Empress, Call Me by My Title at Work!-Chapter 40

Chapter 40:  Fly
The ceasefire agreement between the Holy Federation and the three duchies—Eisenwald, Schwarztal, and Waldenburg—declared one thing loud and clear to the entire world:
The war was really coming to an end.
Starting from the third year of the war, every new year came with rumors that the war was about to end. But year after year passed, stretching into a grueling thirty-four years, with no sign of peace in sight. Until today—when the three duchies that had originally triggered the war signed the ceasefire agreement.
Could it really be ending this time?
But it was often at moments like this that things became most deadly. In war, it was best not to harbor unrealistic hopes. Otherwise, death would soon catch up to you.
The Holy Federation Army received an unexpectedly grim piece of news.
The army was out of control.
According to the original plan, the Holy Federation Army was supposed to launch an offensive to force the Scandinavian Empire to give up Dornhein and Lichburg, and only then would the troops turn to move into Eisenwald.
But—
The Holy Federation Army had only taken Dornhein. Lichburg was not captured—or rather, Marshal Wrangel had not abandoned Lichburg.
And by this time, Ning Luo had already successfully forced the Duchies of Eisenwald, Schwarztal, and Waldenburg into surrender.
With the surrender of these three duchies—
The Prime Minister of the Scandinavian Empire, Count Oxen, in the name of the newly crowned Empress Christina, ordered Marshal Wrangel, Chief of the Army General Staff, to hold Lichburg at all costs.
Did they really think war would end just because they wanted it to?
...
Holy Federation.
Hohenstein.
The Eternal Fortress.
Army  Conference Room.
Ning Luo and Cinderella had already returned to the Eternal Fortress. Along with them was Liaison Officer Colonel Prittwitz. For his achievements in this campaign, not only was promotion to general not enough—he now had a permanent place among the highest ranks of the Imperial Army.
But that didn’t matter. Even if he now had only one hand, it didn’t matter.
The only thing that mattered—
Was that he was still alive.
Although General Carlwitz’s condition looked even worse—far worse than Ning Luo, who had taken a bullet and was now confined to a wheelchair, and even worse than Colonel Prittwitz, who had lost an arm.
He had withered away to the bone, sitting before the war table like a dried-up corpse.
Were it not for his uniform, to everyone else, he would have looked like a sickly old man on the verge of death.
When he looked at Ning Luo—
General Carlwitz slowly raised his head.
"If you truly have the ability to lead us to victory in this war, then I beg you—with everything I have—I beg you, tell me what to do."
To drive a general of the Holy Federation to such a point—
One could imagine just how dire the situation had become. When General Carlwitz pleaded like this, he understood the consequences better than anyone.
Ning Luo took a deep breath.
"We have nothing left we can do."
For Ning Luo, it had been exactly a year since he joined the war. In that entire year, he hadn't had a moment of rest.
Now, there was just a little.
All the strategies.
All the calculations.
Had lost their meaning now.
The Battle of Hohenstein could no longer be stopped, no matter what. The army had, in the truest sense, gone completely out of control. When this campaign had been drawn up, neither Ning Luo nor the Holy Federation Army  had ever considered a fallback plan.
So in the midst of this mad offensive, they had no means of stopping it.
The order from the Scandinavian Empire was to hold Lichburg at all costs.
Thus, the tragedy of war was born.
In truth, the war had already ended.
The Scandinavian Empire’s army, already at a disadvantage, had no hope of holding Lichburg once the surrender of Schwarztal, Eisenwald, and Waldenburg was confirmed. The Holy Federation no longer needed to attack Lichburg—had they simply withdrawn and rebuilt their defensive lines, the war would have been over.
But the terror of war lay precisely in this:
It would not change course for the will of any one person.
This was humanity’s most frenzied, most extreme form of violence.
Cinderella couldn’t help but reach out with her slender fingers and tightly clasp Ning Luo’s hand.
In this war—
There was no other way to resist, other than to hold each other’s hands tightly.
...
..
High in the firmament.
A massive dragon spiraled through the sky, beating its bloodstained wings, letting out a series of screeches.
Then—
Its heavy body plunged toward the earth.
It spread its bloodied jaws, crying out again and again, like a wailing child. But the tendrils of the earth coiled around its body, dragging it inch by inch into the abyss. No matter how it struggled, it could not break free from the ground’s grip.
Its slit pupils stared skyward, desperate to return to the heavens, but the tendrils had already completely enveloped it.
And in the end—
Before the onslaught of artillery fire, powerful enough to wash away all sins and evil, not even its bones remained.
Stories like this unfolded in every corner of Lichburg.
Even at such a point—
Both the Scandinavian Empire and the Holy Federation continued escalating the battle. Troops that could have been withdrawn from Eisenwald and Schwarztal were instead redeployed to Hohenstein and Lichburg. As a result, the Holy Federation committed nearly 300,000 troops to Lichburg, while the Scandinavian Empire deployed 220,000.
By the time the war reached September—
It was already writing history.
For example, on July 7th, 1064, the battle recorded the highest single-day massacre in human history, with 33,000 casualties. The Holy Federation’s First Army’s Thirteenth Division suffered a 73% casualty rate, the highest ever recorded, with the Fifth Infantry Regiment of the Thirteenth Division completely wiped out.
There was also the largest aerial battle in history: the Holy Federation deployed over thirty black dragons, while the Scandinavian Empire sent one hundred and twenty pegasi into the skies.
And humanity inflicted its greatest ever destruction upon terrain itself.
By all logic—
The armies should have collapsed under a chain reaction. The human spirit was not built to sustain such a scale of warfare.
But a long, irreversible, incurable poison had spread across this land.
It continued to spread—
Corroding every person it touched.
A poison called hatred.
After three grueling months of the Battle of Hohenstein, Lichburg had become a pure industrial slaughterhouse. On this land even the gods had abandoned—
Perhaps even demons would find it cruel.
October 3rd, 1064.
Snow fell in Hohenstein.
Count Oxen, Prime Minister of the Scandinavian Empire, agreed to abandon Lichburg. The Imperial Army began a full-scale retreat.
The Battle of Hohenstein came to an end.
Marshal Wrangel, Chief of the Imperial Army General Staff of the Scandinavian Empire, submitted his resignation—to the late Emperor Gustav.
October 4th, 1064.
Karl Lindberg von Wrangel, Marshal of the Scandinavian Empire and Chief of General Staff—
took his own life.