"Today marks the third consecutive day of the Military Commission's offensive. Though the enemy's assault remains incredibly fierce, we managed to barely hold our ground today by relying on the defensive networks we dug in advance. Casualties on both sides are catastrophic."
"The fourth day. Those bastards attacked with even greater madness than yesterday! What on earth is driving them? It is as if someone is standing immediately behind their ranks, physically forcing them into the meat grinder."
"The fifth day. Today, we came within a hair's breadth of losing this trench line entirely. Their sweeps are becoming increasingly unhinged. Something about this entire setup feels deeply wrong..."
Deep within the Kazdel frontier, a burly Sarkaz mercenary sat inside a dimly lit tent, silently reviewing the journal entries he had recorded over the past few days. After a long, heavy silence, he let out a ragged, exhausted sigh.
Their original contract was simple: hold the Kazdel border, rendezvous with the incoming Babel vanguard, and provide a secure escort until the convoy reached its designated destination.
It was an undertaking that carried an immense tier of risk, but the financial payout was equally substantial. Though he had desperately wished to avoid entangling his crew in the catastrophic power struggle between the two legendary royal siblings, a complex web of logistical pressures had ultimately forced his hand.
Reflecting on it now, he realized his decision to accept the contract had been dangerously reckless. Yet, looking at the grander state of the realm, the notion that a mercenary band could simply remain neutral and sit on the fence was pure fantasy.
"Are you hunched over that desk scribbling in that useless journal again? Do you honestly believe recording those lines accomplishes anything? If you have this much spare time, you would be far better off securing some deep sleep so you aren't a walking corpse tomorrow."
Right as he sat there wrestling with his grim thoughts, a sharp voice suddenly materialized from the shadows behind him. His fingers instantly clamped down in a violent reflex, snapping the heavy fountain pen in his palm into splintered fragments.
"You really ought to announce your presence outside the flap before stepping into my perimeter, Ines," the massive Sarkaz remarked. He cast a weary glance toward the woman standing near the entrance, noting the distinct pair of pointed horns rising from her brow, and offered a faint, bitter smile.
The moment he had detected an unrecognized presence breaching his tent, his hardwired combat instincts had nearly driven him to draw the heavy claymore resting against his cot and cleave the intruder in two.
That fatal outcome had only been averted because Ines had spoken exactly when she did, immediately establishing her identity.
"My voice carried through the fabric while I was still outside. What you were doing at that desk was glaringly obvious," Ines replied smoothly. Even though she had essentially danced along the razor-edge of a lethal misunderstanding, her features remained completely hollow of fear or agitation.
"But my core argument remains unchanged: what is the utility of recording this garbage? Aside from forcing you to sit here day in and day out, watching our resources decay while draining your own mental focus, it serves zero practical purpose."
Ines furrowed her brow, her gaze locked onto the ruined pen in his hand as she voiced her sharp disdain.
Her frustration wasn't without merit. In the wastelands, the ultimate destiny for any scrap of paper was serving as kindling to start a campfire.
"Preserving a historical record always yields value," Hoederer replied calmly, cleaning the ink from his fingers. "Reviewing the trajectory of a conflict frequently uncovers a fresh tactical pattern. Setting that aside, weren't you supposed to be monitoring the outer boundary? What brings you back to my station?"
Faced with an analytical partner he could rarely best in a verbal match, he smoothly shifted the vector of the conversation, ensuring their dispute didn't remain anchored to his literary habits. If they stayed on the topic of his journal, he would inevitably be taken apart by her sharp tongue.
"Even if you hadn't prompted me, I was on the verge of bringing this crisis directly to your desk, Hoederer!" The moment he redirected the topic to the active field elements, the neutral mask on Ines's face instantly twisted into an expression of pure, unadulterated disgust.
"To see you manifest such a vivid display of pure rage... I can already deduce the exact nature of the problem," Hoederer muttered, a wave of instant regret washing over him. He had chosen the wrong escape route.
Engaging in a tedious debate regarding the philosophical merits of keeping a diary was infinitely superior to addressing the nightmare she was about to describe! At the very least, discussing literature wouldn't actively provoke her into a violent temper.
But this upcoming dilemma? If he failed to navigate her grievances with absolute diplomatic precision, she might not physically assault him, but she would undoubtedly march out into the trenches with her daggers and engage that massive headache of a recruit in a lethal duel.
"If you do not immediately step in and discipline that 'little disaster' you dragged back to our camp, forcing her to exercise a modicum of caution when burying her explosive payloads, I am going to resolve the issue permanently with my own steel!"
Ines's voice vibrated with raw, frayed patience. God only knew how many times over the past watch she had come within a hair's breadth of slitting the throat of their newest recruit. Their basic worldviews and behavioral patterns were fundamentally incompatible.
"Uh... surely you cannot deny that her explosive arrays have proven exceptionally effective?" Hoederer offered, attempting to inject a baseline of objective fairness on behalf of the rookie he had personally salvaged from the battlefield and integrated into their ranks.
Naturally, he was fully aware that the timing for such a defense was incredibly poor. He recognized that the two women possessed personalities and philosophies that would never achieve a harmonious balance.
Yet, in a purely structural sense, their respective skill sets complemented one another beautifully. Had that not been the case, he would have never assigned the rookie to her detachment in a desperate bid to preserve the peace around his own command tent.
"Oh, they are marvelously effective!" Ines spat, her eyes flashing dangerously. "The crushing flaw is that the wretched creature possesses zero tactical layout when scattering her mines. Triggering a localized detonation that blankets our own vanguard units in shrapnel is a regular occurrence for her! And more importantly... I am invariably the one standing immediately beside her targets!"
Confronted with an argument he had already memorized due to its sheer repetition, Hoederer found himself entirely out of verbal ammunition. He had zero idea how to force these two highly volatile women into a state of peaceful coexistence; truth be told, a part of him was starting to harbor an intense urge to simply pack W up and ship her off to a different continent entirely.
If these two remained bound to the same operational sector, his own life expectancy was going to systematically decay from pure psychological stress. Did either of them possess even a single gram of common sense?
Of course, Hoederer kept these internal reflections strictly to himself. If he dared to articulate those thoughts out loud, Ines would simply discover a fresh vector to shred his dignity, and he lacked the rhetorical capability to counter her.
Ultimately, he chose the safest path available to a seasoned commander: absolute, unbroken silence. He transformed himself into a perfectly passive listener, opening his ears wide while keeping his mouth firmly locked.
Watching Hoederer retreat into his shell, Ines let out a long, defeated breath. It felt as though this already laconic man was shedding whatever remained of his vocabulary, steadily marching toward becoming a literal mute.
The fiery urge to thoroughly chew him out over the matter slowly evaporated. What was the utility of screaming at a stubborn wall? If she continued to push this silent stone, she would likely end up driving herself to an early grave from pure frustration.
With a helpless shake of her head, she drifted toward the corner of the tent, leaning her back against a heavy structural support beam as she kept her gaze locked onto Hoederer. A prolonged, heavy silence settled over the space.
Hoederer remained quietly puzzled. Under normal circumstances, the moment he deployed his silent treatment, Ines would promptly exit the perimeter—either retreating to a concealed watch post or hunting down W to initiate another vicious... ahem, a highly spirited tactical debate.
Yet today, she was lingering in his personal space. Why?
Bypassing any romantic variables, Hoederer assumed her unorthodox behavior suggested she possessed a critical, deep-level operational concern that required a joint executive decision.
"Is there an underlying crisis we need to address?" Hoederer asked, turning his massive frame to face her directly.
"Do you honestly believe our continued participation in this campaign carries a single shred of real meaning?" Ines asked, her gaze drifting toward the canvas ceiling as a trace of deep, structural anxiety crept into her tone.
She harbored zero personal investment in the grand ideological feud dividing the royal heirs; truth be told, no mercenary pulling a vanguard contract in the wastes cared a whit about the crown, provided they weren't directly caught in the gears.
But their current layout had completely altered the equation. No matter how she analyzed the active intelligence streams, she couldn't discern a single mathematical path to victory against the forces of the Military Commission. Even when she factored in the arrival of Babel's main force in a few days, the outlook remained utterly grim.
"If our probability of success has decayed to zero, I believe our optimal path is to execute a quiet retreat under the cover of nightfall. At the very least, we would only be absorbing a minor loss in auxiliary personnel rather than facing total structural annihilation."
This was the true purpose behind her visit. Since the war offered zero potential to tilt the balance of power in their favor, it was infinitely wiser to cut their losses and pull back before their core lines dissolved entirely, preserving the foundation of their mercenary company.
Yet, to her surprise, Hoederer slowly shook his head, explicitly rejecting the blueprint for a midnight retreat. Despite recognizing the overwhelming odds, he was choosing to remain anchored to the position.
"Why?" Ines demanded, her posture sharpening instantly. "If you are commanding us to stand our ground in a meat grinder, you must deliver a flawless, logical justification! Otherwise, I will be forced to officially suspend our partnership effective immediately."
"I cannot provide a concrete mathematical breakdown. Perhaps it is simply a persistent intuition, but I harbor a distinct feeling that our overall situation isn't nearly as catastrophic as the maps suggest," Hoederer explained, his voice laced with careful hesitation as he reviewed the campaign data.
"Look at the Babel regulars embedded across our defensive line. Throughout these days of relentless sweeps from the enemy's vanguard, their expressions have lacked any real trace of panic or structural fracture."
He carefully weighed the bizarre behavior of the enemy command alongside the eerie composure of the Babel staff.
It was a profound gut feeling. He sensed an immense, glaring disconnect in Babel's active deployment. It was almost as if... the grand strategist orchestrating this entire campaign had suddenly torn up her original operational script and substituted an entirely different playbook mid-route.
If the leadership of Babel weren't complete fools, this radical shift suggested they had secured a hidden asset that exponentially elevated their success margins. If that calculation was correct, abandoning their posts now and branding their company as deserting outcasts would be an incredibly poor strategic move.