Wasteland Echoer

April 14th, 527th year of the New Lunar Calendar.

Zine Empire, Old Uko Province, southern part of the Silent Highlands, ruins of the ancient city of "Silent City".

The sky full of yellow sand has become clearer since the early morning. At noon, the air still seems extremely dry, and the humans and the lost in it can still feel as if they have swallowed charcoal fire.

But after the afternoon time escaped, the afternoon temperature seemed strangely cool.

Some almond trees with yellow apricot flowers in bloom surround several black-based steel buildings.

It is the command headquarters of the Zine Empire Crown Prince Ivant. At the suggestion of Aaron, the leader of the city's industrial party who was in power in the empire of Chekavsk, Ivant named it the "Silent Steel Heart", symbolizing the inconspicuous In the quiet highlands covered with yellow sand and Gobi, there is a military headquarters that governs and controls everything.

Since the current emperor Reka I was scratched by unintentional people and fell into a long coma, Ivant has achieved a smooth grasp of power through a large number of rapid personnel appointments and rapid control of major strongholds throughout the empire.

Moreover, after officially announcing the launch of the "Advent of Silence" military operation, the Crown Prince quickly renovated the railway line near Route 49 that had been abandoned due to fighting with the Wuxin people more than ten years ago. Before it could be renamed, It was put into use in a hurry.

As for himself, he rode in the "Kachi (Empire) No. 1" mechanical chariot and sneaked in in the most covert way. He was attacked by the "Fire of Punishment" in the previous battle. Currently, there are not many imperial legions stationed there. There are not many careless people and lost people wandering around Kofu City. Along Highway 69 from the south, we passed through a poplar euphratica forest growing wantonly and entered the ruins of the ancient city of "Silent City".

"Silent Steel Heart" is mainly a six-story steel building, surrounded by seven three-story buildings as auxiliary command areas.

The main feature of the ancient city of "Silent City" is that it is dominated by yellow-style sand brick buildings. Usually the buildings are mainly two-story, and the floors are expanded downwards instead of building upwards. Therefore, the headquarters also inherited part of the local The main style of architecture.

Once the floor is built too high, it will easily become the target of some lost people who have the ability to fly, and some lost people who have special skills will also choose to attack here.

After all, humans and supernatural beings in the empire rarely engage in rebellion, but in so many years of war with the Heartless and the Lost, there are still many Lost who have living habits close to humans and sneak into the legion to learn how to operate aircraft and artillery. Even various types of complex steam machinery have made the three churches of the Lost no longer a backward "medieval theocratic tribe" in the traditional sense.

Looking up along the steel gate at the bottom of the "Silent Steel Heart", layers of bulletproof glass are laid out, demonstrating the empire's ability to interpret Crusted's legacy technology, and the five or six floors going up are obviously smaller than the floors below. He walked around in a circle, carrying a straight lightning rod and a flag of the Zine Empire hanging high on the top of the building.

It looks extremely new, with a length-to-width ratio in a common format of three to two, with a pure red background, and in the middle is a majestic double-headed eagle outlined by a silver simple drawing.

The two-headed eagles also each hold a yellow star in their mouths, which may be taken from the stars or the sun. In short, the history related to the establishment of the Zine Empire is too long, and in the early days of the New Yuan Crisis, in addition to military-related Books, and many other books, were lost in the war.

Until now, it has been particularly difficult for the "Imperial History Group" led by Ivant to re-establish the historical system of the empire.

In the center of an elegant mahogany desk in an office on the 6th floor of the top floor of "Silent Steel Heart" is a battle report written by the new general of the empire, a young man of the 2nd rank of Dawn, Kai Ukoski.

In the bright room filled with sunlight, the battle report that was turned to the middle and revealed the traces of a blue pen was telling the story of the difficulty of the empire's war situation.

"Since the pre-launch of the 'Advent of Silence' military operation, the Directly Affiliated Corps and the Chekavsk Corps have successively launched battles with the Church of the Giants and the Church of the Dark around the two water sources of 'Silence A and B'. Chekavsk can be put into battle. The legion suffered 1,031 casualties, and 207 were executed after being infected and mutated; the directly affiliated (Zhnetsk) legion suffered 2,051 casualties, and 3,053 were executed after being infected and mutated.”

"Currently, the Chekavsk Army can deploy 21,762 combatants, and the Zhinetsk Army can deploy 14,896 combatants. There are more than 8,000 personnel stationed in the Donusk ruins camp in the north, and all the troops stationed in other surrounding cities have been added to the city of Silence 'Command."

"At present, the underground factories in the three major camps have sufficient output, with daily production of 5,000-6,000 mechanical guns, 100-300 howitzers and rocket launchers, and 15 'Empire New A-03' fighters have been built, which can be used for bombing missions. After reconstruction, The 'Silence' airship has arrived at the underground factory at Camp Z, waiting for follow-up battle arrangements."

"There are currently 200,000 imperial standard rifles, such as the 'Socra Series' and the 'Dark Night Series', a total of 5,000 howitzers, new artillery, mortars, and 'Gaul Cannons', and more than 100 fighter planes. Brass bullets have passed through After distribution, we still have a reserve of 2 million rounds and 200,000 silver bullets. (Note: only used for distribution to people with super powers)."

"About 50,000 people from the Imperial Capital Sokra Guards and Legion have not yet fully arrived at the battlefield. Specific data cannot be calculated. The imperial battleships 'Chekavsk' and 'Mamous' are currently along the Mamous River. Move down and anchor in a newly built port near the city of Sogra to respond to extreme situations."

"The ruler of Chekavsk, Aaron, the imperial general Kaiulsky, and the leader of the new army, Pusev, jointly provided three general offensive strategies to His Highness the Crown Prince for His Highness to choose from."

"Strategy No. 1: Carry out a three-day intensive general attack. Thirty thousand people storm the Hope Church's 'Silent Stars' fortress in one day. Under the premise that all members are injected with the No. 15 potion, the other 20,000 people attack the Dark Night Church stronghold. .After taking down two churches in a row, the entire team attacked the Giant Church. Through air, ground, and artillery trinity operations, all the lost ones in the Giant Church were annihilated, and the Silent Highlands Campaign was successful."

"Strategy No. 2: Carry out a slow offensive for 60 days. With the supply of resources and the assistance of explorer associations, escorts and military groups from various places, we will work step by step to seize important strongholds in the west, north and south of the highlands, and slowly advance inward. , and finally reached the core area. Using the action of exploring the realm of gods as bait, we tempted the Church of the Lost to focus its attention here in order to achieve a logistical duel."

"Strategy No. 3: Conduct a 15-30 day operation, relying on reconnaissance and air strikes by fighter planes and airships to consume the effective strength of the Church of the Lost. And through focused attacks in batches and stages, rely on the Zhnetsk Army Corps The main [Warrior] attack was to first seize the important strongholds connecting the three major churches, and then focus on the relatively weak Church of Hope as the first attack. The other part of the legion made pretense of sabotage around the Lake of Silence to attract the Lost to fight for it. Catch them all in the end.”

…

The two pages of the battle report mainly contain the above content. After the last three offensive strategies, Crown Prince Ivant gave instructions for each of them.

"Strategy No. 1 is too radical and impossible to accept. Strategy No. 2 is too slow and impossible to accept. Strategy No. 3 is more appropriate and can be discussed further."

After giving instructions with a red ink pen, the Crown Prince even wrote a complaint with a blue pen:

"Those suggestions from the Western Continent countries, including our Zine Empire, always like to first put forward two suggestions that are simply unrealistic and unacceptable, and then finally write down the plan they really hope to realize. What a group of shrewd but stupid people People."

…

There was a pen with a round belly near the open battle report. It seemed that because the Crown Prince was too anxious to leave, he did not have time to cover the golden pen cap, but it was left exposed.

This office is the temporary office of the Crown Prince. His office is not too big. On the one hand, the empire still has a shortage of supplies, and on the other hand, more resources are used for the upcoming battle.

The furnishings of the room are not so luxurious, and certainly not shabby or shabby.

Behind the desk is an iron bookshelf, which contains some books that have nothing to do with military affairs, such as "The Holy Word", "The Secret Book", "All Things in the Ancient World", "The Light of Nebsk", and "Collection of Poems of the Crusted Poet" ” and other literature and philosophy books.

There is a row of brass hangers on the left side of the door. Except for a suit that the crown prince is accustomed to wearing on formal occasions and a blue tuxedo, there is no traditional royal style clothing of the Zine Empire.

When the sun's brilliance gradually dimmed and some shadows of objects appeared in the bright room, the metal door covered with wood grain wallpaper in this not too big room was opened.

As a heavily armed Zhnetsk escort bodyguard wearing a silver-white uniform and tactical trousers left, and two security personnel wearing black suits and pure black masks were told a few words and nodded one after another. After greetings, two people finally entered the room.

"Aaron, is there any whereabouts of the boy with special magic power you mentioned? I think if he really died in Donusk, it would not necessarily be a loss to the empire. But if he If we are alive and working for the 'Hope Church', our battle will probably be much more difficult."

The person who emits a mixture of soft and thick tones is the Imperial Crown Prince and the current real power figure, Ivant.

At this moment, he was wearing a military green general's uniform. Since Reka I had granted the power to the marshal of the legions of the Ivante Zhne Empire and the general of the Zhnetsk legion before he became seriously ill, he had the power and must do so in such a situation. Dress accordingly.

His uniform is different from the legion's uniform. Although it is also a neat uniform with a square collar and buttons, the color is darker, almost black.

And on the brim of his hat is the Zine Empire emblem instead of the Legion's new "Sun Dove" emblem.

On the chest of his uniform, there are more than twenty hero medals from various cities, as well as several unique badges of imperial heroes, but the most important thing is the medal exclusive to the Imperial Crown Prince, with his name engraved on it, which belongs to the Zine Empire and an important part of the military culture of the old Crusad empire.

"Your Highness." Aaron stood in front of the Crown Prince and just addressed him respectfully, without immediately making an analysis.

Instead, he looked up at the future emperor of the empire who was already very mature and sophisticated through the still bright light.

His face no longer looked like the well-maintained white color it had shown in the "Chekavsk Independent Garden" and the "Industrial Heart" twice.

Now it has a sense of vicissitudes that has experienced the wind and sand, and is slightly yellowed, but it is difficult to conceal the domineering and maturity of a king.

Even a scar near his earlobe that extended to his chin had almost healed, leaving only a faint brown mark, which also showed his masculine side.

Seeing Aaron standing there, his mouth moved slightly and he did not continue to make any sound. Crown Prince Evante did not appear impatient, nor did he show any dissatisfaction on his expression.

He tried his best to learn from the many previous emperors of the Zine Empire, such as Tou II, Kas I, Karl XV, etc., and tried his best to adopt the mentality of a "wise man", and did not show joy or anger on his face. On top of his expression, he dealt with the problem as calmly as possible.

The "tapping" sound of the uniform's military boots reached Aaron's ears. He looked up and looked up at Evante walking towards the desk along the relatively clean wooden floor that was not covered with anything, and pulled open the red leather seat. He sat in the chair smoothly with a professional smile.

Immediately afterwards, the corner of his mouth suddenly twitched, and an extremely painful memory from more than ten days ago flooded into his consciousness again.

"Teacher." Evante called Aaron in a sincere tone. Seeing his eyeballs shaking rapidly, he crossed his hands, placed his chin on them, and sighed in a gentle and regretful tone:

"I heard about Kashaeva's case, and originally I wanted to intervene immediately. John, the [Slayer], did violate the laws of the empire. Originally, the imperial military wanted him to go to the trial bench and accept the Lord and the judge. Joint trial. But just a week ago, he had died, and his successor Shamon had reported the exact news to me through Kaiwukski."

"He was scratched by someone unintentionally when evacuating Migov. Because the wound was located near the heart, and the wound had been improperly treated many times before, he died. It is said that before he died, his eyes were filled with burning fluid and turned red. , extremely terrifying. And his nails have experienced a crazy growth, and are sharper than the wolves seen in some places here in Silent Highlands. Even his heart turned red, but he still retained a little consciousness. , but he obviously held on until the end. Therefore, Shamon personally used a silver bullet to kill him."

"But Your Highness..." Aaron could no longer suppress the pain in his heart and cried out:

"My brother, what about my poor brother? He...he has been transformed into a monster."

Enter important chapters