“Get down!” shouted the captain, dropping to the muddy ground as a bright light approached from the treetops ahead of us.

I, and every other soldier around me, dropped at the same time. This was it. I was going to die on this one. However, as I braced for the impact, a glowing dome of golden light suddenly appeared over the whole place. I looked in awe at it momentarily with my mouth agape, before a loud impact of blinding golden light exploded on top of the dome, and I once more dropped my head to the ground to take cover.

This was no place for someone like me. This was a battlefield of magic; of supernatural people that could decimate and destroy common normal people like me and my fellow soldiers in a second.

“Gonorrhea!” shouted the guy next to me, Corporal Krasnov—Just Krasnov for me—covering his head with both his hands as he faced down.

He was someone from a city close to the capital. He was quite proud too, and would act like he feared nothing, and could do anything. Someone like him, from the place that he came from, shouldn’t have been sent to frontlines like this, but that pride and posturing that he liked to put caused the higher ups to be fed up with him and send him with the rest of us.

“Good thing we have those Zodiac Knights with us!” he exclaimed as the light over our heads dissipated. “What? You scared? Did it get small, or what?”

I ignored his taunt and focused on the captain a short distance ahead, who was already standing back up. “Keep moving!”

We quickly did as ordered and picked ourselves up. There was no time to remove mud, so at best, we wiped it off our faces and marched forward. The enemy was upon us, shooting at us with some strange kind of supernatural artillery, and the few mages that were with us were already gone, flying up ahead with their powers to face—what I assumed—were other supernatural people.

The sound of our boots stomping the ground, and the explosions somewhere in the sky and the horizon was all that was on my mind. There was a strong desire to run away; to find my way home and leave this all behind, but with the other soldiers marching next to me, I just couldn’t turn and run away.

This was no place for someone like me…

Home wasn’t too far away either. Oh, how I wished I could go back to my old momma and have some of her food. How stupid was I to ignore her when she said I had to go to school, that I had to get educated so I could go to university and get a better life.

Instead, I chose to skip school, hang out with other friends, and ignore the things that I had to do for her. It wasn’t long before I was eighteen and mom dragged me to do military service. Service wasn’t bad, and after a couple of years I decided to just stick to this for as long as I could, but now… looking at the lights going from one place to another in the sky, and the booming explosions from different places, I felt like I shouldn’t have stayed here.

As we kept moving forward, right behind the Golden Knights, we reached a vantage point up a small hill. The slope wasn’t too high, but we could see more or less what was going on.

“What the fuck is that?” whispered Krasnov, but I just stood with my rifle in hand and my heaving breath looking at the place we were all looking at.

There was a giant made out of rocks, towering over the jungle, and swinging its arms while rocks flew from it, sending trees and dirt in every direction. I also noticed not too far away from us, up in the sky, the clouds were unnaturally moving, with the moonlight appearing here and there, illuminating parts of the jungle where the rain was still falling.

Our moment of awe lasted only for a moment, as gunshots and loud explosions could be heard some distance away, from where the other part of the army was supposed to be moving. We all instinctively got tensed, lowered ourselves down slightly, and pointed our weapons in the direction from where the gunshots were coming.

And just like the preamble of what was about to happen to us, gunshots closer to us started sounding, coming from up ahead followed with a bullet whizzing by our heads, hitting a tree. We all immediately reacted. Some of us took cover, and others—like Krasnov—pointed their weapons in the same direction from where the bullets came from and returned fire.

There was no way to know if they were hitting something, especially in the middle of the night, the thick jungle, and the rain, but it was better than just standing in place to be shot. However, I couldn’t bring myself to stand up and shoot, so I carefully maneuvered around the mud, grass, and branches until my back was behind a thick tree.

Another bullet hit the trunk and I jolted to the side, away from the point of impact. My breath got much heavier than what I had from the forced march, and my hands tensed, causing me to grip my rifle hard enough to where my fingers went from their natural dark color to a yellowish white.

“Get it together! Get it together!” I whispered to myself as the sounds of combat were heard from all over.

Another soldier, someone I wasn’t acquainted with, ran past the tree trunk, and behind him, another couple of soldiers followed. I carefully looked to the side, trying to follow with my gaze where they were going, but they stopped just like me to take cover and shoot ahead at the jungle and in the general direction from where the enemy was shooting at us.

I couldn’t stay here like a coward and let them die, especially because if they died, then I would follow soon after.

I gathered my courage once more, stood up, and while taking cover behind the tree, I pointed my rifle in the same direction everyone else was shooting, and did as they did, hoping to at least find where the enemy was.

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With widened eyes, I stopped myself once more, and saw how one of those Golden Knights with a large golden sword floated up to the sky and plunged himself into the enemy lines. An explosion of golden light followed, and as I tried to figure out who he was fighting, all I saw was another knight, just like this one, dressed in a white armor that blocked the attack from the one on our side.

Another bullet flew by close to my head and I once more took cover behind the tree trunk. Even with magic, and supernatural beings on our side, we were being pushed back…

This was no place for someone like me.

As I recovered my breath, someone else crashed next to me, causing me to look at him with widened eyes. It was Krasnov. I looked him over, but judging by the strange forced smile that didn’t match the strained look in his eyes, it didn’t seem like he was wounded.

“Part’n!” he exclaimed, looking at my face and grabbing me by the shirt. “What the fuck are you doing, man?! You get easily mixed with the night, but with those widened eyes, everyone’s going to find you! Calm down!”

So he said, but I couldn’t calm my breath at all. Still, I tried to do as he said and closed my eyes as I tried to get it together. It was only momentarily, as after a couple of seconds, I turned to look at him once more. “What should we do!? I’ve never been this deep into a combat zone and much less with supernatural people!”

Krasnov had a similar heavy breath as mine, but he didn’t appear to be panicking like me. He didn’t immediately reply as he leaned over to the side to look beyond the tree. “Those Zodiac Knights are jumping in! We should move up as well!”

Without waiting for a response, Krasnov took a step to the side, but I gripped him, stopping him and forcing him to look at me. “Are you crazy?! We don’t have supernatural powers! We don’t even have tanks or anything like that!”

“Those Zodiac Knights are our tanks! We can’t stay here, if they move up, the golden walls they make won’t cover us! Come on!” he shouted back, harshly removing my hand from his shirt as he leaned to the side of the tree. “You better move it, damn it!”

I couldn’t stop him at all, so I did as he said and followed after him.

It was difficult terrain, but it wasn’t anything that we hadn’t been trained for, so we moved past the trees, the branches, the bushes and the rocks that were in the path, even if they were difficult to see. Other soldiers were doing the same as us, and thankfully, there were those Golden Knights creating walls of golden light further ahead, making sure that we could get into position.

However, in our desperation to not be left behind, we ended up moving to the side of the conflict and away from where they were. I had been so focused on following Krasnov that I didn’t realize there weren’t any other soldiers around us anymore, with just one lone Golden Knight up ahead.

“Krasnov!” I shouted, but he continued moving ahead while firing a couple of shots. “Krasnov! We’re getting lost!”

“No, we’re not! We’re following one of those Zodiac—”

“Watch out!” a woman shouted, and I stopped on my feet as fast as I could.

With my eyes widened, I looked in the direction of a large boulder that was coming our way. There was no time for Krasnov to react to it, as he couldn’t even turn to look at it before that boulder crashed on top of him. Mud, water, and rocks flew all over the place, and I was thrown down to the ground. I quickly gathered myself and looked at where the boulder fell. It was the size of a truck.

“Krasnov!” I shouted, rushing over to the boulder and looking around it.

There was no sign of him anywhere, and as I looked down to the lower part of the boulder… I realized that… he was under it. I was stunned momentarily from the sudden passing of someone I considered a friend. I—I didn’t even have time to say anything, and—and it—it happened so suddenly—That I—

Another boom not too far away from me, just like the boulder that just crashed here, caused me to look away and get my mind back into the moment; to the heated battlefield. The sounds of gunshots in the distance and the exploding sounds of supernatural powers caused me to take cover once more, only that this time, it was behind the boulder… behind Krasnov…

A looming shadow then covered the moonlight that was coming from the sky, and as I looked up, I realized that the rock giant wasn’t too far away from here. If that thing stomped here; if that thing even stumbled here, I was going to meet the same fate as Krasnov, so I pushed myself away from the boulder and looked for a way to get back to the rest of the soldiers, or at least a place to find cover.

And yet, even as I scrambled to get away from here, I heard large steps not too far away from where the rock giant was. I closed my eyes as the thought of being flattened like Krasnov crossed my mind, but the sound of something metallic being hit, caused me to open my eyes once more and look around.

Not too far from where the rock giant was, another giant stood in opposition. This one reflected the light of the moon, and glistened under the few drops of rain that were falling on it. It was quite an angular giant, with long legs, wide feet, a triangle-like torso, and a head that looked not too different from a spartan soldier.

“A robot…?” I whispered to myself.

We didn’t bring something like that, at least, I never noticed if we had a machine like that with us. Perhaps it came from one of those foreign Knights or mages, but judging from the golden lights coming from everywhere, it appeared like they weren’t the ones in charge of such a thing.

I was snapped out of my awe when the robot raised its arm, and its hand appeared a sword that was almost as large as the robot itself, and just as silvery. Without giving room for anything else to act, in one fell swoop that cut the air, the robot slashed at the rock giant.

The rock giant didn’t have time to react, either from its size or just the speed of the robot, causing it to be slashed, and losing one of its arms. The rock giant then stumbled back, causing the ground to tremble as it did, only to stop a couple of steps back as the rocks that fell to the ground flew back up and reformed the box-like arm that matched the rest of its body.

But with nimble feet, the robot followed up, quickly covering the distance that the rock giant was trying to make as the blade in its hands swiped to the side, aiming straight at the middle of the rock giant’s body. That was it, there was no way that a slow rock giant could ever compete with a robot like that.

And yet, it somehow managed to avoid the blade as the rock giant split itself in half, allowing the blade to pass through and cut nothing more than air and the tree tops that were behind the rock giant.

It was an impressive thing to see, but…

This was no place for someone like me.

I turned to leave as fast as I could. If I were to believe Krasnov, then I would be better off finding one of those Golden Knights and moving closer to them. They’re not hard to spot either, as their golden armors glint whenever they use their even flashier supernatural powers.

Another loud dinging sound from behind me caused me to stumble when the shockwave of such an impact reached me. I took a couple of unstable steps forward, before falling to the ground and into the muddy mess that the previous boulder caused.

I quickly tried to stand back up, but a shadow loomed over me, and in my urgent turn to look at what was going on, I saw a silvery wall falling on me. There was no way a common soldier like me could ever move fast enough to avoid it…

In the end… My fate was going to be the same as Krasnov’s…

This was…

No place for someone like me.