Topa Kingdom.

Hannes, colonel of the Gra Valkas' "volunteer" batallion to go to the Grameus continent to fight the demons was in town, the next morning he and his team would leave for the front, where the so-called Order of the Defenders had already occupied the land bridge connecting the two continents.

"Tsk, why me?" The colonel could not stand the smell that the city had, a backward and poor city where nobody was in charge of picking up the dead animals and where they threw their waste in the streets, he saw how the stone buildings looked worn and dirty, he saw a group of rats crossing the street taking what seemed to be a piece of dog's ear, the soldier did not want to know if it was the ear of a dog or a demi-human. Hannes covered his nose trying to avoid the nausea, "Why did I have to come to this country of savages?"

"The kingdom of Topa collapsed when Prince Joshua formed the order of the defenders and took the land bridge." replied a Leiforian volunteer soldier who served as their guide. "Before the kingdom was the only line of defense against the demons so it received large amounts of financial aid from all over the world, even though that money was provided for Topa to become a martial kingdom the kings preferred to waste the money on parties and banquets, everyone began to resent them but they were the first line of defense in case of an invasion."

"Let me guess, that prince formed the order, made the main line of defense further north and now he's taking all the financial support causing a crisis here."

"Exactly, and since Joshua is a Parlpadian prince and uncle to the current Emperor Ludius the Topa's can't do anything against him. Even though the prince has been exiled as a traitor no Parlpadian ruler would allow any inferior kingdom to spill royal blood."

"Then I can take comfort in knowing that the barges where I am going to sleep are going to be much cleaner than... this place." Hannes said disgusted by the place as he avoided stepping in dog shit, or at least he convinced himself that it was dog shit so he wouldn't lose his mind and vomit on the place.

The continental crossroads, Grameus Continent.

In that land bridge that stretched for several kilometers was full of life, along a kind of corridor of land that would have no more than 50km wide in its narrowest part and 130km in the widest part there were not only barracks for soldiers, there were also houses for civilians, trading posts and airfields in the widest parts.

Hannes could see soldiers from all over the world, demi-humans wearing full armor, elves in colorful and extravagant military uniforms and a few wearing simple khaki uniforms.

"Look, the prince is coming to receive us." He said as he pointed out how a group of men wore black coats with two vertical rows of gold buttons, white shirt with a white cloth and a black Tricornio hat with white edges. The one in front was a middle-aged man, about 40 years old with ash hair and beard.

"So you are the volunteers of that nation that surprised Leifor." The prince spoke as he examined the soldiers' uniform, noting that those uniforms followed the same logic as the Mirishial and Muans uniforms which is camouflage. " I had planned to give them access to our most modern muskets Karlslinger of manufacture Parlpadia but it seems that they do not need it." He said with a smile on his face.

Hannes had heard from his Leiforian guide that the prince still has connections with influential people of the empire who supply him with modern weapons which Joshua supplies to volunteers from backward countries who do not use firearms or rather primitive firearms, but even then he didn't quite understand.

"Excuse me, what do you mean by that?"

"You wouldn't wear such a uniform if your firearms didn't have the distance and cadence to make camouflage important. That tells me the equipment they brought is more effective than muskets, am I wrong?"

"You are correct sir!" Hannes was amazed at his powers of observation.

"There are few countries that follow that uniform logic, tell me, have you brought artillery or anything from your air force?" The prince's eyes gleamed in anticipation.

"No sir, only infantry volunteers."

"A real pity, with some more firepower we could take Sonsfork Hill and expand the line of fortifications further north." He said with a somewhat disappointed tone.

"I think my men and I could be more than enough." Hannes was confident. "If with muskets alone they could hold the line and advance to this point, then we can do it." The sergeant was saying to himself.

"Ha! You remind me of the Muans, they always say that with their long-range rifles and machine guns believing they will beat the demons at a distance." Joosuhua laughed, then grabbed Hannes' shoulder and looked at him with a rather serious expression. "Let me give you some advice, you'd better go to the mages to carve resistance runes into your rifles, crossbows, knives and shovels or in less than a week you're going to be using muskets like most of us... if you haven't died by then, of course."

"Oho, I'm not going to fall for that, nice try but I'm not going to let those mages get their hands on my guns." He said to himself believing it was a ploy to steal some of his weapons. "I'll keep that in mind, sir."

North front, Grameus Continent, two days later, Northwest section.

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"SHIT SHIT SHIT SHIT!" Hanner was shooting into the sky as he had his head under a trench, after a few moments a flying beast landed where he was. Hannes was able to get to the side just in time to avoid being crushed.

Soon he saw the creature beside him, although it had a humanoid form it had scaly grayish skin, the head of a pig with protruding fangs and the wings of a bat.

He took a few seconds staring at it in horror but a spear falling just inches from his face made him react.

"Molt! I told you to keep the ground demons at bay!" he scolded a soldier at the machine gun who had stopped firing...

"I can't Colonel! The machine gun has overheated and could break down!" the soldier replied.

"The Muans machine guns keep firing without stopping! Keep firing or-"

"Colonel! Another wave of Behemuts is coming!" Said one of the Gra Valkan soldiers as he kept firing at the enemies.

Quickly Hannes took his binoculars to look over the trench, he could see how a group of two meters tall greenish skinned demons with the face of a bull, bear-like arms and a snake tail were standing behind an eight meters tall monstrous creature that was advancing slowly, similar to a rhinoceros but with a head that looked like a rock. From the binoculars he could see how a very long tongue came out of the creature's mouth and pierced the body of a dead demon a few meters away, the same tongue was in charge of bringing the corpse into the monster's mouth to begin to devour it. There were five of these creatures.

The soldiers tried to shoot it with their rifles and sub-machine guns but the bullets seemed to bounce off the body of the beast, the only thing that had stopped the previous waves of these monsters was the 50 caliber heavy machine gun that now was not able to shoot.

"Fuck! Get in touch with the fort! We need air support and a bombardment!"

"Yes sir!" Soon the communications manager called for support. "The wyverns are busy fighting a group of undead dragons in the center, but they can support us with the great bombards!"

Hearing that reassured the colonel, those great bombard, colossal 518cm cannons would shoot at those creatures and destroy them, and thanks to magic they could shoot faster than they could only with human force, with magic the cannon could be cooled, cleaned and ready to shoot in minutes.

The heavy impacts of the large cannons made the ground tremble, the shock waves even disturbed and destabilized the heavy creatures, stopping them dry for minutes even if they could not hit. But if they hit the monster simply vilaba in pieces, causing a shower of blood and visors several meters around it, soon the demons behind the monstrous debian would run to the back of another Behemut or risk running towards the trench.

The rifles and submachine guns continued to fire at the demons, it seemed that they had managed to keep the situation under control without casualties.

"Still this is more complicated than I thought, no matter how many kills keep coming." Hannes gritted his teeth as he fired at one that had almost made it to the trenches.

"Sir, the operators of the great bombards need to recover magic, they will stop firing for a while." Said the one in charge of communications.

At that, the last surviving Behemuth grabs the corpse of one of the demons with his tongue and throws it with great force towards the machine gun, destroying the weapon and killing the operator with the blow.

"Man down!"

At that a larger wave of demons approach on the horizon, running at an impressive speed towards the Gra Valkian positions.

"Flyers! Six o'clock!"

This was getting complicated, one gurop was starting to fire into the sky while others were trying to keep the monsters at bay, if only they had brought in a few anti-aircraft… But this was no time for regret, now was the time to fight and defend the line.

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Training camp for new recruits near Aruni, Parlpadian Empire.

Marcus, a simple recruit, could notice how the atmosphere inside the camp was more agitated and tense, he observed how the instructors began to look more demanding with the training.

This could only mean a big war.

Although he knew about the problems the navy was having with the Altaras problem, he did not think the situation was serious enough to require the mobilization of the country. It seems he was wrong.

It wasn't long before it became known that this strange nation called the Falklands was aiding the Altarans by harassing the Imperial ships.

Marcus knew that if the empire wanted to win this war with few casualties then they would have to strike hard and decisively.

He breathed as he aimed his Karlslinger musket at a dummy 150 meters away, inhaling deeply and then exhaling, he pulled his trigger which caused a considerable amount of smoke, after a few moments he could see that he had hit the target, the dummy's chest.

Although Marcus would be able to hit the head that was a bad habit for a soldier marching in formation, on a battlefield he would not have the time or the concentration to do it correctly and could cause him to miss the shot, which would give the enemy in front the opportunity to shoot him or his comrades.

Soon Marcus aimed at the other dummy, instead of trying to reload the musket manually he brought his hand to the trigger guard to pull the trigger by turning it horizontally, the young recruit could hear how the mechanism inside the gun worked. Turning the trigger guard allowed a ball of lead that was in a tube under the barrel to enter the barrel, ready to be fired by the magic force of the user immediately. The recruit fires again... and again and again.

The rate of fire of this musket was 60 shots per minute and with a maximum range of 250 meters, which made it an extremely effective weapon by not having to push the bullet with anything to reach the bottom of the barrel, however that mechanism was extremely fragile and would require high maintenance and technique to create it. Parlpadia is the only nation in the third civilization with the ability to produce these weapons and to maintain them with magic for its entire army thanks to its industry and huge amount of magicians that possessed the country, neighboring countries like Riem could only afford to have these weapons for their elite troops and special forces. Karlslinger repeating muskets were superior even to those of many countries in the second civilization.

"I don't know what I'll find in Altaras, those barbarians are tougher than we all thought... but this time they won't take us by surprise anymore." Having placed a special bullet that, once fired, would fragment into several pellets.

This shot would make it easier to hit the target and even hit several targets, however the effective range was less than 50 meters, so this style of shooting would only be effective at short distances.

"Very good Private Marcus! It is likely that at some point they will have to board a ship or are being boarded, that means they will be fighting at short distances and these fragmentary bullets will be very useful. Now I hope firing so many bullets hasn't exhausted your magic, explosive spell now!" Ordered the sergeant.

Marcus soon began to recite an enchantment, not loudly, but only muttered, while some runes carved into the musket began to glow bluish. Marcus recited that spell for about 40 seconds and then pulled the trigger, soon an explosion of the power of a fragmentation grenade blew up three mannequins.

Marcus smiled at the result, this was not a quarter of the amount of magic or spells a fully trained Parlpadian soldier could use.