I, the prince in distress, send money

Chapter 491 The Value of Players (Part Two)
"finally come!"

Just as Bushuang Buwan noticed something amiss and climbed down from the lighthouse, a deep and rhythmic horn sounded from the side and rear of the dock area, drowning out the clamor of the battlefield.

Immediately following was a continuous roar like rolling thunder!

boom! boom! boom! boom!
The reinforcements from the Macon Alliance finally arrived near the battlefield. Instead of rushing directly into the chaotic docks, they quickly deployed on a slightly higher slope on the flank.

Dozens of light field guns of various models were pushed to the front, their muzzles spewing long tongues of fire and thick smoke, and scorching shot pelting the sea surface where the snake people were surging like hail.

The shells were deliberately placed to avoid the near-shore areas where players were active, and instead covered the deeper waters further away.

The moment the shot fell, the sea seemed to boil. Fine jets of water shot into the sky, and unfortunate snake-men were hit one after another. Dark red marks spread underwater, and the corpses of snake-men rolled to the surface one after another.

Although such a large-scale shotgun barrage was unlikely to directly kill a large number of snake-men hiding underwater, it greatly delayed and disrupted the snake-men's landing rhythm, suppressing them in the water.

After the artillery fire extended, another urgent cavalry horn sounded.

About a hundred Macon light cavalrymen, dressed in light armor, carrying spears, and wearing red uniforms, charged out from the flank like arrows released from a bow.

Their goal was not to rendezvous with the players, but to precisely skim across the beach, using high-speed charges to fiercely stab and kill the scattered snakemen who had just climbed ashore, were not yet firmly established, or were stunned by the artillery fire.

Their tactics are extremely clear: strike and retreat, never lingering in battle.

More than a hundred light cavalry swept past like a whirlwind, leaving behind a trail of snake-men corpses and their hissing. Before the players could react, they quickly retreated back to their base.

The entire process was smooth and seamless, demonstrating a high level of training and tactical proficiency, which contrasted sharply with the chaotic style of players fighting individually.

Finally, accompanied by heavy, synchronized footsteps, the main infantry formation of the Macon League appeared.

The front of the formation consisted of two rows of arquebusiers, followed by a forest of spearmen. With their orderly footsteps, they steadily advanced to the edge of the dock, where the arquebusiers calmly aimed and fired in unison.

After a puff of white smoke, many snake-men who had just emerged or attempted to charge the formation were knocked down.

After firing, the arquebusiers did not reload on the spot, but quickly turned around and nimbly retreated to the rear through the gaps in the pikemen's ranks. The whole process was smooth and quiet.

After the volley, the Macon pikemen marched forward in unison, their sharp spear tips leveled, forming a cold, steel jungle that intimidated any enemy who dared to approach.

The arrival of this new force instantly stabilized the battle line and pushed the controlled area outwards a considerable distance from the players' fortified positions.

The players watched the performance of this "regular army" with some curiosity, and many were still marveling at it.

"Not happy, not playing" watched as the Macon army executed their standard "artillery preparation - cavalry harassment - infantry advance" combo and nodded in approval.

However, the situation was urgent, so he didn't look around much. He quickly crossed the players' territory and found Governor Almeida, who was observing the battle under the protection of several officers.

"Your Excellency the Governor."

He didn't speak when he was unhappy, pointing to the deep-colored sea.

"I just saw from up high that there was a huge shadow writhing down there, and it seems like the snake people all came out of there..."

Governor Almeida turned his head, the panic on his face gone, replaced by a solemn yet unsurprising composure.

He nodded, his tone indifferent.

“I know, those are the snake people’s sea serpents, a terrifying sea beast that they have tamed. They have huge cavities inside their bodies that can carry hundreds or even thousands of snake people warriors on long-distance underwater journeys across the ocean. Once they reach their target, they will spit out the passengers and launch a surprise attack.”

The governor's explanation made BuShuangBuWan realize the truth, but at the same time, he was secretly shocked... The monster design in this game is quite interesting.

Just then, a man wearing a dark blue cloak and holding a staff inlaid with a huge sapphire, who appeared to be a mage, stepped forward, surrounded by several guards with shields.

He nodded slightly to the governor, then faced the sea, closed his eyes, and began chanting an obscure incantation. The sapphire at the top of his staff began to emit an increasingly intense light, and the surrounding air seemed to become cold and damp.

A few seconds later, the mage suddenly opened his eyes and pointed his staff at the dark sea area that Bu Shuang Bu Wan and the governor had been staring at.

call out……

A dazzling beam of ice-blue light shot out from the tip of the staff, traversing hundreds of meters and accurately striking the center of that sea area.

Surprisingly, the beam of light did not explode or cause massive destruction. Instead, it remained firmly "nailed" to the sea surface like a giant marker. The blue light pierced through the seawater, clearly illuminating the outline of a huge, twisted, and slowly writhing terrifying shadow.

This beam of light was like a searchlight illuminating the dark seabed, completely exposing the hidden behemoth to the eyes of everyone on the battlefield.

"Holy crap, magic!"

The player who was annoyed and refused to play was stunned, and other players who witnessed this scene had similar reactions.

"Wasn't this game supposed to have no magic, and be killed by volley fire?"

"Cool!"

"It wasn't for nothing that I endured so much; I've finally seen something interesting... I'm going to become a magician, and nobody can stop me!"

The mysterious magician used a beam of magic to completely expose the hidden sea serpent; however, this action seemed to have thoroughly enraged the commander hidden deep in the sea.

A sharp, distorted cry, completely unlike the hiss of the snake-men, seemed to pierce the very soul, emanating from the deep-sea marker and drowning out the cannon fire and shouts of battle.

Immediately afterwards, a dense, nauseating crimson light spread rapidly outwards from the location of the sea serpent, sweeping across the entire dock battlefield like a shockwave.

The blood-red light had no real physical impact, but it carried an extreme coldness that blasphemed life. All the snake-men corpses that were swept by the blood-red light, whether they were killed by players, pierced by Macon soldiers, or torn apart by artillery fire, began to writhe violently and irrationally.

Their flesh and blood seemed to possess a self-awareness, beginning to writhe abnormally, and their bones emitted a teeth-grinding "crack" sound... Under the gaze of countless horrified eyes, these broken corpses spewed out one bright red cobra after another.

These cobras have no scales or skin; their bodies are just flesh and blood. They have no eyes, only empty holes of flesh and blood. Dark green venom drips from their gaping mouths, emitting a strong, foul odor. Their fangs, made entirely of twisted bones, are terrifying.

As soon as these bizarre creations emerged, they were driven by an invisible force and pounced on the nearest living creature... and at the forefront was the players' position!

"Holy crap! What the hell is this thing?!"

"Damn necromancy!!!"

"Oh my god, this is disgusting! Don't come any closer!"

The players' position descended into chaos almost as soon as the cobras began to crawl over.

These flesh-and-blood cobras are not only extremely fast, but also the same size as normal cobras.

If it's just one or two, that's no problem at all. Players can easily take them down by kicking or slashing them with swords.

The problem is that there are too many of these flesh-and-blood venomous snakes. From a single snake-man's corpse, at least four or five snakes can emerge, and sometimes more than a dozen.

There are now at least several hundred, nearly a thousand, snake-man corpses on the battlefield, so that these fleshy snake-men crawling over are so dense that they fill the field of vision of the players on the front line.

This horrifying scene sent chills down the spines of all the frontline players.

Thousands upon thousands of fleshy, venomous snakes writhed and hissed, engulfing the players at the forefront in the blink of an eye.

"what……"

"I've been bitten, I'm poisoned, and I'm losing blood so fast!" "Help! Help me out!"

"Burn it! Burn it with fire!"

Screams and cries of alarm rose and fell; in the face of such a massive swarm of venomous snakes, the flintlock pistols in the players' hands were no different from firewood sticks.

They began trying to slash at it with swords and trample it with their feet, but there were just too many of them. For every one they cut down, three or four would immediately crawl up their legs and bite them.

The venom of these flesh-and-blood cobras isn't actually that bad; it can kill a person, but it takes time. However, there are so many of them that one snake bites and another bites, and the venom injected into the unfortunate person's body is so strong that it literally "chokes" them to death.

Coupled with humans' innate fear of snakes, the players' lines of defense collapsed rapidly, like a sandbar being breached by a flood, and they retreated.

The players' collapse also impacted the well-prepared Macon spear formation at the rear. Hundreds of venomous snakes tried to burrow through the spear forest, forcing the soldiers to divert their energy to strike these repulsive creatures with their swords and musket butts, and the orderly formation began to crumble.

"Maintain formation, don't panic, use torches!"

The Macon officer shouted at the top of his lungs, and the soldiers hurriedly lit the torches they carried and waved them to drive away the snakes.

The flames were indeed effective; the flesh-and-blood venomous snakes seemed to instinctively fear the high temperatures, sizzling and charring as they were struck by the torches.

However, the number of torches was far from enough to combat the boundless swarm of snakes.

Even the governor of Almeida, who was the lord of the island, was forced to "dance," kicking a venomous snake that had crawled to his feet away with unconscious screams of fear.

After kicking the venomous snake away, Governor Almeida, still shaken, immediately looked up at the magician advisor beside her, who slowly shook his head.

“I can deal with these venomous snakes; one Great Exorcism spell is enough. But my magic power is limited. After completing this spell, I won’t be able to deal with the sea serpents in the distance… There might be more than one sea serpent.”

Upon hearing this, Governor Almeida hesitated.

Just when the situation was at its most critical, and even Governor Almeida was caught in a dilemma, several shouts full of surprise and excitement, seemingly out of place on the battlefield, came from behind the players.

"They're here! They're here! The savior has arrived!"

Amidst the shouts, several players, panting but extremely excited, rushed from behind to the front of the battlefield, each carrying three large steel canisters on their backs.

The canister is connected to a thick, long hose and a metal pipe with a nozzle at the front... This is the official improved version of the individual flamethrower called "Dragon's Breath," produced by the Bagnian player's armory.

They apparently discovered these sealed "weapons of mass destruction" by chance in the equipment crates at the rear during a lull in the fighting.

"How do I use this?"

One player was frantically fiddling with the device.

"Press any button, there must be an ignition switch and a boost button here!"

Another player, relying on his gaming experience, haphazardly manipulated the flamethrower.

laugh……

A pungent smell of fuel filled the air, followed by an incredibly thick, roaring fire dragon that spewed out from the nozzle, instantly engulfing the fleshy venomous snakes within a radius of several meters.

Where the flames passed, the nauseating flesh and venomous snakes didn't even have time to struggle before they were rapidly carbonized, twisted, and turned into ashes under the extreme heat. The pungent smell of burning flesh replaced the previous stench.

"Holy crap... I know, first press the green button, then keep holding the red lever, and it will shoot fire... The rotating ring on the handle can adjust the flame pattern!"

"Got it... I sprayed it out too, that felt so good!!! Burn...you all die!!!"

Under the guidance of the first player, the other two flamethrowers were ignited one after another, and three raging fire dragons began to rampage and sweep across the dock.

Other players made way for them, and wherever the three tongues of fire went, the desperate swarm of snakes was cleared away at a visible speed, leaving behind charred marks and still burning remains.

The flames not only efficiently cleared away the venomous snakes, but also created raging walls of fire on the dock, successfully dividing and blocking the ever-flowing snake tide.

The snake-man warriors, who had just climbed ashore from the sea and were soaking wet, instinctively let out fearful hisses when they saw the terrifying flames. Their attack faltered, and they even began to slowly retreat, disappearing back into the sea.

The situation on the battlefield turned around in an instant!

However, the price of using this powerful force is also extremely high.

The player who wielded the flamethrower became a thorn in the side of all the snake people, especially the snake-man priests hiding in the deep sea.

A fire-breathing man was getting carried away with his fire when he got too close to the sea. Suddenly, several iron javelins flew out from underwater and landed around him. One of the javelins struck him and pierced him through.

The unfortunate man screamed as his flamethrower went out of control and swept to the side, nearly burning his comrades. In the end, he and his equipment collapsed heavily to the ground.

The second fire-breathing soldier attempted to repel a group of elite snake-men who were charging forward, but he did not expect that there was a unit that might be a snake-men priest hidden among the snake-men elites. The latter cast an evil drain spell through the wall of fire.

A visible crimson energy chain shot over and pierced through the player, who withered away at an alarming speed, as if all his flesh and life force had been drained away. In just a few seconds, he turned into a skeleton covered in skin, fell to the ground miserably, and the flamethrower in his hand went silent.

The third fire-breathing man was the most valiant; he roared and spewed flames onto the sea, forcing a large number of snake-men to stay away.

But as the latter approached, a snake-man raider lurking among the pile of corpses leaped up, its entire body bathed in flames, and precisely slashed at the flamethrower's fuel canister with its sharp steel blade.

Boom...

The violent explosion engulfed the player and the surrounding snake-men, turning them into a giant fireball with fragments flying everywhere.

Three brave warriors died in extremely tragic circumstances.

But their sacrifice was not in vain.

Before their deaths, the three successfully cleared a large safe zone, and the firebreak they created effectively stopped the snake horde from spreading. More importantly... the two relatively intact flamethrowers fell into the sight of other players.

"Damn it, pick it up now!"

"We can't let this artifact be lost! Brothers, cover me!"

Without needing any orders, the nearby players, as if injected with adrenaline, charged forward frantically, braving the snake-men's final ranged harassment, to snatch the two still slightly warm "Dragon Breath" flamethrowers.

The new operator quickly took over, and although he was still a bit clumsy, he didn't hesitate to relight the flames!

The roaring fire dragon descended upon the dock once more, completely shattering the snake people's last attempt at a counterattack.

The remaining snake-men let out unwilling hisses and disappeared into the dark sea like the receding tide, leaving behind only a devastated, smoke-filled dock and countless charred snake corpses.

The shouts and screams that had lasted for so long gradually subsided, leaving only the crackling of flames, the groans of the wounded, and the sound of waves crashing against the shore.

The snake-men's fierce attack was finally repelled thanks to the players' unexpected sacrifices and bursts of energy.

Governor Almeida watched as the two new fire-breathing warriors held the "Dragon's Breath" like precious treasures, and the faces of the players around him, filled with both relief and excitement. He let out a long, long sigh of relief, his back already soaked with cold sweat.

He glanced at the pale-faced mage advisor beside him; both of them had eyes filled with relief and lingering fear.

(End of this chapter)