Editing The Unexplored Summon Blood Sign:Volume8 Chapter4 (section)

===Part 5===

The chaos was at the northern fortress.

But the other frontline base to the west was silent and ignored.

“…What are they doing?” muttered a large black man with a plethora of medals decorating his chest.

His large glove of a hand slapped and rubbed his head which he kept shaved in a habit he had picked up when he was a new recruit.

Yes, the distant western front had also received reports of the spontaneous battle.

That Colonel had been left in charge of the great force meant to pry open the western gate, but he did not immediately send reinforcements when the terrified reports arrived. But not because he was too reliant on doing things “by the book” to make a decision. There was a bigger problem.

“Sir,” said his saluting Asian aide. “This will not end well if the rookies who viewed this deployment like a field trip have snapped under the pressure of live fire.”

“An explosive outbreak of PTSD and soldiers gone berserk under the influence of mass hysteria…”

Everyone in the command room grimaced, but they were missing some fundamental information.

They knew a battle had broken out in the makeshift base of the company to the north.

But that battle was centered on a summoner and vessel.

And normal people would forget about such supernatural beings as soon as they were out of sight.

Now.

Given those conditions, ''what did the world look like to them?

Here is the answer.

They knew their distant allies were fighting.

But they could not at all see who those allies were fighting against.

“''Attacking each other and creating unnecessary victims within the fortress? Those fools. And they expect us to share responsibility!?''”

“''There do seem to be some witness accounts of something like a ghost.''”

“''You want to send that report back home? They’ll question our mental health.''”

“''Others are saying they are fighting mythological gods. And it seems like everyone there can see them.''”

“''Shut up!! Curse those part-timers who grabbed a gun to earn a stable income. Did the fear and confusion of that space station falling on their heads cause them to lose all control!?''”

The conversation continued while unclear whether they were on the same page or not.

This was what it meant for a summoner and vessel to drop into the center of a large army and slip into the crowd of soldiers. Even the soldiers standing side by side and directly fighting some kind of strange enemy gave contradictory witness reports. And even if the fragmentary reports that miraculously survived were patched together, it would only lead to the nonsensical idea of fighting against ghosts or gods.

Of course, those reports were not the only source of information. The large black man and the others waiting in the west viewed the chaotic northern division using satellites and drones. But the summoner and Material inside an Artificial Sacred Ground could not be seen with cameras or sensors.

They had vague witness reports and hard proof of nothing there.

Of course they were going to doubt the sanity of the other group.

“~ ~ ~”

Whatever the case, their timetable had fallen apart.

Even if the cruise missiles, rockets, and bombers of Phase 2 completed on schedule, they could not continue past that. This was a devastating blow to their ground forces. And unfortunately, technology had not reached the point that wars could be ended with only aerial bombings. The ground forces were needed to declare checkmate by attacking the remaining forces hiding among the rubble.

Also…

“There has been some difficulty with Phase 2 as well. The cruise missiles were lost for no apparent reason. It happened to every last one of them, so I doubt it was a mere accident. We are speculating that the northern unit’s anti-air weaponry was used.”

“Ugh.”

“And we only have satellite imagery to go on, but the Grad Killer that forcibly causes deep-seated landslides appears to have been damaged beyond repair. How this has happened is a complete mystery, but won’t it be difficult to pry open the tunnel shelter? Bunker busters are not suited to the terrain conditions.”

“Ohhhhhhhhh!!”

The large black man shouted futilely.

They could not move things forward without first dealing with those idiots.

The Asian aide remained at attention.

“If the entire division of 10,000 has gone berserk, that is more than 40% of our forces rendered unusable. Thus, we can claim our overall force has been routed. How about that?”

“How about what…?”

In war, it was not after every last soldier had been killed that a force of 25,000 was considered defeated. It differed between militaries and units, but once between 30% and 50% had been taken out, the entire army would withdraw because they could no longer accomplish what they had set out to do.

“We could attempt to suppress them, but if we head north and get into a fight, we might be lumped in with them as an uncontrollable force. So couldn’t we leave them be and withdraw?”

To be blunt, the US Army’s enemy was not Kingdom F.

In this backcountry war, victory was assumed and defeat was unthinkable. Rather than thinking about how many enemies they could kill, they thought about how little damage they could take while ending the war according to their timetable. That was the logic of a powerful nation’s war.

Their biggest fear was the living rooms across the US mainland.

It could be the number of young new recruits who died while deployed overseas. It could be mysterious health problems caused by chemical substances. It could be psychological problems like PTSD brought on by a variety of pressures. If a war cameraman snapped a photo of those social problems and it spread across the internet, intense anti-war protests would begin across the US mainland. This was an age where the chemical fertilizers used by farmers were criticized because they could be used to make bombs. And now this was happening to the high school and college graduates who had excitedly rushed to a foreign land so they could legally fire big guns. If a newscaster displayed a line graph of the tragedy befalling those youths, the politicians would realize how this would affect their approval ratings and the war would fall apart before the military’s eyes.

This was meant to be a deathless perfect game that would be over in a day or two, but now 10,000 of their troops had gone berserk and it could devolve into a shootout between allies. If word of that nonsense got out, they would receive an onslaught of criticism from the civilians with too much time on their hands.

When the alternative was holding a war of words with the made-in-America housewives whose self-consciousness had been fattened to the limit, starting World War Three with those brown bear bastards fueled by vodka did not sound so bad. They were a formidable foe, but they understood the rules of the battlefield.

(…It’s all over…)

In the end, there was no threat of the world being split between east and west. Losing here would not allow anyone to trample all over the United States and it would not get their families and lovers killed back home.

They were not facing a precipice. And that may have been why the large black man and the others did not give this their absolute all. In a game of chicken without a cliff, you could slam on the brakes at any time.

Would they wash their hands of the berserk unit and withdraw, or would they stop the berserk unit despite the danger of misunderstandings?

The large black man slapped the back of his head with his glove-like hand.

“…Relay this to the troops: Those bastards still haven’t taken the pacifiers out of their mouths, so let’s slap them upside the head and wake them up.”

“Colonel.”

“It would be easy to abandon the berserk unit and prove we’re still of sound mind. But if they drag the locals into this and there are victims, we’ll be criticized for not stopping them when we could! ''It doesn’t matter if these are the people of Kingdom F we’re talking about!! Killing as a strategic action in accordance with a plan is entirely different from killing as a chaotic and barbaric act!!''”

“…”

“If it comes to that, it’ll be more than just the liberals in Congress criticizing us. What about Free Feather, the war bereaved families association? No, this goes beyond just one country. The UN General Assembly which includes more than 180 nations and regions will start talking about war crimes and crimes against humanity! If it gets that bad, any groundwork we laid will be null and void. And if they can claim they’re protecting civilians from the berserk unit, Russia might get involved. I don’t care if World War Three breaks out here, but I will not let it happen with us as the villains!!”

“Sir, I marvel at your foresight. Now, what are your real motivations?”

“I’ve already bought a farm in Colorado to live out my old age in retirement. Hunting in the forest, fly fishing in the river, golf all day long, and even a natural hot spring. It will be a private paradise for me and my family!! I spent ages slowly building up to that dream, so I would rather die than have it taken from me by throwing me into Guantanamo just to pacify the TV viewers in their living rooms. I’ve paid my dues to our nation and I’ve followed every last rule since I was a new recruit. It wasn’t easy having a shootout with my own brothers in arms when they disobeyed orders and attacked a jewelry store after we secured that desert nation. So why does my career have to end with some idiots going nuts and getting me thrown into a cell smaller than a phone booth where I only get beans and salt soup to eat!?”

They made a swift decision.

The western division, who were safe here but found their futures at risk, took action.

“Haul out everything we have!! Including the land SDI…yes, the carbon gas laser!!”

“Isn’t that the landmark weapon meant to pry open the western gate?”

“It would only get in the way when we withdraw. If we start breaking it down and loading the pieces on transport planes now, we would never make it in time. We’ll scrap it on site and incinerate it until it can’t be captured and analyzed. They’ll be mad as hell if we report we abandoned it, ''so make sure we use this confusion to properly dispose of that bulky weapon.'' Okay, let’s go!!”

Destroying a large mass of technology would earn them a harsh scolding, but if a weapon was damaged in the fighting and they disposed of it so that it could not be analyzed, they would actually be praised or it.

The aide breathed a somewhat exasperated sigh.

The life of an upstart required some clever solutions at times, but this young man had not enlisted to see this.

“Sir. Won’t your very outdoorsy hobbies not sit well with your wannabe New Yorker of a wife?”

“Drop the ‘wannabe’ next time, boy. And don’t worry. I’ll give her a tablet with an Amalon Premiere account. She’ll be able to shop and watch videos as much as she wants.”