Chapter 147
Chapter 147
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Translator: penny
Chapter: 147
Chapter Title: Ravages of the Marolin Plague
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One by one, the Western soldiers collapsed. It had already passed the stage where isolation could resolve it.
Patients were cropping up everywhere, the disease having somehow spread already.
“Hey, trash! What the hell is going on here!”
Tetora, unfamiliar with Ballast’s endemic diseases, couldn’t help but panic.
Jack Walter also knew little about the Marolin Plague.
“Th-this seems to be the Marolin Plague, a contagious disease.”
“Then treat it! You must have prepared remedies for potential outbreaks of contagious diseases!”
“Well… The Marolin Plague isn’t in season right now, so we didn’t prepare any specific remedies.”
The Marolin Plague wouldn’t rampage in earnest for another two months.
There were even years when it didn’t break out at all.
But how? Only then did Walter look around—not at the soldiers or formations, but at the natural surroundings.
The completely blocked southern wall. Air murky with higher temperatures and all sorts of dust for some reason. Wind that refused to blow.
It was an environment where the Marolin Plague’s outbreak seemed inevitable.
“Is there no way? No way to make a remedy!”
“There is. The Marolin Plague improves quickly if you grind up Keplet grass and ingest it.”
“Keplet? You mean that common weed? The one scattered all over the mountains?”
“Yes.”
“Then move fast! Take the soldiers who can still move and go get it!”
Walter squeezed his eyes shut.
A dead end. That’s what he thought.
If they could secure Keplet grass, they could certainly control the disease.
But did the enemy not know that?
Just looking at the intent behind the flaming arrows made it clear.
Even though this place had been scorched by slash-and-burn tactics last year, it hadn’t been completely devoid of weeds.
Among those weeds, there must have been Keplet grass.
But from the moment the enemy started firing flaming arrows from the high ground, the situation changed.
To avoid the risk of flames spreading through the ground weeds, they had cleared them all out.
Those cleared weeds had since been left to rot.
Now, those precious herbs had been turned into trash by their own hands.
Against such a thorough opponent, they wouldn’t be allowed to gather medicinal herbs.
“The enemy fired those flaming arrows precisely for that reason. To make us discard the Keplet grass ourselves. So they’ll be fully prepared in the mountains too. Rather than that, wouldn’t it be better to break through the encirclement with all available forces right now? That’s the only viable path at this point…”
Attack first? Tetora shook her head in disgust.
“No need! I’ve already contacted the external detachments! We’ll break the encirclement with their help!”
“B-but that contact is likely blocked! An enemy this meticulously prepared wouldn’t overlook something so simple! Besides, searching for herbs now carries a high risk of enemy raids!”
“Shut up! Then just take more troops! Find it somehow!”
Tetora had half-lost her reason.
Having taken a massive hit from Als, who had mocked her, her composure had shattered.
On top of that, her own anxiety gnawed at her.
A strange sensation brushed her chest.
“Cough! Cough! Kghk! H-hey, trash. If you don’t go right now, I’ll kill you myself!”
“…Yes. I’ll head out immediately.”
Walter, mobilizing 6,000 troops toward the mountains, gazed blankly at the sky. He too had realized it now.
“Not my opponent after all.”
Not Tetora Anistri’s, nor Wade’s. Not his opponent.
The bastard’s tactics weren’t the ordinary kind anyone could predict.
A plague using terrain manipulation. Who could have foreseen that?
“This is the end.”
Walter had never dreamed of defeat in this war. The situation Tetora had created made that impossible.
The kind where the enemy couldn’t lift a finger.
But the bastard had brazenly turned it around.
“Officer Walter, sir, we can’t find any Keplet grass.”
“That figures. Of course not.”
The outer side of the encirclement built by the Ballast army had already been weeded. To gather it in quantity, they’d have to breach the encirclement, which was impossible with such a small force.
“Not even one?”
“We found one.”
“Deliver it to headquarters immediately.”
“General?”
“Go!”
“Yes, sir!”
This was the last loyalty he could offer as an army officer.
Moreover, Tetora—the woman who had massacred so many civilians—didn’t deserve an easy death by disease.
She ought to be humiliated before the public and beheaded.
“Listen up, all of you. An enemy raid is coming soon. Anyone who values their life, surrender. I won’t stop you.”
Walter had effectively declared surrender.
Soon after, Ballast’s guerrilla forces appeared.
*
*
*
The Western army wandering in search of Keplet grass.
“Cunning.”
Sly and crafty, but lacking experience.
The experience of defeat, that is.
As a general, I felt I understood Tetora Anistri’s essence.
She had always maneuvered herself into advantageous positions and seized promised victories.
A master of rigging the game, you could say.
Her methods were threatening, it was true. But when her rigged game collapsed and she was cornered instead, she couldn’t produce a proper solution.
Just like now.
The enemy’s only viable path now was to throw all available forces at breaking the encirclement.
Our terrain and formations held the advantage, so it’d be a 4:6 fight in their favor, but she didn’t know how grateful she should be for even that.
Her pride wounded by the idea of attacking first, she ignored the right answer and chose another path.
“But if they get the medicine, doesn’t the situation reset?”
Eo’s words, gripping her spear at an angle.
“If they could get it.”
Juras’s loaned special forces had already weeded most of the Keplet grass inside the encirclement. The enemy might find a few at best.
“Time’s up. Eo.”
“Yes!”
“I’m counting on you for the vanguard.”
“Understood!”
Eo led her troops in a ferocious charge against the enemies searching for herbs.
This happened across all sectors: east, west, south, north.
In the north, Olaf and Gaspar. In the east, Landon Crowe, Ash, and Lisitea. In the west where I was, Eonia and Anton. In the south, Lutger and Sophia led the operations.
“Haaah!”
Eo charged in headlong.
“Wh-what!”
“Enemy raid! Enemy raid! Ghk!”
Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Thwack! Each flash of her spear claimed a life.
Then 3,000 infantry followed her, mercilessly cutting down the panicking foes.
A commander-like figure tried to rally and direct the soldiers, but that command hastened his end.
“There he is. Anton, let’s go.”
“Yes!”
The army was in such chaos that the enemy leader had scant guards.
Anton displayed overwhelming prowess, closing in right under the enemy’s chin.
“Surrender! I surrender!”
The enemy leader dropped to his knees, shouting. Anton captured him without bothering to take his head.
With the commander surrendering, the soldiers began to disintegrate.
“Hm…? Barely any resistance.”
As if they’d planned to surrender from the start.
“Well, good’s good.”
Light reports of victory rang out.
The same held elsewhere. The enemy troops sent foraging for herbs were ambushed and routed.
The enemy lost some 6,000 troops deployed for herb collection outright.
Tetora listened to the successive reports in a daze.
Despite deploying 6,000 troops, they brought back only ten Keplet grasses. Ambushed from all directions, fewer than 3,000 returned alive.
Even that trash had surrendered, they said.
Excluding patients and potential cases, available forces now numbered 53,000. Fewer than the enemy.
And that number would dwindle further as time passed.
“Damn it, if only Guderian were here…!”
Three Great General Guderian. With him and his direct unit, the Beast Ghosts, this situation could have been easily dismantled.
But Guderian had opposed the civilian massacres, withdrawn from this operation, and vanished.
Moreover, most of her capable officers were with the external detachments—to bolster their command.
That had left headquarters short on talent.
It wasn’t for nothing that she’d left command to a surrender-prone hack like Jack Walter.
She hadn’t thought it would matter then.
She’d had that much advantage.
And now this.
They had to break the encirclement right now.
Her reason sounded the alarm.
But her emotions wouldn’t allow it.
Defeat? Her defeat? From that advantageous position? A惨 defeat?
Against that loathsome bastard who provoked her?
“Impossible. No way! There has to be a method. A way to break through this situation…!”
Or perhaps the external detachments had received contact and were en route with reinforcements.
Clinging to optimism, Tetora decided to wait one more day.
This was Tetora’s critical blunder.
She knew little of the Marolin Plague. She assumed it was like any other contagion. She lacked even a disease expert who could advise in detail.
The Marolin Plague targeted the bronchial tubes and spread through them. Moreover, air circulation had slowed, and dust induced coughing.
Its spread far exceeded her expectations.
The problem was how densely packed they were to prevent contagion.
Even just that one-day delay saw over 1,000 soldiers fall combat-ineffective to the disease.
Compounding it, some soldiers deserted under cover of night, defecting to Ballast.
Surrendering to get medicine from the enemy.
Hearing this report, Tetora felt the world go dark.
Even if external reinforcements arrived now, she couldn’t be sure they could breach the encirclement.
The only option left was a pinpoint breakthrough.
But the enemy waited in highland forts.
‘Me, Tetora Anistri, thrown back in the same coin…!’
Tetora had built a fortress and taunted the enemy to come at her.
In war, the defender always held the advantage. Tetora had adhered strictly to that basic tenet.
Als had done the same. His strategy too was to make the enemy attack.
But fundamentally different from what Tetora had created.
The Ballast army still had the option of not attacking.
They could ignore the civilian massacres and just hold position.
But the Western army now had no such choice. Fail to break out, and all died.
Als had executed the strategy of forcing the enemy to attack far more thoroughly.
“P-prepare full army advance. We’ll break through the enemy encirclement…”
Tetora issued the order with a vacant expression.