Hearts of Iron 4 Player's Guide to Save the Isekai World

Hearts and Minds

Three days later

Erich thought about his grandfather. He could never forget the old man brimming with smiles in his apartment block on a nondescript street in Brandenburg.

When Opa asks, Erich's parents turn a one-eighty and drive him away from his luxury West-Berlin home and to the last embers of Ost-Deutschland. Erich remembered how he kept himself well for his age; Never slouched, walked without support, and how he sugar-coated conscript, gulag, and conscript again in his stories. Erich remembered a somber atmosphere as he babbled about, at some point boasting twenty years of reunification when he was four. Grandpa was one of those hopeful bunch, doing their bit and entrusting the future to the next generation. The old man was what gave Erich hope ever since he was alone.

Time sped up, and he was fifteen. Everything was a haze back then, but Erich knew something changed in him. He remembered that rainy day at the local cemetery after the longest year of his life. The car parked outside the entrance, the chauffeur, and a similar black-suited man were with him as usual. There was nothing special about that day in particular. After a short stroll, he stopped at the grave that bore his grandfather's name, and his first thought was a pathetic man's attempt of seeing the good in people until the very end. Erich knew why he suddenly visited Opa's resting place, but when the wind blew the rain for a moment, he was glad because his escorts couldn't tell the difference between a droplet and a tear. Erich spun back to the stone path and never looked back. He couldn't forgive the old man for bringing him pain.

Erich was no better, pleasing himself in the underground shooting range at his personal Reichstag, firing more shots than he could count. The mechanism locked upward. Erich loaded another clip and pulled the arm back, springing it in. He shot five more rounds to the high-quality enchanted armor the Royal Knights lent at the end of the range. The Selbsladekarabiner 06AZ was a shorter version of the Selbstlader 1906 luger rifle. The nuances in the Infantry Equipment confirmed one of his hypotheses that the weapons reflected in it included variants, so it eased manufacturing, reliability, and resources a bit.

Comparative specifications appearing in his head stated the rifle was only 42.91-inch long, 10 millimeters shorter than the M1 Garand. Ministry Guards and Agents were initially Default templates because of time constraints and questions about readiness for elements beyond the King's control, so it was time to edit his default templates. But most of all, when the time comes that he needs to fight, he needs to know how to kill better; If it didn't penetrate, the sheer kinetic force was enough to stop them. The CIS and Ministry Guard was giving an orientation to their high command in preparation for becoming a feared organization.

Truthfully, it was an emotional issue. They were special — literally and symbolically. Justified pride like the ones the Royal Knights was going to cause rivalry. Nonetheless, they had experience with matchlock weapons and were the only local fighting force he could trust to carry a Gewehr 98. Just the G98 for now. If they can find the appeal in the Secret Service, then everyone's happy. If needed, they can bring a popular progressive and a hardliner to see the power of explosive mixtures in metal casings thrown a few kilometers away for five days straight.

"Give it to me. Will I make the cut?"

The instructor was an Angriffskorps operative, the CIS' paramilitary outfit. "I would say you've improved on distanced shooting, but it doesn't take much for a conscript to learn how to shoot straight. However, your mindset is on the right track. Sir, I recommend learning sword-fighting to accommodate your judo."

His eyes rolled as he took out his earplugs. His first time using judo in the world was flipping the Kingdom's Princess straight to the stone floor in a dungeon. There's a silver lining there somewhere, but it wasn't surviving. It was more on flipping the Kingdom's Princess straight to the stone floor of a dungeon part. Erich did what Ministers did best, being a pencil pusher. It's tedious as it sounds, but it's a whole lot better than committing the grave sin of dictating policy after being allowed to write a draft report. So he spent most of his time training and studying.