I, the prince in distress, send money

Chapter 261 Frightening Traces

Xiao Dao indeed only reported good news and not bad news. After the skirmish, the Tiger Mountain Fighting Group he led lost its ability to continue advancing.

Not only were all the surviving players wounded, but the bodies of the fallen players were scattered all over the mountains and fields, lying everywhere, in nooks and crannies, and in remote valleys.

The surviving players reap the joy of victory and seize a large amount of equipment and military merit from the Bohemians, but those who died in the battle cannot be ignored.

However, the surviving players were all injured, so it was really difficult for them to climb mountains and carry corpses. Therefore, this is where prisoners of war came in handy.

Xiao Dao and his gang made the players act as overseers, driving unarmed prisoners of war to search for corpses. This task was long, boring, and tedious.

However, the Bohemians, as prisoners of war, did not find it boring; they only felt horrified.

……

"Huchihuchi..."

Philip, wearing a blue cotton coat, had his leather boots sinking deep into the snow, making a teeth-grinding crunch with every step. He gazed at the snow-covered canyon before him, his breath freezing into frost in the minus twenty-degree air.

Half an hour ago, the madman wearing the wolf-head hat pointed a flintlock pistol at his temple and ordered him to find "his brother's corpse" in this godforsaken place.

"Hurry up, I'm watching you from behind. If you dare to slack off, I'll kill you."

It snowed in this mountain forest this morning. The snow wasn't heavy, but it was just enough to cover the ground with a thin layer of snow, burying the fighting from last night.

Philip stood on tiptoe and looked up for a while, and then he saw many small snow mounds that looked like corpses.

Just how fierce was last night's battle? Philip's mind was filled with terrifying fantasies. He dragged his weary body toward a snowdrift. Every step felt like a battle against his own fear.

Finally, he reached a snowdrift. Philip crouched down and began to dig through the snow with trembling hands. As the snow receded, the outline of a corpse gradually came into view.

It was a Bohemian man lying face down, dead. His helmet was missing, clearly lost while running the night before, and his stiff hands were still gripping his axe tightly.

He was likely killed by a flintlock musket; the armor on his back was smooth and unmarked, and the fatal wound must have been in his chest.

Philip stood up, ready to leave.

“Mark him and put a small flag next to him.”

The player behind Philip said that his leg had been chopped by an axe in the battle last night. Although it wasn't broken, the bone was injured, so he could only work as a foreman and was limping.

"what?"

Philip, who had gotten up, didn't hear clearly. He turned around and looked at the Bagnian barbarian who was using a flintlock pistol as a cane.

"Are you deaf? Plant that little red flag you're carrying next to the corpse. When you come back, bring some men to carry the body back... What, does the Bohemian Army not have the tradition of collecting the bodies of their fallen comrades?"

Philip wasn't angry at being scolded; instead, he breathed a sigh of relief, reached into his waistband, pulled out a small red flag, and stuck it in the ground.

He continued his search.

He slowly dug away the surface snow of the second snowdrift, and there was another corpse.

This time it was the body of a Bagnian. His green cotton armor had been torn apart, revealing his already cold skin. He was still clutching a bayonet in his hand, the blade of which was bent and deformed, clearly indicating that he had been in a fierce battle.

Continuing to dig deeper, Philip found three Bohemian corpses this time, lying around the Bagnians. Judging from their half-body armor and the swords and shields scattered around the corpses, they were all sword and shield bearers.

So... how did three fully armed heavy swordsmen and shieldmen get killed in close combat with a medium-armored musketeer wielding a bayonet?

Phillips, a musketeer, engaged in a skirmish last night. During the day, he fired from the hilltop, and at night, he hid behind sandbags behind barricades, firing outwards in fear. He then surrendered in the chaos of battle, still not understanding how his side lost the fight.

Now the truth of the defeat was right before his eyes. Even with a flintlock pistol pointed at him from behind, Philip couldn't control his curiosity. He knelt down and carefully wiped away the blood and frost from the corpses, finally seeing the cause of the three men's deaths.

The first swordsman and shieldman died from a bayonet thrust into his throat through a gap under his shield.

Philip noticed a distinct notch on the edge of the swordsman's shield, clearly opened by some skillful maneuver. The dead man's expression froze in shock, as if he couldn't believe he had been killed in such a way.

The second swordsman's death was even more gruesome. He had a diamond-shaped penetrating wound on his chest and abdomen, with horribly clean edges—a standard fatal wound caused by a bayonet thrust.

But what chilled Philip even more was that the swordsman's right wrist was unnaturally twisted, and several severed fingers remained on the hilt of the longsword lying nearby. This Bagnian had broken his attacker's wrist with his bare hands before he died!

Philip swallowed hard. He quietly took the bayonet from the Bagnian warrior's hand and examined it closely... It was an exceptionally high-quality weapon. The blade was chipped and icy, yet it still gleamed coldly. The surface was as smooth as a mirror, reflecting Philip's shocked expression. The third corpse revealed a truth that terrified Philip even more.

The swordsman's helmet was badly dented, his visor was completely smashed by some kind of blunt object, and next to him lay the body of the Bagnian warrior.

When Philip examined the latter's hands, he found that his left wrist was indeed shattered and mangled, with all five fingers missing, leaving only a bare wrist. There were also signs of him rolling on the ground.

It was obvious that the Bagnian warrior and the last Bohemian swordsman fell to the ground and engaged in a grappling fight.

Then at this moment, the swordsman lost his shield, and the Bagnian warrior, unable to find an opportunity to kill him with his bayonet, used his left hand as a hammer to smash the enemy's helmet, breaking the iron mask in the process.

Finally, the latter plunged his bayonet into the former's throat, while he himself died from a fatal attack from behind... This shows that in last night's battle, he was surrounded by more than three Bohemians.

Philip was filled with awe and fear. He was a musketeer who was used to shooting from a distance and had never experienced such bloody close combat.

The sight before him filled him with respect for the musketeer, but also made him feel the fragility of his own life.

"These...these are the Bagnians?"

Philip muttered to himself, his voice barely audible in the wind.

He continued searching in the snow. In this canyon, for every five snowdrifts Philip turned over, three of them had corpses lying underneath, mostly Bohemians and few Bagnians.

Finally, behind a rock leaning against the cliff, he turned around and saw what was in front of him. He instinctively staggered back two steps, his breath caught in his throat from the sight before him.

Five corpses, draped in white cloaks and dressed in green military uniforms, lay in a circle behind the rocks, with several Bohemian soldiers' corpses piled up beneath and in front of each of them... They had actually fought to the last night on top of the pile of Bohemian corpses.

The body of the Bagnian man, standing tallest in the very center, remains in the position of leaning against the rock wall, raising his gun and pulling the trigger, his frozen fingers stuck tightly in the trigger guard of the flintlock rifle.

"O God of Light..."

Philip went inside and turned to see the rocks covered with countless gunshot holes, sword marks, and bloodstains. He could hardly imagine the brutal battle these madmen had endured here the night before, as several broken swords remained embedded in the cracks in the rocks.

Philip went outside and gently brushed away the loose snow. On the snow from the previous night, he saw layers upon layers of Bohemian-style military boot footprints... More than a dozen hours ago, at least a hundred-man squad had launched several attacks here.

Philip carefully recalled the Bagnian corpses he had discovered so far... about ten.

How many Bohemian corpses were there?

There are probably seventy or eighty bodies, maybe more.

Philip looked up into the depths of the canyon and saw many more snowdrifts waiting for him to clear. The arquebusier shuddered.

He had already guessed what had probably happened here last night... A mixed Bohemian company had encountered more than ten Bagnian skirmishers here.

The two sides first clashed at the mouth of the canyon. The Bagnians fired first with flintlock muskets, killing a Bohemian axeman in the front row, and then the swordsmen and shieldmen in the back launched an attack.

Bagnia's side left one person to cover their retreat, while the rest fought their way back into the depths of the canyon to find advantageous terrain.

The rearguard Bagnian flintlock musketeer was surrounded by three swordsmen and shieldmen, and the final result was that one man dragged three Bohemian swordsmen and shieldmen to their deaths.

The Bohemian side relentlessly pursued the retreating Bagnian skirmishers, resulting in casualties on both sides, until the latter retreated into a narrow area formed by large rocks and cliffs, where they began to hold their ground.

The Bohemians launched a series of attacks.

The result was that the Bohemian company was routed, and the bodies of their fallen comrades were abandoned. The victorious Bagnians pursued them, and for the time being, they couldn't care less about the remains of their fallen comrades, until this day...

Subconsciously, Philip looked back at the overseer, who was putting a cotton coat under the rock to make himself more comfortable and prevent his bottom from getting cold.

Because he had lost a leg, the player found it slightly difficult and comical to do such a thing, so when he discovered that Philip was spying on him, he immediately started cursing.

"What the hell are you looking at?"

Philip immediately turned back, no longer daring to look... Had his leg been broken here last night?

Philip didn't know, and he dared not think further. He was filled with fear and dismissed a certain thought from his mind.

(End of this chapter)