A cold bayonet tapped against his cheek twice.
Wabu, who had been playing dead on the ground, knew he could no longer hide. With a resigned sigh, he finally opened his eyes.
"Don't shoot..."
He slowly moved his hands to either side of his head, palms facing upward to show he was unarmed.
The soldier holding the rifle wasted no breath on him. He merely kicked away the rifle lying beside Wabu and looked down at him coldly.
"Get up."
Wabu complied meekly, scrambling up from the ground with agile haste. Clasping his hands behind his head, he followed the soldier toward the New Alliance's positions.
A few hours earlier, a drone had flipped Centurion Bagro's tank. Charging alongside the armored column, Wabu had been knocked unconscious on the spot by the explosion.
The comrades around him had suffered catastrophic casualties. Those who weren't dead were missing arms and legs, filling the air with agonized wailing and shrieking.
He was one of the fortunate ones.
Perhaps thanks to his awakening, he had suffered only superficial scrapes. By the time Bear Fang led his thousand-man unit in an assault up the ridge, Wabu had already come to.
Even so, Wabu hadn't stood up right away.
Watching the men ahead tumble down the slope one after another, he feared being shoved forward to plug the line, so he had simply squeezed his eyes shut and continued to play dead.
Once his eyes closed, however, he had accidentally drifted off. When he woke again, the comrades who had previously charged up the hill in relentless waves were already scrambling over one another to flee back down...
Marched at bayonet-point with his hands clamped behind his head, Wabu finally set foot atop this insurmountable ridge—though as a prisoner of war.
Quite a crowd was garrisoned here.
The New Alliance was fortifying its positions. Some captives had been put to work digging artillery pits, while others crouched tremblingly in a shell-pocked clearing.
Seeing those men shoveling dirt, Wabu felt a jolt of terror in his chest.
Did the New Alliance plan to bury them alive?
On second thought, though, he realized that made no sense. Even if they intended to bury people, they wouldn't do it atop the high ground; they would bury them down at the foot of the slope.
Campfires also dotted the mountain ridge to the north. It seemed the New Alliance's main force had already occupied that position as well.
Stealing a glance behind him, he felt a flicker of despair take root, and he began to bitterly regret listening to those rumors and rushing off to join the Bone Chewer Tribe.
There was no endless wine and meat here, no curvaceous female captives, and no boundless treasure.
For nearly six months, all he had seen was rat droppings covering the ground, rotting wood floating in drainage ditches, and choking mouthfuls of green wheat and ram horn potatoes... back in the Free State of Bugra, that sort of garbage was fit only for slaves and scavengers.
He had come to make a fortune, not to serve as cannon fodder.
If he had known conditions here were this miserable, nothing could have persuaded him to come!
"Go crouch over there."
Hearing the bark from behind, Wabu's wandering thoughts snapped back. Daring no defiance, he shuffled over obediently and squatted alongside the other prisoners.
Here, he spotted quite a few familiar faces.
A marauder who also hailed from the Free State of Bugra stared at him in disbelief, whispering under his breath, "...Wabu? You're alive?"
Looking thoroughly disheveled, Wabu muttered back, "I was knocked out by a blast, just came to... What the hell happened to you guys?"
A bitter expression spread across the man's face.
"We stormed the ridge, but took awful losses. The New Alliance mounted an immediate counterattack. The mountain was crawling with them everywhere..."
Over the next ten minutes, he recounted the entire battle—including the 'artillery' hovering right overhead and the trenches reeking of scorched flesh...
Listening to the tale, cold sweat broke out all over Wabu.
Just then, an officer walked over.
The man recounting the story clamped his mouth shut instantly, and the quiet murmurs throughout the group died away at once.
The officer exchanged a few words with the soldiers guarding the prisoners. Soon after, one of the soldiers strode briskly over and stood before the captives.
"We need two prisoners here. It's a task personally assigned by the Administrator. Cooperate and do well, and your sentence will be reduced. Any volunteers?"
The prisoners looked at one another, but no one dared step forward. Instead, they shrank back in fright, dreading that this 'special task' meant being boiled into hot pot or having their organs harvested.
After all, that was the sort of thing they themselves routinely did.
Wabu was equally terrified out of his wits, but hearing that his sentence could be reduced, he swallowed hard and tremblingly raised his hand.
"I... I'll do it..."
The officer standing beside the soldier looked at him.
"Name."
"Wabu," he answered promptly.
"One of Golden Fang's direct retainers?"
"No..." Wabu answered nervously. "I... I come from the Free State of Bugra. I used to be a bounty hunter."
The officer nodded without another word, made a couple of scribbles in his notebook, and gave a crisp wave of his hand.
"Follow me."
...
Though the fighting had ended before midday, clearing the battlefield dragged on until the sun dipped below the horizon.
Not every marauder had surrendered with their hands raised. A portion had fled into the pine forest to hide, while others had lain motionless beneath corpses, playing dead.
Chu Guang delegated the clearing operations to the Second Corps and several novice corps below Level 5.
Most of these corps had been formed recently and hadn't even recruited up to their roster caps, but they held no shortage of players with real potential.
Whether they were particularly useful right now or not, they were worth nurturing.
As for the frontline corps, Chu Guang led them to the northern ridge to remodel the marauders' defensive works while taking possession of the stockpiles stored there.
Across the entire engagement, thirty trucks had been captured, along with the supplies packed inside them.
These trucks were the standard transport vehicles of the Legion's expeditionary forces, outfitted with mid-mounted high-horsepower locomobiles. Their payload capacity and off-road capability slightly outperformed the New Alliance's domestically developed Electric Mule, and their operating costs were lower. On the downside, their maneuverability was poorer and their engine roar was ear-splitting.
Such trucks were well-suited for large-scale, long-distance transport, such as cross-provincial merchant caravans. Chu Guang intended to allocate half of them to the Merchant Guild and repair the rest to keep as strategic reserves.
Aside from the trucks, what delighted Chu Guang most was that of the twenty-seven Conqueror tanks, ten could actually be repaired!
As for the remaining unfixable wrecks, barring catastrophic incidents like detonated ammo racks or ruptured fuel lines that had burned them to shells, their turrets or engines could still be stripped and salvaged for parts.
Furthermore, the captured infantry gear—Ripper rifles, Falcon assault rifles, Pu-9 submachine guns, Panzerfaust rocket launchers, shotguns, light and heavy machine guns, 60mm mortars, and the like—completely filled two storehouses.
Equipment and supplies sufficient to arm half a division were now absorbed into the New Alliance's arsenal.
Although players were reluctant to use this mishmash of weapons that required awkward, mismatched ammunition, the haul would serve wonderfully as trade merchandise to sell to survivor settlements in the eastern provinces.
After all, not everyone fancied high-tech gear from Enterprise.
Robust, durable, and easy-to-maintain equipment with sufficient firepower was far more practical to them than high-tech weaponry tethered to complex logistics...
...
Temporary encampment.
Outside the entrance of a cave-style storehouse.
Gazing at the rifles stacked like small mountains, the crates of ammunition, and the Strength-type players bustling back and forth loading the spoils onto trucks, Chu Guang felt deeply satisfied, murmuring inwardly:
*Thank you, bountiful nature!*
This went far beyond a great victory.
It was an absolute windfall!
"...It seems they planned to push straight south after taking Pine Valley, riding the momentum all the way to our doorstep. However you look at it, given their firepower and troop disposition, these supplies were clearly not intended for just two or three localized skirmishes."
Standing behind Chu Guang, Vannus's face was equally etched with astonishment. The sheer quantity of weapons, ammunition, and other supplies here far exceeded his expectations.
To pile this much material on the front line could only mean they harbored grand ambitions.
Yet halfway through his remarks, Vannus's raised eyebrows knit together.
"...Though rather than surprised, I would say it's more puzzling."
"Puzzling?" Chu Guang turned to him, curious.
"Yes."
Vannus nodded, stepped up to the storehouse entrance, and picked up a rifle from the ground. Stamped on its stock was a gilded eagle. He turned it over in his hands, examining it before continuing.
"A Falcon assault rifle... The 21st Ten-Thousand-Man Unit couldn't possibly possess this."
Not only did the 21st lack them;
the thousand-man unit he had formerly led had possessed none either.
The Legion never issued automatic rifles to clones, regarding it as pure waste. At most, they might issue Pu-9 submachine guns or shotguns to certain assault squads during urban warfare or trench breakthroughs, and even then, rarely with generous allotments of ammunition.
Clones produced in batches every three years were mere expendables. With an average battlefield life expectancy of barely ten minutes, equipping them with surplus ammo was pointless.
Suppressive fire was handled by dedicated machine gunners.
"...The backbone of the Legion consists of its militarily trained citizens. Before becoming junior officers, they enlist in the Youth Army and deploy to the front lines. A rifle bearing a gilded eagle stamped into its stock is standard issue for the Youth Army, serving as proof of their identity."
Looking at the rifle in his hands, Vannus wore a faint trace of nostalgia before setting it aside. Though he had been commissioned as an officer straight upon graduation without serving in the Youth Army, he had received one just like it when awarded his first medal.
"The 21st Ten-Thousand-Man Unit couldn't have had weapons like this. Their primary role on the battlefield was filling the line. Fortifying positions and holding trenches were their specialties."
Chu Guang said thoughtfully, "Could there be other deserters who defected to the Bone Chewer Tribe besides the 21st? A thousand-man unit from the Youth Army, perhaps?"
Or perhaps they had been purchased from that Free State of Bugra.
He had heard that during the latter stages of the war, substantial amounts of Legion equipment had flowed into that territory. A portion had been sold off as war booty by the people of the Great Rift Valley, while another portion had been peddled off by the Legion's own quartermasters.
As for the marauders manufacturing it themselves, that was unlikely.
A gilded emblem added nothing to bullet damage.
Even if someone copied the design, there was no point in replicating such superfluous details.
"I wouldn't rule out the possibility, though my gut tells me it's unlikely." Vannus pondered for a moment, then seemed to recall something. "By the way... what about their commander?"
Chu Guang's expression turned somewhat peculiar.
"...Dead."
"Dead?" Vannus stared, taken aback.
Chu Guang nodded.
"Yes. The left half of his head was blown off, and more than twenty shrapnel fragments were recovered from his body... A 37mm high-explosive shell must have landed right in his trench. On the other hand, Bear Fang was captured, along with one of his subordinates named Tumen, formerly a chiliarch of the 21st Ten-Thousand-Man Unit."
Speaking of this, Chu Guang felt rather exasperated.
The centurions and chiliarchs captured earlier couldn't disclose anything of genuine strategic value. He had hoped to capture the highest-ranking officer to squeeze some intel out of him, only for the man to be wiped out by a stray shell.
Chu Guang had even entertained the thought of making him an honorary transport captain.
After all, he had delivered so many spoils...
Listening to Chu Guang, Vannus looked utterly bewildered.
Or rather, baffled.
For a man who had already deserted once to end up dying on a battlefield that didn't even belong to him—Vannus racked his brain, unable to comprehend what Dillon had been chasing after.
Chu Guang couldn't comprehend why the idiot hadn't ducked into an artillery dugout either. But compared to such trivial details, he had far more important matters to weigh.
"...Let's set aside where these weapons came from for now. Regarding the next phase of the plan, I'd like to hear your recommendation."
Knowing what Chu Guang wanted to ask, Vannus thought it over before replying.
"Although we wiped out five thousand-man units of the Fang Clan, there are still over twenty thousand marauders in Xizhou City. The terrain from Sixin District to the southern urban core is complex, making it difficult to leverage our mobility. Pushing the front line directly into the city to fight street battles against the marauders is not a wise move."
"My suggestion is to advance the artillery positions from Qingshi County to the mountain hollow five kilometers north of Pine Valley. The defensive works they dug there will serve nicely to shelter our guns."
"If a problem can be resolved with artillery shells, there's no reason to throw men into the meat grinder. In two weeks at most, this war can be brought to an end."
When it came down to it, those fellows were merely a rabble of marauders.
They had banded together solely to pool their numbers for plunder, unleashing their feral instincts on a wasteland planet where civilization had collapsed.
Of the more than thirty thousand marauders garrisoned in Xizhou City, at least two-thirds had flocked there drawn by reputation.
What held them together was neither faith nor culture nor tradition—not even ties of blood.
The moment they stopped winning, their morale would naturally dissolve.
Not to mention suffering devastating defeats on the open battlefield, enduring sustained casualties, and being left with no hope of victory whatsoever.
A kingdom of marauders?
Nothing more than a pipe dream.
In all likelihood, only Skullcrusher Golden Fang himself truly believed in it.
Listening to Vannus's plan, Chu Guang nodded in satisfaction.
He had been thinking along the exact same lines.
"It seems we see eye to eye."
Pausing briefly, he continued.
"However, that alone isn't enough. We shouldn't just bombard them strategically; we must bombard them mentally as well."
"For instance?" Vannus asked with growing interest.
"Alongside aerial bombs and artillery shells, we will use leaflets and broadcasts," Chu Guang said with a faint smile. "We won't just bomb those filthy goblins; we will grab them by the ears and hammer it home—the Bone Chewer Tribe's undefeated record has been shattered by our hands. We broke their finest troops on the open field, and against us, they stand no chance!"
"...Yet we are a civilized force. We do not engage in meaningless slaughter. We need hands to rebuild the wasteland, and we need personnel to help oversee prisoners of war. As long as they bring leaflets to us or surrender to the local guerrillas, we will grant them a chance at a new life. And this will be their last and only chance."
*What on earth is a goblin?*
Vannus froze for a second, failing to grasp the reference.
Still, the notion of dropping leaflets and deploying broadcasts across the city made his eyes light up. Having served as a Legion chiliarch, he immediately recognized the strategic potency of such a card.
Those leaflets would not only sap the defenders' morale, but also erode their organizational cohesion, plunging the besieged marauders into mutual suspicion amidst despair.
They would have to endure New Alliance artillery barrages while hunting down the broadcasts planted across the city by guerrillas, quelling wave after wave of rumors, and checking their comrades' pockets to see who was hiding a 'pledge of surrender.'
It might not even take two weeks.
They could witness marauders deserting or surrendering by entire formations...
The more he thought about it, the more brilliant the idea seemed. Vannus couldn't help but voice his praise.
"A fine idea... But most marauders are illiterate. You'll probably have to put some thought into making sure they can understand what's printed on the paper."
Chu Guang smiled and shook his head.
"No need to write useless filler."
"A few simple illustrations will suffice."
Problems that could be solved with artillery shells certainly didn't require human lives, but artillery shells cost money.
Since the war was entering its final act, saving wherever possible was naturally best. Printing leaflets was vastly cheaper than printing banknotes.
Once this war came to a close, there would be plenty of other places demanding funds...
Chapter 326