Time flew by, and in the blink of an eye, it was early spring of Sea Origin Calendar 220. The world war had already lasted a full three months.
The Sirius army, which had fought alone in the early stages of the war, had been forced to withdraw from the first line of defense, the Winterthur Mountain Range, under the Sark Empire's sudden and frenzied offensive.
After joining up with the Tulip reinforcements that had finally arrived, they established a second line of defense along the Urke River. Beyond it lay the empire's heartland, a vast and unobstructed plain.
Rustle, rustle, rustle.
The precious rain of the usual farming season was now only irritating. It silently soaked through the soldiers' clothes in the trenches, taking away what little warmth they had left.
Moreover, though the temperature beneath the drizzle was still somewhat cool, the air remained filled with the lingering stench of decomposing human remains.
And the faint sobbing of certain soldiers.
Boom! Boom! Boom!
Shells exploded one after another beside soldiers on both sides, leaving crater after crater large enough for a person to lie in.
"Charge! Seize the bridgehead!"
"Kill!"
Across the nearly two-hundred-kilometer front, the Democratic Allied Forces' foremost task was to seize the bridges.
At the frontline commander's order, countless soldiers on the river's eastern bank leaped from their trenches with rifles in hand and charged toward the bridgeheads controlled by the Monarchist Allied Forces.
Amid the hail of bullets, human lives were as worthless as grass.
The two-hundred-kilometer front was like a harvesting machine, ruthlessly and efficiently reaping soldiers' lives on both sides every second.
Bang! Bang!
"Get down! Take out that firing position!"
"Watch out, sniper!"
The Democratic Allied Forces' standard weapon was the excellent rifle designed in Sea Origin Calendar 218, named the