It was already too late to explain that he was not from the Germanania Empire, and even if he could make it clear, the enemy would most likely not believe him.
All he could do now was shake off the enemy's pursuit and then consider the next step.
Whether to wipe out the enemy or find a way to escape by seaplane depended on the circumstances.
"Bang! Bang, bang, bang!"
A few more bullets landed near them.
"Are these guys the navy or the army?! There are way too many of them!"
Zhurong took out his rifle and folded the FMG9 into his jacket pocket.
"We can't fight them head-on; we'll fight a mobile battle. Let's go!"
The two of them exchanged fire while weaving through the jungle, trying to shake off the pursuing Leidenschaftlich soldiers.
However, the gunfire was too loud, and the island wasn't that big.
No matter how they ran, their position would be exposed.
Relying on the dense woods, the two of them kept up a guerrilla war against the enemy forces, trying their best not to expose their own position and avoiding the direction of the warships as much as possible.
After all, the power of naval guns was no joke.
"This won't work. The island is still too small; we can't escape at all."
Their physical stamina was not infinite, and if they kept running like this, they would be surrounded sooner or later.
"Damn it, we have to think of a way!"
Zhurong pressed a hand to his left arm, grazed by a bullet, while Violet helped him stop the bleeding and bandage the wound.
"Do you need me to break through the encirclement?" Violet raised her head and looked into his eyes. "That way you can escape."
"Silly girl, what are you thinking?" Zhurong stroked Violet's head. "I still promised to take you to see the vast world."
"They're nearby! Hurry up and chase them!"
The enemy's voices came from afar.
"Let's go. We have to shake this group off first!"
The two of them started running wildly again, but this time they didn't fire their guns.
When they ran into enemies face-to-face, Violet dealt with them directly with a knife.
Still, the small island was only so big. No matter how they ran, they couldn't get out.
Roughly estimating, there were about a hundred enemies, and more than forty had already been taken out. But Zhurong could no longer run.
After over an hour of running for their lives, his physical endurance had reached its limit.
Added to that, he had lost a lot of blood and had two wounds on his body.
Even if he managed to escape, given the current medical conditions on the island, he would either be dead or crippled.
Besides, he could tell.
He was the one dragging Violet down.
If it were only Violet, she could completely use her high mobility and monster strength to carve a bloody path.
She might even be able to breach the warship and take down all the enemies inside as well.
Yet she still had to protect Zhurong.
Without Violet, Zhurong would have died several times over already.
"Violet, let's split up into two groups," Zhurong said while running. "I'll suppress them from this side, and you circle around from the treetops to launch a sneak attack!"
"Okay!"
Violet had unconditional trust in Zhurong; even if he told her to carry out a suicide attack, she would execute it without a second thought.
The moment she left, a continuous burst of gunfire erupted from Zhurong's side.
That was the sound of an MG-15.
Violet sprinted at full speed, weaving through the woods at high speed like a phantom.
She held only two bayonets in her hands.
In just one minute, she bypassed the enemy's line of sight and rushed behind them.
One, two, three...
The silent slaughter began.
Twelve enemies were all decapitated within a mere dozen seconds.
All of this was accomplished with just two bayonets.
Confirming there were no enemies left, she immediately started running wildly again.
She was anxious, rushing back to where Zhurong had originally been.
The gunfire had stopped, and the woods were eerie and quiet.
The only sound was Violet's rapidly heaving breath...
"Ah, ah, ah!"
For the first time, she felt it.
Pain, sorrow, despair...
Before her lay Zhurong, shot in the chest.
His hand was still gripping the machine gun trigger, locked in a death grip...
The first time she met him, the first time they ate together, the first time they bathed, the first time they studied, the first time they hunted, the first time they fished, the first time...
Bits and pieces of the past half-year flashed through her mind.
Was it familial love, friendship, or something else entirely?
She rolled him over.
Enduring the agony, Violet shook Zhurong's body with trembling hands.
He didn't react at all.
She understood.
She understood what it felt like to lose the most important thing.
These emotions slowly blended together...
Finally transforming into fury mixed with sorrow!
"Ah, ah, ah, ah, ah!"
Violet's originally dark blue pupils instantly turned red, as crimson as blood-stained rubies.
"Cough! I'm not dead yet..."
"Ah? Huh?"
Violet was a bit dazed, looking down at Zhurong, who was smiling at her.
"The bullet hit this thing; I was just knocked out by the shock."
Zhurong pulled out the dented FMG9 from his jacket pocket.
"You look pretty when you're angry, too..."
He reached out and stroked Violet's cheek.
Dozens of seconds later, Zhurong slowly climbed up from the ground.
"Next, let's still split up. You go continue clearing out the enemy forces still searching for us on the island, and I'll find a way to deal with the warships on the sea."
Violet didn't answer, just staring right at him.
"Don't worry, how could I possibly die? Go on!" Zhurong rubbed the top of Violet's head.
"Mn..."
After separating, he dragged his injured body at a jog all the way back to the cave they had previously called home, and pulled out a main gun barrel of the battleship from earlier.
"This piece of junk is a real pain to deal with."
Using all sorts of methods to prop the gun barrel up at a suitable angle, he finally managed to shove a shell inside after exhausting all his strength.
"At this distance, it would be a ghost story if it missed!"
Zhurong pulled the firing lever, launching the shell.
"Boom!"
A deafening roar!
The gun barrel flew backward directly!
A 380mm semi-armor-piercing high-explosive shell flew out of the muzzle amidst a plume of thick smoke, slamming straight into the warship hundreds of meters away!
The flight time was less than a second as the massive projectile grazed the bow deck and plunged straight into the warship...
The shell tore all the way down from the deck, smashing straight into the boiler room.
The explosive charge, weighing up to 70 kilograms, detonated instantly, blowing the entire boiler room to smithereens!
The shockwave didn't stop at the boiler room; it surged upward.
The magazine and the fuel storage were all ignited, causing an even more violent secondary explosion.
All of this happened in the span of a single second, producing a most spectacular visual effect!
"Rumble, rumble, rumble!!!"
The destroyer-sized warship suffered a violent explosion, directly blowing the entire vessel into several sections!
A massive amount of debris and fragments flew everywhere, and the gun turrets on the ship got a firsthand taste of what space program for meatbags meant.
Crew members on another nearby warship were also caught in the blast; they either fell into the water or were injured by debris, and some were even sliced in half by metal fragments. The hull itself was heavily damaged by large chunks of wreckage.
Zhurong looked at the raging fire on the sea and revealed a gentle smile.
"It's not bad to have fireworks like this accompany me to the grave..."
He had already reached his limit due to excessive blood loss.
"What a pity. If I could have loaded one more round and sent the other ship away too, I might have actually survived..."
The gun turrets of the other warship finally reacted, aiming directly at the hill where Zhurong had fired from.
He put away the 380 main gun, found a rock to sit on at the mouth of the cave, and watched the flickering fire light on the warship's turret.
"I really want to eat homemade braised pork one more time..."
"Boom! Boom, boom!"
The smoke and dust kicked up by several exploding shells swallowed his figure whole...
After finishing their barrage, the surviving warship immediately weighed anchor, stoked its boilers, spun around with full horsepower, and fled the island like it was running for its life, vanishing over the horizon.
Not far away, Violet, who had just finished off the enemies on the island, also witnessed the entire process.
Her crimson pupils were filled with utter blankness.
A few seconds later, she ran desperately toward that cave—the cave with countless wonderful memories.
Not caring at all about being scratched by tree branches, she rushed toward it like a broken doll.
She sprinted to the mouth of the cave and began frantically digging through the pile of rubble for something.
Even though her hands were cut and her arms were dripping with blood, she didn't care in the slightest.
She had to find him.
After digging for a while, she tremblingly picked up a familiar wallet from the rubble. On the front of the wallet was a second-generation ID card, printed with that familiar face...
The wallet was incomplete; a piece of shrapnel had pierced right through the entire wallet and through the face on the ID card as well...
The midday sun hung high, and the island was eerily quiet.
Violet sat slumped amid the rubble with lifeless eyes.
Before her lay a mutilated corpse.
The corpse was missing its right arm and left foot, and its body was covered in bullet holes punched through by shrapnel.
The head didn't have many wounds, save for a few spots pierced by shrapnel.
That face still maintained a smile.
......
"Did I... cross over again?"
In a purely white space, Zhurong struggled to climb up from the ground.
"Where is this?"
No response.
"I... died?"
The white space began to vibrate violently.
"What's going on?"
Zhurong instantly felt a pulling force drag him out of that space.
Opening his eyes again, he found his perspective hovering above Violet's head.
"Is this... my corpse?"
Looking at the mutilated corpse in front of Violet, Zhurong experienced a swirl of mixed emotions.
"Am I in a spirit state?"
Zhurong tried waving his hand in front of Violet, making funny faces, and trying to hug her, but none of it had any effect.
"So this is what they call being separated by the boundary between the living and the dead..."
Zhurong sat cross-legged in mid-air, lowering his head to look at Violet, who sat in a daze beside his corpse.
"Right, let me test if the system still works."
Zhurong tried purchasing a bullet from the system.
"Jingle bell..."
A 9x19mm pistol cartridge dropped onto the exact spot Zhurong specified.
"It works!"
Zhurong exchanged a large number of forks from the system, designating specific locations for them to form Chinese characters:
"I'M NOT DEAD"
However, Violet didn't notice the forks on the ground.
"Oh, my silly girl, pay a little attention to your surroundings." Zhurong in his soul state covered his face in resignation.
After a brief moment of thought, Zhurong materialized an empty pistol magazine right above Violet's head.
Thud!
A nice, solid headshot.
Violet looked in a daze at the magazine that had dropped to the ground.
As her field of vision widened, she saw the forks scattered across the ground.
Looking closer, some of the forks had been arranged to spell out three Chinese characters.
"I'm not dead?"
Violet's pupils, which had previously lost their highlight, suddenly lit up.
"Zhurong, is that you?!"
Clatter.
An undamaged ID card fell to the ground.
"It's you! It really is you! You're still... Waaahhh, sob, sob, sob!!"
Violet collapsed onto the ground and burst into loud crying.
Zhurong quietly floated right beside her.
After crying for a good while, Violet finally calmed down.
As the sun gradually dipped below the horizon, Zhurong produced a few canned goods from the system and placed them on the ground for Violet.
Having gone hungry for half a day, Violet wiped away her tears, pulled out her Swiss Army knife, and set to work vigorously prying open the cans.
Zhurong, now having some free time, tapped open the system's notification tab.
"Good grief, dozens of notifications."
"First time destroying a World War I light cruiser.
Reward: Points, BV-238 modified version x1."
"Single-handedly destroyed a World War I light cruiser.
Reward: 200Hz-class telekinesis."
"First time destroying a biplane seaplane.
Reward: 800 points, one Bofors-Hazemeyer anti-aircraft gun emplacement."
"First time killing a Junior Mage.
Reward: Mana aptitude +10%, Comprehensive Compendium of Junior Spells."
"First time......"
"Wait a minute, a Junior Mage?"
Although alchemy appeared in the original work of *Violet Evergarden*, magic and mages were never mentioned there. Zhurong hadn't expected to run into a Junior Mage so quickly.
Perhaps it was the captain or first mate of that cruiser.
Or maybe some unlucky soul sent away by that 380mm semi-armor-piercing high-explosive shell of his.
All system rewards were stored in the form of mail and required a click to claim before they would be issued.
Zhurong first claimed a few rewards that didn't take up much space.
Such as the mana aptitude and the compendium of junior spells, 200Hz telekinesis, a Hector Plasma Macrocannon precision strike beacon, a bunch of random canned goods, several submachine guns, light machine guns, and a few World War II rocket launchers. (It seemed like some incredible things had snuck in there.)