“Royalist forces conduct a sudden counter-offensive against Putschist forces in the Ludendorf front. The first hours saw Royalist probing attacks, followed by a massive bombardment from massed Royalist artillery, missiles, and limited surgical air strikes. As of now, a bulge has formed as the Putschists retreat from what appears to be two advancing pincers that could threaten an encirclement of Putschist forces on the west bank of the Ludendorf river.”

- Geopol Press

+++

Well, she really needed it to work.

Another one of William’s men dropped, as he clutched his wounded shoulder. The shot went through it clean, dripping blood like a loose faucet. Amelie naturally felt bad for him, but her adrenaline was so high that she somehow didn’t lose her mind over it.

Alright, time to do it.

She weaved her wand up, and immediately, a blue vortex appeared on top of it.

[Homing Ice]

It immediately slashed twelve percent of her active mana, but a swarm of eighteen ice spikes was launched from the vortex. She had already deployed her previous “target acquisition” spell that identified the OIA agents hot on them. With that, she merely connected her initial spell to the "Homing Ice" spell. It was quite similar to the modern missile guidance systems employed by today’s armies, in that the projectiles required a way to seek, identify, and lock on their targets.

With that, her eighteen targets were marked for death. Unfortunately, Amelie hadn’t had the guts to lock it straight to their necks and other critical areas of the human body, and the ice spikes impaled themselves straight to the wrong place - the legs, the shoulders, or the arms.

However, only four of them successfully scored their hits, unsurprising, as the OIA agents saw it coming.

“That was good.”

“Was it?”

“Well, better than nothing.”

She huffed at William’s remark. Now, she wasn’t asking for big praise for her, but she did her part too! Not that she even eliminated one of them, though their wounded states forced their comrades to drag them off from their engagement site.

Alright, what’s next?

[Surveillance]

The sudden pulse of her mana allowed her once more to identify the situation around her. She noted that the OIA agents had been stopped for a while by her previous attack, but they weren’t going down from that. Not that she expected them to do so, these were professionals.

However, she did question why they attacked her there. Couldn’t they do it more discreetly? Or perhaps they had no other choice. Infiltrating Halia must have been quite a difficult affair. The OAF and the Royal Guard had an absolute iron grip on who entered and exited Halia after all, not to mention the constant patrols around the city.

Now that she remembered that, where the hell were they?

“William?”

“What?”

“Where is the help? I thought they were just minutes away.”

He checked his radio and asked for the status of Echo-3. Gunfire could already be heard a few blocks away, which Amelie suspected was a part of their current altercation.

“Shit, another group engaged them on the way here.”

“You mean there’s more?!”

He didn’t look back at her. Instead, William stood up and barked orders at his men. Immediately, six men detached themselves from the confrontation in the front and manned their rear. Amelie also instinctively took cover at another abandoned civilian car that covered both her back and front.

[Barrier]

Her quick dash was marked by multiple bursts of gunfire nailing her. Her shield did block it well, but that still wasn’t ideal. Her active mana dropped by a quarter just from that, which meant that she would probably have to activate more of it. That was bad, really bad. Activating passive mana meant fatigue. It meant pain later on.

Still, that was what she did, although she only activated enough to compensate for what she lost. Her eyes and halo glowed a little bit more brighter as a result.

“William!”

He dropped down to place another magazine at his SMG. He looked at her, as they were already a bit apart after her tactical relocation.

“Yeah?!”

“Can you…can your men take their attention off me?”

“They already are.”

“I need-”

Another shot pinged straight at the car that Amelie used as her cover. Some shards of glass showered her, but she merely ducked and held her ear. Truly, this was getting beyond terrifying.

“I’ll try to freeze that area.”

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“You’ll what?”

“I need to stand up and aim at them for a few seconds for that.”

“Can’t you just use your surveillance spell?”

“My barrier spell is activated.”

“So what? Do three.”

“Three active spells at once? Do you think I’m a Royal Guard knight?”

He held his head as another burst of OIA gunfire streaked to the ground. The damned OIA was getting handsy now. They were also getting uncomfortably close.

William pulled out his radio.

“Echo Two, get your asses up again. Her Majesty is about to do some miracle. Suppress them at all cost.”

Once again, William’s men exposed themselves from their positions to fire back. Burst after burst of rifle fire greeted the OIA advance, which forced them down into cover. Naturally, they still fired back, but their volume of fire was significantly reduced by William’s men.

That of course won’t last long, William’s men didn’t have unlimited ammo in their magazines.

And so, while her body definitely wasn’t shaking like crazy (it was) she stood up and aimed her wand at the road in front of her. She almost ducked down when a sudden burst nicked her barrier, but her wand was already glowing blue as her mana gathered toward it.

She calculated the area of her target as best as she could, and just utilized the preset already available in her wand. As the mana coalesced in her wand, it glowed madly blue, and her mind spoke.

[Freeze]

The splash of blue light collided straight into the asphalt and exploded with a blast, light blue in color. The temperature around it dropped almost to absolute zero, utterly freezing everything in a thirty-meter radius. The OIA agents didn’t even have a chance to react when suddenly, they were frozen dead.

“Amelie! Get down.”

She didn’t notice William’s almost muffled shout. She was almost frozen still as she stared at her work. She…actually killed people.

She however found herself dragged straight down, quite suddenly. She found herself pinned down to the ground by William, who seemed enraged.

“What the hell were you doing?! You could have gotten yourself killed!”

“I-I’m sorry.”

“When I say get down, you get yourself down!”

“Understood.”

She picked herself up as William turned back to the fight in front of them, radio at hand. She killed people. So many people. With her own wand, her own magic. Moreso, she was again almost killed. How could she do that? How did she do that?

I almost got myself killed.

“Echo Three, I really need that damned reinforcement yesterday.”

“Copy that, Major. OAF soldiers are now aiding us in combat here. We’re moving in.”

William turned around to face Amelie, her face already slightly pale at her own atrocity. While he definitely felt bad for the poor girl, he had to be stern in combat and drive it straight to her noggin that she could not be sloppy in a life-or-death situation.

“I apologize for my outburst, but they’re coming already.”

“It’s alright…it was my mistake.”

“Just keep your head down.”

Amelie herself was still left in a stupor. Was her mind really this slow at processing shock? She somehow felt sluggish and unable to move. Was it her sudden activation of passive mana that did her? Or perhaps she really was just shocked? Her blood really felt cold after all. Again, she almost killed herself. She killed people.

I killed people.

She looked down at the wand she held tightly. It seemed to be shaking. That was strange. She was…she was really shaking. How long had it been? It was already many moments from that event, yet her mind was still transfixed at it.

She needed to get a hold of herself.

Deep breaths…deep breaths. You did what you had to do. It was either them or me. I had no other choice. It’s…still not alright. But, what choice did I have? Why am I trying to justify it while I’m being shot at?!

She really wanted to pull her hair at this point.

Fortunately, she heard the sound of advancing HMLVs. It was William's men - immediately, their guns atop opened fire at the OIA agents. That seemed to do the trick as they all began to back out from the fight.

They were still firing back as they escaped, but the influx of William's men gave Amelie the chance to breathe out a sigh of relief. At the very least, she was safe - for now.

"Status report!"

"Major! Echo Three is chasing them." Replied one of William's Lieutenants. "Eight of our men are wounded. Jackson and Theodore are KIA."

"Form a perimeter again. And get the wounded out of here."

He turned back at Amelie, who was still ducked down, hiding from an already gone enemy. Her breathing was shallow, and her eyes dilated, but as she looked up at William, the weight on her chest dissipated.

"It's alright now, Amelie."

+++

She didn’t exactly have an idea of what really happened. They were attacked by OIA troops out of nowhere, inside the city of Halia itself. She looked around the site of the battlefield, especially at the OIA agents that she froze alive.

There were six of them, all of them still with a look of terror plastered on their faces. Their final reactions on the very second of their demise. It sent a chill to her spine.

Perhaps, this was the true face of women’s magic. Utter terror for men. She already was wondering how it must have felt for these young men. To face an ability that could wipe them out that easily. All without the use of any weaponry. Just a mere wand, and a woman’s mind. That was all.

And they were dead.

I’m sorry…

Not that such apologies even mattered to the dead. And while she would like to justify her killings of six souls, again and again, her mind almost always came back at her. To blame herself. To blame herself for her failures that plunged her Kingdom into this deranged conflict in the first place. The sole reason for this skirmish.

The sole reason for these men’s deaths.

“Amelie, I really do apologize. I left a vulnerability in our security.”

Marie Wittfield, her friend, was now also at the scene. Apparently, the Royal Investigations Unit, and Marie herself had been tracking this OIA cell for days already. Marie had been stuck outside of Halia for weeks when the civil war started and only arrived a few days ago to begin counterintelligence operations in the city.

Unfortunately, they were too late.

“We’ve only detected this cell two days ago. We were hot on their tracks, but they kept evading my agents.”

“What was their objective?”

“They wanted to cut the head of the Kingdom.”

“So they wanted to assassinate me?”

“They wanted a more surefire way to do so. Unfortunately, we forked them out of their operation yesterday. Their operation plans failed.”

“And so they tried a desperate way to kill me?”

“Indeed.”

She looked back down at the eyes of one of the frozen OIA agents. Desperate indeed. Desperation…that was what drove all of these men, wasn’t it? It was in his eyes. The desperation that pushed them to do anything. Almost as if they didn’t, they would lose something more than their lives. Or perhaps their lives didn’t matter any further.

Desperation to win their rights. With every, desperate method.

And that look in his eye - it terrified Amelie.