Oliver was seventeen years old this year, the third son of his family.
This meant he would inherit no land; his best path forward was to join the army and live off military rations.
He was assigned to the 32nd Border Defense Regiment on the Eastern Border of Victoria, stationed in a forward sentry tower within the Bachman Fortress Complex.
His daily work consisted of polishing his long spear and inspecting his shield, which was painted with the Duke's crest.
And standing atop the tower, gazing with naked eyes toward the end of the distant plains.
His squad leader was a veteran missing a finger, always chewing on a grass root, his speech full of nonchalance.
"Kid, stop looking. Staring until you go blind won't make flowers grow out of the ground."
"Leithaniens? The last time they dared to charge here, your grandfather was still wearing split-pants."
"They're just a bunch of soft eggs who fiddle with music."
Oliver nodded, seemingly understanding yet not, but he couldn't help looking toward the East.
He had heard the bards in town sing that the East was a land of riches and art, but also a synonym for frailty and hypocrisy.
The Victorian Army was the strongest force on the Terra continent.
He stroked the weapon at his waist, his heart filled with longing for the future.
Perhaps he could achieve military merits, earn a title, and return to his hometown in glory.
...
Today's weather was somewhat strange; the cloud layer was low, and the air was so stifling it made breathing difficult.
Around noon, Oliver spotted a tiny black dot on the distant horizon.
It didn't look like a bird; it flew too straight, and too fast.
"Squad leader, look! What is that?" he shouted.
The veteran spat out the grass root and squinted for a long time.
"Some strange bird, I guess. Screw it, we can't shoot it down anyway."
The "strange bird" circled once above their heads, emitting a subtle buzzing sound, and then flew off toward the East.
Oliver didn't think much more of it.
However, an hour later, a different sound came from the horizon.
It was a continuous, unceasing rumble.
The earth began to tremble slightly, and dust rustled down from the stones of the tower.
The veteran's face changed for the first time. He threw away the bread in his hand, grabbed the horn by the wall, and blew it with all his strength.
"Dooooo—"
The sharp, urgent alarm resounded through the fortress.
"Enemy attack—!"
The roaring of officers rang out everywhere. Soldiers rushed out of the barracks, running chaotically toward their posts.
Oliver gripped his long spear tightly, his palms slick with sweat.
He followed the flow of people climbing up the city wall, his heart pounding wildly.
Then, he saw it.
In the eastern sky, a dark cloud composed of many black dots was pressing down upon them.
That low rumble was emanating precisely from that dark cloud.
As the distance closed, the black dots grew larger and larger, revealing their hideous forms—they were iron birds with wings, hanging iron lumps beneath their bellies.
"What the hell is that..." a comrade beside him muttered, his voice full of fear.
"Archers ready! Ballistae ready!" the commander on the wall roared, his voice hoarse from strain.
The next second, the iron birds began to dive.
A sharp, ear-piercing shriek descended from the sky, like the wail of a banshee, instantly seizing everyone's hearts.
Oliver felt as if his soul was being torn apart by this sound; he instinctively covered his head with his shield.
In an instant, the fortress was turned into a purgatory.
The first bomb landed in the center of the fortress, throwing up waves of earth and fire several meters high.
The hard stone pavement was instantly shattered. The shockwave tossed dozens of nearby soldiers into the air, their limbs severed before they even hit the ground.
"Boom—"
Immediately following was a carpet bombing.
The sky was completely obscured by firelight and thick smoke.
Oliver was knocked to the ground by the tremor. He could hear nothing in his ears but a buzzing ring.
He watched helplessly as the tower near him was hit directly by a bomb and collapsed with a crash.
The veteran who had been bragging beside him just moments ago, along with all the brothers in the tower, vanished instantly into a cloud of smoke and dust.
An atmosphere of terror began to spread.
Is war... supposed to be like this?
Oliver didn't know.
The city walls they took such pride in, barriers sufficient to withstand the charge of the most elite heavy cavalry, were useless in the face of these "iron eggs" falling from the sky.
Spears could not reach the sky. Arrows could not pierce the skin of the iron birds. All the combat skills they had learned became a joke at this moment.
The bombing lasted for a full ten minutes.
When that terrifying rumble faded away, the Bachman Fortress had already turned into a burning ruin.
Survivors crawled out from piles of rubble and corpses, looking around blankly, their eyes hollow.
Half of Oliver's face was plastered with blood. His long spear was broken, and his shield had cracked into several pieces.
He stood up, looked at everything around him, felt his stomach churn violently, and vomited.
However, the nightmare was not over.
The vibration of the earth came again, more violent than before.
Outside the breached gap of the fortress, on the smoke-filled plain, rows of steel behemoths appeared.
They had heavy iron armor and long cannon barrels. Their tracks crushed over the ground, making a tooth-aching creaking sound.
"It's... it's Leithanien's iron armored vehicles!!" a surviving officer screamed in despair.
Leithanien's "Tiger II" tank cluster.
The remnant Victorian soldiers attempted to organize a final resistance.
Some brave knights raised their lances and launched a charge, but under the strafing of the machine guns spitting tongues of fire from the front of the tanks, they were directly beaten into a mist of blood.
Arrows fired by crossbowmen landed on the tanks' armor, making crisp ding-ding sounds before bouncing off weakly.
Oliver saw a tank stop. Its turret rotated slowly, aiming at their remnant position.
He wanted to run, but his legs wouldn't obey, feeling as if they were filled with lead.
With a loud "boom," an arrow tower beside him was hit by a shell and instantly exploded into a sky full of debris.
The defense line completely collapsed.
Soldiers threw away their weapons, crying and shouting as they fled to the rear.
Oliver was swept up by the chaotic tide of people, fleeing westward involuntarily.
He looked back once, only to see the red flag of Leithanien already planted atop the ruins of the Bachman Fortress.
The news of the outbreak of war spread rapidly to the hinterlands of eastern Victoria.
In Rockwell, a small town dozens of kilometers from the border, the mayor was still appeasing the populace, claiming the border was impregnable and that the Lord Duke's army would soon repel the invading enemy.
But when the first batch of routed soldiers, covered in blood and looking terrified, poured into the town, all the lies were punctured.
"Monsters! Monsters flying in the sky!!"
"Bachman Fortress is gone! It didn't even last an hour!"
"Run! They kill everyone they see!"
Panic detonated instantly.
The townspeople rushed madly toward the town's largest grain store and bakery, using gold coins, silverware, and even their fists to snatch anything edible.
The shop owner's wails were drowned out in the chaotic crowd.
Order vanished in an instant.
The rich loaded up their gold, silver, and valuables, fleeing west regardless of the cost.
The commoners, meanwhile, carried simple bundles, dragging their families along as they merged into the torrent of refugees.
The roads were blocked solid. The sounds of crying, cursing, and the neighing of horses mixed together.
A young mother held a crying infant in her arms, kneeling desperately by the roadside; her husband had been trampled to death in the crowding just moments before.
No one paid her any mind. Everyone cared only for their own escape.
At the same time, news even more despairing came from the south.
"Southern border emergency! Cornwall Fortress has been breached! The defending general has fallen! The enemy... the enemy is the Sarkaz Legion from Kazdel!"
To the East was Leithanien's torrent of steel; to the South were the infamous Sarkaz.
The two presented a deadly pincer formation.
Victoria, this sleeping lion, only discovered the moment it was startled awake that two sharp blades were already pressed against its throat and abdomen.
Oliver mixed among the routed soldiers, fleeing aimlessly.
He had thrown away all his weapons and armor, leaving only a set of tattered cloth clothes.
Echoing repeatedly in his mind were the veteran's nonchalant tone, the screams of his comrades before they died, and that shriek that tore the sky apart.
Everything he believed in, the glory regarding Victoria, had been blown to smithereens in those ten minutes of bombing.
He looked up at the sky, as if he could still see the shadows of those iron birds.
He lowered his head and looked at the fleeing crowd, every face written with the same confusion and fear as his own.
An era, it seemed, had ended just like that.
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