War truly is hell. Captain Aziz stared as three to four divisions of faceless goons charged towards the long-established firing lines that the Southern Pacification Force had set up. Projectiles of qi slammed into the incoming wave, each of them as deadly as the men and women who were operating a newly developed artefact — the Limitless Shot.

Faced with the possibility of being overwhelmed by sheer numbers, Camp Napoleon’s research and development department had managed to piece together a new artefact that fired blasts of qi with rapid succession. Admirably enough, they had done so within two weeks after the initial skirmishes with the Southern Houses had begun, and mass production soon followed afterwards. Another month had passed in such a fashion, but the war had begun to develop rapidly afterwards.

Men fell in droves the moment the Palisade artefacts protecting them gave way — the projectiles the Limitless Shot fired were stronger and faster than the traditional Shot-class artefacts. Each of the new Shot artefacts was powered by a team of six people, and there were over three hundred of them positioned along the defensive line.

Horns blared, and a solid wall of light exuded outwards in tandem from the human tide, which immediately shuddered as qi slammed into them. Their pace of advance, however, dropped immediately. In response, the scattered fire from the Limitless Shot artefacts all around the defensive line began to concentrate onto multiple shots.

“It’s like they’re trying to experiment with their Palisades and relevant tactics,” said Captain Aziz.

“They are experimenting with a new design,” said Colonel Marie. “Preliminary reports indicate that for the past week or so, the troops charging out have been holding incrementally different Palisades, in terms of design and effectiveness.”

The captain rubbed his nose. “What does ‘incrementally’ even mean?”

“It means, dearest dolt head, that their Palisade designs are growing more effective,” replied Marie. “And incidentally, so are ours. We’ve been reverse-engineering their experiments too. I can’t believe that we have that much free time.”

“Well, we are at least at the point where fears of being overwhelmed by numbers aren’t that relevant anymore. Who knew that the propaganda leader was that skilful?”

“The Council is at least decisive. They didn’t even hesitate to give a human such an important post,” replied Marie.

“Why would they?” Aziz asked. “The Council isn’t fighting a racial war aft—”

“Headquarters to Thunderbolt Actual, three Knights inbound, ten kilometres away. Intercept, over.” A smooth voice came out from the Radio artefact, and their conversation was abruptly cut short.

“Wilco, Headquarters. Provide guidance, over.”

Captain Aziz turned to the bored Thunderbolt Company. “Heads up, ladies and gentlemen! Our prey has arrived!”

Cheers broke out, and after further directions from the captain, Platoons One to Three flew off, followed closely by Platoon Four, who was acting as a reserve unit again. The order of battle was simple — each platoon, which had around forty people each — would engage a Knight. Two squads from Platoon Four would serve as a reserve force, while the other two, led by Colonel Marie, would help crush one of the Knights first.

The sounds of Straight Shots firing began in earnest. Captain Aziz, who was in charge of the reserve squads, could immediately sense the dismay of the Knights as forty or more Squires engaged them. Against such a number, the first actions each Knight took was to defend themselves — two of them had one such artefact that erected an omnidirectional defence.

The third one, however, didn’t have such an item, and Colonel Marie, who was initially headed towards Platoon One, immediately took a hard turn, making a beeline for Platoon Three. The Knight there, whose back was already badly injured, died a minute later.

Marie and the two squads following her had pumped the back of the Knight full of holes, while he was busy being distracted by the combatants of Platoon Three. Leaving behind one person to bring the corpse back, she ordered the others to follow her.

“Looks like I’ve nothing to do once again,” said Captain Aziz, and the other two squads with him laughed.

“You should consider swapping with the colonel, Captain Aziz,” said the leader of Platoon Four, Hans. “We won’t need to worry that much if you take her place. And you’ll get to show off too!”

“Or you can try to be the second vice-commander of Thunderbolt Company,” said Captain Aziz. “And then you can take her place.”

“Yeah, go for it, Hans!”

“Deputy vice-commander sounds like a great title!”

Hans shook his head, and his golden head of hair dazzled Aziz for a moment. “I think Platoon One’s a better fighter than me though. Never won against him.”

“That’s because you’re going easy on him, sir!”

The second lieutenant chortled. “No way. I’ve been working hard all this while, but he’s half as skilled as Captain Aziz. There’s a huge gap between him and me.”

Aziz rubbed his nose as the sounds of what appeared to be humblebragging — another new word he picked up in the North — entered his ears. Maybe we should hold a competition between the platoon leaders. Should be great entertainment for the troops.

By now, Platoon Two’s target had been killed. Like before, Colonel Marie had not used any sigils, but the sheer weight of fire from almost one hundred people was too much for the Knight to handle. Unlike the Knight Platoon Three was facing, however, this particular corpse had been turned into a beehive. Whatever valuables that were on this Knight was damaged, at best.

Captain Aziz, and the two squads around him, couldn’t help but laugh when they saw the expression of the person assigned to carry it back to base. Her face was… ‘mortified’ didn’t cut it, neither did ‘repulsed’. In short, it was the sort of face the captain couldn’t even begin to describe. The unfortunate trooper shrieked as a lump of mashed flesh fell out of the Knight’s armour, and then rushed off towards the Expeditionary Force’s headquarters, where Knight level corpses were dumped.

I won’t even call that a corpse, though. It’s on the level of ‘urgh’, ‘what the hell did you do to this man’ and ‘how did he offend you’ rolled together and wrapped by a ‘that’s just a lump of meat’. He laughed, this time in anticipation of what the headquarters would think, and then flew off to rejoin the rest of Thunderbolt Company, who had just finished dealing with the last Knight.

“Truly a demonstration of strength through numbers,” Captain Aziz said, as he drew close enough to see the…corpse. Some of the troopers behind him began to retch, joining the nauseating chorus going around the assembled Thunderbolt Company.

“Indeed,” said the colonel. “In fact, I don’t think we can even get anything good out of this Knight. I suppose we can just bring this to the R&D department and tell them that this is what happens when a hundred and forty standard Straight Shots hit a Knight head on.”

“Sure, go ahead,” said the captain. “I’m not carrying it back though.”

“Neither am I,” said Marie.

The assembled members of Thunderbolt Company backpedalled swiftly, but Hans, the commander of Platoon Four, was too slow to react.

“Alright, thank you for volunteering,” said Colonel Marie, who passed the…corpse to him. “We’ll return to our original post until the battle below us ends.”

“Y-yes, ma’am.” Hans dry-heaved, and then zipped off as fast as the Dynamo allowed him to.

And with this, thought Captain Aziz, a grand victory is within sight. This long month has come to an end. The kids don’t know it yet, but we’re about to see our most successful tactical victory.