+++ Captain Adelyn von Wittenstein +++

Alizée already left the Diligence, left behind to keep watch over the chaos as a reserve element.

Adelyn would never let the little girl be in danger, so she kept her protected by a group of water mages from behind, nurses from Captain Weibel's unit in essence. Therefore, she was clear to attack side-by-side with Hans.

[IDEAL PARTIALLY MANIFESTED!]

[IDEAL: FAIR EAGLE (JUSTICE) II GRANTED AND SUMMONED]

[PUSH BACK AGAINST INJUSTICE AT ONCE!]

"We have our opening! Let's go! I'll charge to keep him on his toes, you open fire and kill him, got it?"

Adelyn smiled bitterly as a golden glow overtook not just her mech outside, but even his screens inside. In fact, she could even see sparks of golden electricity on her body as she became practically one with her mech.

You're always so bold, Hans.

Without even an ounce of powerful magic or an ideal, she watched as Hans' Wanderfalke galloped forward. The sight of it—it tugged at her heart, to keep fighting.

"Got it," she replied, as she readied herself.

Her AP, strength, and even the abilities of her mech were greatly heightened. She felt a surge of power, righteous power, coursing through her body. The numbers on her stats sheets barely mattered. Whenever one summons one's ideal, almost all of them go through the roof.

The amount of AP she had this time was quite literally just that.

[AP: 38,000/50,000 PTS]

And the speed at which she replenished her AP cap, was beyond inhuman. This was the power of an angel. The power to face a demonic calamity head-on.

When she moved her Wanderadler out of cover, to get into a favorable firing position, it felt beyond light. Her mastery of the controls also felt unnaturally overpowered. It was as if she could feel every step being taken by her mech itself.

As a result, she traversed the rough battlefield almost as well as Hans did. When she managed to get herself into a good elevated spot, she quickly turned her turret to Injustice, who was still wreaking havoc on everyone ahead of her.

Shot after shot from his mech devastated scores of men, innocent men, to Adelyn's eyes, who deserved to live a good full life. She watched as positions were snuffed out, soldiers forced to retreat under heavy fire, and everything else.

Meanwhile, Hans was hard at work, trying his best to gain the attention of the demonic mech ahead of them, dodging and repositioning every time he opened fire on that gun of his, which in her view, was a mere peashooter.

If even with nothing, he can chip Injustice down, then I have no excuse.

She took aim, slowly, making sure every little adjustment counted. This shot of her wasn't exactly unlimited. Secondarily, if she failed and lost too much AP to it, she wouldn't have enough magic in her mech and body to resist a counterattack from a calamity.

[DIVINE JUDGEMENT READY!]

A single round, which glowed powerfully with a golden hue, was loaded into her barrel. With a low voice, she gave her warnings to the soldiers ahead of them using her loudspeaker.

"All of you, please duck down at once!" she begged, though she doubted everyone heard her.

Still…one shot. One shot, all she needed, to reduce that bastard into a much-weakened state, and save so many people. One shot.

One perfect shot.

"Adelyn."

That voice of his. So calm, and so smooth, even in the thick of a deadly knife fight with Injustice.

"Adelyn, I need you to fire on my signal."

"I have prepared already."

"I know."

Why are you so calm? Why are you speaking….like a dead robot, when you're piloting your mech like that?

Each shot. Each close call, she could see it, and it made her heart sink. But she held herself, disciplined as best as she could. If she wasted it because she was swayed by her emotions, she knew Hans would just be in trouble.

He already was in enough trouble because of her.

"Tell me. Tell me when to fire," she said again.

"Just hold on. A little bit more."

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

"You're gonna die. You said I should open fire!"

"I'm close. He's getting weak. He's getting jittery and annoyed. Heh…bastard…"

That laugh. It sometimes felt…horrifying. She wondered a lot how a pilot like him could do so many extraordinary things when he was merely an ordinary guy by this world's standards.

Yet he only had two modes in the face of death. Either a stone-cold silence coupled with calm, short sentences or this. Laughter. The laughter of someone who probably saw something worse than what she was seeing.

But what even is worse than this?

He dodged another close call. He almost died, but he stubbornly fired another shot at the face of Injustice's mech.

She had enough.

"I think he's weak now!" Adelyn shouted.

"Alright, I'll be pulling back now. I just bought time for the other guys!"

+++

+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++

Crazy as it may sound, Hans cared a lot about the faceless guys that he never met from the 1st Corps.

As far as he could tell, they were all fine soldiers. Their performance was impeccable, and their ability to withstand the worst was truly admirable. It was why he risked his neck for this, why he held Adelyn back when she could already use her ultimate trump card earlier.

Neat. They all managed to flee the first defense lines!

A round from Injustice, as the calamity screamed a profanity against him, nearly clipped his Wanderfalke, and he only barely dodged it when it exploded with such great force on the ground behind him.

"I think he's weak now!" a panicked voice pulled him out of his battle-drunk state, and Hans stabilized his mech as it landed on the cold ground.

"Alright, I'll be pulling out now. I just bought time for the other guys! Give me four more seconds!"

Like a flash, Hans reversed the Peacemaker out of trouble rapidly. That only grated the old man on the mech nearly nine hundred meters away from him greatly.

"You damned dog! Cowardly running back from a fight—!"

"Instead of yapping further, have a secondary taste of Captain Wittenstein's might!"

"What?"

That bewildered response from Injustice was cut by a sudden, powerful crack of light that cut through the sky. Hans held on tight to his mech's controls, as his targeting feeds all glitched up, followed by a powerful shockwave that rattled his mech so brutally.

The force of it was so great, that he almost felt as if his mech was going to break. It only lasted for two seconds, but when it was done, even he couldn't help but cough.

The force, it practically went through his mech and body, that he felt like crap. He could barely move himself, and he could see once again multiple warning signs on his screens as it booted back.

"Heh…Captain, you ruined my autoloader, engine, radiator, and electronics again."

"W-what? I thought you were far enough!"

"Not the case it seems," Hans activated his 'Arcane Maintenance System', spending hundreds of his AP on repairing his mech at once. Including the slate of fabricated reloads for his machine guns and main gun, he seemed to have spent around a thousand AP so far already.

"Anyhow, is he gone now?"

"No. I don't think he is…"

"To be expected."

Hans bashed his glitching targeting feeds a bit on the side, causing them to stabilize. Then, his hands settled back on his controls. In the distance, Injustice, badly beaten and damaged, limped.

His mech was a mess of exposed wires and interior. There was even blood pooling out of the small hole in its pilot compartment. Yet it moved. Its turret, shifty, began to turn. The lights on its eye-like sensors began to glow a red hue.

"Justice! Damn you!" shouted the monster, as it limped forward. "Damn you! How dare you not show yourself at the front, and hit me this way?! How unjust. How unfair! How dishonorable! Is this how you were raised, Captain Wittenstein? To fight your foe in this manner?!"

"You bastard. You cursed those people. Don't you dare lecture me about justice!"

"No. Why would I not? It clearly shows how unjust you are. You refused to accept my offer. Instead, you drag an entire army of young boys and men with you, so you can play hero! When you could have agreed to me and lifted the curse to many!"

"Lies. You're nothing but a murderer. You're not—I wish I didn't even remember you, you dirty creature!"

As Hans tried to regain full control of his struggling mech, out of nowhere, Adelyn's Wanderadler surged forward. On the other hand, a powerful, pained scream came from Injustice.

A single shot from his main gun zoomed through the battlefield, striking the position that Adelyn held just a second ago. The field was awash by its light, its fury, that not a single soul raised their head, all ducking at its might.

Meanwhile, the Peacemaker, already rattled by the previous detonation, was rattled once more. Hans barely had the chance to warn her to stop her reckless charge, when she emerged from the smoke.

"No! Adelyn, it's a trap! Don't expose yourself!"

"I don't care. He's my job. I'll finish this myself!"

+++

+++ Captain Ebert Strobel +++

"The western flank is barely holding!" one of Ebert's officers pointed his spyglass in the direction where the massive explosion originated from. "I believe that Captain Wittenstein is engaged over there!"

"We might need to redirect ourselves over there indeed," Ebert said, distraught, as he looked at the front.

Ahead of them, at the center, the soldiers of the 1st Corps and the various deployed musketeers from the 1st Anti-Demon Unit were knee-deep in the fighting. Lesser demons were flooding them, only held back by volley after volley of musketry, spells, and heavy artillery.

I can't exactly move my boys and my guns in this situation.

He felt like he was stuck between a rock and a hard place. He needed to keep his forces here, alongside his cavalry, who were acting as a rear reserve, in order to prevent a collapse of the center, which could force them into a rout.

On the other hand, if the western flank gave in…

More explosions rattled the battlefield, their power coming from the west. It wasn't looking good by now. He needed to make a decision.

His throat turning dry, he made a split-second calculation, deducing that the 1st Corps' artillery deployed here should be sufficient.

"Screw it. Lieutenant, get those guns moving. We're going to support the Golden Angel and the Grey Knight at once!"

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