Sino-Korean War: The Bait
"Please don't leave my side."
The Head Maid holding me in her arms swept her gaze across every direction as she spoke. Strangely enough, ever since our last conversation she had refused to put so much as a step of distance between us.
Before, she had always kept a measured space and stood at my back. Not anymore.
"Hehe. Your Majesty is adorable."
Alteira, captain of the Guardians and someone I was meeting for the first time, drifted close and nuzzled her head against my chest. For all the laughter in her voice, her expression never so much as twitched.
Golden hair swayed, and a clean, bright fragrance spilled out around us. It felt, somehow, like being purified.
"You aren't even a beastfolk. What do you think you're doing?"
"Something that feels good."
Alteira yielded under the Head Maid's murderous stare and answered with perfect composure.
"For security's sake, keep your hand on your weapon."
"Understood."
The Head Maid frowned as she said it, yet she seemed to trust Alteira well enough.
Fair enough. This high-elf lady was Calamity-class herself — the equal of a Head Maid, not merely close to one.
They even looked oddly familiar with each other.
"Ugh… uuugh…"
"That was my spot…"
"Tch."
The three sisters formed a triangle around me, grumbling the whole time yet carefully holding their distance — roughly three meters, give or take.
Whatever the formal name for it, it was clearly a protective formation.
"You will guard His Majesty with your lives. Understood?"
The Head Maid was unusually strict today. The three sisters stopped their muttering at once and nodded with serious faces.
Hmm… wasn't she worrying a little too much?
What could possibly go wrong?
"I-I've never actually seen His Majesty before!"
"Me neither!"
Beyond the three sisters, a human wall of troops had been drawn up — forces assigned to escort me. From what I'd heard, there were easily ten thousand of them.
On top of that, dozens of helicopters and aircraft filled the sky overhead.
Guardians had already taken positions along every approach and were fully ready to intercept.
For reference, they made up the single largest share of Korea 3's air-defense network. This was a modern world, yes — but it was also a fantasy world, and that was not something you could afford to forget.
Hmm. On Earth 1, this kind of procession would have been a perfect invitation to get vaporized by a missile.
An army this size marching past — it was basically the same as shouting, Please, shoot us right here!
"Your Majesty! Until you return to the Imperial Palace, you won't have a single reason to worry about the sky."
Scarlet, chairwoman of Walpurgis, made the promise with a deadly serious face. The other magical girls, however, did not have a scrap of seriousness among them.
"Can't we at least do our entrance lines?"
"No. Today we're His Majesty's escort."
"What about scattering light?"
"That's out too."
The witches known as magical girls had pulled off the front lines and were floating in lazy circles above my head.
At a glance they looked like nothing more than cosplaying young women — yet on the battlefield they were all-purpose aerial units that seized air superiority, shredded enemy air defenses, and carried out bombing runs all at once.
Every one of them wore skirts stuffed with frills and ribbons, and somehow not a single pair of panties was visible. Was this the power of magic?!
Magic truly was a formidable force!
Even under my blazing stare, that defense refused to break!
"…Your Majesty, shall I show you?"
"No!"
Apparently my gaze had been far too obvious. Scarlet flushed red and murmured the offer so quietly that I startled and refused on the spot.
Conscious of my eyes, she pressed her skirt down with both hands — which only made it harder not to look.
"It would have been nice if Miss Rianna had come as well."
"Rianna has critical duties. Impossible."
"We can't abandon command of the army."
Even with three Calamity-class fighters, three superhuman units, the air force, and the army all on escort duty, the Head Maid still seemed to think more protection was required.
As far as I knew, this was the strongest party on Earth at the present moment.
With this combination, even if you took a nuclear shower outside of non-nuclear mode, you would survive it and hit back.
I had lived through that once before.
In the game, I had merely dusted every enemy city with poison gas — and for some reason nuclear missiles had started raining down on the Korean Peninsula without end.
That event text had appeared, a nuclear shower had followed, and the entire country had been smashed to pieces. Even Korea 3's formidable air defenses had been shredded the instant the Earth Alliance became the enemy.
The fact that we still managed to counterattack after ending up like that had been genuinely impressive.
After taking the bad ending, I had repeated the same stunt a few more times and discovered that Judgment Day was probabilistic — not guaranteed.
I also learned that a handful of preemptive measures could keep the event trigger from firing at all.
From that experience onward, I made a habit of improving relations with every major power and signing non-aggression pacts.
I had also stopped casually dumping poison gas just because it was a game. Now that this was reality, I had abandoned chemical and biological warfare entirely.
There was a bare minimum of morality that needed looking after.
While I was reaffirming that hard-won caution, the Calamity-class superhumans kept talking among themselves.
"You could have just called Cora."
"…Miss Cora might cause an incident. Absolutely not."
"You're treating Miss Cora like far too much of an idiot."
"She actually is an idiot."
Cora apparently referred to the mermaid queen, and her reputation did not seem especially glowing.
We kept moving, and at last I arrived in the city of Harbin.
"…What on earth is going on?"
"Scoop!"
"The Korean Emperor stepping onto foreign soil — what's here?"
Even though this was occupied territory, foreign reporters and local residents had crowded in to gawk at the enormous procession.
The atmosphere was surprisingly free. Of course, the moment anyone tried something like terrorism, a festival of blood would break out on the spot.
"The Korean Emperor has shown himself in Harbin?"
He almost never left the Imperial Palace, and on the rare occasions he did appear, he only ever moved inside his own country.
So why come out now?
Why appear in a place as dangerous as occupied territory?
One thought rose above all those questions.
Wasn't this… an opportunity?
Most of China's high command thought exactly that.
"Pour missiles down like rain and blow him away right now!"
"If we commit airborne troops in force and manage to close the distance, the entire war situation will flip in an instant!"
"A huge share of their strength has been pulled off the line to guard the Emperor! If we push now, we have a real shot at winning!"
"The air force! Commit the entire air force!"
Generals frothed at the mouth and ran wild. That was the majority opinion — the hardliners, if you wanted a label.
"Let's proceed carefully. The Korean Emperor is no fool. This is far too suspicious."
"This is clearly a trap!"
A handful of cautious voices raised those objections, but the hardliners crushed them. Suspicious as the whole thing was, letting it pass was simply impossible.
"We have to use the missile forces we've been holding in reserve — now!"
"Those were for the great counteroffensive!"
"You idiot, that great counteroffensive is right now!"
"And if we advance the schedule and everything unravels, then what?"
Even the old veterans, men who had lived more than long enough, sprayed spit as they fought. The bait was that large — large enough to reverse the war in a single stroke.
"Vice Chairman, in my view this is the proper moment for the great counteroffensive."
Even Mao Zedong himself stepped forward and threw his weight behind the hardliners. It was the most natural thing in the world.
The front's main strength had been withdrawn. An offensive here would yield enormous gains.
And if they captured the Emperor on top of that, they would win the war.
You expected them to just sit still?
Had someone, by any chance, been bought by Korea?
The Vice Chairman had no desire to endure those suspicious stares. Of course, that was not the only problem.
Once the Chairman's will was set, the Vice Chairman had no choice but to agree. This was Mao Zedong's nation.
The Chairman decided everything, and China followed him.
"I agree to advancing the great counteroffensive."
And so the Vice Chairman made the decision.
"That's it!"
"Finally!"
"Let's smash those Korean bastards!"
The cheering men were swallowed by the heat and lost all capacity for rational thought.
"I will follow Comrade Vice Chairman's decision."
"Ahem. I will state in advance that the air force's losses will be severe."
"If we attack now, the navy's movements will already have been anticipated… but if it is necessary, so be it."
Those who still found the situation suspicious produced statements carefully designed to avoid any personal responsibility.
So who would take the blame, then?
Chairman Mao Zedong, who had pushed them into it?
As if that would ever happen.
"…Prepare the great counteroffensive."
The Vice Chairman was doing everything in his power not to let a strange expression cross his face. If the operation failed, every scrap of responsibility would fall on him.
He was the one who had formally proposed it, after all.
The fact that this was not the original planned timing did not matter. What mattered was that the Vice Chairman had declared the great counteroffensive now.
"Ready the army."
"Comrade Vice Chairman, set your mind at ease! The People's Liberation Army has always been ready!"
General Chao Lianjun's words only made the Vice Chairman more uneasy. Didn't that mean the troops were already exhausted?
Just what had he ordered them to do?
Contrary to the Vice Chairman's imagination, General Chao Lianjun had merely scolded the defeated with harsh severity. He had not issued any special orders.
The dressing-down had simply cascaded downward of its own accord, and the soldiers had been standing by wide-eyed and sleepless for twenty-four hours straight.
Is that so? Morale is that high?
Yes, sir! The troops can fight at any time! They can be committed to combat within five minutes!
That report had satisfied General Chao Lianjun. Of course his subordinate generals were not fools either, and they had planned to grant rest periods well before the Korean forces could close in.
They had simply been unlucky enough that bait they could not refuse had appeared at exactly the wrong moment.
Still — they would get a little rest, at least!
"Hah… so I head to the battlefield again after all this time."
General Ping Hongwei, summoned for the great counteroffensive, smiled even as he keenly felt the shadow of death settling over his entire body.
"I've got a really bad feeling about this."
"We're not about to die, are we?"
"The kids are in rough shape. Is this going to be okay?"
The Red Army — the superhuman unit that had survived countless battlefields — felt the same sensation.
"At our age, it's about time we made room for the young ones."
Ping Hongwei looked over his unit once and casually admitted they were going to die. A bottle of liquor rested in his hand.
After so many campaigns, it was something he had started reaching for at some point — and never stopped.
"Cough! There aren't any young ones to take over, so what are you talking about."
"Looking at the captain losing it, yeah, we're definitely dying."
"Tsk. Guess I'd better write a will leaving everything to my grandkids."
No successor superhumans had ever appeared for the Red Army. They had thought, Shouldn't we be conserving our lives? — but one look at Ping Hongwei told them this was an order that could not be ignored.
The Chairman?
So it's Chairman Mao's order.
The Red Army could ignore anyone else's commands. If the Chairman wanted it, they could not.
The participation of China's proud superhuman unit had been decided.