All the way from the north to the south of River Valley Province, Bear Fang had campaigned alongside Lord Gold Fang, overrunning countless survivor outposts, yet he had never run into such a tough nut to crack.
That sky-blotting barrage of rockets, in particular, had terrified the wits out of him. He had pulled back a full five kilometers before he finally began to catch his breath.
A column of nearly a thousand men halted in a mountain hollow.
The surrounding vegetation was dense, providing excellent concealment, while several nearby slopes offered wide fields of fire and were easy to defend and hard to attack. It was a good spot to pitch camp.
Watching the badly shaken Bear Fang, Tumen sighed inwardly, gathered his composure, and stepped forward to offer comfort.
"...There is no need for panic, my lord. While those rockets are destructive, they lack accuracy, and their effective range cannot match our 100mm artillery. From where we are now, there is no way they can reach you.
"As long as we dig trenches and construct bomb shelters and tunnels in our positions, no matter how powerful those rockets are, they will not harm the men inside."
Underestimating the strength of the enemy's resistance had been his own mistake.
In Tumen's initial assessment, the New Alliance had held the southern slope of Pine Valley for less than twenty-four hours. At best, they could have scratched out a few shallow trenches. Once their artillery finished pounding the hill, a single infantry rush ought to have planted their banner. There had been no need to waste time digging trenches on their own side.
The real uphill battle was supposed to be the outskirts of Qingshi County afterward.
Yet what he had never anticipated was that the enemy's resistance far exceeded his wildest calculations. By the time he realized something was amiss, the enemy had already recovered from the assault and retaliated with a wave of indirect fire against his own positions.
It had utterly stunned them.
Panting heavily, Bear Fang cursed,
"Damn it... The intelligence was dead wrong! They have far more than a single thousand-man unit! There are easily a thousand men crouched on that high ground alone!"
Tumen forced a bitter smile.
"That seems unlikely, my lord... Judging by their volume of fire, there are probably only two or three hundred men. However, they are well stocked with ammunition—they must have brought excessive supplies. Their machine guns never seemed to stop."
"Either way, this isn't an enemy we can handle on our own!"
Spitting out the words, Bear Fang immediately summoned his signalman, snatched the walkie-talkie from his chest, and reported the situation to the rear.
"...Those dog-fucking mole rats have too much firepower! The moment our men charged, they called down support! In just a few minutes, they pounded our positions with at least a thousand shells! Thank fuck I didn't send everyone in!
"There's definitely more than a squad dug in there—it's at least a thousand-man unit! Report this to the chieftain! We need reinforcements!"
After roaring spit-flecked fury into the radio, Bear Fang tossed it back onto his subordinate's chest.
Watching the millenarian, Tumen, standing nearby, offered a suggestion.
"It does us no good to sit here waiting idly. Why not send two centuries back to the positions we just evacuated and dig proper earthworks? When reinforcements arrive, we will be able to launch our next offensive immediately. Without fortifications, we will have nowhere to hide if their shells come down again."
Tumen paused for a moment before continuing.
"The New Alliance soldiers are most likely reinforcing their shelters in Qingshi County right now. The longer this drags on, the worse it is for us... We have no time to waste."
Bear Fang turned the thought over and decided his counselor had a point.
That idiot Lion Fang had dragged his feet in Qingshi County for four whole months, and all the defenses he had built ended up handed to those wretched mole rats on a silver platter.
If time dragged on and the enemy fortified the place, even if he managed to take Qingshi Town later, he might not have many brothers left alive.
He was still eyeing the copper mine in Yuanxi Town.
To swallow that copper mine, he needed men at his back.
"Fine, we do as you say!"
With that, Bear Fang summoned a centurion.
"You! Take your men back to the previous ridge and dig out the trenches! If you don't have trenches dug out to hold three thousand men in three days, I'll string you up from a pole!"
The centurion knew very well how vicious Bear Fang's methods were, showing zero mercy to enemies and subordinates alike. Though ten thousand objections screamed in his heart, he dared not disobey, answering stiffly,
"Yes, sir!"
***
Pine Valley.
On a ridge not far from the southern slope, Ye Shi propped up his sniper rifle, peering through an eight-power scope at the northern hilltop two kilometers away. Surprise flickered across his eyes.
"Whoa! Those bandits actually came back?"
And they were digging trenches on the mountain!
Binoculars in hand, Kuang Feng analyzed the situation calmly.
"Looks like they realized they can't chew through this high ground in the short term."
"Well, that works out fine! When it comes to a war of attrition, we've never backed down from anyone. I'm just worried they can't afford it." Ye Shi grinned and fired a shot toward the opposite side.
"Can you even hit anything from that far?"
Ye Shi cycled the bolt, ejecting a smoking casing.
"Nope!"
Kuang Feng: "Then what the hell are you shooting for?"
Ye Shi chuckled.
"Doesn't matter! They can't spot us from this distance anyway. I'm just rattling their cages."
Kuang Feng shot him a sideways glance through his binoculars.
"Careful an artillery shell doesn't come flying your way in a minute."
About to take a second shot, Ye Shi instantly shivered.
"Holy crap, they wouldn't play that dirty, would they?"
Kuang Feng replied noncommittally,
"Don't know. Go ask them."
Scoring a hit at over two kilometers was unrealistic, but scaring them was no problem at all.
The bullet kicked up a plume of dirt on the opposite earthen slope with a sharp crack, giving the marauders working nearby a violent fright.
Thinking the enemy had launched an assault, the man hollered in gibberish, and a whole swarm of them scrambled frantically to the reverse slope, throwing themselves flat and bracing for attack.
The barrage of rockets Mosquito had unleashed earlier had turned them into startled birds; the slightest rustle in the grass made them jump out of their skins.
Ye Shi waited for quite a while, but none of them emerged from behind the reverse slope. He couldn't help smacking his lips.
"Are they really that chicken?"
Kuang Feng frowned through his binoculars.
"They probably plan to dig a trench from the reverse slope first..."
Uncertain of the sniper's position, the marauders dared not show their heads, though the digging didn't stop.
Kuang Feng even noticed a squad dispatched to fell nearby trees, using timber stakes to reinforce the trenches.
These marauders were getting smarter!
On the other side of the front-line positions, Lao Bai and Fang Chang, also peering through binoculars, spotted the situation on the opposite ridge.
"...Once they finish digging those trenches, the next offensive will probably begin."
"Then let's loosen the soil for them."
A wicked smirk curled on Lao Bai's lips. He gestured to the brothers behind him, and a player nodded in understanding before jogging toward the rear of the position.
Just half an hour ago, New Alliance logistics personnel had trekked over mountains and ridges to deliver ammunition to the front. Beyond 7mm rounds, there were two 88mm mortars and eight crates of mortar shells.
Because there was no intact road along the way, vehicles made sluggish progress, so supply transport relied almost entirely on two feet.
However, thanks to the widespread use of KV-1 exoskeletons, the individual carrying capacity of New Alliance soldiers was formidable.
Strength-type players in particular could trek long distances hauling three times their body weight in supplies without breaking a sweat. The only real drawbacks were charging batteries and eating.
Yet these were minor issues.
Once the road from Qingshi County to Pine Valley was cleared, New Alliance logistics could be handed over to trucks.
With the arrival of heavy fire support and supplies, the players had quickly used shovels and dirt-filled sandbags to construct a simple mortar pit.
Now it came in handy.
Calculating the distance to the target, Lao Bai gave the order at once.
"Mortar squad, heads up! Two point one kilometers ahead, one salvo!"
Two crisp thumps sounded from behind the position.
A moment later, two thick plumes of smoke erupted on the northern slope of Pine Valley, and the marauders digging trenches dropped flat to the ground.
Fang Chang tracked the impact points through his binoculars.
"A bit off. Extending another hundred meters should do it."
Lao Bai adjusted his command.
"Adjust fire forward one hundred meters! Dispersed fire, six salvos—hammer them!"
The mortar battery fired again.
This time, the shells landed squarely on the opposite ridge.
The marauders working on the fortifications took a direct hit. Flattening themselves against the dirt, none dared lift their heads, curling up and rolling down the slope.
After six salvos were spent, Lao Bai ordered a ceasefire.
On the smoke-shrouded ridge in the distance, not a soul remained visible.
"...Looks like they pulled back." Fang Chang observed through his binoculars for a moment, clicking his tongue. "By the way, normally speaking, what should you do if you get shelled while digging trenches?"
"In an encounter, you dig a few foxholes first, then connect them laterally in zigzags. Or you start digging from the foot of the slope upward, and once you reach the high ground, you fan the trenches out to both sides..."
Staring at the enemy position two kilometers away, Lao Bai narrowed his eyes. "We hit them with a salvo every few dozen minutes, and once night falls, we rush over and catch them with their pants down!"
Fang Chang's eyes lit up.
"Great idea. They'll never expect us to dare leave our trenches!"
That earlier rocket strike had shown the Fang clan their firepower; before front-line trenches were established, they wouldn't dare push large forces forward.
The opposite ridge could hold two or three hundred men at most. With Scavenger spearheading the charge, rushing up to slaughter them and pull back would be a breeze!
Lao Bai chuckled mischievously.
"When the time comes, we'll plant a couple bundles of explosives in their trenches. When they go back up to dig, we'll give them a nice little surprise!"
"Hahaha! We'll blow their latrines sky-high!"
Sinister laughter drifted from the trench.
Those cackles sounded entirely like those of villains.
Just as the two were whispering their plans for the nighttime operation, the VM screen on Lao Bai's forearm suddenly flashed.
"Message from headquarters... Let me see. Damn it!"
Seeing Lao Bai's reaction, Fang Chang asked quickly,
"What happened?"
"The mission changed... In two hours, the Death Corps is rotating in to relieve us." Lao Bai spoke with an expression of pure misery.
They had agreed to hold out here for forty-eight hours, yet before morning had even ended, the transfer order arrived.
He strongly suspected that because they had fought too well, the damn dev was deliberately targeting them.
Fang Chang gave an odd look.
"What about us?"
"Headquarters ordered us to return to Dawn City to refit... Said there's a harder, more exciting mission waiting for us after dark."
Glancing at the enemy position in the distance, Lao Bai's face was painted with regret.
"The night raid will have to be left to Brother Edge and his guys."
***
Xizhou City.
Sixin District, inside the main tent of the Fang clan.
Listening to his subordinates' reports from the front line, Gold Fang sat on his bone-carved throne, his dark-green face overcast with storm clouds.
Losing two hundred men in a single morning was something he had never imagined, and what surprised him even more was that those blue mole rats were equipped with such a volume of artillery.
He knew very well his men's habit of running their mouths. A thousand shells in a few minutes was absolute exaggeration.
The actual truth was probably around one or two hundred.
Even so, that was more than enough to demand his serious attention.
Tapping his index finger lightly on the armrest, he said in a low voice,
"Deploy the tanks."
Unlike the Snake Clan, the Fang clan's tanks were not distributed to individual millenarian units. Instead, they were organized into an independent tank company serving as the chieftain's personal guard, answering directly to him.
These behemoths were enormously valuable; every loss was irreplaceable, and they broke down constantly. Unless driven to the absolute brink, he would not risk sending them to the front.
Now, however, he had no choice.
Standing to the side, Dillon murmured,
"The New Alliance has aircraft. Rushing our tanks forward is not a wise move. No matter how thick the frontal armor of a Conqueror 10 is, the top remains a blind spot. Before sending our tanks, we must resolve the air-defense problem..."
Gold Fang asked heavily,
"Then what better idea do you have?"
Dillon considered for a moment.
"We need anti-aircraft weaponry. Can we find a way to import a batch from the Free State of Bugra? Anti-aircraft guns, for instance."
The expeditionary force had possessed anti-air weapons to counter the air force of the Great Rift Valley, but they were few in number and had drawn heavy attention from Rift artillery and aircraft, leaving almost none behind.
Yet Dillon faintly recalled that when the expeditionary army first began to collapse and everyone looked out for themselves, a batch of supplies containing anti-air equipment had been offloaded to the Free State of Bugra by a myriad-commander.
Though he didn't know how many dinars that fellow had sold them for, they shouldn't have been too expensive.
If they could buy some back, dealing with those small planes would be more than manageable.
However...
Sitting nearby, Gold Fang bluntly shattered his hopes.
"We're out of money."
Dillon froze, staring at him.
"Didn't we still have two million dinars?"
Gold Fang coughed, his voice dull.
"There were too many places that needed money. It was spent long ago... Enough, drop the subject. Can we solve this problem ourselves? Relying on others for help won't get us anywhere."
Why had he become a marauder?
Certainly not to hoard money and run a business.
A portion of the plundered riches had gone into weapons, but most had been spent on pleasure.
The slaves locked in the dungeons were scrawny as dried husks. They served well enough as labor or emergency rations, and the few with any looks had mostly been broken. As the chieftain of the Fang clan, he obviously wouldn't stoop to picking through his subordinates' leftovers; it was undignified, and he lacked the stomach for it anyway.
When it came to indulgence, synthetic androids that could take any beating without breaking and carefully cultivated clones suited his tastes far better.
As for those survivors in the northern suburbs?
From the start, he had never taken those scrap-picking scavengers seriously, which was why he had only sent a single millenarian unit to deal with them.
Gold Fang admitted he had made a strategic misjudgment, but regret was meaningless now. Spent money wouldn't magically reappear.
As for plundering it back, that was unrealistic, especially at this critical juncture.
Standing beside him, Dillon stared wide-eyed, feeling a ringing ache in his head.
Spent? All of it?!
That was two million dinars!
Even if Legion dinars didn't stretch far in River Valley Province, they couldn't have vanished so fast, could they?!
Wulun, who had remained silent the entire time, couldn't help rubbing his brow, gaining a fresh appreciation for his ally's stupidity.
Had partnering with the Bone Chewer tribe not been the decree of the Holy Son, he would have begun questioning the point of propping up such an idiotic teammate.
Seeing his counselor lapse into silence, Gold Fang knew his spending pace had been a bit absurd, so he gave a dry cough and said,
"Don't worry, my friend. In another two months, when the weather warms up, we'll have the slaves grow spirit leaf to sell to those profiteers. That stuff is far more useful than dinars."
"Two months?! We can't fight them for that long!"
Dillon took a deep breath and pressed on,
"Purchasing equipment is off the table for now. If all else fails... we can take a few trucks and weld quad-mount 12mm heavy machine guns onto them. That will have to do.
"This war cannot be dragged out. Their industrial capacity likely exceeds my expectations! If we let them establish a firm foothold in Qingshi County, driving them out will be near impossible.
"Once our anti-air trucks are converted, they must deploy to the front alongside the tank unit immediately, concentrating our forces to launch an offensive on the New Alliance positions! Even if we trade away a few tanks, we must bite through their lines! That is our best course of action!"
Listening to his counselor's recommendation, Gold Fang frowned.
Hearing that they might lose a few tanks made his heart bleed before the armor had even rolled out.
Those tanks were his treasures.
He would rather lose a few more cannon fodder than have a single scratch come to his prized possessions. On the wasteland, human life was cheap, but some things couldn't be bought for any price.
"Those anti-air trucks... do they actually work?"
Hearing that, Dillon nearly coughed up blood from sheer fury.
Whose damn fault was this in the first place?!
Standing to the side, Wulun sighed and chimed in,
"...The propeller planes of the New Alliance fly slowly. As long as the fire net is dense enough, shooting them down when they dive is not difficult.
"I believe your counselor's advice is sound. The longer this war is prolonged, the more disadvantageous it becomes for you."
Seeing that the apostle from the Church of the Torch agreed as well, Gold Fang still hesitated, but he knew a decision was unavoidable.
After long contemplation, Gold Fang slapped his right hand down on the armrest and made his call.
"We do as you say!"
***
No. 81 Steel Mill.
Parked in the center of the brand-new workshop was a large aircraft nearly twenty meters long with a wingspan close to thirty meters.
Neat rows of countersunk rivets lined the nearly upright fuselage and the straight wings. The wings were cantilevered low-wings, their leading edges fitted with two symmetrical electric motors.
The tail assembly consisted of a cantilevered horizontal stabilizer and a single vertical fin, with a cabin entrance situated near the rear ventral section.
The entire fuselage and wings were crafted from A3 aerospace aluminum, carrying an immense price tag.
Compared to the wooden gliders produced by Goblin Technology, this craft looked significantly more like a proper airplane...
From its outward appearance, Chu Guang could roughly tell it was modeled after a World War II C-47 twin-engine propeller transport.
Of course, the differences between the two were considerable.
Perhaps worried that the electric motors lacked sufficient power, the players from No. 81 Steel Mill had installed an additional motor and propeller at the nose, modifying the original twin-engine design into a trimotor.
No weapons were fitted to the craft, and even the cockpit had only bare wires and a single stripped-down seat.
Yet that did not prevent the players of No. 81 Steel Mill from pinning high hopes on this great bird. They had even given it a name—
The H-1 "Dragonfly" General-Purpose Aircraft!
Standing in the workshop, Chu Guang walked a circle around the plane, nodded approvingly, and turned to the two players standing beside him.
"Can this plane fly?"
Brother Toilet Cable and Brother Levin exchanged subtle looks.
In the end, Brother Levin gave a dry cough and explained,
"Respected Administrator, this aircraft is... still in the testing phase. It will be difficult to put into service in the short term."
Ever since their rival, Goblin Technology, produced gliders, they had been pondering how to build an airplane of their own.
However, because they started late, the players with relevant expertise had largely been poached by Goblin Technology to work on refining the "W-series" aircraft. The talent they could hire was limited, so progress had been slow.
The prototype parked in the workshop was the fruit of over two months of labor. They had only just finished running the wiring and installing the powertrain; putting it into actual operational service would take more time.
Though a bit disappointed, Chu Guang said nothing.
Rushing such matters was useless anyway.
To achieve this much in such a short time, his players had already done remarkably well.
"Roughly how long until it can be put into service?"
Faced with the Administrator's question, Brother Toilet Cable hesitated a moment.
"Within a month shouldn't be an issue... If things go fast, maybe half a month. It depends on the test-flight results."
A month.
That should make it in time.
Just then, an idea crossed Chu Guang's mind, and he spoke up.
"Is there a way to mount a 37mm cannon on the side of the fuselage?"
Brother Toilet Cable and Brother Levin's eyes lit up simultaneously.
"Mount a 37mm cannon on the side? You mean a design like a gunship?"
"We didn't consider that when designing this aircraft, but A3 aluminum has very high structural strength... I think it shouldn't be a problem. We can try!"
Chu Guang nodded.
"If it can't handle a 37mm cannon, switching to a 20mm is fine too. A month from now, our ground forces should be pushing into the urban district of Xizhou City.
"Urban terrain is complex with far too much cover. Artillery and dive-bombing have limited effectiveness. We need a support weapon capable of efficiently and precisely eliminating Fang clan ground forces to coordinate with our ground troops for the final sweep.
"As for the specifics of the design, I'll leave the research to you two."
Right then, Chu Guang received a message from Xiao Qi: the Burning Corps had returned from the front by train and was regrouping outside the military camp north of Dawn City.
Leaving No. 81 Steel Mill, Chu Guang headed straight for the barracks.
The moment he saw Chu Guang, Vannus hurried over to greet him.
"How is it? Can that transport plane be used?"
Chu Guang shook his head.
"Not for the moment, but that won't get in our way."
Vannus froze, not quite understanding his meaning.
Without transport planes, how could they fly troops over the obstacle?
Chu Guang offered no explanation. He simply turned his gaze toward the airfield not far away, and toward the dozen or so pilots regrouping beside it.
To fly their aircraft back alive, those pilots had already proven their mettle.
Pausing for a moment, Chu Guang continued,
"Even without transport planes, gliders will do."
At worst, they would just fly a few extra sorties!
Chapter 313