I, the prince in distress, send money

Chapter 353 Tired
Hector leaned against the cold, blood- and soot-stained stone wall of the city gate. Each heartbeat pulled at the lingering dull pain deep in his chest, making his heavy breathing sound like a broken bellows.

He could smell the rusty, bloody stench, the acrid smell of gunpowder, and the stench of his own sweat and excrement... traces left by extreme fear.

He survived.

When the thought crossed Hector's mind, it caused him to feel dizzy from the brief weakness that came with relaxation... Just a moment ago, he was an ant struggling on that scorched earth of death.

Hector didn't want to recall it, but he remembered the deafening roar, the earth groaning and cracking under the ravages of Bagnian heavy artillery.

The falling shells brought a deluge of mud and human fragments, and familiar or unfamiliar figures around you, who were roaring forward one second, became flying pieces of flesh and fallen wreckage the next.

His spear formation was hit five times by enemy artillery shells in a short period of time, as if it were being repeatedly struck by an invisible giant hammer. The formation was shattered and disintegrated in the blink of an eye.

Fear gripped all the survivors instantly, and the instinct for survival overwhelmed commands.

The rout began.

Hector was one of them. In order to run faster, he threw away his cumbersome spear, took off his cloak and armor, and stumbled and fled desperately backward toward the direction of Golden Harvest City with the surging crowd.

However, the road to "safety" is also fraught with death.

Supervisory Team!
Those officers and military police wearing scarlet armbands stood like cold reefs behind the torrent of fleeing soldiers.

There was no pity in their eyes, only cold-blooded murderous intent.

"Those who retreat will die!"

The icy roar of the supervising officer could be clearly heard between the muffled thunderous sounds caused by the falling shells.

Hector witnessed a young man running ahead of him being beheaded without hesitation by the gleaming sword of a supervising officer simply because he tripped over a corpse and slowed down.

The head rolled, its eyes wide open in disbelief and astonishment. Hot blood sprayed all over Hector's face.

At that moment, the sharp blades of the supervisory team terrified him more than the roaring artillery fire behind him.

Retreating meant death, advancing meant death! He could only desperately squeeze, bump, and roll, using any corpses and shell craters as cover, crawling like a rat between the swords of the supervising team and the intervals of flintlock fire.

Each volley of musket fire from the supervisory team meant the fall of another group of fleeing soldiers who were either too slow or too unlucky.

Those desperate cries and death throes still echo in his ears.

What sustained him as he ran here, besides instinct, was the silent and imposing square formation in the city gate area.

The last bastion, composed of the King's Guard and mercenaries, stood like a rock before the massive gate, their heavy armor gleaming coldly in the smoke and dust.

It was a beacon in despair, the last dam built of flesh and blood.

However, this brief sense of "security" vanished instantly after he witnessed the hellish massacre at the city gate.

Those tin-clad monsters charged forward. Even though only three or four hundred of them remained, their silent, unstoppable, and terrifying aura still made Hector, who was hiding in the shadows of the stone wall behind them, tremble all over.

He had only glimpsed their terror in their fleeing spree before; their heavy footsteps were like war drums, and anything that tried to stop them, whether man, horse, or makeshift roadblocks, was reduced to fragments by the terrifying swings of their exaggerated giant axes, halberds, and "long-handled greatswords."

Their armor was incredibly sturdy; ordinary swords could only leave white marks when they struck it, and arrows were like tickling them.

When the hailstorm of bullets from his own crouching cannons suddenly erupted at extremely close range, knocking over a dozen warriors in the front row and sending armor fragments flying, Hector's heart nearly leaped out of his throat.

For a fleeting moment, he thought hope had arrived! The defending troops seized the opportunity to launch a fierce counterattack!
But then he saw a scene that almost froze his blood: the black and white warrior leader, who was like a giant bear, had his breastplate torn open by lead bullets, his magnificent breastplate stained with blood, yet he only staggered one step before continuing to fight.

The super-long greatsword in his hand could also unleash arcs of death, cleaving a top-tier royal guard shield bearer, along with his steel kite-shaped shield, in two!

The gushing entrails and shattered shield fragments proclaimed the despairing gap between mortals and these steel monsters.

The battle devolved into the most primitive and brutal hand-to-hand combat.

The king's guards and mercenaries pressed down with their shields and slashed wildly at the warriors' joints with their broadswords, risking their lives to make the enemy stagger or be slowed down.

Hector saw groups of heavily armored swordsmen rushing toward a warrior, shields held firm, as several broadswords simultaneously and viciously slashed at the same spot—the back of the knee, the joint of the arm, and the gash torn by shrapnel.

One after another, heavily armored Bagnian foot knights fell to the ground under such a fearless siege.

But for every warrior who falls, it often means that several or even a dozen of the most elite warriors of Minicia are buried with him.

The small open space in front of the city gate has truly become a meat grinder.

The roar of clashing steel, the cracking of bones breaking, the screams of the dying, the roars of anger... every sound pierced Hector's nerves like needles.

Hector huddled behind the stone wall, his teeth chattering uncontrollably, his hands trembling so much that he could barely hold onto his wet, slippery clothes.

He was incredibly grateful that he hadn't been in that formation; otherwise, he would surely be among the trampled remains lying there now.

Just when he thought those steel monsters would eventually crush everything, even the last dam would collapse, things changed.

The black and white giant bear roared, but unlike its previous battle cries, this time the sound was filled with resentment and... a command?
Then, Hector witnessed an unbelievable scene: those Han and Tang warriors, who looked like demons from hell, actually began to retreat!
Wielding heavy weapons, they swept away the onrushing defenders, covering each other as they retreated step by step towards the scorched earth, plowed by artillery fire and littered with corpses.

The Minisians erupted in frenzied cheers and gave chase, and sporadic cannon fire continued to boom, but the retreating warriors still carried a chilling, silent resilience.

Just then, a sharp, penetrating sound came from behind the Bagnians, drowning out the noise of the battlefield.

The sound was different from a horn; it was more piercing, like the Grim Reaper uttering his shriek.

The sound seemed to be a signal.

Immediately afterwards, he felt the ground beneath his feet begin to tremble, and a dull, dense rumbling came from afar, growing ever closer.

He peered out in terror and saw a heavily armored Bagnian cavalry, like a black torrent, charging menacingly along the blood-stained path previously carved out by the Han and Tang warriors.

Their objective was clearly to rescue the retreating warriors.

"Returned...returned?"

Hector muttered to himself, almost unable to believe his eyes.

Those steel monsters that weighed on their minds like nightmares were actually defeated by them?
They fought back with the lives of countless comrades, with the desperate counterattack of the King's Guard, and with those tiger-squatting cannons hidden behind the low walls... They managed to repel the enemy.
The overwhelming sense of exhaustion from surviving the ordeal instantly overwhelmed him. Hector slid down the cold stone wall to the ground, looking down at his trembling hands. He recalled the cold blades of the supervising troops and the limbs flying in the artillery fire, the terrifying charge of the Han and Tang warriors that disregarded death and the image of the long-handled swords cleaving through human bodies... His stomach churned violently.

He is still alive.

Living temporarily, beneath the golden ears of grain surrounded by death.

But next time, when the bugle sounds again, when those steel torrents or the blades of the supervisory teams approach once more, will he still have such luck?

Hector was unaware that a tremendous sense of lingering fear and an even deeper terror, like the smoke and blood that filled the city gate, enveloped him completely.

……

The battle raged until around 1 p.m. when Chris ordered the drums and alarm bells to be sounded, signaling a retreat and the entire army to withdraw.

When the Han-Tang warriors led by Monokuma failed to capture the gates of Golden Harvest City in the first wave of attack, Chris lost the chance to win in just one day.

He didn't realize this fact at first, but when the player's heavy cavalry charged past the Han and Tang warriors toward Golden Harvest City, only to be blocked by the Minieses, Chris realized that an opportunity had already passed.

Furthermore, after Chris learned from the player scout that the Leterians had left Camp One, he knew that continuing the fight was pointless.

We may win today, but our forces will be overwhelmed by the Leterian army that arrives in Golden Harvest City the next day due to excessive losses.

So let's call a truce for now.

The Bagnian Defence Forces now need a fortified camp to prepare for tomorrow's brutal war.

The high ground, codenamed Rock, is an excellent vantage point; taking this hilltop would allow one to overlook the surrounding plains.

Therefore, Chris decided to establish camps in the west, southwest, and northwest of the high ground to enclose it, leaving only the east side, which directly faces Minicia, undefended.

“Secretary…”

His voice wasn't loud, but despite the noise of the battlefield, it didn't stop the clerk beside him from hearing it clearly and quickly walking over.

"I'm here, Your Highness."

"Order the siege artillery regiment to fire several more rounds of shells with all its artillery pieces that can fire, to suppress the enemy as much as possible. At the same time, ring the bell for the entire army to retreat, so that the First Army Group can stop and cover the Second Army Group's orderly retreat."

"Understood, Your Highness!"

The clerk walked away and went to the communications company next to him to quickly repeat the order. The dozen or so flag signalmen standing on the wooden tower immediately waved the heavy signal flags.

Minutes after the order was given, the heavy artillery group on the rocky highlands to the southwest, which had been silent for a moment, roared again with deafening fury.

Heavy shells pounded the retreating Bagnian army and the city of Golden Harvest, creating a death zone of mud and human fragments.

This bombardment was not intended to kill many enemies, but to create chaos, block roads, and intimidate the Minesian gunners and archers who were eyeing the city walls.

Under the cover of deafening artillery fire, the retreat of the Second Army Group became orderly.

Although the players were exhausted after the bloody battle, and many were reluctant to leave and wanted to continue fighting, they maintained their ranks and walked away, looking back every few steps, at the hoarse shouts of their team leaders.

The Bagnians were about to withdraw from the battlefield.

The Minisians naturally noticed this as well, but they had no intention of pursuing. In fact, the entire army breathed a sigh of relief, voluntarily extinguished their fire, and the soldiers retreated, clearing space on the battlefield.

Compared to Bagnia, the Minisians needed more time to rest their army and allow their soldiers to regain morale.

The attack by the players from the Second Army really caught them off guard.

After more than an hour, the battlefield returned to silence. Corpse collection teams from both Bagnia and Minicia appeared on the battlefield, and the two sides tacitly avoided a conflict.

You collect your own dead and the wounded who were unfortunately left behind, while I search for the fallen on my side. We don't interfere with each other's work.

Around 3 p.m., while Chris was inspecting the militiamen of the supply battalion building their barracks, he received a report from the clerk about casualties.

In this battle, the Second Army suffered more than 1,800 dead and about 2,000 wounded, some lightly and some seriously... Among them, there were more than 200 wounded players in the vanguard.

Although Chris witnessed their complete annihilation on the battlefield, thanks to the protection of their good armor, the auxiliary soldiers found about two hundred still-living players in the pile of corpses during the post-battle search.

The First Army suffered much lighter casualties than the Second Army, with only about two hundred killed and a little over one hundred wounded.

Compared to the players of the Second Army who fought the entire game and charged at the forefront, the NPCs of the First Army essentially watched the whole show from the rear today. Apart from volley fire and artillery bombardment, they did not engage the Minisians in battle.

This is the main reason why the First Army suffered relatively few casualties.

As for why Chris didn't send the First Army forward, there are two reasons.

Firstly, because battlefield space is limited, randomly sending troops forward will encroach on the player's combat space.

Secondly, the First Army was a reserve force that Chris had set aside. He planned to deploy the entire First Army when the players were tired, or when the Minisians held off the players' charge and launched a counterattack, to use human wave tactics to defeat the enemy's counterattack.

Unfortunately, after fighting for most of the day, Chris did not find an opportunity to join the First Army.

Today's Minisians are neither as brave and skilled as he had predicted, able to withstand the player's onslaught, nor as weak and easily defeated by the player's charge.

This limbo and persistent disadvantage made Chris reluctant to commit to the First Army and engage in a bloody battle with the Minisians.

Because of the existence of Golden Harvest City, if the battle cannot achieve an absolutely dominant situation, then even if Chris defeats the Minisians at all costs, they will still have a way out today and will not suffer a complete annihilation.

The Leterians are destined to appear tomorrow, so Chris needs to conserve his troops and precious gunpowder, and wait for the battle after tomorrow.

As the sun set, Chris stood atop the highest point of Rock Heights, looking down at the military camp below, bustling about like ants.

The engineers were digging trenches with shovels, the supply convoy was winding its way along the makeshift road, and the first wisp of smoke rising from the mess hall was particularly clear in the twilight.

"Sigh, I'm going to be busy tonight... So many players have died, I have to revive them all in one night... Damn it, I should develop an automatic revival machine, I can't keep doing this manually."

(End of this chapter)