This heretic cannot be burned, he must be hung up and whipped!

"The Hungarian Plain, also known as the Carpathian Basin, is flat and open, making it suitable for tank advances. It can maximize mobility and impact power, avoiding obstacles such as mountains or rivers.

Strategically, a breakthrough here would allow us to penetrate deep into Europe, threatening Vienna, Prague, and even Berlin! This would cut off the connection between the European allied forces and the north, and destabilize our defense system.

Moreover, controlling key cities such as Budapest in the Danube River basin can cut off our coalition's supply lines and at the same time approach the core industrial areas of Hungary and Austria.

Budapest is the most important hub for our Crusaders in Eastern Europe. Almost all railway networks and supplies pass through here. It has our most complete industrial equipment. The steel production of this industrial zone accounts for almost a quarter of our annual production in Europe!

This is totally different from the battle we are used to. The heretic troops did not fight positional warfare with us bit by bit like they did in the past few hundred years. Instead, they chose to break through our defenses as quickly as possible and then penetrate into the rear. This is why so many of you were able to walk hundreds of miles to see us alive!

The only thing we can be thankful for is that the heretic army's mechanization level is very poor. Aside from a small number of heretic artillery and tanks, their logistics are almost entirely transported by Hell's synthetic beasts!"

"Yes, they broke through our defenses as fast as lightning. The only thing that can limit the speed of the heretic army's advance is the speed of their logistics. Tanks always need fuel, and soldiers always need food and drink - wait, it seems they can eat people in the occupied areas. Oh no!"

Neos realized something was wrong.

"It seems they don't need as much supplies as we do..."

Father Amos agreed: "Our soldiers cannot live on nothing but belts. If these divided and surrounded troops run out of ammunition and food, they will probably..."

"If they dare to do something blasphemous—like cannibalism, or something even more horrific—then the portal to Hell might open! And then the supply of Hell's army would be reduced... It's a vicious cycle!"

"So that's why you keep gathering up the defeated troops? Even though we only have less than a week's supply?"

Neos suddenly realized and put away his pen and paper. Valentine also called on the pilgrims to do their assigned duties, some to stand guard, some to wash clothes and clean the church, and some to go.

Dominica put down the stick, took the map off the wall, and drew a big blue cross near Budapest, the capital of Hungary.

"Back then... during the First Crusade, our Crusaders committed unforgivable crimes in the Holy City of Jerusalem. The gates of hell were opened wide on earth. No one could guarantee what hundreds of thousands of soldiers, whose minds and bodies were stretched to their limits, could do under the mental pressure of a lack of food!

I wouldn't dare to bet, and neither would Pope Benedict. Only that monster from the ether sea wants to see all this!" "Dominica! These fleeing soldiers must not know the truth!"

Seeing that Dominica was about to reveal the true face of God, Neos rushed forward to cover her mouth, but he couldn't find a point of force on the iron mask, so he had to strangle Dominica's neck with both hands. As a result, he embarrassedly discovered that his neck seemed to be covered with armor as well, so he had to retract his hands.

Dominica looked at Neos as if he was an idiot.

"I'm beginning to doubt whether it was the right decision to make you the leader."

"Don't do that! I will work hard! Red Bean Paste Private Marseille!" "The military quality of these militiamen is very poor. Take them out for training. You still have a long way to go to become a leader."

Neos bowed at a 90-degree angle, and amid the good-natured laughter of the pilgrims around him, Dominica took a group of defeated soldiers out to collect supplies. Neos quickly grabbed a rifle, put on his helmet, and went out.

----------

"War...what is war really like?"

"One group of people picks up a gun and goes to kill another group of people, or is killed, and this cycle repeats until the war is over."

"Then I can't be killed! My devotion to the Lord is unmatched. Perhaps I can trigger another miracle on the battlefield and become a saint!"

"You—you're a saint? You don't even know what a heretic looks like. Going to the battlefield is just waiting to die!"

"Death? I'm not afraid of death! I'm so happy when I hear about dying for the Lord! After I die, I can go to heaven. Look, it's written in the manual: For those who die fighting for God, their bodies will decay, but their souls will remain in the trenches of heaven forever until the final battle..."

The troop transport truck was driving on the muddy road. A large group of newly recruited Crusaders had no sense of crisis at all. They sat in the back of the truck and talked loudly without restraint.

Luce sat among the new recruits who had just joined the Crusaders, holding a one-handed sword tightly in his hand. This new army had just been formed, and even basic training and combat training were carried out on the transport route. Just like that, the Pope sent it to the cruel front line.

She also heard from the company captain by chance that although the heretics launched a fierce attack and quickly broke through the defense of the Slovenian front, they stopped the attack after only advancing a few hundred kilometers and changed the main attack direction to Hungary.

She didn't know what the heretics' new weapon, the "Hell's Claw Landship", which could break through barbed wire, was capable of, that could force the Pope to send such a troop that was almost going to die and commit suicide to the front line.

"The enemy's landships have stopped. Could it be that they're halting their attack because they don't have many of these new, special weapons, and it's inconvenient to maintain them once they've broken through to our rear?"

She suddenly spoke up and asked the officer in the truck who was silent and looking at the recruits coldly.

The officer looked up at her in surprise and said, "I didn't expect there would finally be someone smarter."

The recruits' heated discussion in the car came to an abrupt halt, and everyone turned their eyes to the officers.

"What a bunch of idiots! So what if you joined our regiment? Based on my experience, this girl will probably be the only one left alive in a month! The rest of you will have to dig trenches in heaven!

What about becoming a saint... a saint... ridiculous? What do you think of war? A game of pretend with the neighborhood kids?

Do you think you're going to a gladiatorial fight? While duels have a high mortality rate and intense combat, they're only physical, and only last for a short while. If you're mentally resilient, physically strong, and well-equipped, you can overcome and persevere through your own thinking and exploitation of the environment.

But trench warfare is different. In trench warfare, you often have no room for resistance. You may not see the enemy, and you don’t know who you are fighting against. Suddenly, a shell kills the people around you!

The stinking water, which came up to my waist from the rain, was filled with rat carcasses and all kinds of excrement. I watched my wet calves become inflamed, stinking, and the rotten flesh fall off bit by bit, until I collapsed and committed suicide.

His words shocked the recruits, and these young crusaders began to think about what it really meant to participate in this war.

"Then how did you survive on the battlefield? Please teach us!" Luce tactfully handed a cigarette over and lit it for the officer.

Although Luce doesn't smoke, she heard a lot about the social customs in the military camp from the veterans in the team during her pilgrimage.

"You will be staying in the trenches for several months. I heard that some unlucky places may not be able to return for several years. The time of fighting is always short, and the time of waiting to die is even longer.

What you need to face is being in the trenches, accompanied by rats, bedbugs, feces, bad smells, and poor food. Every day you have to think about how to kill a lot of boring time, endure extremely narrow spaces for several months, and the pain of being unable to stretch your body for a long time.

The situation is even worse if it rains. Not only can you not smoke, but rotten corpses and flesh will be washed to your side by the water, and rats, bedbugs and feces will be delivered to you along with them. And you can't do anything about it. When heretics frequently harass the defense line, you can't take a shower once a week, and your scalp is full of fleas. Even if you don't have fleas, your comrades will infect you.

The second is a series of problems caused by long-term humidity, such as blisters, skin rot, bad breath, foot odor, etc., and of course there are heretic snipers.

The sudden attack of artillery fire will interrupt your sleep. Although the artillery fire is unlikely to hit you in the trench, the vibration, shock wave and noise of the shells will cause great psychological distortion in you. Every month, a few unlucky people with shell shock are caught by the supervision team in the rear and sent for "treatment".

Oh, and the 'treatment' is to put you in the death squad. God bless you. But I'm getting off topic.

So if you spend ten days or half a month in trench warfare, you're likely to have suicidal impulses. This is inherently more brutal than even the bloodiest, most brutal gladiatorial combat you can imagine. In gladiatorial combat, you fear death and the manner of death, while trench warfare, through various circumstances, has distorted the normal soldier's survival mentality.

The psychology of new recruits and veterans is very similar, including me now thinking the same thing as you. You are not afraid of death, and there are even idiots who are happy to hear that they will go to heaven to dig trenches! I am not afraid of death either. I always want to use death to get rid of this!"

The officer took a deep drag on his cigarette with red eyes, glanced at the remaining half of the cigarette butt, and put it into Luce's mouth.

"Ahem! Ahem—"

The officer ignored Luce and held his head in despair: "I sleep next to my excrement. I am always looking forward to the next charge. I can't escape... I can't escape the trenches in my life..."

I want to tell you to leave this cold and stinking trench, even if it is blown to pieces..."

The troop carriers passed through a deserted town, their wheels grinding through weeds, passing ruins and debris. The convoy moved silently through the deserted ruins. From time to time, half-shattered pieces of furniture peeked out from the buildings destroyed by the heretics, and corpses hung from the inverted crosses on the roofs.

“Bang!” “Bang!”

The engineers in the regiment fired at the inverted crosses erected by the heretics and buried the bodies hanging on them on the spot.

The recruits watched in silence as the Qi 3rd Division's engineers dealt with the bodies.

This was not the war they had imagined.

Luce noticed that there were some defeated soldiers and wounded soldiers slowly moving backwards on the street. There were many eyes staring at her from the houses on both sides of the road. Some were wounded soldiers wrapped in bandages, and some had half of their arms missing or their legs amputated.

But more often than not, their eyes were covered with white cloth, and blood was constantly oozing out from under the cloth.

The shadow of death hung over everyone, making it hard for the new recruits to breathe. The convoy temporarily rested in this abandoned town, and the new recruits on the vehicle were able to meet these survivors of the war.

"Hey--"

Luce lit a cigarette and walked up to a soldier with one eye wrapped in a dirty cloth.

The soldier was silent, and everyone stared at the intruder who broke the silence. The gray, helpless eyes made Luce's heart tremble. The soldier did not take Luce's cigarette. He coughed violently, and his mouth was full of bloody mucus - a typical sign of lung damage caused by poison gas.

"Madam - ahem - this is not the place for you, go, go back, no one will blame you -

War keeps women away."

Luce pushed his helmet down, dew dripping down his hair into his collar. In the morning mist, the fleeing soldiers who had retreated to the rear huddled in the corner of the ruins. The soldier's corroded gas mask drooped on his chest like a dead leaf, revealing half of his face covered with festering blisters.

"gentlemen."

Luce squatted down and looked into his tired eyes, hearing the suppressed gasp in his throat.

"War has never kept women away, and we must keep war away."

The soldier coughed violently, bloody mucus constantly flowing out of the corners of his mouth. His lungs had been severely damaged by the poisonous gas. He did not respond to Luce, but looked sadly ahead, looking in the direction of his hometown.

Luce sighed, this was the umpteenth time she had sighed. She lit a cigarette, and the pungent smoke of low-quality tobacco poured into her delicate trachea.

"Cough-cough!"

Is this poison gas? She wondered, staring blankly into the distance.

The embers still burned, and the endless smoke from the farm ahead cast a pall over everyone. The streaks of fire and rising smoke on the horizon had just been blasted by artillery fire. The smoke drifting across the iron-gray sky created blurry afterimages, like the wailing souls of those who died on the battlefield.

Flames were rising across the land, casting a shadow over the New Year of 1915.

"Ah sneeze!!!"

She sneezed and felt a little dizzy.

Looks like I need to take some sulfa.

PS: This drug can only treat certain types of bacterial infections.

------------

"boom!!!"

The kerosene lamp in the anti-bomb hole was shaking in the vibration of the shelling. When Neos was pouring water into the cooling cylinder of the machine gun, he heard Sergeant Valentine's cough suddenly become sharp.

"Damn morning mist! Damn wind! Why would heretics use poison gas!!" "Damn it, it must be captured from us. Look at the green cross on the shell - that's our chlorine gas!"

Sergeant Valentine used his bayonet to pry open the sackcloth covering the observation port. A yellow-green mist was seeping into the trench through the crater. The sergeant's bloodshot eyes suddenly widened. A swarm of squeaking rats scurried across his boots, knocking over the kerosene lamp. The sound of the glass shattering startled the sleeping soldiers.

"Dominican Republic! We have to retreat to the church!!" "Wait to die in the church? It's getting dark and we have to find a way to break out!"

Even though Dominica is as brave as a demigod, he is just a powerful special forces soldier after losing God's blessing. Although Neos has always wanted to use his ability to bless Dominica on behalf of God, he has never succeeded.

"Help me—ugh!" "Gas mask—where is the gas mask?!" "Hide inside the house! Quick! Use wet cloth to seal the gap! Quick!!"

Neos quickly gave the order, now unable to worry about the heretics attacking them! In the past few days, as the Dominicans continued to gather up the defeated soldiers and plunder supplies, their isolated army had grown to 500 to 600 soldiers, which naturally attracted the attention of the heretic legions wandering nearby.

"Nooo ...

New recruit Lucas was the first to begin retching. He grabbed his throat and fell onto the ammunition box, twitching like a salmon thrown onto the shore.

Neos smelled the sweet smell of rotten pineapple, and the pain of the gas mask strap digging into the back of his head suddenly became real - the entire company had only twelve captured heretic respirators.

"Gas bombs! Poison gas!"

The shouts of the military doctor in the team were torn apart by the coughs that came one after another. He was cutting open his shirt with a scalpel.

"Soak the cloth with urine! Cover your mouth and nose!" The newly enlisted doctor always carried anatomical atlases with him and kept himself clean even in the trenches, but now he was tearing his clothes like a primitive man.

Neos's mask visor was clouded with green mist as he watched Karl dragging his machine gun toward his firing position. This Saxon farmer's son, who always talked about returning to the mill after the war, now dug his nails into the wood, leaving traces of blood. A yellow-green cloud of mist surged into the trench like a living thing, and Lucas's face had already turned the color of a ripe plum.

“Mom…Mom…”

No matter which country or language is used, the words people use to refer to their mothers are surprisingly similar.

Nineteen-year-old Lucas's last words were laced with blood, and he died clutching Neos' leggings. Dominica used his bayonet to cut through the gold-trimmed battle robe and used it to block the crack in the bunker's wall.

"boom!"

Another gas tank was hit into the trench by artillery fire, and the turbid liquid ignited blue flames on the trench wall, but the wind suddenly changed direction.

"I'm going to church with a respirator!" The doctor tied a urine-soaked gauze on his face, "I put a batch of sodium bicarbonate in the cellar the day before yesterday..." "Bang!"

His voice suddenly became distorted, and Neos watched helplessly as the military doctor took two steps in the trench before being accurately hit in the head by a heretic's bullet.

"Those bastards! They're waiting for us to get out!!"

The military doctor was alive and kicking one second, but his eyeballs and brain exploded the next.

The machine gun finally roared to life, its bullet chains drawing crimson trajectories through the poisonous mist. "The heretics are coming!"

Valentine's roar was muffled through his gas mask, and Neos saw the outline of a gas helmet emerging from the mist. The ammunition handler, who was responsible for feeding the ammunition, suddenly trembled violently, and Neos realized that his respirator hose had been ripped open by shrapnel.

"Saint..." The ammunition carrier pulled off his mask and stuffed it in front of him, biting his lower lip until it was broken. "Hurry back to the church and ask for help..."

"Hurry up! Neos! I'll hold you here!" Dominicana shouted. She was not wearing a gas mask, but only a cloth mask, standing in the poisonous gas and shooting at the heretics.

"Can--"

“Da da da——” “Bang! Bang!”

His words were cut short by a heretic bullet, the ammunition carrier's body blocking the breach in the blasted breastwork. Blood splattered the visor of Neos's mask as he watched three heretic soldiers wearing elephant trunk masks collapse in the poisonous mist.

Two pilgrims wearing gas masks and Neos crawled in the collapsed trench. The dust floating in the flashlight beam looked like a miniature poison cloud. He wanted to crawl back to the church along the trench outside the town to find support, but found that the front of the trench had collapsed due to artillery shells.