Beyond Lies Hell
"Say that… again?"
Lieutenant General Henri de Dubois, commander of the Republic's 2nd Corps, could not believe his own ears. With trembling hands, he crumpled the battle report his staff officer had submitted.
"The vanguard is… annihilated? Retreating?"
"…That is correct, sir. The lead armored battalion of the 4th Armored Division is combat-ineffective, and the infantry regiment that pushed in behind them has suffered casualties exceeding forty percent, with command and control collapsing entirely. The vanguard force has effectively disintegrated."
A hollow laugh escaped Henri's lips.
"Our opponent was a single infantry brigade. A slapdash defensive line, short on heavy weapons, a ragtag mob, by all accounts! And yet our elite armored power has been reduced to scrap metal, and an entire infantry regiment was chewed to pieces in a night of street fighting?"
"W-well… it will sound like an excuse, sir, but the enemy's response was… beyond reason."
The intelligence officer pressed on, sweating through his uniform.
"For one thing, they fired their anti-aircraft guns horizontally. An 88mm armor-piercing round punched through the frontal armor of a tank as if it were paper."
"Lunatics… wasting expensive anti-aircraft guns like that?"
"The infantry fighting was worse. Whatever supplies they had stockpiled, their firepower never let up all night. And apparently, none of our ambushes or flanking attacks worked either."
SLAM!
Lieutenant General Henri brought his fist down on the desk.
"Absurd! How many supplies could they possibly have? And ambushes don't work? Are you telling me they know our positions?!"
A murderous gleam sharpened in Henri's eyes.
"Some variable? Tactical deception? Don't make me laugh."
By any sane standard, the report was impossible to accept. Whatever advantages the defense enjoyed, the notion that an elite corps spearheaded by the most modern armored forces had been pushed back by a lone infantry brigade was preposterous. It was a gap in weight class where the word "contest" shouldn't even exist in the first place.
And so—
"Enough. Commit more troops."
Henri issued the order without a moment's hesitation. This was a battle that could not be delayed any longer. It had to be crushed, completely.
"It's all parlor tricks anyway. Meaningless in the face of overwhelming superiority."
At the end of the day, they were an isolated brigade with no supply lines.
'If they'd dumped their ammunition like they did last night, they'd be firing empty cans by now.'
It was a perfectly reasonable judgment.
"Unlimited firepower, was it? Then let us see just how long it lasts."
Lieutenant General Henri tapped Rosenheim on the map with his baton.
"Move the 5th Artillery Brigade forward. Erase the city from the map itself. Grind it to dust—not one stone, not one brick left standing. And then… commit the following infantry divisions and the 4th Armored Division simultaneously."
A staff officer burst in, aghast.
"B-but, sir! If we don't preserve the Rosenheim rail facilities, our own supply lines will—"
"Irrelevant! Securing the place is what matters, now!"
He growled, jabbing a finger at Rosenheim on the map.
"Use every means available. If the rails are broken, lay them down again. But I will not tolerate another moment of delay."
BOOOOOM—!
Rosenheim's morning broke with a thunderclap that seemed to split the sky. No—morning never came at all.
Only gray gunsmoke did.
Ssss—
The dazzling snowfall had swallowed the sun whole.
Squadrons of Republic fighters tore through the snow in dive attacks. A torrent of 150mm howitzer shells ripped buildings apart, while howitzers and mortars shattered every block of the city. It was a vision of hell where snowflakes evaporated in searing flames before they could even touch the ground.
Literally an artillery barrage sweeping the city away like an eraser—brute force with no subtlety whatsoever.
"Everyone underground! Sewers! Cellars! Anywhere deep—get your asses in a hole!"
I screamed myself hoarse, kicking soldiers bodily into the gaps below.
"Gaaaah! Help me! The fire! The fire won't go out!"
The surface was hell itself. White phosphorus rounds burst, blooming smoke that burned everything it touched. Stone ran molten and rebar bent like taffy, while the snow at our feet melted and refroze over and over, spreading sheets of black ice.
"Don't pour water! Smother it with dirt! Damn it, use dirt, I said!"
Utter carnage.
Any ordinary unit would have been wiped out at this point, or surrendered in terror to a white flag. The enemy had made up their mind to erase even the places where we could hide.
But there was no need for that.
Rumble, rumble….
After the storm had swept through and passed—
I peered out through a crack in the cellar of a collapsed bakery.
"Ha."
A hollow laugh came out of me.
The buildings that had still been standing were simply gone. The roads were severed, and the clock tower that had been the city's landmark was now powder, buried under drifts of white snow. I had no idea who the enemy commander was, but in the end, Rosenheim had been wiped off the map exactly as he intended.
"C-Captain… the city… it's all broken…."
Kurt spoke, coated head to toe in powdered plaster, his face blank with despair.
"Where… where do we hide now?"
I brushed the frost from my shoulder and squeezed tight the grenade I held in my hand—born of Material Conversion.
"Hide? Who's hiding?"
I grinned. They had made a fatal mistake.
'I should probably bow and thank them.'
Collapsed slabs of concrete. Tangled, knotted rebar. Mounds of brick piled like mountains, and heavy drifts of snow burying it all.
The buildings were gone—but the wreckage had become something more complex and far harder than before, sealing off the streets like a fortress.
The flat roads had turned into treacherous ground where men sank to the knee in snow mixed with debris, and where the windowless walls had once opened on all sides, there now existed thousands upon tens of thousands of rat holes where soldiers could breathe and wait.
It was a paradox.
The Republic's intent—to eliminate every hiding place—had come back around as its exact opposite. The city had vanished, and in its place stood a vast labyrinth.
"Listen up. From now on, this isn't urban warfare anymore."
I gathered my company and told them.
"It's a rat-hunting game. Of course, we aren't the rats—those bastards are."
"Sir…?"
Kurt echoed dumbly.
"They'll want to push their tanks forward and advance along the roads. But there are no roads. Only rubble. The tanks lose their mobility, and the infantry have to crawl across open wreckage without a scrap of cover."
I stomped the floor with my boot, thump, thump.
"We settle in beneath them. Sewers, cellars, the gaps in collapsed buildings. The soles of their boots as they walk over our heads—that's our trench line."
Kurt swallowed drily and nodded.
"All units! Move below! Open the sewer covers! Get into the debris gaps and hold position!"
The soldiers dug through the snowdrifts and crawled down into the dark. Narrow cavities formed by collapsed ceilings, underground passages linked by shattered drainage pipes. We crammed ourselves into those filthy, cramped crevices.
And then, some time passed.
Rumble, rumble….
The vibration came through the earth again.
I checked the Minimap. Red dots were pouring into the ruins of Rosenheim.
I watched them with my own eyes through the cracks. Satisfied with having erased the city, they came swaggering in. At the head of the column rolled an engineer tank mounted with a flamethrower, infantry trailing behind it.
Their footsteps were impossibly light. Not one of them seemed to imagine survivors in the ruins.
"Burn it! Don't leave so much as a pile of stones!"
FWOOSH—!
The flamethrower spewed a ferocious torrent of fire, burning through the fallen walls. A scarlet fire demon licked its way across the wreckage. This was housecleaning—burning debris out of their path, and purifying any corpses that might be lurking there.
But they didn't know.
They had no idea that beneath the very rubble they were trampling, in the narrow gaps connected to the sewers, enemies still remained.
The vibration of the tank's caterpillar tracks rolled straight through the ceiling above us. Dust sifted down over our heads.
"Everyone. Fix bayonets."
No lengthy explanation was needed.
"Now!"
KA-BOOM!
The piles of debris erupted skyward. The sewer covers we'd hidden beneath and every camouflaged hole blew open at once.
"Wh-what the hell?!"
"Fr-from below?!"
Across the pristine white snowfield, I could see the dumbstruck faces of Republic infantry. We burst up out of their blind spot—from directly beneath their feet.
"Die, you bastards!"
Gunter swung his entrenching shovel and smashed a man's shin clean through.
"GYAAAAGH!"
Bang! Rat-tat-tat!
The range was under five meters. No aiming required. You just pointed and it hit.
I sprinted across the blood-soaked snow toward a tank. The turret began to rotate, but the barrel snagged on a collapsed steel structure and couldn't move an inch.
"You idiots!"
I jammed a grenade into the gap between the tank's treads.
"Eat this and die!"
KRA-BOOOM!
The tank, its track severed, spun uselessly in place.
"Rear! Enemy to the rear! Suppressive fire!"
"We can't! Friendlies are mixed in with them!"
Panicked shrieks burst across the Republic's communication net.
They were rattled. They'd thought it would end once they smashed the buildings from a distance—but between every fragment of those shattered buildings, their enemies were still alive and moving.
"Captain! Sniper, second-floor wreckage, two o'clock!"
"Ignore it! Pop smoke and close the distance! Get in close enough to kiss them, I said!"
Even as I shouted, I rolled across the ground. A Republic soldier grabbed at my collar and screamed. My uniform was soaked in his blood, his shrieks ringing dully in my ears.
This was no longer war. A mud-fight brawl. No—a war of rats in the ruins.
And in this filthy, vicious gutter brawl, no one alive could beat me—not with the Minimap and Material Conversion in my hands.
"Welcome to Rosenheim."
I drove my bayonet into his chest and smiled a thin, bitter smile.
"You Republic scum."