What is your mission here?!

"Bam!"

"What is your military observer delegation's real mission in Seville?!"

Morin only came fully to his senses after taking a solid punch to the face.

As his vision gradually cleared, he stared in bewilderment at the tall white man before him, dressed in some kind of old-fashioned military uniform and wearing a vicious expression.

Where the hell am I... did I finally get home on leave, only to fall asleep grinding the tech tree?

The thought popped into Morin's head, but the waves of searing pain in his cheek and jaw made him realize that this probably wasn't a dream.

Someone really had just punched him square in the face!

Then the vicious-looking white man rattled off a long string of words in a language Morin had never heard before.

Strangely, however, Morin found that he understood every word as easily as if it were his native language.

He could even tell that the man didn't seem particularly fluent in it himself.

Now Morin was completely baffled.

I'm a cadet. Since when did I become a second lieutenant?

Even if he's going by my rank in Slavic Genshin, I should be a level-98 lieutenant general...

And this "Seville" place—I've never even heard of it...

Wait a sec!

As Morin thought of that place name again, an icy electronic female voice suddenly sounded in his head.

[Current information collection progress... 5%]

[Intelligence management system activating...]

Morin felt his vision flicker, and then an interface resembling a game UI appeared in his field of view.

Its main feature was a huge map whose outline resembled Europe, though most of it was currently unexplored.

The only place with any significant exploration progress was a large city right in the center of the map. According to its label, this was the "Seville" the officer had just mentioned.

Morin assessed its position. It lay roughly in the south of the country he knew as Spain.

He tried reducing the map's scale to its minimum, revealing a simple street map and a golden star marker—that probably represented him.

On the left side of the map were several tab-like buttons, with the "Map" tab currently selected.

Below "Map" were "Information," "Intelligence," and several tabs marked "???".

Morin tried mentally clicking a "???" tab, but all he got was a notification reading, "Insufficient information collected. Unable to unlock."

He turned his attention to the "Information" tab instead, and sure enough, something new appeared.

The large map on the right was replaced by a document-like interface, though it currently contained only a handful of lines.

[Seville, capital of the autonomous region of Andalusia. Population approximately 110,000. The fourth-largest city in the Kingdom of Aragon.]

[Saxon Empire, a federal state in central Europa under a dual monarchy. A powerful empire ruled by the House of Wettin of Saxony.]

Fuck, Aragon and Saxony? Isn't this just Spain and the German Empire?!

After reading this information, Morin mentally opened the "Intelligence" tab. This time there was even less content—just one line.

[Your military observer delegation was attacked. You are currently a prisoner, confined in the cellar of a private residence in Seville.]

As he read, a stream of related information rapidly filled Morin's mind, gradually forming a somewhat hazy set of memories.

The owner of this body was also named Morin and came from another country bordering the Kingdom of Aragon—the Saxon Empire.

More specifically, he was a young officer candidate who had just graduated from Richterfield Central Military Academy...

No, he had already been commissioned as a second lieutenant ten days earlier and was supposed to report to his assigned unit.

[Current information collection progress... 7%]

Morin sorted through the jumble of memories in his head and was about to switch back to the "Information" tab when another swinging punch struck him as he sat tied to a chair with his hands behind his back.

"Smack!"

This time, both he and the chair toppled to the floor.

The interface before his eyes was forcibly closed as well, restoring his normal vision.

[Danger detected. System interface temporarily closed.]

Wait, fuck... this system doesn't pause time?

"Thud!"

A military boot slammed into his lower abdomen, leaving Morin capable of nothing but agonized whimpers.

He couldn't understand it. One moment he had been playing a game, and the next he was tied to a chair with his hands behind his back, getting the hell beaten out of him.

Sure, I finally got home on leave and snuck in some brain-dead air realistic battles, never climbing and hogging every capture zone, but that doesn't deserve this...

Then the vicious-looking white officer roughly hauled his chair upright again, walked over to a nearby table, and picked up a towel to wipe the sweat from his face.

Only now did Morin have a chance to quickly survey his surroundings.

Much as the map had indicated, he seemed to be inside a building, in a room with a low ceiling and no windows, lit entirely by a few oil lamps.

In the dimness beyond the lamps' reach, he could just make out something resembling a wooden staircase.

Morin guessed he was somewhere like a basement or cellar.

Behind the table where the white officer was wiping away his sweat sat two more soldiers wearing uniforms in the same style as his.

To Morin's left, an elderly officer in a different uniform was also tied up with his hands behind his back. His field grey uniform, however, matched Morin's own.

Morin now had a rough idea of his predicament.

Unless this was some utterly insane prank, he had probably experienced that ever-popular phenomenon of transmigration—and landed straight in the nightmare opening of "captured by hostile forces."

The white officer carelessly tossed the damp towel back onto the table. Its sweat and bloodstains stood out harshly under the oil lamps.

He turned and strode back to Morin in a few steps, his heavy breath washing over Morin's face with the foul stench of tobacco mixed with sweat.

"Bam!"

Another fist came crashing in, striking Morin's left cheek squarely and leaving his ears ringing and his mouth full of the taste of iron.

"I'll ask you again. What is the real mission of your Saxon military observer delegation in Seville?"

The officer's roar exploded beside his ear.

"Are you Saxons planning to tear up the agreement and formally intervene in the Kingdom of Aragon's civil war?!"

Morin grimaced in pain, inwardly cursing eighteen generations of the man's ancestors.

What the hell is wrong with these people?

I don't even know what you're talking about, man!

He wanted to shout that back, but reason told him that opening his mouth now would accomplish nothing except earning him another beating.

The original owner's memories were a tangled mess. When it came to this supposed "mission," his mind was completely blank.

The only thing he could do now was keep his mouth firmly shut and refuse to utter a word.

The other two officers behind the table merely glanced over before going back to smoking, utterly indifferent to the violence.

"Taking your anger out on a second lieutenant proves nothing."

A hoarse but powerful voice came from beside him.

"If you have questions, direct them at me."

Morin painfully turned his head toward the voice.

It was the elderly officer wearing the same field grey uniform as him.

There was blood at the corner of his mouth, and his face was covered in bruises, but he sat ramrod straight, showing none of a prisoner's abject misery.

At those words, the white officer slowly released his grip on Morin's hair, a vicious grin spreading across his face.

"That's the first time anyone's asked me for that..."

He turned and walked slowly over to the elderly officer, then punched him in the face without another word.

"Bam!"

The chair legs scraped across the rough floor with a piercing screech.

The elderly officer's head snapped to one side, and blood soon seeped from the corner of his mouth, but he stubbornly refused to make a sound.

The white officer apparently still wasn't satisfied. He raised his hand for another blow.

At last, the two officers who had remained seated behind the table moved.

They stubbed out their cigarettes, stood, and approached.

One of them, who appeared to hold a higher rank, raised a hand to stop his colleague from continuing the beating.

He stepped before the elderly officer and circled him, carefully examining his field grey uniform and the epaulettes on his shoulders.

"August von Mackensen."

The officer spoke in a much steadier voice than the first man.

"A lieutenant general of the Saxon Imperial Army... I certainly never expected to capture someone of your stature here."

Morin's heart gave a sharp jolt. He hadn't imagined that the old man beside him was actually a general.

No wonder he sounded so confident just now...

Wait, why does that name sound so familiar too?!

Before he could place the familiar name, another question surfaced in Morin's mind—how had a lowly second lieutenant like him ended up captured alongside a general?

Meanwhile, the general addressed as Mackensen slowly raised his head. Though his face was battered, the arrogance ingrained in his very bones had not diminished in the slightest.

He even pulled at the bleeding corner of his mouth, forcing it into a contemptuous expression.

"If you know who I am, you should understand the nature of a military observer delegation."

Mackensen's voice remained steady.

"We came at the invitation of Fernando VII, the legitimate ruler of the Kingdom of Aragon, and enjoy diplomatic immunity... your brazen attack on our military observer delegation is an open provocation against the Saxon Empire. Could it not also be construed as an act of war?"

"Diplomatic immunity?"

The officer who had approached later gave a soft chuckle, as though he had heard some tremendous joke.

"General Mackensen, this is Andalusia, not the capital, Madrid... given the Kingdom of Aragon's current situation, the king's orders don't necessarily carry any weight here."

He paused, his tone softening and losing some of its aggression.

"We have no intention of making an enemy of the Saxon Empire... but general, you and your men appeared somewhere you shouldn't have been. We simply want to know why."

He spread his hands, adopting an air of reasonableness.

After hearing this, Lieutenant General Mackensen studied the officer speaking to him for a while, then gave a cold laugh.

"Heh... you say we appeared somewhere we shouldn't have been..."

"Then why are your Britannian troops here too?"