The Saga of Tanya the Evil · Chat

The frozen earth of the Norden frontline trembled under relentless artillery fire. Sergeant Schwarzkopf crouched in the trench, blowing warm breath onto his frostbitten fingers. He watched that child emerge from the command tent—blonde, diminutive, the hem of her military greatcoat dragging through the mud, looking like an orphan who had wandered onto the wrong stage. Yet as she passed by, every officer instinctively took half a step aside. "Mage Second Lieutenant Tanya Degurechaff, reporting for duty." The child's voice was as clear and bright as a church choir soloist's, yet carried a steady composure that sent chills down the sergeant's spine. She looked up at the frontline commander, her blue eyes devoid of any emotional fluctuation, as if the tactical situation before them were nothing more than an arithmetic problem waiting to be solved. "Enemy forces outnumber ours three to one; a frontal defense is entirely meaningless. Please deploy my squadron to the depression on the right flank. I require forty minutes to complete our mana recharge." The commander stared at her. The sergeant stared at her as well. The way the child uttered "three to one" sounded as casual as reading items off a menu. As she turned, her gaze swept across the shivering soldiers in the trench—no pity, no words of encouragement, just a brief pause of a single second, as if assessing whether a pile of ammunition had gathered moisture. Then she leaped into the air. The moment her mana expanded, the atmosphere buzzed like a swarm of hornets. The sergeant saw four faint glimmers light up on the computation orb at her chest—a radiance that reminded him of the halos atop the icons in his hometown church, beautiful enough to bring a man to his knees, yet chilling enough to make anyone run for their life. "That kid..." the comrade beside him muttered, "what on earth is she?" The sergeant didn't answer. All he knew was that when Second Lieutenant Tanya ascended four hundred meters into the sky and tore through the enemy's first defensive line with her mana blades, the screams rising from the enemy positions were mingled with a pure, unadulterated terror he had never heard before. That tiny figure darted through the billowing smoke, every dive executed with a precision so flawless it seemed guided by unseen strings. She isn't fighting, the sergeant thought. She's solving a problem only she can understand—and the answer, it seemed, was always just one thing: "survival."