“The lone wolf operates best when alone.”
- Unknown
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+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++
Rousselot County’s Countryside
JUN 27, 1538 CE
Hans was finally free.
For some reason, scouting without anyone to worry about, or without even caring for his fate liberated him. This…this was what he loved. Quite frankly, in rearguard actions, he always operated best whenever it was him alone. When there was nothing but himself to worry about.
And nowhere was that as obvious as today. It was already 0100 Hours, just shy of an hour since the date changed. And Hans had been on the move relentlessly. Already, he covered three kilometers and a village in his scouting mission. Quite frankly, his goals now were three-fold.
Fully develop the battle plans and their positionings, alongside the concentrations of the infected so they could avoid them.
Scout out the location of the ‘Rodent of Pestilence’ at specific hours.
And most importantly—discover everything that he could find out about it.
Even if it meant his death.
Hans’ Wanderfalke rushed through the dirt road, his MG24 cutting through a group of shambling undead, fifteen of them. He had a twenty-five percent boost at the moment until he reached his level of fourteen in his last death. Already, he was up to level ten at the moment, and he was racking up kills.
While it was surely a massive downside—Hans was looking to kill as many undead as he could in this scouting trip. All the while he marked every area where he engaged them on his map. While he knew he wouldn’t have this map once he died and returned in time, roughly knowing which areas they would avoid alone was a massive boon.
Not to mention that twenty-five percent progress boost. He needed to rack up as many kills as he could and reach levels eighteen to twenty. With [ACT: PROGRESS OF LIES I] in effect, he essentially could breeze through level twenty-five in his next life in no time if he did his best to kill as many enemies as he could at the moment.
Perhaps, if I even manage to kill that beast…
Hans stopped his vehicle. Four kilometers away, on the flat lands, near one of the tree lines, Hans spotted the creature rushing. Unfortunately, switching to Thermals, it was practically invisible. He only spotted it with his less effective night vision sensors, and he already lost contact. That was the main problem he and Adelyn faced.
Thermals were their best long-range sensor. In fact, they had always been trained to use it since that was standard procedure against armored vehicles. They were hot, which meant that on the modern battlefield, both infantry and vehicles would be lit up for a perfect shot kilometers away with thermals. These things weren’t, and Hans had to rely on old-school daylight cameras to spot it (or, in this case, night vision), which he only really used for the final firing stage.
The spotting stage was best done with thermals, but these damned things were low-temperature bastards. At this point, if it had been a tank (even if it had a magical point-defense system around it) Hans would have dead-shotted it at ridiculous distances. But he couldn’t. It was truly gone on his thermals.
He clicked his tongue and marked the direction in which he found it on the map using his pen, all while placing “0122” on it.
He continued on.
For the next two hours, Hans began plotting the possible locations for the engagement. The first one was the sight of their death, due to how flat it was. It was twenty-six kilometers from Rousselot, north-east, just south of Belancon. He noted how they could use the hills that overlooked the direction of the village where Hans and Adelyn spotted the beast last loop, and he imagined that if they had placed a thousand men on that hill, they would be able to fire their sixteen cannon battery on it for at least two or three salvoes, in comparison to the last loop where they positioned themselves on the hills behind these hills thus blocking their firing lines (and screwing up Adelyn and Hans in the process).
He marked it on his map with an X symbol, calling it “Plan A”. He would choose it if he spotted the beast at 1000 to 1200 hours in a radius of six kilometers from it.
Hans soon moved westward, five kilometers from “Plan A’s” site. It was a good treeline that overlooked four kilometers of flat grazing fields northward. It also faced the direction where he spotted the beast at 0122 hours. It wasn’t the best, he noted, as the treeline might cause a disaster should it reach them and box them from retreating, but it would be perfect for bait-and-shoot tactics.
He marked it as “Plan B” with an X symbol on the map, same with first, he’d pick this if he spotted the beast in a six-kilometer radius in the 1000 to 1200 hours time range. Honestly, there was a bit of a complication with the distances of these engagement sites from Rousselot. On average it would take five hours to reach these sites on foot from Rousselot if the 4th Holy Ygeia Regiment marched out at a good six to seven kilometers per hour.
This meant that he really would have to find a way to convince Captain Strobel and Father Olbrich to begin preparations for the 4th in the early hours of the twenty-seventh. By 0500 or 0600 hours, the main force should be in march to Hans’ predetermined route and engagement site to reach it by 1000 hours. Being late would be unacceptable, not when he was perfecting the timing of this operation down to the last detail.
Hans continued scouting all of the routes leading to Belancon for the next three hours. He shifted his goal away again from shadowing the creature back into threat assessment of the routes. He deliriously marked every engagement site that he could mark as he wasted metric tons of bullets over the hours, forming a general outline of the concentrations of the undead on his map with red-colored circles.
By dawn…Hans sighed as he watched the rising sun, with another few dozen fallen undead surrounding his vehicle. It was already getting early. Luckily, Captain Strobel would delay Adelyn as much as possible from searching for him. Should things go well, Adelyn would focus on her task of talking to the Countess or gathering intel straight into the afternoon, where she would definitely start gaining considerable suspicion.
Doesn’t matter. I’d be dead by then.
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It was 0835 hours. Hans finished marking the “Plan C” location, another flatland that was in the middle of Plans A and B. By this point, Hans was already running out of time. His munitions were already badly spent by the morning recon, and his map…well, it was a beautiful art that he seared to his mind.
Alongside that, he marked every hour and location where he spotted the beast at a comfortable distance.
0544 hours, it seemed to be circling an infected settlement seven kilometers from Plan B’s site.
0632 hours, he spotted it at a three-kilometer distance from Plan B’s site.
0712 hours, he spotted it at a two-kilometer distance from Plan A’s site. Close call, but he was well camouflaged.
Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
0744 hours, he spotted it at a five-kilometer distance from Plan C’s site. He was also on top of a fairly high hill by that point, and he made sure to only present his turret, so as to not alert it.
And his last sighting…0815 hours. Seven kilometers west of Belancon. It seemed that the creature was almost preparing for an attack on the town before it swung back west.
Which was the general pattern he observed. The settlements west of Belancon were overrun, and that was where the creature seemed to be running around. Almost as if it was circling its territory. It was an interesting phenomenon for Hans. Almost as if it was defending the undead in that area.
Perhaps it really has some semblance of control on them.
He soon circled the area where he was sighting it and marked a rough five-kilometer “exclusion” zone around it with his red ballpen. Truly…he bastardized the map he acquired. But Hans didn’t care. He was searing in his mind what he had learned here. This was essentially how he could abuse his ability to return in time upon his death.
Death was a high price to pay…he needed to extract as much value from the cost. And the best way to do that was eating as much intel as he could. This level of intelligence was something most militaries would be salivating for.
But Hans held himself. He still needed to enact the final part of his plan. Engage it.
He pushed his feet back on the pedal.
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Hans had his answer.
1008 hours…and it was five kilometers away from Plan A’s site. There was no more discussion to be had. They’d be fighting and killing it on the same field where Hans and Adelyn died on his first loop. He marked the site’s X symbol with a cross symbol, signifying it as his final target. Picking up his blue ballpen, Hans traced a line from Rousselot to Plan A’s site, taking care to avoid any concentrations of undead on the way.
And with that…he seared on his mind his plans. A simple line to this hill, which he now marked as “Hill Belancon” due to the fact that it was unnamed and the fact that it was just southwest of the town, and it was done. With this in mind…he closed his map and took stock of his remaining munitions.
He took a deep breath. Thirty-two rounds. Thirty rounds that he could expend till his death. For a few moments, Hans felt a bubbling surge of fear on his spine. What if dying to that thing sucked? What if it would be too painful? What if…what if.
He shook his head.
Onwards.
Activating [UPG: EYE OF PARANOIA I], Hans pushed his Wanderfalke forward in a surge. He kept his targeting feeds as much as possible on his target. On his way, immediately, hordes of undead blocked his path. Hans wasted no time giving them an ounce of care—his target was that thing after all.
Alright. Tailing tactics. Bait, retreat, bait, retreat, kill.
In eight minutes, he finally had a visual. Close to an infected settlement, just eight hundred meters away. Hans’ Wanderfalke drifted to a stop on the dry grass, as his main gun turned to the rat that was running westward.
“Got you on my sights.”
He pulled his trigger.
And its magical point defense system blocked his APFSDS. Hans smirked as the monster turned around and roared at him—before rushing fast. Except this time, the ground was solid. Dry. Ready to support his mech’s overclocked speeds. Hans turned his chassis to the other side and prepared his next round—firing it.
A chase of death began. Hans rushed his mech away from it, firing four more shots before he dashed into the cover of a bunch of trees—completely disorienting the thing from chasing him. Quickly, Hans repositioned himself westward, rapidly covering a distance of two kilometers and gunning down anything that stood in his way.
Soon, he spotted the creature again—and it charged at him.
Hans pulled the trigger again, firing shots one after another as the creature’s magical scalpels were depleted. The problem with his APFSDS solid shots was that they were always deflected by that thing’s magical defenses. It was to be expected. The APFSDS penetrator was thin, and while dense, only a slight application of energy from another direction would either make it lose energy—shatter it—or divert it away from its original direction of attack.
The sheer speed of those magical scalpels meant that they must have enough energy to completely shatter the dense penetrator or slice it in half. Thus…Hans switched to MPAT as he turned straight into the infected settlement.
Time for urban combat.
Soon, Hans entered the roads as he was swarmed by the undead, his MPAT raining hell on them every seven seconds. Hans fired his mech’s grapnels on one of the houses and scaled it. Immediately—he had a clear shot of the creature. Firing two more shots, he jumped down on the stone roads and cleared his path with his MG24, slicing through dozens of packed undead that tried to swarm him.
He was now up to level sixteen.
Soon, he watched as flying scalpels began raining down on him—and Hans began dodging it, lowering down his mech’s chassis while turning left and right through the ruins of the town as it rained above him. By the time he emerged outside, he engaged his engines at full power, racing at seventy kilometers on the dirt, just as the beast continued chasing him.
Hans turned his turret back again on the rear and rained a hail of shots on it as it tried to chase him. Three more APFSDS shots rained on it…then Hans rained another two MPATs on it, trying his best to observe which round type would work best. Soon, his mech once again drifted on its side as he turned his direction to Plan B’s site—-disorienting the creature who struggled to turn with the same agility, as he continued firing on it.
And with it merely only four hundred meters away, its depleted defenses didn’t deflect Hans’ final shot—his APFSDS skewering through the creature’s belly. The demonic rodent momentarily winced, but Hans found two scalpels skewering through his mech’s legs after he botched his dodge attempt.
His vehicle skidded through the ground as one of his legs was completely decapitated while two failed due to the slice damage on them. But Hans’ main gun didn’t relent, firing another two shots at the running creature, and detonating one MPAT on its tail as it retreated.
Heh…so my maneuver skills haven’t died yet?
The creature ran away, almost limping, with Hans holding off from firing any further. It seemed that at extremely close ranges, the creature’s defenses turned useless at stopping their high-velocity shots.
Shame…it also meant they were easy pickings for its defenses that also served as an offensive weapon. Hans sighed on his controls, watching as a horde of sprinting undead rushed on his immobile vehicle. This was it.
He did what he could do.
Alone.
Hans fired two more MPATs on the horde, killing at least fifty, and raising him to level seventeen in the process, before he finally gave up, and grabbed his SMG when his two coaxials ran out of ammo. All he had left now was five APFSDS, which were useless against the undead.
He’d get overwhelmed in no time.
He popped his hatch open, dropped to the ground, and began shooting them as they rushed into him. One by one, he dropped them, but the tide was too many. He estimated he attracted at least two hundred with the stunt that he did.
And they were too fast.
Hans pulled out his Ruger when his SMG’s magazine ran out, but—a man in his forties, frothing with blood on his mouth, pounced on Hans and dropped him on the grass before he could pull off his first shots. He could only look at the blue sky as the intense pain slowly dulled, his body rapidly torn apart by dozens of undead feasting upon him.
Slowly…his vision turned blood red.
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Hans…he had no control of his body. Instead, he was in an endless…excruciating pain with his body as he shambled around the undead that killed him. His head… felt like it was in a constant state of swelling as if it would pop at any moment, but it didn’t. His body moved…but he couldn’t control it.
Most of all…he wanted to scream, but he couldn’t.
Instead, Hans watched as minutes bled by, the pain slowly turning into dull defeat as he lost his semblance of humanity. By the tenth minute…hunger for everything had overtaken him. Most of all…rage. Rage at why they abandoned him. Rage at why he was alone.
Rage.
Soon, sudden flashes of light overtook Hans’ hypersensitive senses. Gunfire scattered all around him, and the undead around him was cut down. Hans’ body ran, charging with the horde at whatever the hell was shooting them. He thought it was food. And so his body followed.
Until…it was just him running on the field, the gunfire falling silent.
Hans however continued charging, even if his target, a vehicle of sorts, was a kilometer away. It was sleek…gray…and…
Out from its hatch came a single woman. She was shouting at him. Her pistol was aimed at him.
“Why?!” She shouted. “Why?!” Her cracked voice echoed through the empty fields.
Again and again.
But Hans merely rushed in rage at her, unable to control his body. Only when he was close did he realize her familiar face…now laden with tears, as a final shot from her pistol dropped him.
…She didn’t abandon him.
He only lied.
But only he would remember this.