“To that end, I have a tall mission ahead of me. To prevent the destruction of a city. To kill a serpentine water demon. And to prevent a child from falling into a disastrous series of events that would doom us all. I suppose that’s my job now. From shooting Flandrians in a soul-sucking battlefield, to this. Someone who has to hunt and kill the most dangerous creatures this place has to offer. From the frying pan—straight into the fire.”
- Excerpt from Lieutenant Hans Hoffman’s Journal Entries.
+++
+++ Lieutenant Hans Hoffman +++
Rousselot City
AUG 4, 1538 CE
It’s only me who can do this.
Hans closed his journal as he prepared himself for today. He placed the cap back on his pen, as he tried gathering his thoughts. Truly, this…this was a difficult ordeal he had to fight. There was still no way for him to stop it from getting inside the city and fighting it in favorable terrain for both his and Adelyn’s Wanderfalke.
Thus, he abandoned all thought of fighting it outside of the city. He was now operating under the assumption it would arrive either today or already arrived before the news of its incoming attack would reach their offices for the emergency meeting later.
He’d assume the latter. That meant, this city, from now on, was marked as a compromised position, and he’d be operating from that assumption. The St. Heka church and the Countess’ Estate had also been marked as a danger zone in his mind, so much so that he now wondered if he could evacuate Alizée or not.
He checked his magazines. He had already acquired his enchanted bullets, just like he did last time, from Moritz, the singular mage he knew that could help him. This time, he even acquired more than twice his previous, already expensive and hefty acquisition. A hundred enchanted 5.7x28 LFI rounds, both for his pistol, and SMG. He wasn’t going to rely on it though.
Really, he only needed it for the first phase—the spotting phase, where he’d need the SMG as his personal defense weapon. Quite frankly, it was why he held a simple PDW (Personal Defense Weapon) instead of a rifle. Unlike most other pilots, he vowed to never need a rifle in his service life. Why? Because he was a damned Wanderfalke pilot. His greatest trump card was his Wanderfalke. Plus, he liked the fact that it shared the same rounds that his pistol used.
That, and again, he planned to use his Wanderfalke on the tight streets of Rousselot this time. How would the battle go? He didn’t know, but he already made adjustments. First of all, he had already been hinting to the Countess that it might be a good idea if she joined in on the fight.
This time around, he’d report to her directly about his lie of spotting the creature. And that was the good part—he had a working theory that the “Tentacled Eel” was somewhat connected to the Countess. Someone, who she would have to fight to “tie the loose ends” as she said.
Second, he’d get Captain Weibel and Lieutenant Preisner again on the search, alongside the 4th Holy Ygeia Regiment on the fifth day of August, to fully follow the last timeline, and prevent it from attacking on the fifth of August and delay it to the sixth of August. Third—he’d need to find a way to get Alizée inside the Countess's estate.
It was a ruthless tactic, but Hans had been acting very kind to Alizée since he made the promise that he wouldn’t leave her. Why? It was clear that the demon wanted her alive, and that it wanted her to turn into whatever abomination that Alizée became in his first and third death. Yet, his first death showed that he could reverse it, easily, by pulling her back to her senses.
Thus, Hans hoped that with his recent actions, Alizée would be in a better mental position to withstand the effects of the demon even if it abducted her. Ruthless yes, but with it attacking the Countess’ estate to get Alizée—the Countess would recognize the demon, and join the fight.
All I’d need is to lie to Adelyn to make her visit the Countess with Alizée in tow while we’re preparing outside for the big fight. He smirked at his magazine after he finished loading it. The Countess is a powerful woman. She’d stop that thing from harming Adelyn, at least, well enough. I already reminded Adelyn to carry her pistol anyway, and she had been studying up a few spells for her guns from my advice since I returned in time.
That way, Adelyn would be able to survive the chaos, while Alizée would be abducted—then, Hans, Captain Weibel, Lieutenant Preisner, and the rest would rush into the Countess's estate to confront the demon in a location where it would one hundred percent be in.
It was an elaborate plan that required so many lies and manipulations, but Hans knew the truth. Without a little mental gymnastics to ensure that the pieces on his chessboard fell in line—without his little lies to move everyone to the right position in order to counter a credible threat he met many times, they’d all die. Either to that demon—or to Alizée freezing the city.
No…Alizée isn’t the demon here. Hans told himself, as he placed his loaded magazine on his Ruger. It’s me. The only man who knows the truth of what’s happening.
He frowned.
And the only bastard with the balls to lie about it.
+++
The meeting went about as much as he had expected. So far, he remained true to the timeline of his last death. Considering that Captain Weibel and Lieutenant Preisner still hadn’t arrived, he held off from alerting the 4th Holy Ygeia Regiment about him “spotting” the “Tentacled Eel” inside of Rousselot. He didn’t want to mess up the timeline of events until the critical moment, which would be tomorrow when they would start the search by afternoon and fully place the 4th and the Rousselot Garrison in a ready posture.
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What he did though was use his power as a sort of “military advisor” to preposition Captain Strobel’s units throughout the city. Specifically, he proposed for a “military parade” to be prepared on the routes close to the St. Heka church and the Countess’ estate on the 6th under the guise of “improving public morale”. He also, this time, scrapped suggesting his north defense line plan.
No, all sixteen pieces of the 4th Holy Ygeia Regiment’s light cannons were inside of the city. The plan he hatched for now was for the cavalry to scout the north, as he still needed to keep his reputation of being a reliable advisor to the city’s defense. Now, he had at least four hundred musketeers, veterans of the takedown of the “Rat of Pestilence” posed inside the city, close to the area where he expected the fight to begin, alongside six of their artillery pieces right on the city barracks, which was close to the Countess’ estate, the rest being dispersed in the city.
But that didn’t matter, this time around, they’d have thrice of the firepower they had compared to the timeline of his first death. A battle for the Countess’ estate would still be a surprise attack that would cause panic—but they would have more troops on the ground, and more artillery pieces ready for rapid redeployment by the time of the attack. Both the St. Heka church and the Countess’ estate, instead of being an easy high-value target, were now both traps for the demon.
All that was left now was ensuring Adelyn’s and Alizée’s safety once the attack arrived, which he wasn’t sure how he would guarantee. It was honestly disgusting, as he was using them, the same people he wanted to save from this, as bait. But what could he do? He knew it was impossible to intercept the demon. He knew that their efforts of searching for it would fail (but they would have to do it to make it delay its attack) and thus they wouldn’t be able to stop it from getting to Alizée.
And Hans knew that it targeted Alizée specifically.
He had already resigned himself to the reality of the situation. Alizée would be abducted. What he could do was maximize his chances of disrupting the plans of that demon as best as he could. Thus prepositioning Alizée and Adelyn in the Countess’ estate, which would force the Countess to act and hunt the demon later on, prepositioning the city garrison to the perfect spot on the sixth day of August, and of course, starting a determined search attempt in the fifth of August to ensure that the attack would happen in the sixth of August.
Having the power to see the future sure is disgusting.
He shook his head as he walked back to the St. Heka church, as the afternoon sun drew down, and the city became ever more relaxed as people went home. It was, honestly, strange. These people, most of them, were calm, carrying on as if business was usual. Even the city’s leadership, even Adelyn, even the Countess, was treating the demon problem as an unconfirmed threat.
Yet…if he failed in his elaborate plans, in just days, thousands would die inside the walls of Rousselot.
Most people he passed through rarely regarded him with much interest. Quite frankly, he had the reputation of being the closed-off “hero” in comparison to Adelyn. He certainly wasn’t popular with the cityfolk. Even to the officers of the 4th Holy Ygeia Regiment, he was regarded with neutrality. It was only really the soldiers of the 4th who saw him hatch a plan and execute it in order to kill the “Rat of Pestilence” where he imagined he had a truly positive reputation.
Not that it matters.
He shook his head. Sometimes, he wondered what it would be like if he led the 4th himself, and made them act under his directives. Would that give him comfort? Being in control might, certainly. But really, it wouldn't change the reality of the situation. It was just him who knew and who could restart endlessly to change the fate of forty-thousand people.
He could go through this a hundred times, and not much would change. In fact, he imagined once all of this was over, while he would be regarded as a competent officer who saw a threat early and acted decisively against it, ultimately, no one would know the rest of his efforts.
Well, there was a silver lining to that, he supposed. No one too would know how much he failed them.
He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.
“Sir Hans!”
By the time he was back at the St. Heka church, he didn’t expect that the first thing to greet him was Alizée. She rushed to greet him, genuinely joyful, and she began showing him her “notebook”, really just a bunch of papers stitched together, and excitedly showed him many pages filled with phrases.
“Look! Look!”
He checked on it. All of it was in Lotharingian—err, “continental”, mostly, simple words and phrases like, “I like chicken soup!”, or “I want to play”, or really just simple things like, “I want to be friends!”, repeated again and again in dozens of lines below. The girl was certainly a determined self-studying student.
He gave her a head pat.
“Gee, this looks good,” Hans said. He kneeled down to her level and pulled out a ballpen. Now that he thought of it, he had a lot of ball pens, while this girl continued using nothing but ink and quill. She curiously looked at his pen, as he removed the cap, and began writing on her paper.
All he placed on it was a star symbol, writing down, “10/10” on it, and placing a big check below for extra measure. She looked at what he did curiously.
“There, full marks,” Hans smiled. “You did good. Just keep up the good work. I’m sure you can ask for chocolates next time more fluently.”
“Thanks, Sir Hans!”
She took the paper, and her eyes lit up, almost as if the marks that he gave her were now her little world. Hans checked his pen. He had a lot of spares anyway, and since the kid’s all determined to be a student, he thought she’d definitely do better with a piece of easier equipment to use.
After all, writing all that using ink and quill must be a pain.
“Hey, also,” Hans showed her his pen, demonstrating how to place and remove its cap. “This…this is your reward.”
She didn’t seem to understand it.
“Okay, gift.”
“Gift?” She smiled. “Is that true?”
“Yep,” he took her paper again and began demonstrating how to write on it. “See this? Yeah, look, it’s easy. You just write, and write, no worries. And then when you’re finished…”
He placed back the cap on it.
“Just cover it up with this. It looks stylish too, so that's an extra, I guess. Um, just don’t eat it, for god’s sake. That’d be silly.”
He handed it to her. She looked down on it, almost hesitant, until Hans took her hands, and placed it on her palms. She accepted it.
“Thank you, Sir Hans,” she said. “This is so nice…”
“Yeah, that. Actually, you know what, let’s get to your room. I suck at teaching languages, but I sure as hell can teach you how to use that. How about it?”
She nodded eagerly.
“Okay!”
“Right. Then, let’s get to it, kid.”
He stood up, and immediately, Alizée followed him. He sure as hell didn’t expect himself to teach a kid how to use a pen.