The Korea-China War — Occupied Territory
"I'll clean this up nice and tidy!"
The smiling maid held a freshly acquired tank in her hands. That tank became a weapon, and she swung it.
A deep, thrumming roar filled the air.
"Hwaaagh!"
The instant a multi-ton lump of steel slammed into a human body, the man became shredded meat. Chunks of blood and flesh pattered down, driving home the fact that this was a battlefield.
"Ei!"
With a cute little battle cry, the maid who had crashed into the enemy line produced dozens of casualties in a single sweep.
"Aaaagh!"
Whenever the meat fragments that had been launched skyward came raining back down, Chinese soldiers screamed and fled.
"Kill that bitch!"
Gunfire erupted in a staccato roar. A Chinese commander led his troops in pouring fire onto her — and the result that came back was pitiful.
Bullets pinged and skipped away.
"That stings a little."
The rounds that struck the maid of blood and flesh simply tumbled to the ground.
"…Where the hell are our superhumans?"
"Probably still in the rear."
Unease rippled through the soldiers watching the grumbling maid. Their commander's insistence that if they just kept shooting she would eventually die sounded like pure nonsense.
"About time they showed up."
As if answering the maid's expectant glance toward the rear, allied forces came thundering forward in a cloud of dust.
A deep, rolling rumble shook the ground. Twelve tanks held the lead, with infantry fighting vehicles streaming in a line behind them.
The Chinese forces spotted them too.
"…Fall back!"
The commander who had been screaming that the enemy was only one person now shouted with a face gone deathly pale — but it was already too late.
"All our transport's been destroyed!"
A soldier bellowed the news, and only then did the commander grasp reality. That maid grinning through a hail of bullets had wrecked their vehicles first thing.
The reason for that little stunt was charging toward them in the form of those tanks.
"I—I surrender."
Surrounded by the bloodshot eyes of soldiers who had no desire to run from tanks on foot, the commander raised both hands. Without hesitation, his men flung down their weapons and put their hands up as well.
The battlefield, which had been roaring with gunfire, fell silent in an instant.
"What a good boy~."
The maid who had strolled up close said it with a smile. The commander's face twisted, but he only bowed his head and kept silent.
Scenes like this were playing out across the whole of Manchuria.
"We are successfully pushing the enemy back."
I listened to the maid's report while focusing on the screens spread before me. Dozens of monitors linked to various battlefields let me watch victory after victory unfold with my own eyes.
Even to someone like me who knew next to nothing about real warfare, the picture was one-sided.
"China's got more troops than I expected."
I was receiving the same real-time intelligence that went to the general commanding the entire army. Enemy forces already annihilated had exceeded the numbers that had originally been stationed along the border before the war began.
"China anticipated our attack and reinforced their troops."
The maid's explanation made sense. The image of the Chinese embassy going up in flames was still vivid in my memory.
…After a stunt like that, of course they would have expected a war.
The war-justification button I had pressed in the game was, by its very nature, a way of telling the other side, We're about to come beat the hell out of you.
"If they saw the war coming, why are they collapsing this easily?"
Winning was a given, but the near-total lack of real resistance felt slightly off.
"Our assessment is that the surprise attack was faster than they anticipated. Miss Rianna is loudly insisting that everything is fine, so please don't worry."
Hmm. Is that so?
It still felt a little suspicious, but reserve forces were standing by in the rear. We could handle an emergency if one came up.
Once the initial surprise attack had succeeded and shattered the enemy's main force along the border, the Korean military's subsequent operations were simple.
First, a superhuman charged in to smash the enemy, clear traps, and break their lines. Then armored units or mechanized infantry poured into the half-destroyed, disordered ranks and swept up whatever remained.
The tanks that had originally carried the shock role had been pushed back, and superhumans had taken their place. In practice, the superhumans were far stronger than tanks and far easier to supply.
Into the ground the enemy had been driven from, allied infantry arrived and dug in hard, carving out trenches and securing positions. The air-defense assets we had been stockpiling for some time also advanced into Manchuria.
Then the same method of advance, again.
When one of these spearhead lines reached a suitable distance, it linked up with another breakthrough unit that had cut a parallel line beside it, trapping the enemy in between and annihilating them in an encirclement. The classic doctrine of double envelopment.
If a breakthrough stalled, or if the infantry that had dug in got pushed back, it would have been dangerous — but Manchuria's defenders had no unit capable of stopping the shock power of the Maid Corps. On top of that, enemy forces already shattered by massive artillery barrages had no capacity left to respond.
Even air superiority over Manchuria had fallen to our side. The success of the initial raid had given us a considerable edge, and once the enemy main force was half-destroyed, the magical girls committed to seizing the skies had mercilessly swatted fighters out of the air.
It hadn't been like this when it was a game, but now that it was reality, superhumans in modern warfare were close to invincible. Units typically operated at company or battalion scale, so the moment a superhuman dove in, an entire unit simply evaporated. A thousand men at most could not stop a single superhuman — by Korean superhuman standards, at least.
In other words, as long as you watched out for China's superhumans, ordinary soldiers were just free meals.
A few major preconditions did apply, of course.
One: air superiority had to be secured. If the other side held the skies, our forces moving in long columns would get bombed. Even a superhuman maid would struggle to deal with enemies several thousand meters overhead. But for Korea — which had aerial superhuman units in the form of magical girls — to lose air superiority, the theater would have to be too vast for them to cover and our air force would have to be overwhelmingly outmatched. At present, that was not a problem.
Two: friendly air-defense networks were necessary. Superhumans might look invincible in ground combat, but they were not truly immortal. A missile barrage could kill them. That was not a major issue while we were constantly on the move, and once the Elf Guardians finished deploying a proper air-defense net across Manchuria, it would not be a problem afterward either.
There were other concerns — smashing enemy radar, continuously suppressing Manchuria's air defenses — but Rianna was reportedly handling those well.
Mm. Through Manchuria, at least, there shouldn't be any problems.
Cross the Yalu River and the Chinese city sat right on the doorstep. The moment the border garrison was wiped out, Korean troops had poured in, and now the place was crawling with them.
"…Please, just stop going past already."
Li Zicheng was hiding inside his house, peering out through a gap in the curtains.
"The Korean military will not harm you! Safety is guaranteed for all civilians!"
A vehicle rolled down the road, blaring the same announcement he had already heard several times.
"Get the hell out of China!"
A middle-aged man with a vicious face hurled a rock at the vehicle.
Tires screeched. The car stopped.
"Oh, come on. You really shouldn't do that."
A woman with dog ears stepped out and approached the middle-aged man with a warning. The smile on her face and her round, soft features made it impossible to feel any real threat in the words.
"This is China! Go back to your disgusting country, you barbarian bitch!"
Li Zicheng's face went pale as he watched the man pour out curses. He already knew what was about to happen. He had seen it several times before.
"…Not a civilian, then?"
The woman tilted her head, still smiling. There was nothing threatening about her anywhere — she was almost cute.
"Are those eyes just for decoration? Typical Chinese."
The middle-aged man, who still believed that being a civilian would protect him, had chosen the Korean army as a convenient target for a little patriotism and a little venting. He was about to learn how foolish that choice had been.
"Aha! So you're saying you're not a civilian?"
Still smiling, the dog-eared woman raised her gun. The moment the muzzle lined up on him, the courage potion's effects evaporated and the man tried to apologize — but it was already too late.
A single shot cracked out.
The muzzle flashed. A bullet fired without the slightest hesitation punched a hole through his head.
"I figured there wouldn't be any credit to earn cleaning up a city, but they keep popping up! Guess I'll make a few more rounds!"
Humming a little tune, the woman loaded the corpse into the car and drove off. Li Zicheng kept his hand clamped over his mouth in silence until the vehicle was finally out of sight.
Only then did he mutter under his breath.
"…Are they running sting operations or what. How many does that make now."
Early days of the occupation.
Just as Li Zicheng had said, the first time those vehicles appeared, brave souls had gathered and shouted their condemnation at the top of their lungs.
"Get out of China!"
"You'll pay for shelling this city!"
The woman who stepped out of the car at those words looked so thoroughly harmless that she lowered their guard.
"Please don't do this! If you interfere with military operations, you'll get in trouble!"
She spoke as if scolding a child, complete with a sharp little tsk, and they laughed at her. Then one of the men finally stepped in and shoved her by the shoulder.
"Ah. I've been attacked!"
She said it with a bright, sunny face. Her tail wagged back and forth as if expressing the mood.
"Uh, what?"
A cold prickle of wrongness hit them, and the ones who sensed something off began to edge backward.
"I'm going to counterattack!"
Still smiling, the woman had her gun trained on them. One quick-witted man spun and ran — but no one outruns a bullet.
A burst of automatic fire tore through the street.
There were no survivors.
Death by natural causes.