Chapter 51: Welcome to the Meat Grinder

Daniel was a farmer from the northern mountains of Aragon.

Unmarried, but with a girl he loved dearly.

Three months ago, he was snatched from his fields by a recruitment squad of the Royal Army, stuffed into an ill-fitting uniform, and handed an old, battered rifle with the rifling nearly worn smooth.

He did not want to fight. He only wanted to return home to farm, save some money, and marry Maria from the neighboring village.

Instead, he was now pressed flat against the cold cobblestones of Seville, with the warm corpse of a comrade beside him. Bullets whizzed incessantly from every direction, striking the ground and walls, kicking up bursts of dust and sparks.

Just minutes before, their officers had told them that those Saxons and rebels had already fled! That this would be nothing more than a casual armed promenade!

But the moment the first gunshot rang out, everyone was stunned.

Immediately afterward, gunfire erupted like strings of firecrackers from every window, every rooftop, and every unseen corner along both sides of the street.

Daniel had no idea where the bullets were coming from; he only saw the men around him drop one by one, uttering agonizing screams.

Instinctively, he hit the deck alongside the crowd, burying his head deep as his body shook like a sieve.

"Take cover! Find cover, quickly!" the officer screamed at the top of his lungs.

But where was there to hide?

The wide street offered no cover at all. They were sitting ducks, completely exposed to countless hidden muzzle flashes.

"Get inside the houses! Get into those buildings right now!"

The instinct for survival drove the soldiers, and they scrambled on hands and knees toward the structures lining the street.

Daniel scrambled up as well, fixing his eyes on a two-story building closest to him, and dashed toward it with every ounce of strength he had.

Yet when he reached the doorway, he discovered with utter despair that the doors and windows on the ground floor of this building had all been boarded and bricked up from the inside. There was no way in!

He slammed against the door desperately, bashing the windows with his rifle butt, but the damned door did not budge an inch.

Behind him, the street had turned into a complete slaughterhouse.

The MG08 heavy machine gun, lying in wait at the end of the street, finally unleashed its fury.

That heavy machine gun, treated like a prized possession by Morin, was now demonstrating its true power as a battlefield reaper.

The gunner did not even need to aim carefully, for the black-uniformed soldiers of the Royal Army were packed tightly along both sides of the street.

He merely had to sweep across the densest concentrations of the crowd, and the scorching bullets effortlessly tore through human flesh, kicking up thick, bloody mists.

Royal Army soldiers fell in heaps, like wheat mown down by a scythe.

Paralyzed by terror, Daniel gave up on the door and turned around to look for another entrance.

At that exact moment, he spotted a building a short distance away with its front door wide open.

As if grasping at a straw, Daniel rushed toward it recklessly.

Many others shared the same thought; a dozen or more Royal Army soldiers flooded into that building like madmen.

The cramped space was packed to bursting, everyone shoving and pushing one another, desperate to squeeze deeper inside.

Not a single soul noticed that the base of the chimney in this room had already been hollowed out, and even the metal safety grate used to block it had been removed.

Squeezed tightly in the middle, Daniel could barely breathe.

Right then, he heard a strange sound coming from right above him, as if something had dropped down the chimney.

"What is that?" someone asked, looking up.

Yet no one could answer. Only a few soldiers standing closest to the chimney saw a black object roll out from its base.

The next second, a violent explosion tore through the room.

A grenade, tossed down the chimney by Saxon soldiers lurking on the roof, detonated inside the crowded interior.

Then came a second one, and a third...

The roaring blasts nearly shattered Daniel's eardrums, while the scorching blast wave and flying shrapnel instantly swallowed the entire room.

Daniel felt himself shoved heavily to the floor by an immense force, with countless bodies piling on top of him.

He smelled the pungent stench of gunpowder and scorched flesh, while his ears were filled with shrill screams and groans.

He did not know if he was injured; he only knew he had to get out of there.

Crawling frantically out from beneath the pile of bodies, Daniel finally escaped that hell on earth.

Alongside other blood-soaked Royal Army soldiers, he wept and wailed as he fled from the deadly building, plunging once more into the open street.

And waiting to greet them were the bullets that had been lingering all around.

The farmer from the northern mountains of Aragon had barely taken a few steps out the door when a numbness struck his thigh, and he crashed heavily to the ground.

Glancing down, he saw a bloody hole torn through his trousers, with bright red blood gushing out profusely.

Excruciating pain instantly washed over his entire body.

He tried to crawl, to escape this terrifying place, but his limbs refused to obey him.

Daniel's vision began to blur. He saw the golden wheat fields of his hometown, and Maria standing among them, smiling at him.

"Maria..."

He murmured weakly, his head lolled to the side, and he lost consciousness entirely.

...

Scenes like this were playing out simultaneously on every street in Seville.

The first wave of the offensive by the Royal Army and the Britons failed to advance even a hundred meters before shattering against this intricate web of crossfire, barricades, and indoor death traps.

Leaving behind countless corpses and groaning wounded, they retreated in utter disarray.

In the rear temporary command post, General José Sanjurjo, commander of the 24th Royal Division, sat with a face as dark as iron, listening to the battle report brought back by an aide from the front lines.

"What did you say? The first wave... was beaten back?"

"Yes, General."

The aide reporting kept his head bowed, not daring to meet the general's eyes.

"Our soldiers couldn't break through at all. The casualties... the casualties are catastrophic."

"Useless! A bunch of useless fools!" Sanjurjo kicked over a chair beside him, the tension in the tent plunging to a suffocating extreme.

He could not fathom it. With superior numbers and reinforcements from the Britons, how had the first wave devolved into such a total disaster?

"What kind of magic are those Saxons using? Have they started deploying combat mages as well?!"

He clutched his hair, thrashing about like a wild beast driven mad.

"General, the enemy... the enemy's tactics are bizarre. They abandoned the streets entirely and deployed all their forces inside the buildings. The moment our soldiers entered the city, they were attacked from all directions and couldn't organize any effective counterattack."

"Inside the buildings?" Sanjurjo paused, stunned.

Though no brilliant military mastermind, he had spent half his life under arms in the Kingdom of Aragon and had fought in numerous campaigns, yet he had never once heard of such a style of warfare.

In his view, fighting a war meant arraying troops in open fields, coordinating artillery, cavalry, and infantry, with the core objective of seeking out the enemy's main force and annihilating them in a pitched battle...

A glorious, Austerlitz-style victory, free from civilian involvement, was the only truly civilized warfare...

So what on earth were the Saxons doing hiding inside houses?

Could that even be called combat?

"What about the Britons? Weren't their Northumberland Fusiliers trailing right behind? What do they have to say?"

Sanjurjo finally remembered his 'allies'.

The officer's expression grew even uglier. "The Britons... when they saw our troops falter, they simply pulled back. They never committed to the fight at all."

"What?!" Sanjurjo felt his blood pressure spike instantly.

He had long known those arrogant Britons looked down on the Royal Army, treating them as cannon fodder, but he never expected them to be so utterly ruthless.

A wave of overwhelming humiliation and rage surged into his chest.

Could the Royal Army accomplish nothing at all without British assistance?!

"Pass down my orders!"

With bloodshot eyes, Sanjurjo pointed at the map of Seville and roared:

"Launch another wave of the attack! Commit all forces! Push everything in!"

"General, but..."

"There are no buts!" Sanjurjo interrupted him brutally. "Have that surviving magic-crystal artillery battery open fire! Pound the city to dust! Blast all those turtle shells to pieces!"

A staff officer hastily stepped forward to dissuade him:

"General, please reconsider! Opening fire now will expose the position of our last magic-crystal battery! The enemy cavalry is still prowling outside—this is too dangerous!"

"I don't give a damn anymore!"

Sanjurjo had lost his sanity. Right now, he only wanted to wash away his recent humiliation with the most ferocious bombardment possible.

"Execute the order! Immediately! Right now!"

Witnessing the general's madness, everyone fell silent.

They knew that the second wave would be far bloodier and crueler than the first.

Yet orders were iron.

Soon enough, the dull booming of artillery echoed once more. This time, the shells were aimed straight into the heart of Seville.