“I watched. I was silent. I only looked. I have no words of excuse. Shoot me if you will. I am guilty.”

- General Emanuel Roehr, West Lieplatz Defense Command (WLDC).

+++

Northwestern Lieplatz

A/2-6 Marine Regiment

Corporal Oakley slackened his hold on the machine gun. The Sergeant himself was already shouting “cease fire” at them, as the Lieplatzans raised a white flag from their positions. Their troops began rising from their trench lines and foxholes, alongside their vehicles. The sudden ambush had nearly screwed them, but the timely strikes from Orlish artillery silenced this bunch.

Oakley shook his head. The road further and further up north had only grown more harrowing, as the weather intensified. Right now, his thick military-issued jacket kept him warm, but he doubted it would work any longer the further they went.

Soon, they’d be truly in the Kaltic, the furthest north in the Opellian continent.

In an hour, both Timmy and Oakley were out of their HMLV. They were eating their MRE rations on the side, as they watched multiple APCs and IFVs drive through the road.

“Hey man,” Timmy said after he placed a spoonful of beef stew in his mouth. “Ya think we’ll find what the Queen wants up here?”

“The what?” Oakley asked.

“The missing noblewomen,” Timmy said. “Ya think we’ll really find them out here? It seems…too desolate…”

Oakley looked up at the afternoon sun. To be quite frank, since Nordia, the journey up north had been quite tense. Just in the last three days, A Company suffered thirteen casualties as they pushed through the evermore thinning roads. Some say, soon, it’d be nothing but unpaved roads up north, and nothing more. Unpaved roads through frozen thick forests. Well, technically, they already were in those forests.

His eyes looked away from another squad of Marines, huddled together in a hastily set up campfire near their parked HMLV beside the road. Oakley shook his head, remembering one of their platoon’s HMLVs this week that was struck by an ATGM. That was five people in his platoon wiped in one fell swoop.

I could have prevented it had I just seen them. He told himself, as he looked back down at the heated MRE main he was eating. Just chicken soup, nothing more.

“I don’t know Timmy,” Oakley answered, and his fellow Marine simply looked at him. “What about you, do you think this is a worthy mission?”

“We’ve already lost at least a quarter of our brothers in this company since we crossed the border,” Timmy lamented. “We…we could be the next for all we know.”

“Don’t say that…” Oakley said. “Not that…it ain’t possible.”

“I’m just saying, man.” Timmy looked at his ration angrily. “Why? Why are we still fighting…and…and dying for them? I get saving normal women, we…we already did, didn’t we, when we liberated the south. But now? We’re just dying for some high aristocrats. Who cares? What even…is the point of this? I mean…we might be dying for already dead people who never gave an ounce of crap about us men.”

“You’re frustrated?”

“Damn right, I am. Why can’t the RIU do this if they want to? Why can’t those Lieplatzan Resistance groups do it? I mean, they have magic, don’t they?” Timmy laughed. “Meanwhile, us grunts they never valued, with just shitty rifles are out here slugging it out with concealed lunatics in tanks on our soft-skinned shit wagons. Just to save some ladies who would shit on us men anyway.”

“...Tell me, Timmy. Do you wanna back off from this mission, and run?”

The younger Marine fell silent. “No…it’d be too shameful…” He laughed. “What kind…of a guy runs from…saving civilian women? For some reason, to even think about it, is distasteful. Even when I sometimes want revenge against them all…”

Oakley looked back at the sun, thinking about what Timmy had to say about it. He agreed. This was a distasteful mission that had no point for them. What would they even gain from this? Would they ever even be repaid for their service? Wouldn’t they just be punished anyway for it? They’d just be cast adrift and forgotten after all this.

None of what they were doing here, none of it, for most men in the Orlish Army, mattered. Liberating and saving Lieplatzan women and girls, for what? Orland’s society would never look at them as anything but monsters. Those they were saving would probably treat them as heroes for a short while before the old business returned, and they were demoted back to second-class subhumans.

And yet, he had not seen many men run from their duty here. He included. They were still pushing on, through the cold winter, through the lack of proper supplies (they had only been eating MRE rations for the past weeks), through the lack of shelter, and through the endless ambushes and battles.

“These Lieplatzans, Timmy…isn’t that what they’re doing?” Oakley asked. “Revenge?”

“Yeah…they are, aren’t they?” Timmy barely touched his food anymore. “They’re…pretty thorough and brutal at it. Almost like they really are monsters. Yet…”

Timmy didn’t continue. Oakley understood. Seeing everything they did, most Orlishmen on the ground like him began condemning them as inhuman monsters.

But…were they really…?

Or were they merely trying to comfort themselves from the idea that they were not too dissimilar with them?

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

“Do you wager they feel nice about it?” Oakley asked. “Do you think…it’s worth it for them?”

Many times, their unit encountered PC troops already. Many fought till their last breath. Many, committed suicide instead of surrendering. Some would even act as if they were surrendering before detonating a grenade behind their backs. At this point, there was already an unofficial standard operating procedure amongst frontline Orlish troops to shoot PC troops preemptively, even surrendering ones.

They must have been completely backed against the wall.

He remembered the faces of some of the PC troops they passed through. The corpses of men who chose damnation and hell. Their corpses…they always held that same neutral expression. As if they were no human beings anymore, and that their only last purpose was to kill women with a straight face, and die while doing it.

He wondered what it was like from their perspective.

Was it a nightmare, or was it euphoric?

“I don’t know,” Timmy said. “But it’s scary. It’s like…whenever I look at them…I see myself at times…”

Oakley remembered the face of that dead PC trooper again.

He wondered…if he was no less different than them. Were they…Orlishmen of the Kingdom…really no less different from those men? Were they…just looking at the mirror of who they would be had they been nudged a little further into madness?

Oakley found the answer to be too troubling to pursue for now, and he resumed eating his MRE.

+++

Three Days Later

Revenge?

Why?

Corporal Oakley looked around the camp that their regiment found. The Colonel already mandated that they would not shoot any PC officer they found, but Oakley could see many marines threatening the commandant of the camp, alongside the dozens of PC officers near the electric fences.

“Oakley!” The Sergeant called, snapping him off from the commotion, as one of the marines pushed the camp commandant into the barbed wire. “Oakley! Snap out of it. They need more hands to distribute supplies.”

“Sorry, Sarge,” Oakley said, as he followed him. The crowds through the camp had been desolate, there were barely any women inside. He couldn’t believe what he was seeing, most of the people they found were young women and children. Apparently, the camp was supposed to house the children of the detained high nobles, and they were separated from their mothers and families. “What…the hell…?”

“Look, Private Kazper already went bonkers this morning, and we’re temporarily out of a driver since the MPs are still ‘talking’ with him, and your buddy Private Huppert is already acting badly, so I really need you to stay calm on this one,” the Sergeant looked back at him. “Corporal Fried?”

“Sergeant Higgs…why?” Oakley asked. “What really is the point of all this? Why would they do this, Sergeant?”

Their team leader sighed, and he raised his arm for some gesture to speak, but no words came out. Instead, Oakley remained standing, as their own Sergeant too shook his head, and almost cracked himself.

“Fuck…I just,” the Sergeant sighed before he looked at a bunch of young girls in shoddy plain clothes watching a bunch of marines distribute water. “This…look, let’s just go. We need to help these people, that’s all there is to it.”

The two of them continued on until they found Timmy helping out on a bunch of marines that carried these water bottle packs. Oakley and the Sergeant immediately joined in, with Oakley grabbing a pack that probably contained two dozen water bottles from Timmy’s left hand.

“Hey, thanks man,” Timmy said, as the two of them walked straight to the distribution tents. “This crap is damned awful.”

“No shit,” Oakley grunted, as they placed the water bottles on the tables. Nearby, a woman, most likely a medical volunteer, was checking a bunch of young girls in heavy winter clothing that the Army must have distributed upon their arrival. The rest of the marines already left, except for them, when the woman called them over.

“You two,” she said, standing up to them. She seemed utterly tired and her eyes were almost devoid of warmth. She was even slightly shaking, the faint halo above her already flickering dimly. “Do you two know how to distribute food?”

“Um…of course?” Timmy awkwardly said. “Of course, miss! What food exactly?”

“Fetch some,” she said. “From the cooks on that tent.”

She pointed at a tent outside, that indeed, had Army cooks on it.

“Yeah, sure,” Oakley replied, before looking at her. “Um, Miss, are you perhaps, just alright?”

The woman’s expression turned even more neutral from that. “Of course, I am…just having a little bit of mana exhaustion.”

“Tending to the kids must be a pain,” Oakley said. “I apologize for…”

“Shut up,” she said, before returning to the girls she was tending to. “Go fetch what I asked for. These girls have been partially starving for a while. Those men…they barely fed them.”

The two of them stood frozen in place. This time, it was Timmy looking down as he spoke.

“They’re…awful…we really are sorry, miss…we were too slow.”

“Stop, I don’t want to hear you two apologizing for crimes you didn’t do,” she looked back at them. “Just go, please. You’re not them just because you’re all men. Just like how these girls aren’t the same who screwed you and your…generation.”

The two of them gulped. Timmy especially, when he looked back at the badly treated noble girls that were dragged into this mess.

Indeed. What have generalizations and collective guilt dragged us into?

“Go now,” she said, a little bit softly this time, but still in that tired tone. “They really need it.”

Oakley and Timmy both said yes respectfully, before leaving the tent to fetch food for them. Still, her words bugged Oakley.

What has it all led us to?

Those girls were dragged into this mess because those men wanted to enact revenge on the perpetrators of their misery. The collective of women. Just like how Oakley and Timmy today were dragged into this mess, into their long service of seeing war and death…all because they were condemned by women centuries ago as responsible for the crimes of a long-gone era of men’s rule.

Revenge.

Collective sin

And collective punishment.

He looked up at the pink moon in the sky. Three centuries. Three centuries, of them being under that same moon…and they were still repeating the mistakes of the past in possibly worse ways.

Oakley…for once, remembering the faces of those girls…wanted to cry in guilt. But was he really guilty of their crimes just because he was a male too?

And were those…girls guilty of the crimes of some of their mothers, that they should be in these conditions?

Of course not…

It’s stupid. Why then…why is it always…

From Ginzhu to here…Oakley was becoming tired of it.

He didn’t know.

And he didn’t cry. He had to keep going and do his job.