Jungle Warfare Is Hell (3)
The instant the monstrous projectile shattered the barrier, Ruben's extraordinary reflexes wrapped his entire body in aura, sparing him from instantaneous death.
But countless shards of steel sprayed in every direction, and even with his aura up he could not escape unscathed. Wounds large and small opened across his body, and blood began to pour from him in streams.
The dizzying pain of being sliced open from head to toe made him stagger, yet he could not fall.
The flames born from the projectile's explosion were already sweeping over the camp.
"Agh… Aaaaagh!"
"F-fire! The camp's on fire! Put it out, now!"
"Medic! Medic! Is there anyone left?!"
The First Camp, peaceful only seconds before, was transforming into a hell of fire in the blink of an eye.
Ruben had reacted fast enough to scrape by with his life. Most of the soldiers had not. Every man near the impact point when the projectile fell and detonated was dead without exception, and even among those farther out the critically wounded were piling up by the dozen.
That single shot alone had already dealt a catastrophic blow to the garrison. The problem was that it was not a single shot.
KRAAAAAAANG!!! KRAAAAAAANG!!!
One explosion, and barely a second later another round came screaming in.
In the jungle night, visibility collapsed to almost nothing. No one could tell where the projectiles were coming from or what they truly looked like. All that could be seen was the fireball of each detonation.
Dozens of blasts erupted in rapid succession until the ringing in their ears and the roar of the explosions drowned out every other sound.
A great many of the projectiles struck the massive trees packed dense through the Great Rainforest on their way down, but the enemy clearly did not care — and in truth it made no difference.
Even a projectile that detonated against a tree dozens of meters high still rained steel fragments onto the ground in a deadly shower, and those that exploded on the surface needed no further description.
Whoooosh!
Caught in the endless barrage, the First Camp caught fire and belched acrid black smoke in every direction.
Ruben had been certain that fire attacks of any kind were useless strategy in a rainforest this humid, and indeed the flames did not spread far beyond the camp itself.
But he was watching with his own eyes the proof that a fire intense enough to burn the entire First Camp to ash could still be generated — even without a scrap of combustible material worth mentioning inside the garrison.
As the whole camp went up and the superheated air rose in a column, the soldiers trapped inside screamed.
"Aaagh, it's hot!"
"Cough, cough…! M-my eyes…!"
"Put it out! Mages, extinguish the fire! Anyone—!"
Black smoke shot straight up, then a sudden hard wind slammed in from the side, and burning branches and leaves whirled into the air on a vortex. Turbulence tore through the blazing First Camp, scattering the black smoke into total chaos until even keeping one's bearings became nearly impossible.
In that situation the knights could do nothing, and the mages, unable to quench the flames or raise a barrier, could only flail in panic.
Ruben, who had felt the force of the explosion firsthand, squeezed every last scrap of strength from his bleeding body and roared.
"Abandon the camp! Survivors, to me — now! We fall back to the Second Camp! Mages, conserve every drop of mana and put it all into keeping the unit moving! We leave this place immediately!"
Watching the unending barrage, he felt a bone-deep certainty that even if every mage threw themselves into raising a barrier, it would shatter in a single hit. So he chose the survival of his force over the camp and every scrap of matériel in it, and prepared to evacuate at once.
As Ruben limped north toward the Second Camp, the remaining soldiers scrambled desperately after him.
But the hope of gathering the survivors and breaking free lasted only a moment.
KRAAAAAAANG!!!
Another explosion. A direct hit on the upper canopy of a giant tree sent fragments raining down like a steel storm, cutting men apart as they fell.
"Gyaaaaagh!"
"S-save me…"
Crack-crack-CRACK!
Then the upper half of a giant tree, already ablaze from a direct hit, gave a terrifying groan and snapped clean through, plummeting toward the ground.
"G-get clear!"
"Wait! Take me with—"
CRUUUUSH!!!
The burning treetop slammed into the earth and crushed every soldier beneath it. The impact shook the ground, and the other trees already battered by the bombardment began to fail one after another, their upper trunks cracking with sharp reports before they too came down.
"It's falling!"
"G-gods above…"
CRUUUUSH!!! CRUUUUSH!!!
The massive wreckage of the trees smashed through the camp's buildings, flattening them completely. Ruben had been trying to gather every survivor he could, but a significant number of those still alive were crushed under the falling timber or cut down by the splintered branches that exploded outward on impact, adding fresh wounds large and small to the toll.
The fallen burning trees filled the air once more with toxic smoke. Ruben no longer had the strength to generate enough aura to fell a tree of that size, and lingering any longer meant only one of two ends: crushed under the next falling trunk, or swallowed by the next explosion.
Tears in his eyes, he shouted.
"Kh…! Only those who can keep up right now — follow me! We get out of here immediately!"
There was no room left to care for the wounded. Every second of hesitation cost ten more lives. If they stayed, the entire force would be annihilated, so with a heart that felt as if it were vomiting blood, Ruben abandoned even the injured and resolved to save only those who could still run on their own two feet.
KRAAAAAAANG!!! KRAAAAAAANG!!!
Even then the explosions never stopped. The entire Eastern force had its will to fight shattered completely; men wept and shook with terror.
"Gods… gods… this can't be happening…"
"What… what in the world is this… how…"
Ruben had no answer for that question. In all his life he had never seen or heard of an attack like this. Forget facing the enemy head-on in an honorable one-on-one duel — he could not even tell where they were, or whether there were enemies inside this jungle at all.
Their assault had not been aimed with precision at the positions of the First Camp's troops. It was as if missing them entirely did not matter — as if, because the dense terrain offered such thorough cover, the enemy had simply decided to erase the whole area. Hit or miss, no difference.
Who in the world attacked an enemy like this? Who could even conceive of an assault that showed not the slightest regard for the honor of the men it was meant to fight?
Isaac…!
Ruben ground his teeth as the name of the culprit rose in his mind. And with it came the wild rumors that had been circulating through the East.
— A merchant who travels south a lot was saying the South is in complete chaos right now.
— The South–West Gate wall is gone. Completely gone, not a trace left. The Southern Archduke has the whole area locked down tight, but someone supposedly saw it before the lockdown started.
— Not just collapsed — wiped off the map, they said. Like divine punishment.
Rumors always grew in the telling, and Ruben had dismissed them as worthless marketplace gossip not worth a second thought. But having lived through this, he was forced to admit he had been wrong.
What the hell are they attacking us with? Where is it coming from? It wasn't magic! What are those explosions?! How did they pinpoint our position in the dead of night from somewhere we can't even see? Is this the same attack that brought down the Southern Gate? Damn it… damn it all!!!
Weeping, abandoning the wounded, the Eastern force fled with only the survivors they could scrape together. But even flight was not granted them freely.
KRAAAAAAANG!!! KRAAAAAAANG!!!
Those hideous explosions kept erupting close by as if tracking Ruben's unit wherever it went, and with every blast the survivors edged closer to madness.
"Uuuuh… Uwaaaaah! I-I can't hear! I can't hear anything! My ears!"
"How long is it going to keep following us?! That's a demon! We've been possessed by a demon! Nothing else could keep chasing us like this!"
"Commander, please save us… please save us… get us out of this…"
The soldiers going to pieces clung to Ruben, but he himself was only a breath away from breaking.
"If… if we reach the Second Camp… it'll be all right… j-just a little farther, everyone…"
Most of the mages were already dead, so there was no longer any way to raise the barriers that had shielded them from the Great Rainforest's humidity and heat at the First Camp.
Exposed raw to the wild jungle, the Eastern force ran with sweat pouring off them like rain — and still the massive explosions followed, slamming into the rear of the column or forcing them to detour around fallen trees, turning the march into a nightmare.
After a long, desperate run they finally reached the Second Camp — only for both Ruben and his soldiers to scream in pure despair the moment it came into view.
"Ah… aaaah… AAAAAAAAH!!!"
The Second Camp was under the same merciless bombardment, being reduced to the same ruin as the First.
There was nowhere left to run. They could neither stop the explosions nor mitigate the damage. Facing this enemy was simply impossible.
That reality crushed Ruben and the survivors. Every last shred of fighting spirit left them. They dropped to their knees and broke into tears.
Then—
Bang! Bang! Bang!
A series of sharp reports cracked through the air, and the few remaining mages toppled sideways with half their heads blown away.
Even watching their comrades die before their eyes, the soldiers were so crushed by overwhelming despair and terror that the will to counterattack had vanished. Trembling, they turned their heads toward the sound.
Tiger beastmen and Leopard beastmen armed with AK Rifles emerged from the trees, weapons leveled at Ruben and the survivors.
"There is nowhere for you to run. Bird beastmen are reporting your position from the air in real time, and we have already mapped every one of your camps."
"Every camp you were fortifying has been destroyed. No matter where you go, you will not escape Lord Isaac's grasp — and you certainly will not survive."
"We have more than enough capacity left to repeat a bombardment like the one you just endured thousands of times over. Choose. Die fighting here to the last man — or save the lives of whoever is still standing."
With every scrap of fighting spirit gone and not even a speck of hope remaining that victory was possible, Ruben sank to his knees in despair and hung his head.
"I… surrender."