+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++

Astelia City

June 19, 1539 CE

"Save the Empress?"

"Is she finally back?"

"Why do we have to do this? Isn't it dangerous to push eastward?"

"We have the Grey Knight and the Golden Angel with us. It shouldn't fail."

"Still…this is unimaginable…"

The murmurs between the gathered soldiers and officers of the Ygeian Expeditionary Corps in the city's military HQ stopped as suddenly, Hans, General Florian Kohler, and Colonel Strobel stepped to the stage.

The trio stiffened their poses, and while Hans himself was a bit unsure about this whole thing, and he questioned why it was he who had to stand here instead of Adelyn, he kept himself steady.

Then, Florian coughed to clear his throat.

"Men of the expeditionary corps!" he started. "I am here to inform you that today, we will go on a mission, immediately. It is urgent, and we must make haste! Today, we've received word from our forward scouts that a small army that's protecting the Empress is under attack."

The soldiers on the ground paled. Hans himself knew this already, as they received the information an hour ago. He could still remember the panicked discussions and planning between the higher-ups earlier.

Now, there was no denying it.

They had to go forward.

"We'll be driving out, all at once," Florian declared. "I know we've been left behind for so long by the Imperial Government, but we have reason to believe that the Empress is just as much a victim as we are. We need to take her in, to find the truth about what is happening to mankind today.

"We cannot be headless chickens anymore, ready to be slaughtered. We are disunited, fractured, and without someone, somewhere, giving us directions. Her absence has greatly sped up our collapse, but I know many soldiers and officers who know that back when she was here, the Empire was great, and so was mankind.

"There are multiple demons on our way, and we will be charging forward with our dragon-drawn carriages and horses to reach them. Once deployed, and once we make contact, many of you will fall in battle. But this battle will be one of the most important ones we've yet to fight.

"We will take the Empress and restore the Imperial Authority in the west! Then, with her, and whatever truth she bears with her, we shall rally mankind again against demons and those who had betrayed it. That is the mission of the day! And I expect the best from the soldiers of Ygeia! Down with the demons, and long live the Imperium!"

"Long live the Imperium!" the soldiers shouted, now riled up with anger after learning the possibility that they, and their once beloved Empress, must have been betrayed all this time.

"Do your best," Florian said to Hans as he turned to him. "You and Captain Wittenstein, I need you two to be the vanguard again, as I've said earlier."

"I understand," Hans said, nodding. "My captain is probably already preparing our mechs."

"Good. We cannot fail with this one," the general's gaze turned colder. "I know you're a foreigner, and for days you've been doubting this one, but I need you to understand, right now, she's the most important target that we, mankind, has to acquire."

"I already understand her value as even just a figurehead," Hans said. "Again, I said I'll do my best."

"Good. See you again on the road. Ebert! Assemble your vanguard battalion. I want these two supported all the way," Florian said, and Ebert saluted stiffly.

Below them, the soldiers were already scrambling on their feet, rushing out of the barracks to get to their staging areas.

Within minutes, Hans found Adelyn waiting in the area where their mechs were held, a small makeshift hangar in the city. The two talked a bit about their reported enemies and the tactics they'd use, before agreeing on a concrete plan.

Hans would act again as a forward scout, while Adelyn would focus on protecting the vanguard force from any demonic ambushes. With that out of the way, the two went for their mechs, before someone appeared in front of the hangar's entrance.

"You two will not leave me alone here!" a girl's voice squeaked, and the two turned to see Alizée standing, her arms on her hips. "Hmph. Sir Hans and Lady Adelyn, always so sneaky, why do you two always forget that I'm still the Angel of Purity? I'll help you two kill those demons!"

"Alizée," Hans' eyes were wide. "Look, this is just a brief mission. If you really wish to help us in this conflict, then just keep training at summoning your ideal during emergencies."

"But I would never truly put it to good use," Alizée complained, as she looked down. "Since the battle with Granny, I've never been able to fight side-by-side with you two truly. I've always just been on Lady Adelyn's lap, watching…"

The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings.

She teared up a bit.

"After seeing Sir Hans almost die, I refuse to simply sit. I want to fight. I want us to win. I want…I want everyone to come back home, and as an angel, I realized that it is my 'duty'."

"A child has no duty to adults, Alizée," Adelyn refused, shaking her head.

"Yes. But this is an 'extreme time', right?" Alizée asked, looking at Hans. "Therefore, 'extreme measures' have to be used. Isn't this just another one of those? I wish to fight, because this ability chose me. If I could give this to an adult so that they'd help people using it instead, I would, but I can't."

She placed her fist on her heart.

"I wish to devote myself to mankind and the two of you, and to every friend I made. So please, let me come with you again! I wanna fight those demons, and I want to save the lady empress!"

"And why would you want to save her?" Hans asked, his tone cold. That made Alizée stiffen a bit, until she answered honestly.

"Because they said saving her would mean mankind could win against demons better."

Hans sighed.

In the end, she's still just an impressionable girl.

Then, he turned to Adelyn with a smile.

"Keep good watch of her, as always," Hans said.

"Of course," Adelyn nodded, then she looked at Alizée with a smile. "You're coming with us, but you're still only going to fight when I allow it, okay?"

"Okay!"

+++

"Blast 'em!"

"Copy that!"

Hans and Adelyn immediately began a heavy bombardment of three demons charging straight at them. They were all humanoid, but, outside of the swords each carried, they were pretty much hard to distinguish due to the black mist surrounding them.

It didn't matter though. Adelyn's firepower, now mostly APFSDS plasma rounds, was extremely potent. Combined with Hans' plasma machine gun rounds due to his upgraded 'Trace the Dots' upgrade, meant that the trio of demons immediately suffered heinous injuries before even reaching the one-kilometer mark.

By the time they were at the one-kilometer range, the soldiers from the 1st Anti-Demon Unit began opening fire. Organized with the vanguard group was a unit that Hans had created earlier, with four squads of four mages each, each capable of conducting combined ritual casting.

They were denoted as the 1st Caster Company for now, even though their numbers were nowhere close to it as they were still training both the veteran battlemages from Jonas' unit and newly hired mages for it.

Still, four glowing runic circles appeared high in their positions. Each of these casters had their staffs raised to the sky, as they pooled their mana and chanted the same spells together. Right then, glowing bolts of light struck the demons charging at them, with force that made them stagger in pain.

"Seems like the new units are working well," Hans said, laughing as he sent another MPAT round at one of the demons, causing it to stumble on its feet and collapse on the fields. "Bastards are quickly being drained by those new anti-demon bolts."

"You three sure are geniuses," Adelyn awkwardly laughed. "Those light bolts seem to be just as powerful as our rounds. It's so…"

"It requires too much magic to do though," Hans gritted his teeth, as one of the squads' runic circles finally disappeared. "They're going to need a lot of replenishment potions for this one. Might have worked better if we cycled each squad, but there's no time for that now."

Hans pressed the speaker button for his mech, causing his voice to reverberate on the battlefield right as two of the caster squads ceased their attacks.

"Musketeers, ready your guns at once and use your best skills for the kill blow!" Hans ordered. "Remaining casters, send the AOE fire spells at once."

The runic circle on the last caster squad available changed, the words and symbols on it shifting and turning into different things that Hans never truly understood. But what mattered was that afterward, a single pulse of red light came from it, striking the green fields.

A massive fire appeared, causing the three demons to burn, further slowing them down as the injuries ate through their bodies badly. By then, the musketeers, each of them hiding on the base of the small hills or lying flat on the grass, appeared in the open and began firing volley after volley of musket shots.

The demons absorbed nearly all of it, causing the black mist around them to dissipate. They barely even had the chance to swing their blades and cause a few casualties, but they were now laid bare and exposed to Hans and Adelyn, their bodies covered in tattered rags revealing severe wounds and bleeding.

"Let's finish this one," Hans said, as he loaded a fresh belt of MG24, ADP straight into his double coaxials. "I take the one on the left, you focus on the one in the center, and the right side."

"Wiclo."

Coupled with the continuous barrage of musketfire, Hans and Adelyn fully joined on. Hans sent an APFSDS on the demon he assigned to himself, tearing off its entire shoulder when he struck it. Then, a hail of blue plasma rounds burned the demon's body further, creating holes that finally stopped regrowing…until it fell flat on the ground.

Adelyn on the other hand was just as fast. She took care of the one in the center, sending a plasma round straight to the head of the demon and quite literally beheading it in one shot, causing it to collapse flat on the ground. The other one, she sent a cryofreeze round on, causing it and the area around it to completely freeze.

When the single ice statue didn't move, Hans gave his orders on the speakers.

"All units, cease fire!" he barked. "We won. Good work!"

The last shot of the battle was from a nervous musketeer, his bullet hitting the frozen demon statue on the neck, shattering the ice and causing its head to fall off.

"I said cease fire, damn it!" Hans repeated, and finally, there was silence. "Finally…"

[3 DEMONS LIQUIDATED!]

[LEVEL UP! NOW LVL. 33!]

[PROGRESS TO LVL.34: 12%]

[AVAILABLE AP: 5500/200 PTS]

Well, that's not so bad, I guess.

Certainly, killing three demons without incurring any casualties on their own, aside from the few fainted casters due to AP exhaustion, meant that things were looking on the upside for now.

But, they have been delayed by this engagement. Quickly, Adelyn gave the orders to the rest of the vanguard force. They needed to double time if they wanted to save the Empress.

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