Chapter 199 Chaos of War
“Everyone charge!” Almost at the same time, Lehman’s voice sounded out loudly.
Levin stared disbelievingly at Lehman Hawes who had suddenly fallen from his horse. The back of his head was completely blown away, revealing a red and white sticky paste from within. His helmet laid broken to the side, blooming with a big hole at its top, showing that it had not had any protective effect.
“Charge, everyone, to me!” Then Levin’s voice also rang out.
No, they both hadn’t spoken! Levin covered his mouth, looking behind him, he saw the militia wasn’t waiting, they immediately swallowed the pills and began to rush, just like a flood of people coming towards him.
It’s a witch. He realized that a witch had imitated his voice. “Do not charge, cease!” He shouted out as loudly as he could.
However, within the excited crowd his voice didn’t spread very far, the few people who had heard his cry stopped, but even more continued charging forward.
“Hurry, quickly attack, try to break through the center of the enemy’s defense line, everyone who reaches the town is allowed to plunder!” It wasn’t just his voice, Duane’s and the voices of the other Knight’s also sounded out, one after another, as if all of this was by prior arrangement. Moreover, the witch’s voice overshadowed all the other noises, as if it was being directly created next to his ear.
Within the militia, there were also many voices bursting out, as if in line with their commands, the crowd began to shout out “looting” slogans. Levin didn’t know who had started it, but soon the slogans rang throughout all of the ranks. The situation had completely gone beyond his control, Levin didn’t try to shout any more commands, they would just be drowned in the excited roars of the crowd anyway. Instead, he had to fully concentrate on controlling his horse, in order to avoid getting himself pulled away by the mighty current. And as if they have lost all reason, the militia rushed towards the center of the road.
No, that wasn’t right. From the very beginning they had already lost all reason, especially in the case of someone else guiding them. After they took the drugs they became totally euphoric, and with the thought of killing and looting they got even further stimulated. In the beginning, the first people had still tried to avoid stepping on the fallen Lehman, but the people after didn’t care any longer, and directly stepped onto the corpse.
Levin wanted to meet up with Duane and the other Knights, only to discover that they had been scattered all over the place by the flood of people. Under these compelling circumstances, he would first have to go along with the stream of people, and gradually try to lead his horse to the woods at the side. In case he decided to turn his horse directly, it was only a matter of time before he would be knocked down by the strength enforced militia, and if he then wanted to get up again, it would be nearly impossible.
From within the ranks, Levin was looking all over the place, trying to find the witch responsible for causing the chaos, wanting to chop her in 1000 pieces. In his view, this definitely had to be the doing of a witch!
The 1500 people who had eaten the pill are rushing into the direction of the Prince’s defense line, for the Prince this wave has to be a deadly attack. Even if the other side had now more of the new weapons, it still won’t be enough to go against so many people at once, for that guy, the result of this won’t be much better. A situation where both sides have to suffer a loss, is obviously something the witches will be jubilant about, this was also the reason why they had infiltrated our ranks and caused so much trouble, luring our army to advance forward of their own initiative.
“The witch who killed Lehman and the witch who created the chaos can’t be the same person,” Levin let his gaze wander over the few people who still stood at his side, they had previously stood at the front and had witnessed the fall of Lehman, furthermore, later they had also heard him calling for a stop. But they couldn’t be compared with the huge army of before, even if they gathered, they still couldn’t reach 30 people, “One of the witches has the ability to hide her body and the other one can manipulate her voice. After all, a witch cannot have two abilities, go and find the latter, I want to tear out her throat!”
…
Through the shooting window, Brian could see how the enemy steadily came closer. From the bunkers at the forefront even the first gunfire could be heard.
His defensive position was at the middle of the diamond. Because of this, he had to wait until the enemy passed the purple marks at the side of the road. Having to wait so long before he can fire made him very anxious.
To do something else, he went to the window on the other side, there Brian could look at the defense line further behind. From the artillery positions white smoke was unceasingly rising up, and with it, a thunder-like roar rolled over the battlefield. They are once again the first to become busy, with their 12-pounder they can almost cover the entire battlefield. As long as he listened carefully, he could even hear the screams of the shells as they flew through the air.
“Oh my God, they are running so fast!”
“Look at that fellow, his hand was torn off by a shell, yet he is still running forward.”
“What His Highness said was true, can they still be called human? They are simply the same as demonic beasts.”
Because the First Army was already informed during the pre-battle mobilization, of the enemy having taken the Church’s berserker pills, they didn’t become scared when they saw the enemy’s continued attack even under a hail of bullets; instead they were full of fighting spirit, after all, they were the First Army, who got forged under the flames of demonic beasts.
“Captain, they are coming!” Someone warned.
Hearing the call, Brian quickly returned to his position, took a revolver rifle next to the window and began loading it. Compared to the old weapons, His Highness’ new version had a simple improvement. Now, within a breath he could already fire off five rounds of bullets, then he could just throw the cartridge towards the recruit standing behind him, take the five extra rounds and fire them off, while the recruit would have reloaded his previous cartridge.
However, during the training, His Highness had stressed that only when the enemy had stepped into the range of 100 to 50 meters, were they allowed to use this kind of shooting. While for long-range shooting they had to aim to be as accurate as possible, because the manufacturing the bullets of revolver rifles was very troublesome, everyone’s amount of rounds were limited.
Brian deeply believed that the shells which contained the gunpowder –with their slender front and thick back, and their, and their almost always similar form– absolutely couldn’t have been created by a blacksmith. He knew that such a fine and delicate work had to have come from the hands of a witch.
Usually, after the shooting exercise, they would collect all their cartridge cases and hand them over to Iron Axe. Shooting practice was generally followed with a reloading exercise, during which they would sit as a group in the center of the camp.
To assemble the used cartridges into a new bullet, they had to follow strict operating guidelines. First, they had to push the primer to the bottom, followed by filling it up with gunpowder, then finally inserting the projectile. Due to the exercises, he was reluctant to consume his ammunition carelessly, in case the target was too hard to hit.
The moment the enemy crossed the purple marker, Brian took a deep breath, then finally shouted, “Fire at will!”
The soldier that have been waiting for this order for a very long time, enthusiastically aimed at an easy target and start pulling the trigger. Suddenly, the bunker became flooded with the sound of the gunfire. The first enemy to cross the line was hit by bullets from both sides, which caused blood to splash from his waist, after staggering two steps forward, he fell to the ground. It was obviously that they could suffer through more pain than ordinary people, but in the face of heavy-caliber bullets, this still didn’t matter.
Brian noticed that several people had jumped on the top of the frontmost bunkers, wanting to sneak attack the soldiers who were inside from the back, but they were blocked out by a thick iron gate. Not hesitating, he pulled the trigger, killing off the madmen who were exposing their bodies to him one after the other. The reason why the bunkers were arranged in a diamond formation, was so that that they could help with defending one another, enemies who wanted to bypass the first row and attack from behind would be shot to death by the rearmost bunkers.
“Be careful, they’ve thrown out their spears!” Someone suddenly shouted.
Brian noticed how a dense shadow rose up from the center of the enemy’s army, after passing its apex, they began to fall upon the bunkers that were on both sides of the road.
At such a distance, they have to cover two or three hundred meters! He subconsciously lowered his head into the pit, only to hear the sound of a series of cracking sounds from the top. After this wave of attacks had come to its end, he stood up straight and discovered that not one of those spears had been able to penetrate the bunker. Looking at the bunker in front, he saw that their situation was similar; only a few spears had been able to insert themselves into the wall, like some lonely feathers.
“Even if it’s looks very scary, it is still useless,” everyone began to roaring with laughter.
At this moment, Brain saw one enemy who disregarded all dangers, and threw up several splashes of earth in his forward charge towards their bunker. Then the enemy bent over and threw his spear in a flat curve, and at the very moment the spear left his arm, he was nailed down by an intense hail of bullets.
“Down!” Even before his warning shout could entirely leave his throat, the thrown spear already passed through the shooting window, and pierced the chest of a shooter, the latter issued a stuffy groan and then fell face up, towards the ground.