Chapter 71
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Translator: Wjin
Chapter: 71
Chapter Title: Train Like You Fight, Fight Like You Train (3)
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“I'm sorry—!!!”
“Next time, let's have the strong ones run while holding onto the people behind them…….”
If I hadn't activated Featherfoot just before my face was about to be smashed into the ground, I would have become a flattened meat patty for real.
It was that close. Even after using Featherfoot to momentarily slow my descent, I ended up tumbling and rolling for several meters, tangled up with Bell Mayer.
Thanks to that, I sprained my ankle for real.
That's why Bell Mayer is now burying her head completely on the ground, massaging her ankle.
She's even casting a recovery spell along with it, so every time she kneads my ankle, I feel the muscles loosening up. The slight bruise I had is also slowly fading, so it's definitely effective.
“Is Squad Leader Bell alright?”
“I'm fine.”
Luckily, it seems she wasn't seriously injured. The sacrifice of my ankle was worth it after all.
……Was that really the case?
In any case, the first drop was laughably successful, with the entire 1st Platoon completing it safely, except for the company commander suffering a minor injury.
Wind attribute magic is inherently very easy to handle, just like water attribute magic.
Basically, as long as you ride the airflow well, a single mage can easily carry three adult men.
With the squad leaders and deputy squad leaders of each platoon, plus Lumia as the company executive officer and Roxana as the supply officer.
A total of ten mages cleanly executed their magic and safely completed the drop with thirty soldiers.
“Ugh……!”
“Ah, I'm sorry! Did that hurt?”
“It's fine. Well, getting treated by a pretty person like Sergeant Bell is more than enough.”
“Seriously, Commander, how many women have you flirted with? The vibe I get from your tone is just…….”
“I've never done such a thing.”
I let out a dry laugh. First drop. It was a training session conducted recklessly without a proper understanding of airborne or assault operations.
Frankly, the courage of the other company members who jumped down calmly was excessively good.
“How about it? Do you think you'll be able to handle the next drop by yourself?”
“……I think I still need a bit more preparation.”
“I heard there are a few others in the other companies who are struggling with the drops as well. I'm thinking of asking Chief of Staff Yosef to form a special class.”
“I wonder if that's just making things unnecessarily complicated…….”
“If the ground assault was also assigned to our battalion, we could have pulled you for that. Unfortunately, another unit has been assigned to that.”
The overall operation outline I heard from Soni Chepelin and Yosef Levandovsky was as follows.
The target is an armory located in the northwest of the Sovye Empire. It's a classified facility located in a remote area, so almost no one in the Sovye Empire's military knows about it.
In other words, it's the perfect target for the Sovye Empire bastards to scheme something, and for Ukran, it's the optimal target where a big incident won't break out.
Therefore, there are two attack routes. The 3rd Rapid Response Battalion under the Special Response Brigade will infiltrate by land through the Walter 3 Kingdoms, which has established friendly relations with Ukran.
In the meantime, our 8th Assault Mage Infantry Battalion will board Soni Chepelin's long-awaited prototype airship, 'Diabola,' cross the Kalpas Mountains, join up with the Rapid Response Battalion, and attack that unit. That is the main operation.
“This is my first time in a real battle…….”
Bell Mayer trailed off her words, sounding worried. It couldn't be helped. It wasn't just Bell Mayer who had no real combat experience.
I patted Bell's shoulder, who was diligently working on loosening my muscles, and offered a word of encouragement.
“You'll do well, Squad Leader Bell. I believe in you.”
“Commander…….”
“And let's worry about that after you've properly learned how to drop first.”
That's the priority anyway.
“One, I! Two, can do it. One!”
“I……!!”
“Two!”
“Can do it……!!”
“You are the elite troops of the Ukran military, the first to be deployed in an assault operation! Are these the only voices you can muster!? Weren't most of you volunteers!?”
“Yes, sir—!!”
“If you understand, raise your voice even louder!!! One!!”
“I iiiiiiiiii!!!”
“Two!!”
“Can do iiiiiiiiiit!!!”
Soldiers were rolling on the ground. And next to them, a non-commissioned officer was rolling. And next to that, a commissioned officer was rolling.
Watching the scene where everyone, regardless of rank or position, was rolling around on the drill ground, Soni Chepelin couldn't help but exclaim in admiration.
“Just what kind of treatment did they receive at the military academy to be able to carry out such near-perfect hazing?”
“That's not hazing, it's a systematically organized training regimen, Battalion Commander.”
“All I see is just rolling around. That tone of voice, the hand gestures, it's perfectly suited for an instructor rather than a commander!!”
The first drop training conducted by the 8th Mage Assault Battalion yielded quite remarkable results.
Out of the total 160 personnel, only 15 suffered minor to moderate injuries among the 130 who were to be deployed in actual combat operations.
However, even excluding those 15 with minor injuries, about 20 people were reluctant to participate in the training.
Since the training involved jumping straight down from a giant flying object, I had predicted that it wouldn't be easy for them to accept.
Still, it's definitely not a good sign that a considerable number of the personnel I had painstakingly gathered voluntarily refused the training.
While I was pondering what to do with these problem personnel, 1st Platoon Leader Enok Levandel suggested creating a special drop training class.
Soni Chepelin readily approved that proposal.
And the result was exactly this.
“Alright, next one up! Everyone, get up quickly!”
After having the personnel roll around, Enok Levandel had them climb a small wooden tower set up on one side of the drill ground.
It's about 10 meters high. A shoddily built tower. However, it was a proper ‘structure’ built by the former facilities management officer, Captain Debra Bennett.
It was clearly solid enough to be acknowledged by Soni Chepelin, but the problem was that to people without knowledge of magic, it looked like a building on the verge of collapse at any moment.
Enok Levandel lined up the personnel on that building and slowly circled around them.
Then, the soldiers who had safely completed the drop training gathered in front of the tower, as if a fun spectacle had appeared.
“You, what's your name!!”
“Sergeant Chaikovsky!”
“Sergeant Chaikovsky, judging by the ring on your finger, you have a girlfriend, right?”
“She's my fiancée!!!”
“Ooh~~! A fiancée~~!!”
The soldiers cheered and whistled among themselves.
“Ah, really? Then how do you think your fiancée would feel if she saw your pathetic self, unable to jump from such a measly height?”
“She'd think I'm a coward!”
“Correct! With that kind of mindset, your beloved fiancée might be getting picked up by some blond, tanned countryside punk! Are you still not going to do it!?”
“No, sir!!!”
“Then jump! I'll count to three and you'll jump while calling out your fiancée's name! One, two, three!! Jump!!”
“Aaaaah!!!! Lena, I love youuuuu!!!”
The soldier squeezed his eyes shut and flew towards the ground, and Sergeant Roxana Elim, waiting below, cast a Featherfoot spell at the perfect moment to safely land him.
The people who followed were the same. Enok Levandel's loud voice echoed, and the person on the tower jumped.
Finally, after the last person in line, Sergeant Bell Mayer, had jumped as well.
“Today's drop training will end here. If there are still any personnel afraid of jumping, gather here again tomorrow.”
Enok Levandel dismissed the troops.
The soldiers and officers, looking completely drained, trudged back to their respective units. However, it was only natural that their comrades, who had watched the entire training process with their own eyes, would come over and start teasing them with loud laughter.
“Lena, I love you? What a sweet guy you are! From now on, your nickname is Sweet-kovsky.”
“Kekeke, now the entire battalion knows your fiancée's name, huh?”
“I saw you rolling on the ground. You looked really comfortable, didn't you?”
“Fuck, are these crazy bastards!? Watch me never volunteer again. That drop thing is total bullshit!”
Soni Chepelin finally seemed to understand why Enok Levandel had adopted this peculiar ‘training method.’
By subtly pricking their pride and exposing their actions to the entire battalion, he gave them a powerful motivation to jump.
If the problem personnel were officers or NCOs, they would be mocked as cowards for not jumping when all the soldiers were doing it.
As for the soldiers, since the class differences that normally protected them from criticism would disappear, they were sure to be mocked in even more vicious and strange ways.
No one in the world likes being made fun of.
He gave them a clear stimulus to boost their individual will, and as a result, he also managed to forge even stronger bonds among the unit members.
“……How did you come up with a training method like that?”
“The part about grinding and breaking them down is the same as other training units, but by adding a sense of ‘shame’ to the subject, he made the reason a voluntary element. It's excellent.”
“I'm starting to think I didn't bring him in as a commander for nothing…… Should I just hide him away in a training unit?”
“This training method just needs to be systematized. Once this operation is over and the battalion members return safely, we can leave it to them to train the new recruits.”
Yosef and Soni envisioned a future not too far off.
A scene where the battalion members, having successfully completed the operation and returned, are all laughing together and sharing jokes.
And a scene where those battalion members line up and train the new recruits.
“Yeah, let's make it that way.”
Soni Chepelin slowly nodded. In fact, this was a unit she had personally selected, like her own child.
She would stake both the honor of a Grand Archmage and that of an Army Colonel.
She had no intention of leaving a single member of the 8th Assault Mage Infantry Battalion behind in enemy territory.
Hell Week.
It wasn't as tough as I thought it would be.
If you consider how the Ukran military's training had been conducted so far, it might indeed be hell for them.
But for me, who had endured training that was at least twice as vicious with sheer grit, it was just about the level of a warm-up.
The two weeks passed in a blur.
The members of the 8th Assault Mage Infantry Battalion, including my 1st Platoon, stood in front of the airship, fully equipped, with resolute hearts.
The sun had long since hidden behind the darkness.
The only things visible were the twinkling starlight. There, Colonel Soni Chepelin spoke with her violet eyes gleaming.
It wasn't her usual playful tone.
It was the voice of an Ukran Army Colonel, the commander of the Special Response Brigade, and the commander of the world's first assault battalion.
“You have all done well to follow through with the difficult training. And with the end of this final training today, the 8th Assault Mage Infantry Battalion will be completely reborn as a formal unit.”
Soni Chepelin slowly took in the sight of her unit members. The 160 or so personnel were all looking straight at her.
“I once said that we should train like we fight, and fight like we train.”
“Yes, you did, sir!”
“Today is that day. The end of training is a real battle. As you have been pre-notified, we will be deployed into real combat today!”
Following that, Major Yosef, standing next to the battalion commander, took over the speech.
“We've made it so you'll think of it as a simple warm-up. The objective is to completely annihilate the bandit group holed up in the northern part of the Byaltok territory.”
It was the first real deployment before entering the Sovye Empire.
Boarding the airship directly, traveling to the target point, dropping down, and sweeping away the enemy.
A real battle to cap off the end of their training.
“Then, let's all finish safely and return! Don't you dare die to some pathetic bandit bastards.”
“Yes, sir!!”
“All personnel— Board!!”
“Boarding!!!”
The thunderous voices of the 8th Assault Mage Infantry Battalion members echoed through the night sky.