"Who on earth authorized the Punishnt Camp to join the battle? Those lunatics have turned the battlefield into a complete ss!"
"...You did, sir."
"...Delete this part from the record."
—Communication Record, Usar Union 3rd Legion Headquarters (Deleted)
The sound of artillery fire had not ceased.
The sky in the distance was dyed orange, as if soone had set an entire forest ablaze on the horizon.
The flashes of explosions rose and fell, tearing the night sky into countless fragnts.
Eleanor did not know how long she had been walking.
Perhaps an hour.
Perhaps two hours.
She only knew that her right leg had gone completely numb, the girl on her back was as light as a feather, and the world around her had descended into utter madness.
Eleanor could hardly rember how many enemies she had killed.
The first was an Usar soldier she encountered at a corner of so ruins.
The other party clearly hadn't expected to run into an enemy here.
Before he could raise his rifle, Eleanor's bullet had already pierced his throat.
The second and third were on a shattered street.
Two stray soldiers were rummaging for supplies.
She could have bypassed them.
But they still stood in the path she had to take.
Three bullets.
Two corpses.
The fourth...
The fifth...
The sixth...
The ammunition in her pistol magazine was running low.
Until the last bullet was spent on a sniper trying to ambush her.
Click.
The sound of the firing pin striking empty air was jarringly sharp in the night.
"...Damn it."
After an unknown amount of ti passed, Eleanor finally found a relatively safe place.
It was the basent of a bombed-out building.
It might have once been a wine cellar, or perhaps a storage room.
The entrance was obscured by a semi-collapsed wall; if one didn't look closely, they wouldn't have noticed it at all.
A perfect hiding spot.
Eleanor used her last ounce of strength to drag herself and the girl on her back into that dark space.
Then, she leaned against the wall and slowly slid down to a sitting position.
The basent was very dark.
Only the faint glow of firelight seeping in from the entrance dyed everything a dark red.
The air was filled with the sll of mold and dust, but at least there was no scent of blood.
At least there was no sll of gunpowder.
At least... it was quiet.
Eleanor gasped for air, feeling as if her lungs were about to burst.
She looked down at her right leg—her pants were completely soaked with blood, and the tal fragnt was still embedded inside; she could feel it shifting in the wound with every breath.
She needed to treat this wound.
But first...
She turned her head to look at the girl lying on the ground.
In the dim light, the child looked more like a corpse.
Pale skin, dried blood, faint, barely perceptible breathing.
Was she still alive?
Eleanor reached out and placed her fingers on the girl's carotid artery.
Hmm, there was a pulse.
Weak, but still beating.
"So you're not dead yet..."
She whispered, unsure if she was speaking to the girl or to herself.
"Then keep on living."
Eleanor took everything out of the first-aid kit at her waist.
Tourniquet, bandages, antiseptic cotton, tweezers, a small bottle of alcohol, and a few syringes.
Standard field first-aid equipnt.
Not much, but it should be enough.
She treated her own leg first.
Grabbing the tal fragnt with the tweezers, she took a deep breath, and then pulled it out sharply—
"Ugh—!"
She gritted her teeth, forcing herself to swallow the scream.
Blood gushed out, but less than she had expected.
She quickly tightened the tourniquet at the base of her thigh, pressed the antiseptic cotton against the wound, and finally wrapped it with a bandage.
Crude, but effective.
At least she wouldn't die from excessive blood loss.
Then, she turned to the girl.
She first unwound the ssy bandages.
Then, her movents stopped.
"...Good God."
Eleanor whispered in exclamation.
That was the first ti she felt truly shocked tonight.
The girl's body...
Was like a living map of scars.
New wounds layered over old ones.
Old wounds layered over even older ones.
So wounds had healed into hideous scars, so were still oozing blood, and so had begun to fester and suppurate.
Her skin was covered in marks of various colors—bruises, dark red scabs, pink new tissue, white age-old scars.
Like a piece of rag that had been repeatedly stitched up and torn apart.
A penetrating wound on the shoulder.
A penetrating wound on the abdon.
A penetrating wound on the thigh.
These were from today.
They were the most severe.
But besides that...
There were clear signs of fractures on the ribs, at least three places, and they had healed poorly, the bones misaligned.
There were irregular bruises on her back, as if she had been repeatedly whipped by sothing.
There were countless tiny needle marks on her legs, dense and nurous, like so sort of morbid pattern.
Eleanor had seen war.
She had seen all kinds of wounds.
But she had never seen a body like this.
What on earth had this child been through?
Eleanor forced herself to calm down.
Now was not the ti to ask these questions.
She needed to save this child first.
Then... then they would talk.
She began to treat the wounds.
First was the penetrating wound on the shoulder—the bullet entered from the front and exited from the back, missing major blood vessels, but the muscle tissue was severely damaged.
She carefully cleaned the debris and dirt from the wound with tweezers, applied antiseptic alcohol, and finally bound it tightly with a bandage.
Then the abdominal wound.
This was more troubleso. The trajectory was angled downwards, likely damaging internal organs.
Eleanor was not a doctor; she didn't know how to treat internal injuries.
She could only clean the wound as much as possible, then press it with a bandage, praying that this child had enough luck.
Finally, the wound on the thigh.
Another penetrating wound.
Fortunately, it hadn't hit the femoral artery, otherwise this child would have died long ago.
The entire treatnt process took nearly an hour.
When Eleanor finally tied the last bandage, her hands were trembling.
Not because of exhaustion.
But because she had discovered more things during the bandaging process.
Those old wounds.
The way those old wounds had been treated...
Was absolutely terrible.
So wounds had clearly been stitched up without any disinfection, leading to severe infection.
So fractures had been left to heal on their own without being set, causing the bones to grow completely crooked.
So burns had been wrapped in dirty rags without any treatnt, leaving horrific scars.
Eleanor couldn't understand how this child had survived until now.
By normal human physical standards, any one of these wounds would have been fatal.
But this child not only survived, but was also able to...
Able to what?
Eleanor's movents suddenly stopped.
Her gaze fell on the girl's back.
More accurately, it fell on the girl's spine.
There was a row of neat scars there.
Not caused by battle.
Nor caused by torture.
It was...
The marks of a ch connection port.
Eleanor felt her blood run cold.
Of course she recognized these marks.
As a ch knight, she was too familiar with them.
The ch's neural connection system needed to interface directly with the pilot's nervous system.
And the most effective connection point was the spine.
That was where the body's nerves converged, and it was the easiest place to connect.
But—
Inserting connection probes directly into the spine was extrely dangerous.
It would cause excruciating pain and could even lead to permanent nerve damage.
Therefore, all regular ch pilots needed to undergo spinal chanization modification.
Implanting a specialized port into the spine.
Making the connection process safe, painless, and efficient.
This was common knowledge.
This was an ironclad rule.
Whether it was Victoriana or Usar, all ch units followed this rule.
No one would let an unmodified pilot operate a ch.
That was practically murder.
But this girl's spine...
Had no traces of any chanical modification.
Those probes were directly—
Forcibly—
Inserted into her spine.
And then forcibly pulled out.
No anesthesia.
No shock absorption.
No protective asures whatsoever.
Ti and ti again.
Ti and ti again.
Eleanor felt her scalp tingle just imagining that pain.
She had received neural connection training at the Royal Knights Academy; even with complete chanical modification, the feeling of the first connection had been so painful she had nearly bitten her tongue off.
...What on earth had this child been through?
Eleanor shook her head, forcing herself to stop thinking about it.
The most important thing now was to survive.
Wait for the chaos of the battlefield to subside a little.
Then she could try to contact her own troops or find a safe route of retreat.
As for this child...
She hadn't decided how to handle it.
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