany Campaign had begun,

Ning Luo had already known.

The Kingdom of Fontaine had no way of truly crushing the Albion Empire. This war was never something that could be ended with a single glorious victory. In the end, the victor would be whichever side still had people left alive. Neither Fontaine nor Albion could land a single decisive blow to destroy the other.

Priscilla was long used to this kind of attitude from Ning Luo.

“What I mean is,” she said, “we won. You can take a break.”

And truly, Ning Luo should rest.

Months of sustained high-intensity work—this wasn’t something a human being could endure. Especially not while bearing the weight of all the blood and sins soaked into this land. Even Marshal Asfled could barely hold on—how much more so for the man in charge of the Military Dispatch Division?

If he didn’t rest soon, Priscilla feared Ning Luo’s body might be the first to give out.

Even if Ning Luo could hold on,

the others in the division couldn’t.

But Ning Luo showed no sign of letting up.

“Win? Priscilla, you’re being far too optimistic. We are nowhere near winning this war.”

Just as Ning Luo believed that the Kingdom of Fontaine could never crush the Albion Empire, he also believed that the Empire could not completely crush Fontaine either.

Even after such a devastating defeat for Fontaine in Brittany, the Empire still couldn’t bring the war to a definitive close.

Ning Luo emphasized to Priscilla,

“My promise was to end the war. I need to begin preparations for next year’s campaign.”

...

Ning Luo had never viewed the Brittany Campaign as an isolated battle.

In his eyes, it was merely a single phase within a vast war. With both sides burned out and every card already played, what mattered most was the all-or-nothing struggle awaiting them next year.

And Priscilla had no way of stopping him.

After the inspection ended, Ning Luo prepared to return to his office and continue studying the operational plans for the coming year.

However—

when he opened the door to his office—

he often experienced hallucinations. It was common on the battlefield. But this time, it was too vivid.

And only at a moment like this did Ning Luo cease to be the Tyrant of Brittany.

Snow was falling on Brittany.

And Isabella was there.