Chapter 92

"Enemy forces confirmed! Distance 11,000!"

"The main force of the enemy's vanguard is medium-sized, numbering about 200. Behind them are about 7,000 small ones. The large ones are even further back!"

"Enemy has made contact with the defense line!"

"Artillery fire, commence."

"Understood!!"

The voices heard over the communication device were tense, but not despairing.

As a mere pilot, I cannot tell if this is due to the leadership of Lieutenant General Izaki, the division commander, or if there are other factors at play.

However, just by looking at the artillery fire being carried out methodically despite the loud sounds, it is clear that the battle is proceeding as planned.

"Thanks to the lessons learned from the Second Division."

Keita, who was ordered to wait until the time came, muttered this as he watched the artillery fire being conducted by the Fourth Division from his cockpit, as if it were someone else's business.

In the basic defense against monsters, the most important thing to be wary of is the long-range attacks from large monsters.

Given that we are confined to our positions, it is impossible to avoid such attacks, and the magic cannon fire from large monsters, even if defended by a large shield, has enough power to vaporize surrounding facilities and personnel.

Therefore, it is usually necessary to eliminate the large monsters first.

However, medium-sized and larger monsters have a barrier called a magic barrier, which makes them immune to normal attacks, so to defeat them, it is necessary to use attacks from machines rather than conventional weapons like tanks.

Until now, it was known that large monsters, due to their size, were not good at close combat, and if they could be brought close enough, they could be defeated to some extent, so the method of bringing the Kusanagi-type machines close to defeat them was used.

However, recently, the behavior of the monsters has changed.

Small monsters, which can be defeated by conventional weapons, have been replaced by medium-sized monsters, which are positioned around the large monsters as a direct support force.

Due to this direct support force, surprise attacks on large monsters are now almost impossible.

Since surprise close combat is not an option, the only method available to the human side is long-range artillery fire.

As a result, the intentions of the monsters, which are skilled at long-range attacks, and the humans, who can only defeat them with long-range artillery fire, align.

However, this does not lead to a fierce artillery battle with casualties on both sides.

For a while, the artillery fire will be one-sided, coming from the human side.

Why? Because the monsters can only perform straight-line attacks.

It is a matter of course that the Earth is round, so when targeting an opponent at a certain distance, it is necessary to take into account the curvature of the Earth when attacking.

This is why the Yui-type machines use indirect fire from howitzers rather than direct fire from smoothbore cannons.

Of course, the demons leading the monsters know this.

However, since the monsters they command do not have the intelligence or capability to perform indirect fire, they have no choice but to close the distance to a range where they can damage the enemy with direct fire.

This distance is estimated to be about 6 km.

Once they close the distance to this point, they can simply vaporize the enemy artillery units with cannon fire from the large monsters, which would be their path to victory.

To prevent this, humans desperately carry out artillery fire, but it is not easy to penetrate the magic barriers of the large monsters and deal damage. Furthermore, the medium-sized monsters of the direct support force can act as shields, making it extremely difficult to bring down the large monsters with artillery fire alone.

In conclusion, while it might be possible to defeat the exhausted monsters that swam across the Sea of Japan, it is almost impossible to defeat the monsters with excess energy using only the artillery units of each division.

Furthermore, the problem is that the humans must be wary of not just the large monsters.

While the large monsters are the primary targets, the small monsters, which make up the majority of the enemy forces, are not powerless.

Imagine being attacked by a horde of nearly 10,000 tigers.

Moreover, these tigers boast a body length of at least 2 meters, can move faster than a tank, and have claws and fangs that can easily penetrate tank armor.

It would be impossible to ignore these and only target the large monsters and their direct support force in the rear.

It is simply not possible.

If you panic, your aim will be off.

If you tremble with fear, your aim will be off.

If you fear the monsters, the magic power needed for the artillery fire will be lost.

To function as an artillery unit, these elements of uncertainty must be eliminated.

In other words, the side that must confront the monsters must dispose of the monsters that are closing in, regardless of artillery or gunfire, and as quickly as possible.

However, this is not an easy task.

Medium-sized monsters are deployed in front of the small ones.

To put it in human terms, they are like a shield wall.

The medium-sized monsters at the front deflect attacks from conventional weapons, allowing the small monsters behind them to close the distance unscathed (though not all of the incoming shells from above can be blocked, so there will be some attrition).

This will lead to a melee.

And in a melee, humans cannot win against monsters, which are essentially wild animals made even more ferocious.

In other words, it is a losing situation.

At this point, the human side has no chance of winning.

"The only way they could win would be to abandon the base, lure the monsters into a trap, and defeat them one by one, even at the cost of sacrifices. Their defeat was decided the moment they did not take that desperate gamble."

Rouran, a viscount-level demon in charge of this sector, sighed as he observed the Fourth Division, which was still desperately firing artillery, and spoke to his subordinates.

---

"This is going according to plan."

"Yeah."

Both Izaki and Yubuki fully understood that it was impossible to defeat the large monsters with artillery fire alone and that they would lose in a melee.

Still, they carried out the artillery fire.

Why? To avoid arousing suspicion in the enemy.

"Major Kawakami said that the best time to take down a large monster is when they start preparing to shoot, right?"

"Yes. Specifically, the moment they enter the 6 to 7 km range and stop advancing is the best time to strike."

"The moment they are about to fire their magic cannons is the best time. How resolute."

"Yeah. I wish our people could learn from that."

"...That level of resoluteness is not necessary."

"Yeah, I agree. I wouldn't want to have a superior like that."

Izaki and Yubuki chuckled, thinking of the young lady Kuga, who had been assigned to a superior against her will and sent to this place.

While Izaki outranked Yubuki in terms of rank and position, Yubuki, being a childhood friend and having grown up with Izaki as his attendant, did not use formal language with him.

Of course, if someone like Asakawa, a higher-ranking officer, were present, it would be different, but she had retreated to the capital, Da Nang, to report the situation and the strategy of the expeditionary force to the Emperor of Vietnam, so no one was there to correct their tone.

There were also observers from the First Division, but as they were unfamiliar with the situation on the ground, they had no say. The command of the artillery units they brought was also delegated to Izaki.

To the point.

The current objective of the Fourth Division, led by Izaki, was to make the large monsters, the main force of the enemy, advance to the sniping point he had planned.

Until then, they had to avoid revealing that they had the firepower to take down the large monsters. The artillery fire they were currently conducting was for that purpose.

"We need them to come without any suspicion."

"Yeah."

While Izaki and Yubuki appeared to be calmly conversing, both were tense and afraid in the face of a horde of 10,000 monsters.

If this were just a horde of ordinary monsters, they would have requested the deployment of the Instructional Battalion to eliminate the threat as soon as possible at this stage.

(But not now.)

Izaki, maintaining his calm demeanor, gritted his teeth inwardly.

There was a reason he had to hide the Instructional Battalion, and more specifically, Keita Kawakami, even at the cost of the fear of losing subordinates or his own life.

"How many demons do you think there are?"

"...More than one, I suppose."

Yubuki's question summed it up.

With the existence of demons, the leaders of the monsters, now confirmed, they could not afford to play their trump card too early.

The demons might become cautious and take a cautious approach.

Or, they might launch a full-scale assault with all their forces.

Either way, the Fourth Division would suffer a major blow.

Of course, there was a possibility that they would only observe, but that was unlikely.

Moreover, basing tactics on personal wishes was a dereliction of duty for a commander.

(That's why.)

"Whatever the enemy plans, we need to put them in a position where they can do nothing. Everything depends on that."

Even if the enemy launched a full-scale assault, if the majority of the medium-sized monsters at the front were injured, the damage to our side would be minimal.

Even if they tried to wear down the large monsters with artillery fire, the threat would not be significant if the large monsters were eliminated.

Ultimately, it all came down to whether the Instructional Battalion and the artillery units could take down the large monsters as planned.

If they succeeded, the Fourth Division's artillery units could focus on the front lines, and supporting fire from surviving units would be possible.

If they failed, not only would the Instructional Battalion and the artillery units suffer, but the Fourth Division itself would also take a major hit.

That was the reality.

(In the worst case, we might have to self-destruct the base, but it probably won't come to that.)

From an outside perspective, it might seem like a gamble, but there is no such thing as a war without a gamble.

The job of a commander like Izaki is to bring the situation as close as possible to a 100% win.

In this case, Izaki was confident of a 70% chance of victory.

Or rather, considering Keita's track record, even if there were six large monsters, they would not be a significant threat.

With the addition of the Instructional Battalion and the artillery units, the odds were even better.

Therefore, the current source of Izaki's concern was not the large monsters themselves, but the fate of the demons controlling them.

Indeed, the worst-case scenario that Izaki and his team had envisioned was that the demons would appear on the front lines and wreak havoc.

Fortunately, no such presence had been confirmed so far.

"Whether it's complacency, overconfidence, or something else, I don't know. I don't care to know."

However, if they don't come out, they shouldn't.

They shouldn't come out until it's too late to do anything.

Feeling a sharp pain in his stomach and enduring it for a few minutes,

A communication came into the command center, and Izaki knew that one of his wishes on this battlefield had been granted.

"Target point reached. Commencing the hunt."

"...Yeah. Go all out."

In Vietnam, the hunt by a hero began.

Thank you for reading.