The war raged on with terrifying fury. Casualties piled high, death tolls climbed by the minute, and heavy mechanized gear lay shattered across the field, torn apart by relentless devil assaults.
Inside the primary field medic tent, the air was thick with the copper stench of blood and the deafening screams of the grievously wounded. Orderlies rushed frantically, carrying the limp bodies of already-deceased soldiers out through the rear flap simply to clear floor space for incoming casualties. Battlefield surgeons bolted from one emergency station to another, trying to triage a endless nightmare.
This was not to say the NHF military was losing the engagement outright. In truth, humanity held the tactical upper hand, largely thanks to the air force's relentless high-altitude bombing campaign.
However, that overwhelming fire support came at an astronomical price—a single high-yield missile cost between 80 to 100 million NHF coins. Because the devils were scattered unevenly across the ruins, firing an 80-million-coin missile at a solitary monster was an unsustainable financial loss.
The air force had no choice but to strictly utilize their fire power to minimize ammunition depletion and targetted the devils clustered into dense formations to maximize damage per payload.
Meanwhile, back at the command post, Colonel Greyman was inundated with frantic comms calls from military commanders and inner-wall politicians alike, repeatedly assuring them through gritted teeth that the situation was entirely under control.
Meanwhile, somewhere on the periphery of the main battle zone, a solitary figure was slowly, stubbornly dragging itself across the mud toward the distant lights of the medical camp. From an aerial view, the shape looked obscure and heavy—and for good reason. The crawling figure had an entire grown man strapped to his back.
BOOM!
An artillery round impacted a nearby area sending a violent shockwave tearing across the mud. A thick cloud of dirt and debris rained down on them, forcing Graves to squeeze his eyes shut and cough violently.
Above him, the soldier at his back let out a ragged cough of his own, bringing a strange sense of relief to Graves. At least the bastard is still breathing, he thought to himself.
Graves had been crawling on all fours for over thirty agonizing minutes. His knees were a shredded mess of burst blisters, and his palms were raw and bloody from digging into jagged rocks and buried metal scraps.
He cursed himself with every inch he gained. "Damn it all, why did I decide to help this guy?!" Just a few minutes earlier, he had crawled directly over a charred bone—he couldn't even tell if it belonged to a dead soldier or a devil.
"Hey... you!" Graves rasped out through the mud, his voice dripping with sheer annoyance. "Are you still alive back there?! I swear, if I drag a corpse for three kilometers just for you to die on me at the doorstep, I'll kill you myself!"
"I'm... I'm thirsty..." the soldier mumbled weakly against Graves's shoulder. He didn't answer the question directly, but it was enough to prove his lungs were still working.
"Thirsty?!" Graves gritted his teeth, digging his bloody elbow deeper into the muck to drag them forward. "I have exactly one bottle of water in my pack, and I'm preserving it to survive this battle! I can't share it!"
He really didn't know why he was putting himself through this absolute hell. Damn it all...
"If you're willing to save a man's life... by crawling on all fours for kilometers through a warzone..." the soldier's voice was faint, almost swallowed entirely by the distant thunder of tank fire, "...then surely you can spare a single gulp of water for your cargo."
Graves grunted, his strength suddenly giving out. He collapsed onto his side, roughly dropping the wounded soldier into the dirt beside him. He lay there flat on his back, gasping for air as pure, suffocating exhaustion washed over his chest.
After resting for two agonizing minutes, Graves unzipped the medical bag strapped tightly to his chest and pulled out his standard-issue water can Uncapping it, he took a gulp. Sighing, he turned back toward the soldier, forcefully grabbed the back of the man's neck, pried his lips open, and poured a modest splash of water directly down his throat.
"That's all you get," Graves said, capping the bottle tightly and shoving it back into his kit. "It's not much, but it'll keep your tongue from drying out, and worse still dying of thirst "
Reaching down, Graves checked the soldier's leg stump. A grimace instantly crossed his face. The crude tourniquet was holding, but the open flesh was caked in filthy battlefield mud. If this man didn't reach a medical tent in three hours then his condition might become worse....
"Damn it... I have to hurry," Graves growled. He hauled the 85-kilogram man back onto his aching spine and resumed his grueling, inch-by-inch crawl.
As the slow, agonizing crawl continued, the soldier spoke admists the raging fire "Hey... kid. Do you... do you actually believe in the Church? Do you truly believe that when we bow our heads for those prayers before a deployment... the Church is actually protecting us out here?"
Graves's crawl slowed slightly, caught completely off guard by the question. In all his time living inside the walls, he had never heard a soldier openly question the sanctity or efficacy of the Church.
Graves thought about it deeply as he dragged his bloodied limbs through the mud. "I don't know if I believe in the Church's protection... or if I even care," Graves answered honestly. "At the end of the day, even if the Church offers some kind of divine shield... if a soldier stands stupidly in front of a devil, they're still going to get eaten."
The soldier seemed to ponder Graves's cold, pragmatic logic. "So... what are you really saying?"
"What I mean is that even if an all-powerful being exists and watches over us, if we don't act with personal caution, we just die," Graves muttered, nodding quietly to himself in the dark. "To be completely honest, I don't know anything about religion or the Four Church. I only believe in running away from impossible danger and surviving to fight another day."
The soldier let out a faint, wheezing chuckle against Graves's back. "You know... I read a historical book once. A relic from the era before the nuclear fallout. It said that back then, people used to worship a deity they couldn't see. They didn't worship a physical institution or a building like we do with the Four Church now... they worshipped the invisible spirit behind it all. That's the only way I can describe it."
Graves let out a heavy sigh, his lungs burning. "Maybe one day, if we make it out of this ordeal, we can have a long philosophical conversation about it. But right now, if there really is an invisible spirit out there that helps people... now would be a fantastic time for it to step in."
The soldier chuckled again, the sound laced with pain.
"By the way... what's your name?" Graves asked, trying to keep the man talking so he wouldn't slip into a coma.
"Well... my name is—"
BAAAANG!
Before the soldier could finish his sentence, a catastrophic explosion erupted just a few meters to their left—an errant, misfired friendly core powered artillery round rimpacting the mud.
The violent shockwave tore through the earth, hurling both Graves and the wounded soldier high into the air like ragdolls. Graves didn't lose consciousness, his mind registering the terrifying sensation of spinning helplessly through the night sky.
PANG!
He slammed violently back down into the saturated mud, the deep layer of sludge cushioning his fall just enough to keep his spine from shattering on impact. But that didn't mean he escaped unhurt. The raw kinetic force felt as though a solid iron cannonball had crashed straight into his chest. Blinding, white-hot pain shot through every joint in his body.
Rolling onto his side in the dirt, Graves opened his mouth and screamed at the top of his lungs, but he couldn't hear a single sound coming out. The sheer volume of the detonation had caused a temporary deafness, With his ears ringing violently and his body burning in agony, the world around him went entirely silent.