Free Web NovelA contact, on a rainy night in an abandoned warehouse, handed her a pack of dry rations and an encrypted communication frequency table.
“From today on, your code name is ‘prisoner’,”
the contact said. frёeωebɳovel.com
“Your job is simple: turn everything you see, hear, and touch on the front lines into intelligence we can use.”
It was as simple as that.
Pavel received tactical training, though at her level back then, it was more like “systematizing what she already knew” rather than “teaching her anything new.”
She was responsible for transmitting war intelligence, sending information on front-line troop deployments, supply routes, and commander rotations through encrypted channels.
Occasionally, she would also receive special missions.
For example, “conveniently” making a shipment of arms disappear during a supply transfer.
Or “accidentally” leaving a forged order in a certain officer's tent.
Or even burning a noble officer to death.
She did it well.
So well that by the time the Night of Calderburg arrived, Pavel had already risen to a significant position within the Fire of Freedom.
The code name “prisoner” carried weight in the organization's Kaldburg branch.
Because she was useful enough.
Someone who could survive the hell of the Punishment Camp and consistently output high-quality intelligence would be valued by any organization.
Her handler began giving her more authority—higher-level communication frequencies, more sensitive mission details, and occasionally even snippets of the organization's overall strategy.
Though at that time, the Fire of Freedom was already at its wit's end in the entire Kaldburg region.
The war had crushed everything.
Not just armies and civilians, but underground organizations as well.
The Fire of Freedom's network in Kaldburg once covered every key node from the front lines to the rear—they had people in supply depots, communication stations, and even the Gendarmerie.
But as the front lines shifted back and forth, these nodes were destroyed one by one.
Crushed by the war itself.
Supply depots were razed by artillery fire, and the informants inside turned to ash along with everyone else.
Communication stations were blown up in night raids, and the operators responsible for passing intelligence disappeared in the flames along with the entire building.
The inside man in the Gendarmerie was executed by his own people during a “purification operation.”
His identity hadn't been exposed; his superior simply needed a scapegoat to explain why the recent desertion rate was so high.
Yet, the support the organization gave her never ceased.
Survival conditions in the Punishment Camp were hellish.
Rations were never enough, medicine was always in short supply, and parts were always scavenged from the mechs of the dead.
For a private in the Punishment Camp with no background or backing, the average survival time under normal circumstances was no more than three months.
Yet Pavel stayed there for nearly a year.
During that year, although her thug-iv was a wreck, she could always manage to get barely usable replacement parts at the most critical moments.
Her rations were meager, but they never truly ran out.
When she was at her limit, medicine from “who knows where” would always appear on her bunk.
These were not coincidences.
The Fire of Freedom had its people in the Punishment Camp.
Not many, but enough.
They wouldn't reveal their identities or contact her directly; they just silently ensured in the shadows that “prisoner” wouldn't die before completing her mission.
The support of the Fire of Freedom was instrumental in her holding out until the Night of Calderburg.
That was a fact.
Pavela never denied this.
But now—
She looked down at Igor at her feet, then glanced at the «N.o.v.e.l.i.g.h.t» corpse in the alley, a layer of coldness growing in her eyes.
The “Fire of Freedom” seemed to have betrayed the promise they once made to her.
Pavela was never someone who could be easily kept in the dark.
During her time as a noble miss in the Empire, she hadn't truly been idle.
On the surface, she was the well-behaved adopted daughter of the Schwartz Family, her daily schedule consisting of nothing more than recovering from injuries, eating, being fed by Eleanor, being bombarded by Victoria's letters, and occasionally having meaningful conversations with Cecilia.
But Pavela's eyes had always been open.
The political situation of the Victorian Empire, the factional struggles, the attitudes of various forces toward the war on the Eastern Front—she didn't need to go out of her way to ask about these things, because the Schwartz Family hid nothing from her.
Eleanor was not the type to hide things from family.
At least within the scope of what she deemed “you should know,” she would explain things very clearly.
And while the Marquise was cold, her “education” of Pavela had never stopped since the day of the adoption.
Every dinner chat, every tea party critique, every seemingly casual question.
She was bit by bit stuffing the Empire's map of power into Pavela's head.
The political situation of the entire Empire unfolded before her like a map.
And on this map, two forces were engaged in a long-standing tug-of-war.
On one side was the Royal Research Institute.
The Institute advocated for the continuation of the war.
The reason was simple and disgusting—war brought them abundant research funding and experimental materials.
Every battle was a large-scale “field experiment,” every corpse sent back from the front was a “precious research sample,” and every new weapon tested on the battlefield meant the arrival of the next grant.
To them, peace was a loss.
A ceasefire meant budget cuts, project cancellations, and staff layoffs.
It meant that the massive research system they had meticulously built, fueled by war, would lose its reason for existence.
So they needed the war to continue.
On the other side was the Imperial Army General Staff Department.
The General Staff Department's attitude was exactly the opposite.
Because they knew the true state of the front lines better than anyone.
They were about to break.
The situation on the Eastern Front could no longer be summarized by the word “stalemate.”
This war had dragged on for too long.
Both sides were bleeding, both sides were being consumed, and both sides were approaching their respective limits of endurance.
While Victoriana's standing army was well-equipped and well-trained, humans are not steam engines; they cannot run indefinitely.
The rate of troop replenishment could not keep up with the rate of casualties; veterans were decreasing batch by batch, and the training cycle for new recruits was being shortened time and again.
Logistics supply lines were being stretched longer and longer, and the cost of transporting every ton of coal and every crate of ammunition from the rear to the front was climbing.
And for the Usar Union on the other side, the situation was not much better—but they had one variable that kept the General Staff Department awake at night.
A newly emerged commander.
A rising star.
Pavela did not know this person's name.
While the Schwartz Family's intelligence network was extensive, very little information regarding personnel changes in the Usar Military high command reached the Empire.
She only knew that in the past year, the Usar army on the Eastern Front seemed to have gained a new brain.
Tactics became more flexible, coordination became more precise, and the timing of several local counterattacks was nothing short of miraculous.
If not for the severe infighting within the Usar Union's command structure.
The generals sitting in the rear were busy undermining each other and fighting for credit, always pulling back at the most critical moments.
If the Imperial Army General Staff Department hadn't seized those openings created by the infighting to launch timely counterattacks.
The front lines might have already pushed into the Empire's interior.
