Light armored personnel carriers rumbled over mud covered in weeds and mist, their noisy engines carrying from deep within the valley all the way to the river mouth. Wearing dark green bulletproof armor, the Latverian Legion gathered by the river under the leadership of their noncommissioned officers, waiting for the armored personnel carriers assigned to their respective units to pass. The light armored personnel carriers slowly crossed the temporary pontoon bridge, with the soldiers following close behind as they advanced toward their target. Compared to the miserable days when they had barely enough to eat, these Latverians had more color in their faces. After training, their once frail bodies had grown considerably stronger, and their disorderly discipline had gradually taken on the beginnings of steel under the political commissars' refinement.
The river glittered beneath the sunlight, while white snow mist was swept up from the distant mountains by fierce high-altitude winds. Two squads of Assault Transports painted in crimson and gold dragged trails of engine exhaust as they flew over the mountaintops. The Latverians below raised their heads toward the sky, lifting their hands and greeting the soaring Assault Transports with deafening cheers—during the siege a week ago, it had been these strange-looking aircraft that descended upon the battlefield and wiped out every enemy with their terrifying firepower. Their powerful main cannons had even reduced the fortifications built by the local nobility to worthless fragments in a single strike. The Latverians' confidence had been built through battles like these, and many Latverian children who had begun receiving education from the City of Immortals dreamed of one day piloting such an aircraft.
This mechanized infantry unit was headed for a village near the Latverian capital. Two days earlier, the guerrillas had captured several nearby villages and evacuated the local population to