Steampunk Era: Mad Abield
Chapter 123: Section 103: Sowing for the Joy of Harvesting

Chapter 123: Section 103: Sowing for the Joy of Harvesting

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Taking a drag on his cigarette, the Chief Commissar of the 17th Guard Infantry Division stood in the trenches, unable to see the distant scenery through the thin morning mist. However, after last night’s night battle, the bodies of Chaos littered the entire frontline. The stacks of corpses even made cleanup extremely difficult, so much so that even as the Chief Commissar, he could not make the soldiers, who had fought all through the night, move the bodies of Chaos.

But there was no need to worry about anything. Engma’s Paladins had already purified the land, and the cold weather prevented the bodies of Chaos from decaying too quickly—an essential factor. If it were summer, and if the bodies were not dealt with swiftly, the whole combat zone would likely turn into an epidemic area soon enough.

The wooden door to the cabin behind him opened, and the Commissar turned his head to look. His division’s commander had come out, "Has the third lie detection passed?"

"It has passed. The boy has passed the lie detection carrying out by Engma’s Paladin, the Divine Envoy of the Lord of Suffering, and our field Priests three times in a row. He said that last night he saw the flash of a gun barrel, and he fired at that position. It was certainly a credible shot."

"So, the kid killed the former White Death of the Fourth Guard Infantry Division, now the Crimson Reaper?"

"Correct, it should be him who killed him. This reminds me of that very famous saying."

"Hitting your mark is less important than the enemy catching the bullet," the Commissar said, taking another drag of his cigarette, a long draw—The Crimson Reaper was a very dangerous opponent. He was the Chief Sharpshooter of the Fourth Guard Infantry Division, the White Death, with a record of seven hundred and seventy-four kills.

Three years ago, when the Fourth Guard Infantry Division was surrounded by the Chaos Legion, he, like most soldiers, couldn’t evacuate the encirclement. Then, after three months, he was transformed into Chaos and appeared on the opposite side of the Sydney Union. In these three years, the Crimson Reaper had killed at least six hundred people, most of whom were officers on the front lines. This did not even include the missing patrol teams and sharpshooter groups.

But today, after the morning battle ended and during the cleanup of the battlefield, soldiers found his ugly corpse.

The bullet had entered through his right eye and blown away a large portion of the back of his skull; the Crimson Reaper died at his shooting position.

According to the bullet trajectory, the Chief Commissar and the division commander eventually found the firing position on top of a small hill behind the defense lines. However, last night, there were no sharpshooters on duty here, just a kid from the South who had set up a shooting position there. Almost all the soldiers had no idea what the kid was up to until they discovered the firing position littered with shell casings, a military rifle with an odd appearance, but equipped with a tripod and precise sighting equipment. As for the little item, it was found in a one-man foxhole enjoying a bag of snacks, with coffee heating up on a small stove by the hole.

So, the Paladin of Engma specifically inquired about his potential combat achievements.

The number was terrifying.

Confirmed shots at one hundred and twenty-five targets, with about one hundred and seventy hits, most of which were Magicians and Archers.

Using a specialized gun barrel, firing 9mm long cartridges instead of the typical 11mm military rifle bullets, those responsible for confirming achievements found one hundred and thirty-seven bodies on the front lines—forty-one Magicians and ninety-six Archers—giving a confirmed kill rate of 109%.

Excluding those targets that could not be found, it could be said that this kid’s kill count was far higher than one hundred and thirty-seven. This was no longer just terrifying to describe; as verified by the Chief Commissar to the highest command, no human Sharpshooter could achieve this during a night battle—not even Orcs or Elves with night vision capabilities could hardly do so. In history, only an Elf Sharpshooter managed to reach such a level forty years ago.

After which, he was invited back by the Elf Royal Court to become an instructor for Sharpshooters.

Any combat with more than a hundred kills would undoubtedly qualify the soldier as the Chief Sharpshooter of an infantry division. Placed in the entire history of Sharpshooters, he would rank in the top ten—up to now, the fifth place achieved only sixty-seven kills in one battle.

Lie detection couldn’t prove that he was lying, and the subsequent shooting confirmed everyone of the child’s talent—he could hit eight of the coins placed at the Crimson Reaper’s shooting position from atop that hill, shooting nine times and hitting eight, with the first shot missing by less than a finger’s breadth.

The Chief Commissar asked the Sharpshooters to confirm that missing by less than a finger on the first shot demonstrated that the kid could identify the bullet’s impact point right away—this was no secret among Sharpshooters. The hard part was controlling the bullet’s point of impact, which required that the Sharpshooter’s rifle had extremely high precision, which is usually not the case for rifles coming out of military factories.

The middle-aged Chief Commissar wanted to recruit the kid right away—draft him as special personnel, not requiring him to fight on the front lines, but merely to train a thousand Sharpshooters like him for the Sydney military within a year. Chaotic Magicians would then become mere targets, and without the protection of Chaotic Magicians, the Chaos soldiers would just be moving targets from the Middle Ages; every squad member in the infantry division could shoot them all dead from two hundred paces away.

However, the problem was, the Chief Commissar soon learned that the kid’s background was not so simple.

First and foremost, he was clergy of the Goddess of Harvest Church. According to the rules, if the Goddess of Harvest Church did not release him, then the military had no right to conscript him by force. If the Chief Commissar acted in such manner, not only would the division commander and he get in trouble, but also the corps commander and the seniors at the command would find themselves in a difficult position.

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