“E Company was almost lost. Truly, it’s a massive joke. We were almost surrounded during the retreat because Captain Victoria could barely communicate with C and A Companies. I suppose it’s game over. The Battalion Commander chastised her, so I’ve heard, after compromising the Battalion’s pull out. There’s talk she’ll replace her, but I can’t be too sure. I honestly cannot trust the greenie nobles from officer schools that they’re pumping here in the front as officers. Perhaps Lieutenant Kruger from 2nd Platoon should get promoted, but…eh, they don’t seem to like guys, no less penal guys, above the Lieutenant rank unless he’s a special cookie. It is what it is, I suppose.”
- Excerpt from Lieutenant Hans Hoffman’s Journal Entries.
+++
+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++
Unknown
Hans closed his journal with a heavy breath, as he placed it back on a bag of his.
His journal had always been his little stress reliever. Each time he wanted to rant about something, that was where his thoughts would be. He would write almost endless essays on it, as it always helped clear his mind from whatever he was experiencing. For some reason, angrily using his pen to scribble every damned thought he had on paper had that effect.
This time, all he placed on his journal entry for today was about the situation they were in. Hostile entities. System and status shenanigans. Levels. Upgrades. He even ranted at how no one even told him that his Wanderfalke now had the potential to be magical. That could have helped. That would definitely have helped.
Hans looked back at the displays. The skies were already pinkish. They just paused on their journey, as now, Hans was planning to return to where he and Alizée came from. In that same settlement where he met and killed the first “demonic entity” he encountered. But he was already doubting the idea of his current operation.
They, at this point, were just wasting daylight trying to “raise” his level. He hadn’t found more night wolves to use as target practice, which meant he had no progress to show for himself. Just hours wasted, reducing visibility. Still, he hoped that with the distance they covered, that entity wouldn’t be able to chase him.
If it was chasing him even. Hans certainly hoped that it merely treated that area as its own territory. Like an animal. Well, as far as analysis went, that thing was no normal wolf. What kind of a wolf even had four tails that could slice through Confederation steel? But, he didn’t have any other intel to work on. Assuming that it was a mere animal with animal instincts was best for his sanity.
And going by that train of thinking, that entity should stay in that town’s vicinity.
“Captain,” Hans spoke to his comms. Immediately, Adelyn’s audio icon opened up on his screens as a result.
“Yes? Sorry, Alizée fell asleep on my lap.”
“She did?”
“Well, I guess those plushies eventually bored her,” Adelyn replied. “Anyway, I’m back on the controls. Are you ready to move out?”
“Yep,” Hans said, placing his hands back on the control sticks and his feet on the pedal. “We’re really burning daylight. We should get back moving. Hunt for more.”
“Is this even a good plan?” Adelyn asked. “Having no intel to work with really sucks.”
“It’s why I’m your recon unit,” Hans said. “Our class specialization said it already. You’re the finisher, I’m the vanguard.”
“I find it ridiculous. What does that even mean?”
“We’ll find out how different our upgrades are,” Hans said. “Once I get myself to level five.”
Immediately, he powered his mech back on the road. Adelyn’s Wanderadler followed hot behind him. This time around, both of them went close to their one hundred kilometers top speeds, speeding through the forest way too rapidly for most of its normal inhabitants. While Adelyn’s Wanderadler lagged behind due to her mech’s lower acceleration, she soon caught up, as they both synchronized their speeds down to eighty kilometers.
If there was anything where the lighter family of Wanderpanzers excelled, it was this. Mobility through most terrain. It most likely helped that even Adelyn’s Wanderadler was close to half the normal tonnage of modern Main Battle Tanks. Of course, the downside was that their construction frames were significantly lighter, with Hans’ Wanderfalke being less armored than a comparable eighteen-tonner wheeled tank destroyer that the Confederacy employed.
Of course, that didn’t matter to Hans. He wouldn’t be able to use a wheeled vehicle in three-dimensional movement. It was how he and Lotharingian mechs dominated outside of flat terrain after all. The ability to utilize all forms of irregularities and deformations in the terrain, and move through it. And that was also his problem right now.
He truly felt as if he was the one in a tracked or wheeled vehicle, and that beast was a Wanderfalke. His options of movement were, in comparison to it, severely limited, by virtue of him still being in a six-legged vehicle with a full metal body, too rigid and inflexible to combat that monster anywhere outside the open.
As such, he thought, fighting it outside the open should be the best option. Much like how an MBT would almost always beat an exposed Wanderfalke in Lotharingia’s flatter plains in the south, so would his mech beat that entity in a terrain where its flexibility would be negated. Hell, with the Wanderfalke’s reverse speed of almost forty kilometers, he could even keep himself at a good distance. Unfortunately, even then, here, he was in no flat ground.
The story has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.
Hans’ eyes looked left and right, almost paranoid, as they passed through the dense forest. Anytime, anywhere, anything could easily ambush him and Adelyn through this thin dirt road from the dense forest. And then what? His movements through the forest, while slightly better than in the dense town blocks, would still be partially limited by the trees.
He didn’t want to fight here either. He really needed to search for the perfect battleground if that thing was still on their tail.
+++
“So this is where you downed that…demon?”
Hans stopped his mech right where its burned corpse lay. The first demon he killed earlier. Hans removed his hands from the controls of his vehicle, took his SMG, and opened his hatch. He jumped down, walking straight into the corpse. For some reason, something tugged at him and he needed to inspect this being for answers.
“Yes…it seems like it changed a bit,” he said to his radio.
He kneeled down and looked at it. Right now…it seemed almost human, save for its horns. As if its demonic “mutations” disappeared. Instead, what he could see was now a bullet-ridden, burned, half-decomposed…it was a woman. Perhaps a Vanus woman. Like Alizée. The hair alone showed it.
She had a white-like garment of some sort. While Hans prided himself on not being a corpse desecrator, this…this was needed. He pulled something from it. It was a letter of some sort, somewhat half-burned. He looked at it, and the letters on it…
Scared.
Soldiers.
Scared.
They chase me.
Sister.
Where are you?
He didn’t understand it. It was written in red blood. Strange, how she wrote it that way. He supposed that was simply how demons worked. But Hans…for some reason, even if he didn’t know the words on it…he felt pity for the creature. It was almost as if she wrote it in a deep pit of despair. The way it was written, almost frantic in a way.
Not that he found any regret at killing it. Perhaps, she went crazy. And she tried killing him, and Alizée, so he had no choice. It was kill or be killed. It seemed that it killed the people in this settlement anyway. Truly, that was simply the truth in life, perhaps.
Kill or be killed.
He stood up and muttered a silent, solemn nod of respect to the dead creature. He supposed there would not be much intel from it. He sighed. He should probably give her a proper resting place, if for nothing else.
“Wait, my motion sens—”
A slicing sound…then screams. Hans immediately turned back. Four hundred meters away from him, where Adelyn’s mech was parked…was the creature, standing right in front of her mech. He was frozen still, as the two of them screamed bloodily through his radio. He watched as the creature tore the hatch of Adelyn’s mech, and two of its blackened tails entered.
What.
What.
What am I supposed to—
Their screams fell silent, and Hans watched as two sliced heads emerged from Adelyn’s mech. Adelyn’s and Alizée’s. Hans backed off in horror, but his muscles went stiff as the creature turned, and showed him the faces of the two people he swore to protect from it. The beast snarled at him, and Hans… could not even raise his gun to fight…
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die.
I don’t want to die.
“You,” the beast spoke. “Killed my little sister. Revenge. Revenge. Revenge.”
Hans didn’t understand what it said. But the sheer hate from it as it slowly walked forward…
“I desire…revenge….”
“All I wanted is a way out of this…” Hans weakly begged. “I just wanted to get them both out of this. To search for a way out. Why…you damned monster…why chase us here?”
But then…what’s the point now?
He looked at the two of their faces…those blooded faces…it burned into Hans’ mind. This…this…
The cost of his sloppiness.
The cost of his inaction.
The cost of his incompetence.
The cost of his failure…to search for a way out…
When he could see the future.
I am…
The beast lunged at him, and Hans opened fire with his SMG. Blood, blood sprayed from the creature’s body, as Hans screamed at the top of his lungs. If this was going to be his last stand on this loop, then he’d take as much revenge as he could for himself. Against this damned creature. Against this beast that killed the child he swore to protect, and the Captain he served.
But the beast was unabated, seemingly unaffected, as it sunk its claws into Hans’ body. Hans felt himself thrown, his back bashing into something solid. The sound of his spine cracking left Hans in a silent pain, as he tried to hold himself off from screaming in despair.
Blood trickled from his open wounds, his uniform and Kevlar armor completely torn open, with three diagonal slashes that left him bleeding so badly. He tried to open his eyes and reach to his SMG, but he couldn’t move anything. Not his feet. Not his hands. Nothing responded.
He could only stare at the beast’s yellow eyes, as it stared at him with nothing but predatory hate. And Hans returned the same. For it killed those who mattered to him.
Kill me!
Kill me!
You animal!
The beast growled at him, as it towered on his fallen body. Hans looked up, the moon high above its demonic face…its white fangs almost as white as the moon behind it. It was…there was nothing he could do now. He would not give it the satisfaction of hearing him scream anymore, and so…
Hans peacefully closed his eyes. His fate that night…in this life…was sealed…
A stabbing pain…as he felt something bite deep into his neck…the familiar pain of his life once again leaving his body, as his mortal form was crushed and mangled once more.
How many times had he felt this?
How many times more?
And Hans was gone in mere seconds.