In the sun-drenched, tranquil harbor, a towering cargo ship lay quietly berthed alongside the pier.
Within the ship's cabin, an unconscious man lay flat on his back upon a bunk.
Perhaps disturbed by the raucous cries of gulls outside the window, his tightly shut eyelids suddenly twitched, and with a violent fit of coughing, his eyes flew open.
"Cough, hack—!"
Seeing the man suddenly burst into a coughing fit, the doctor stowed his stethoscope and turned to Arman, who sat nearby.
"Doesn't look serious. He'll be fine after some rest."
Arman let out a sigh of relief and looked at the physician with sincere gratitude. "Thank you."
"Don't mention it. Just doing my job."
The doctor gave a curt nod, appearing disinclined to chat, and stood up from his chair.
He was a local of Golden Gallon Port—which was to say, a Bolo native. Treating a Wilante was purely a matter of medical ethics, an unwillingness to let a dying man perish before his eyes.
Had it not been for that oath, he wouldn't have spared a single word for the man before him.
Though the survivors of Bolo Province had once revered these big-nosed foreigners like gods, that was all in the past. At least here in Golden Gallon Port, the Wilante had lost their halo.
Arman saw him to the door, returned a moment later, and looked at his fellow countryman, who had already sat up on the bunk.
"Feeling any better?"
Henk nodded blankly. Staring at Arman for a while in utter bewilderment, he then looked past the cramped, damp cabin and out the window.
In the distance lay a picturesque harbor. The neatly arranged marble buildings and the fountain statues gracing the port square reminded him at every turn of his long-unvisited "spiritual homeland"—Triumph City.
It was as if they had been copied straight out of Triumph City.
Yet alongside those marble structures stood rows of square concrete buildings and edifices of red brick and glazed tile, possessing a distinct charm unlike anything he had ever seen.
Even more impressive were the bustling streets, teeming with carriages and pedestrians—a lively scene that rivaled even the most prosperous ports in the New World.
Right then, a white-feathered bird flapped its wings and landed on the windowsill. It pecked under its wing, then stared at him with an innocent, dopey look.
Looking into those clear yet utterly foolish eyes, Henk felt a sudden, inexplicable urge to feed it french fries...
This had to be a seagull.
Then again... what were french fries?
Evidently realizing he had nothing to offer, the practical gull flew off.
Watching the stray feather left behind on the sill, Henk finally snapped back to reality and remembered he had yet to answer his rescuer's question. Embarrassed, he blurted out:
"I'm feeling much better. Thank you for saving my life... Right, I'm Henk, from the New World. May I ask where this is?"
Arman didn't mind Henk's flustered introduction. He offered a gentle smile.
"I'm Arman. This is Golden Gallon Port. We need to purchase some supplies here and see if there are any others who wish to board. By the way, the others rescued alongside you have all gone ashore here. You were the last one to wake up."
Henk didn't immediately register where that was; the name merely sounded somewhat familiar.
Then, memories flashed back of a sailor's jest before they set sail: whatever you do, don't sail to Golden Gallon Port; that's the territory of Bolo natives, and if they catch you, they'll slice off your nose.
Henk's face blanched in an instant.
Not that he actually feared the rumor was true—after all, anyone looking upon such a thriving port would be hard-pressed to associate the locals with primitive savages.
Still, he was an arms dealer, and he had been shipping arms to the locals' sworn enemies.
Even if his nose was spared, prison time was virtually guaranteed.
Noticing how pale Henk had turned, Arman guessed what was on his mind. In that anxious expression, he even saw a shadow of his past self.
Most people who believed they could stay out of the storm were already caught in its center.
Those daydreaming of fishing in troubled waters were already soaking in the murky muck, completely oblivious.
A fleeting stroke of luck was merely an execution delayed.
Arman himself had nearly lost everything over an empty promise that could never be fulfilled.
Yet Arman didn't pry. He simply asked with gentle concern, "Feeling unwell?"
"No..." Henk gave an awkward, wan smile, glancing outside the window again. His Adam's apple bobbed as he managed, "Can I... stay on the ship?"
A thread of pleading colored his voice.
Arman nodded and replied mild-manneredly, "Of course. But returning to West Sail Port may take some time. You'll have to stay aboard for a month or two."
"That's fine!" Relieved, Henk said at once, "Let me come with you... I can help out with odd jobs."
Arman chuckled. "Focus on recovering first. We can talk about that once you can get out of bed and walk around."
Feeling reassured, Henk looked at him and asked, "By the way, what line of business are you in?"
Arman thought for a second before answering. "I don't really know how to describe my trade, but my partner calls me a snakehead."
"A... snakehead?"
Seeing Henk's bewilderment, Arman nodded and offered a concise explanation. "Ferrying survivors from here to the southern coast of Haiya Province. The Alliance has several settlements there. Simple as that."
That sounded an awful lot like slaving, except instead of collecting money from slave masters, he was collecting it from... the slaves themselves?
Where would slaves get any money?
Thoroughly baffled, Henk asked in confusion, "How much could those natives possibly pay you?"
Arman didn't hide anything and answered frankly. "They can't pay right now, of course, but they can take it on debt. We help them reach their new home, help them settle in, help them find work, and then deduct a portion from their future wages to pay off what they owed before boarding."
You could do that?!
Henk was flabbergasted. "That's quite the business model!"
If you set the ticket price to a million dinars, wouldn't you be able to milk a person dry for the rest of their days?
Knowing Henk had completely misunderstood—and guessing exactly what twisted conclusions he'd jumped to—Arman merely smiled faintly without bothering to explain.
Debts couldn't be racked up indefinitely; the Alliance's laws and regulatory bodies weren't fools.
Yet explaining that was far too cumbersome. Even what he was doing now looked like simply transporting people, but behind it lay a full, indispensable set of procedures.
"...It gets by. It doesn't compare to arms dealing, but it's safe. The Southern Legion ignores us; West Sail Port's population is surplus to them, and they don't need so many people. The Alliance folks give us a bit of leeway when they see us—they're running mega-projects in the Southern Sea and are starved for labor."
The mention of weapons sent a pang of agony through Henk's chest. The cargo aboard those three ships had been worth at least thirty million dinars, to say nothing of the cost of the vessels themselves.
He had insured both the cargo and the ships, but being sunk by torpedoes... he had no idea whether that fell under covered perils.
Worse yet, if this war dragged on and more insured ships were blown out of the water, the insurance firm would likely go bankrupt on the spot.
By the time he got back to the New World, there was no telling if the company would even still exist.
Henk held out no hope of recovering his money.
All he could do for now was take things one day at a time...
***
Just as an unlucky arms merchant resolved to tag along with Arman's fleet to try his luck in Alliance territory, a battle of unprecedented scale erupted across the soil of Bolo Province.
The Southern Legion's 30th Myriad was the first to push into the western side of Reedpur County, clashing west of Sunrise Lake with the Bolo Republic's 3rd, 4th, and 5th Myriads stationed there.
Before reaching Reedpur County, the Southern Legion's 30th Myriad had already lost an armored millennium, leaving a glaring disparity in troop numbers.
Furthermore, long before the Southern Legion marched out, the Bolo theater commander for Lion State had ordered an extensive network of tunnels and "rat holes" dug throughout Reedpur County.
Had the 30th Myriad chosen to mount a head-on assault, even with two-thirds of their tanks and a vast fleet of armored personnel carriers intact, they would still have paid a steep price.
At least, in theory.
The moment the Southern Legion's airship arrived over the front line, the Bolo army's advantage vanished into thin air.
A sky-blotting hail of shells rained down like a swarm of locusts.
As if to flaunt their overwhelming firepower, the Wilante had even fitted their indirect-fire shells with tracers.
"Take cover!!!"
Watching imminent death screech closer, a Bolo centurion prone on the defensive line let out a desperate bellow.
Soldiers huddled in foxholes pressed their foreheads tight against the dirt, clenching their fists or clutching keepsakes from family as they prayed silently.
The howling bombardment closed in.
Before touching down, shell after shell burst violently in midair, dispersing into denser, finer showers of fiery shrapnel that indiscriminately carpeted every inch of the trench line.
A blistering wave of explosions plowed across the positions, superheating rubble and blasting dirt into the sky.
Wisps of smoke drifted upward, and the deafeningly chaotic earth was instantly stripped of all human voices.
Those were cluster munitions.
Where that devilry washed over, let alone living men, not a single blade of grass survived...
Inside a command vehicle over a dozen kilometers away.
Myriad Commander of the 30th Myriad and Eastern Front Commander Ryan stared at the holographic feed, his face as still as water.
It showed aerial footage transmitted by the airship Clarion.
Across the earth churned up by the barrage, not a soul could be seen moving—scarcely an intact corpse remained.
Yet before long, bobbing heads began creeping into view at the corner of the frame.
At the sight, Ryan's eyes narrowed slightly.
He had swept the Bolo army's positions time and time again, yet their soldiers were like unkillable locusts, pouring forward in wave after endless wave.
Just as he was about to order another round of barrage fire, the communicator on his shoulder buzzed twice.
Ryan pressed it. Soon, that grating voice came over the channel.
"...Honorable Commander, much as I hate to interrupt your fun, I must remind you that a third of our ammunition has already been expended."
The speaker was the captain of the Clarion, a one-star myriad commander from Avent.
Ryan frowned, displeased. "Didn't we purchase a batch of munitions from the Western Legion?"
Clarion's Captain: "That's true... However, word on my end is that of the ten transport vessels scheduled to arrive yesterday, only four made port."
Ryan: "...What do you mean?"
Clarion's Captain: "You can probably guess. Clearly the Alliance's handiwork. Word is their submarines have been attacking our allies' transports, though they feign innocence and pin it on 'Kraken.' Our supplies are decent for now, but there's no telling what happens later. We'd best economize... don't you think?"
Due to disputes over chain of command, relations between the air force and the army were fraught.
This friction wasn't unique to the Eastern Legion; it plagued the other three legions as well.
Even belonging to the same faction and sharing identical doctrines didn't make them genuine brothers-in-arms.
Even if both turned their necks to the right, there were always those further to the right than others.
The captain's tone carried the mocking undertone of someone enjoying a show, while Ryan's face darkened entirely.
The Alliance was utterly venomous.
Lacking the spine for a head-on clash, they targeted unarmed transport ships instead!
"...Shall we continue?"
Listening to the voice on the channel, Ryan deliberated for a moment before barking, "Drop a salvo of white phosphorus on them. I'll leave the rest to the infantry."
The Clarion's captain replied promptly, "Understood."
Shortly after the order went out, muffled booms like rolling thunder erupted beneath the low-hanging clouds.
Flames shrouded in acrid smoke descended like an avalanche tumbling from a mountain peak, crashing toward the steaming trenches with devastating momentum.
Bolo reinforcements from the rear had barely stepped into the trenches before a searing rain of fire doused them from above.
The flames could not be smothered, no matter what they tried.
A mere speck was enough to turn a man into a screaming torch.
"Aaaagh!"
"My arm—!"
Shrieks and wails rose in horrifying waves. The stench of charred flesh choked the trenches; it was a living inferno.
Unable to endure the agony, some engulfed soldiers begged comrades to grant them a quick end, while others jammed rifle barrels under their chins and pulled the trigger themselves.
And that was merely the beginning.
The lethality of white phosphorus was not limited to fire; the toxic gas released by combustion was just as deadly.
Lacking gas masks, the Bolo soldiers could only bury their faces in the dirt, praying the loose soil would filter the poison.
Yet this crude expedient rarely worked. The fumes continued to claim catastrophic casualties.
Looking upon the blackened, contorted corpses, the soldiers crouching in the trenches ground their teeth until they creaked, their wide eyes burning with venomous fury and hatred.
They no longer cared whether they made it home alive.
All they wanted was vengeance for their fallen comrades—to repay every shred of this torment back upon the Wilante.
It was not just the frontline grunts; the officers behind them felt the same burning rage.
Before an intermittent radio inside a bomb shelter, Myriad Commander Metar of the Bolo Republic's 3rd Myriad felt his heart bleeding.
In just one hour.
He had thrown three millennia into the meat grinder, and they had yet to even catch a glimpse of a Wilante!
He was trading his brothers' lives for Wilante shells!
Fortunately, the Wilante's shells were not bottomless, and the raining fire seemed to be the final frenzy of the bombardment.
Once the flames and smoke mostly cleared, a millennium belonging to the Southern Legion was quickly pushed to the front.
The soldiers were nearly identical in height and build. From their standard uniforms to the subtle twitches of their facial muscles, they were unnervingly uniform.
Their weapons were universally Ripper rifles, the bayonets fixed beneath the muzzles gleaming with cold malice.
Staring at the murderous formation, the Bolo soldiers in the trenches swallowed hard in unison.
The Legion's clone troops!
Rumor had it those fearless bastards fought like hyenas—even with their intestines spilling out, they would grapple with an enemy to the death.
Though Alliance brothers had mentioned that these clones suffered from congenital defects and had mediocre physical conditioning,
the Bolo soldiers found, with bitter irony, that these "defective" creatures looked far healthier and more intact than themselves.
At the very least, their bones had meat on them.
"...Damn it all. We eat and dress worse than these clones," a soldier with a bandaged head spat, his eyes a mix of envy and indignation.
A comrade prone beside him grinned, speaking half in jest, "Doesn't matter. My death benefit has already been sent home. My kid's gonna grow up way sturdier than them."
"Heard yours was seven and a half jin?" an older veteran chimed in, sounding wide-eyed. "Is that real?!"
The soldier chuckled proudly, beaming from ear to ear. "How could it be fake? I weighed him with my own hands! That boy's gonna grow taller than me, mark my words."
The old-timer grew even more envious and couldn't resist asking, "What'd she eat to pop out one that big?"
The soldier gave him a sidelong glance and laughed. "You're an old geezer with one foot in the grave, what're you asking for?"
The old man's face stiffened, and he glared back. "Can't I ask for my boy?"
That provoked a burst of laughter from the men. Many old hands in the unit remembered he had once said he didn't have a son.
"Doesn't matter what they eat. As long as it isn't dirt, any kid'll grow up looking like a proper human."
Mounting an LD-47j light machine gun with a broken bipod onto the trench parapet, a machine gunner whose eye had been blinded by smoke drew a deep breath and pressed his scorched cheek against the blackened stock.
"Abishek said we won't have to eat dirt anymore. Said our kids won't have to either. That dog bastard better keep his word... or I swear, I'll haunt him as a ghost!"
He had pledged his life to that man.
He had no other desires—only that what Abishek had promised wasn't empty talk.
Watching the grunts banter, a nearby centurion barked in a low voice, "Cut the chatter, damn it! Eyes forward—the big-noses are moving in!"
"Oorah!" Chambering a round, the lad with the bandaged head let out a spirited yell. "Bring it on, you mongrels!"
As someone once said, they had nothing left to lose.
With a piercing whistle, the calm before the storm was ripped to shreds.
Marching on the flank of the formation, a Wilante centurion drew his saber and blew into the whistle held in his lips.
"Fweeeet—!"
The shrill whistle swept across the battlefield like a signal arrow.
Advancing in synchronized lockstep, the clone soldiers raised their rifles and bayonets in unison, charging into the smoke-choked battlefield under the lead of their decurions.
"Kill—!"
War cries shook the earth!
Roaring as they charged, the clones resembled jackals in human form.
The bayonets leveled forward were their fangs; they were like gnawers that could speak human tongue!
Spitting out his whistle, the centurion kept his saber raised high, bellowing at the top of his gravelly voice:
"Charge!!"
"With your rifles, your bayonets, your fists, your teeth, and your claws—use everything you have! Snuff out the filthy breath of your prey!"
"You are the bravest warriors! Those cowardly rats cannot withstand a single blow before you—!"
The fanatical roaring galvanized every clone's morale.
To those born into the gladiatorial pits, this rough-voiced man was their father.
Yet their father had lied to them. Those weak rats were not fragile toys.
The moment they closed to two hundred meters, the Bolo centurion prone in the trench blew the whistle in his mouth and fired his pistol forward.
"Fire!!!"
No longer able to hold back the fury burning within, the soldiers lining the trench parapet pulled their triggers in unison.
Rattling gunfire resonated across the field as bright amber tracers crisscrossed the air, tracing the sweeping arc of the Grim Reaper's scythe over a landscape strewn with corpses.
Clone soldiers were mowed down one after another by machine-gun fire, and among the fallen were several Wilante decurions.
The Bolo soldiers in the trenches fared no better.
Behind the bipodless LD-47j light machine gun, two gunners had already been replaced; the one manning it now had shifted from a father of children to a thirteen-year-old boy.
As for the lad with the bandaged forehead who had shouted for them to bring it on, his head had been blown apart early on, collapsing to the dirt without a sound.
And the man whose newborn supposedly weighed seven and a half jin—
the old veteran who constantly bickered with him never did manage to pry out the secret recipe for siring a plump baby boy before he died.
Then again, it wasn't as if he had any use for it anymore.
A century was wiped out in minutes, replaced immediately by another.
Then a millennium, and then entire myriads!
The jagged, twisting frontline was like the maw of a monstrous beast, chewing through the flesh and blood of everyone caught inside.
Those hundred-odd jin of flesh, meant to be pillars holding up individual households, weighed no more than a stray feather across a frontline dozens of kilometers wide.
It was not only the Bolo people bleeding; the Wilante charging across the shell-churned earth bled just as heavily.
Although the clones on the logistical manifests were not counted among the five myriads' formal roster—nor even regarded as livestock, their casualties going completely unrecorded—for every ten or twelve clone troopers, a Wilante decurion charged alongside them.
In the span of a single morning, the Southern Legion's 30th Myriad crushed the three Bolo myriads holding the hills on the western shore of Sunrise Lake, shoving the front line forward by a full ten kilometers!
Refusing to retreat, Myriad Commander Metar personally led his command millennium to form a rearguard, covering the retreat of allied forces, only to be struck by gunfire and killed while holding off a mechanized infantry millennium of the Southern Legion.
With that, the Bolo Republic's 3rd Myriad was wiped out as a combat unit!
Over twelve thousand soldiers and officers were virtually annihilated, with zero survivors!
The 4th and 5th millennia also suffered over fifty percent casualties and were forced to pull back to rear positions.
In contrast, the Southern Legion's 30th Myriad recorded a combined casualty count of merely three hundred men.
Following the painful loss of an armored millennium, Myriad Commander Ryan had finally regained his lost face on the frontal battlefield just as he wished.
Even if the price was nearly twenty thousand clone cannon fodder and over a hundred thousand artillery shells.
Western Reedpur County fell completely. One of the Southern Legion's fists had seized the throat of that aging lion, Lion City.
The 31st and 32nd Myriads were cutting into the battlefield from the southwest and northwest respectively.
Arriving at the front along with them were an armored train laden with munitions and weapons, as well as a 902mm super-heavy cannon that combined sheer terror with cataclysmic power!
The Alliance's reckless, fearless airstrikes kept the Southern Legion's logistical units constantly on edge, daring only to operate beneath the airspace dominated by their armored airships.
Yet if they believed danger came only from the sky, they could not have been more mistaken.
Southeast of "Reed County," billowing plumes of smoke raced across the boundless plains.
Screened by 62 Chimera armored vehicles, an assault formation of 93 Type 3 heavy tanks barreled at breakneck speed toward the Legion's southern front.
Their objective: the Southern Legion's 34th Myriad.
According to intel gathered by Pangolin during his time in West Sail Port, that was a reserve unit.
If they could punch straight through the 34th Myriad, they'd be able to flank right around and strike at Myriad Commander Ryan's rear!
For this impending clash, the players of the Skeleton Corps had waited far too long.
Especially after seeing the brothers of the Burning Corps flexing so hard on the forums, they had been itching for action, rubbing their palms raw in anticipation.
If a bunch of paratrooper infantry could blow up an enemy armored regiment, wouldn't proper armor specialists like them beat the living daylights out of those big-nosed bastards?
Besides, they weren't the only corps taking part in this offensive!
After five days of waiting, the brothers from Goblin Corps had returned to the front aboard Overlord transport planes, while pilots from Golden Gallon Port had ferried their rides to the airfield outside Tiandu.
In addition, Brother Luo Yu, piloting a Thunder fighter, would be joining the operation.
There was no way in hell they could lose!
Perched half out of the Type 3 tank's turret, Mole gripped his communicator and roared at the top of his lungs, brimming with bravado:
"Brothers!"
"The Southern Legion's 34th Myriad is just twenty kilometers ahead of us!"
"It's time to show them what a real iron tide looks like!"
Hardly had his words left his mouth when euphoric, frenzied howls echoed across the comms channel.
"Awoooo!!"
Chapter 859