Necromancer, summoning 055? What the heck?

Chapter 389 Bloodfield Meat Grinder: A Bizarre New Tactic

In the second year of summer, the scorching sun baked the vast plain outside the Crack Claw Canyon.

The three major orc tribes of "Crack Claw," "Thunder Roar," and "Sky Ridge," along with more than a dozen medium-sized tribes and over 130 small tribes under their command, assembled nearly 200,000 elite troops and surrounded three brigades of the Vast Sea Field Army, totaling 18,632 men, on the plains outside Crack Claw Canyon.

A vast array of orc banners fluttered in the wind, accompanied by the mournful sound of horns.

This sudden turn of events instantly attracted attention from all sides of the Starry Continent. A large number of military observers flocked to White Deer, either trying to obtain a safe opportunity to observe the battle through their connections with the Seven Luminaries Garland Merchant Guild, or simply relying on their skills to infiltrate and get as close to the battlefield as possible.

The orcs seemed to be deliberately showing off, and they tacitly approved of these battlefield observers as long as they didn't try to collude with the poor bastards in the encirclement.

Of course, they will soon regret this decision.

From this moment on, the battlefield has shifted from offense to defense, with orcs now attacking and humans defending.

The orcs fought fiercely, constantly adjusting their tactics in the face of the vast ocean's "powerful ranged enchanted arrows".

At first, they spread out their formation and charged forward.

The ground forces moved first, unleashing a line of troops that stretched as far as the eye could see. Green-skinned and brown-skinned orc warriors, clad in simple leather armor or bare-chested, roared and surged forward like a tidal wave.

They were used to deplete the first wave of firepower from the Hanhai forces.

At the same time, these infantrymen also carried a large number of "smoke balls" made from a mixture of animal dung and special herbs. After igniting them, they threw them wildly forward on the battlefield, creating a continuously advancing wall of murky smoke in front of the Hanhai position.

As the smoke thickened, the sound of hooves thundered from both sides.

The orc cavalry has been mobilized.

These carefully selected elite beastmen charged forward at full speed from the southeast and southwest, their ranks stretched out in an extremely wide line, almost a straight line, like two surging waves rising simultaneously from the horizon.

Smoke and dust billowed up behind them, gradually merging with the wall of smoke in front of them, and the earth trembled slightly with each rumble of their footsteps.

The idea is good, but the reality is difficult.

The idea that infantry and cavalry could charge a position equipped with artillery, heavy machine guns, and automatic rifle fire has been proven wrong by the bones of generations of pioneers.

It's not good!
No matter how thick the smoke, how scattered the formation, or how thorough the preparations, it won't work!
A crisscrossing barrage of fire relentlessly poured forth from the smoke, pointing the way to death. Shells whistled as they fell, blooming into blood-soaked flowers of death among the orcs. Modern weaponry is so intense, yet so cold, showing no mercy whatsoever.

The orcs charged from different angles and directions for three days, and this one-sided slaughter, this "meat grinder," lasted for three whole days.

Seeing that their opponent's "arrows" showed no signs of running out, the orcs could no longer hold on.

The battlefield was a scene of shocking devastation.

Outside the Hanhai defense line, within a range of several hundred to several thousand meters in front of the barbed wire, countless orc javelins were planted, embedded in the ground less than a kilometer from the trenches, pointing silently to the sky like the spines of a hedgehog.

The barbed wire was torn with gaps of all sizes, and many places were covered and compacted with corpses and mutilated limbs. The horse traps were filled with unrecognizable objects.

The once relatively flat ground is now covered with craters, bloodstains, and various charred marks.

Of course, the most numerous were the orc corpses that lay dead outside the range of the barbed wire... a dense, layered mass.

They lay there in all sorts of contorted postures, and the entire circumference, with its tens of kilometers-wide front of attack visible everywhere, extended long and short backwards.

In some places, the corpses of orcs and their mounts piled up, almost forming a low wall. This obstacle often became cover for the orcs who instinctively tried to avoid it, so even more corpses were piled up.

Dark red blood soaked into the soil, pooling in some low-lying areas to form shocking little pools of blood that reflected a mirror-like luster in the sunlight.

Rod Ironspine, who was in charge of the outer perimeter interception and arrived at the battlefield late, felt a chill run down his spine. He was extremely grateful that he had arrived late, as the chieftains seemed to have been awakened by the blood.

How to do?
Should we continue to gamble, hoping that such a charge will exhaust the enemy's arrows, or should we surround them until they run out of ammunition and food, or until their morale collapses?

The orc leaders began to argue fiercely, and in this dire situation, several messengers dressed in black robes arrived at the orc camp.

Rhodes couldn't make out their faces, or even their race.

Soon, the orcs' fighting style transformed, becoming increasingly flamboyant.

First, the skirmish line remained the same, but heavy shield infantry began to appear.

These shields were not made with any special casting techniques; they were simply thick iron plates, roughly the size of an average orc. The orc's elite infantry would carry them forward and stop once they were within range of their own javelins, providing cover for the javelin throwers behind them to finish throwing all their javelins.

This tactic resulted in casualties for the first time in the Han Hai territory.

Because the opponent's shields are also spread out extremely wide, even if the Han Hai Territory uses artillery, one shot can often only cover one shield. In fact, to hit the moving shield exactly, the artillery fire has to be calibrated multiple times, and it often takes six or seven shells to hit one heavy shield.

Han Hai had no choice but to use more powerful heavy machine gun armor-piercing rounds to concentrate fire on the enemy, which suddenly increased the battlefield attrition.

That wasn't the end of it; soon, an advanced version of the enemy arrived.

This time, the shield was changed to a V-shape, almost completely enclosing the orcs behind it in the angle.

Even more critically, this extremely angled shield greatly increases the chance of bullets ricocheting. Bullets fired head-on, even armor-piercing rounds, are often deflected and fail to penetrate effectively, requiring the target to be fired from the side.

This undoubtedly greatly reduces the effective range of Hanhai firearms.

The most elite squad of orcish greatshield infantry, braving a hail of bullets, advanced to within 700 meters of the forward trenches! Finally, the exasperated Macaga ordered loitering munitions to be used, which directly struck them down.

Consumption is increasing further. Loitering munitions are not like artillery shells. Even if they can be sold at rock-bottom prices in Dongxia, the transport capacity of the Bloodline Altar will always be a bottleneck that is difficult to solve.

During this period, the orcs also tried a variety of bizarre tactics that could be described as "ingenious".

They selected strong and robust warriors who were at least at the second-tier level, wrapped them tightly in wet, thick leather and rattan, and fixed them inside huge, round stone projectiles. Then, using super-heavy catapults, they launched these "human projectiles" at the Hanhai position like cannonballs.

Unfortunately, the catapults' range was somewhat inferior to that of the artillery in the Han Hai Territory, not to mention the rockets and loitering munitions equipped by the field army.

Therefore, even after the stone projectiles, fired from a distance, rolled a considerable distance, the orcs who finally emerged were still quite far from the human camp.

The stone sphere stopped, its outer shell shattered, and the dizzy, even vomiting, orc warriors inside struggled to crawl out. Before they could even see where they were, they were greeted by a precise and synchronized volley of salutes.

For example, the orcs also devised an airdrop tactic.

They used wyverns to carry the orc warriors into the air, and after a period of aerial acceleration, they threw them at the human base from a distance.

Because it had to avoid the anti-aircraft fire of the Vast Ocean Territory, the flying dragon flew very high and far. Theoretically, even a first-level warrior would not be able to withstand such a parabolic fall from a height of nearly three thousand meters. However, the opponent used a special item - the Feather Fall Scroll.

The moment Macaja saw the effect of this thing, he immediately understood that there must be a human force involved behind the opponent, but he didn't know which underworld force it was.

Of course, these orcs met an even worse fate.

Imagine paratroopers, without air superiority or fire support, parachuting over enemy-held defensive positions—what would happen?

When this part of the video was sent back to Han Hai Ling, Commander-in-Chief Chen Mo had to blur it out when he quoted it in his lectures to his military academy students...

In short, under the guidance of that mysterious "strategist" or group of strategists, the orcs seem to have opened the floodgates of some kind of "tactical creativity," with all sorts of strange and tricky tactics emerging one after another.

Macaga, on the other hand, records one enemy's "little trick" every day and takes in several "experiments" of various forms.

By late June, the troops that had gone to the upper reaches of the Huanyan River had completed all their combat missions, and there was no fighting on the western front! On the eastern front, the fighting was still in full swing.

Chen Mo had already pushed his reserve force across the Illusion Flame River. Several carefully selected units from the National Defense Army also crossed the river at the same time as the field army, and deployed their formations on White Wave Beach, waiting for the orcs to reveal a weakness.

Just then, the enemy finally found a real trump card that could threaten the Hanhai position.

A large number of orcs skilled in digging were deployed to the front lines of Crackclaw Canyon. The orcs first dug a horizontal trench parallel to the human battle line, and then, along dozens of different routes, they simultaneously began digging longitudinally towards the Vast Ocean Territory.

The real crisis has arrived.

This seemingly clumsy and primitive tactic struck Han Haijun squarely where it hit his weak point.

Whether it's guns or cannons, their effectiveness against enemies in trenches is very limited. Only precision-guided weapons can achieve a good killing effect.

When the orcs disregard cost and casualties, the precision-guided weapons of the Vast Ocean will inevitably be no match for the sheer number of orc hordes. The message reached headquarters, and the commander-in-chief issued two orders.

The first step was for the government to issue an ultimatum to the dwarf.

For so long, the intelligence provided by the dwarf has been utterly useless.

"They claimed their intelligence network covered the entire Starry Continent, but what happened? Not only did they fail to warn of the orcs' large-scale encirclement plot, they don't even know who's currently advising the orcs behind the scenes!"

"In my name, issue a formal inquiry to the 'Seven Luminaries Garland.' Tell them that if the next intelligence report does not arrive with concrete and valuable information, I have every reason to suspect that these greedy fellows are behind the orcs. After all, they have a 'previous record.'"

"At that time, all cooperation between the two parties will be immediately null and void!"

This intelligence, unsurprisingly, caused quite a stir among the Seven Luminaries Flower Wreaths.

The second order was to increase the delivery of supplies to the field army positions.

For some time now, Hanhailing has been using drones to deliver supplies to the front lines.

The deployment time is usually chosen at night. Under the cover of twilight and the intense noise of the surrounding battle, batches of drones fall directly to the ground from the high altitude of the position.

Sending food, weapons, ammunition... Now, the Han Hai Territory is sending people.

Sigrún has taught at the Iceland University of the Arts as a part-time lecturer since and was Dean of the Department of Fine Art from -. In – she held a research position at Reykjavík Art Museum focusing on the role of women in Icelandic art. She studied fine art at the Icelandic College of Arts and Crafts and at Pratt Institute, New York, and holds BA and MA degrees in art history and philosophy from the University of Iceland. Sigrún lives and works in Iceland.

When Lin Xiangming got off the plane, he still felt a little dizzy and his legs were slightly weak.

On the one hand, due to the turbulence of the flight, the drone naturally did not take the pilot experience into consideration. The obese pilot felt a bit uncomfortable in the cabin. On the other hand, there was also psychological pressure. In addition to supplies, there was also an elven air force knight and a large bird serving as a mount in the cabin.

It was a royal griffin from Xiyue, pure white, with a majestic appearance, and its two dark eyes were always scanning the surroundings warily.

Clearly, the royal griffin had never been on an airplane before. Its massive body seemed somewhat cramped in the confined space, and its two sharp eyes darted back and forth warily from time to time.

When his gaze occasionally swept over Lin Xiangming, who was standing right next to him, he would always cast a fierce look at him with a warning, and let out a low gurgling sound from his throat.

Although he didn't understand bird language, Lin Xiangming could roughly guess that it wasn't anything good.

But Lin Xiangming wouldn't hold a grudge against the Military Affairs Department; this was a safety net arranged for him.

If the plane malfunctions and the cabin opens automatically, then it will be entirely up to the griffin and the elven knight to save him, who is powerless to fight.

Fortunately, the aircraft, which had been personally inspected and adjusted by Master Norton Ironbrows, was quite stable, and Lin Xiangming was safely delivered into the defense zone.

Makaga came to greet him personally, and Lin Xiangming was flattered. His round belly made it difficult for him to bend over properly, so he had to lean his upper body forward, making the whole posture look a bit comical.

"Commander Ma! Why did you come in person? You flatter me so much!"

Makaja gave a solemn military salute: "Dean Lin, you've come a long way, it must have been tiring!"

"No, no, not at all. It's all just following the Chairman's orders and serving the Alliance. It's my duty, my duty!"

Although this guy has a despicable face, it's truly commendable that he volunteered to come to the scene at a time like this.

This is a battlefield, a frontline battlefield besieged by a ferocious orc army ten times larger than itself, where a humiliating defeat and rivers of blood could occur at any moment. When Chen Mo sought opinions, although everyone expressed their obedience, the hesitation on their faces was impossible to hide.

Lin Xiangming was the only exception.

As the person in charge of the Huigui Cemetery and its deputy director, he used to have a name: "Fu Nang".

A greedy, shrewd, and calculating fellow, he was even privately referred to by some cemetery necromancers as "a dwarf among necromancers."

However, the lord was truly wealthy and willing to spend money.

Based on this, Lin Xiangming can be described as infinitely loyal to the lord.

During this time, because of his reputation for greed, an unnamed force secretly contacted Lin Xiangming, promising him a huge sum of money. However, Lin Xiangming reported them without hesitation.

The necromancers, finding it unbelievable, asked him curiously, "You don't want so much money? Have you changed your mind?"

Lin Xiangming looked at the monk who asked the question with disdain and held up a few chubby fingers.

"First, I know my own limitations. I am not worth that much money at all. It is only because the esteemed Chairman believes in me that I am worth this much money."

“They’ll only give me money once or twice. If I betray the chairman and lose his trust, they won’t give me a single penny anymore.”

"As long as I don't die, I can keep making money here with the Chairman, and I'll keep making more and more money. It's nothing compared to this one-time payment!"

"Secondly, having money is not enough; you also need to be able to retain it."

"In Hanhai, as long as I don't do anything illegal, and as long as the esteemed Chairman is still alive, no one will dare to rob me, no matter how much money I have."

"If I follow those guys, hey, my money is just the savings of those higher-ranking nobles, they can take it whenever they want?"

"Third, whether money is a lot or a little depends on what it can buy."

"Most of the things that can be bought elsewhere can be bought in the Vast Ocean Territory, but many of the things that can be bought in the Vast Ocean Territory are not available elsewhere."

"Moreover, things are cheaper in Hanhai. The money that buys one pound of grain elsewhere can buy more than ten pounds in Hanhai, and this is even while we are at war."

"Am I crazy? To take a sum of money meant for execution and go out to live a life of constant fear?"

To be honest, these are principles that even on Earth, let alone the Starry Continent, many people still can't understand.

However, this greedy fat man always managed to see things very clearly.

This time, as soon as Chen Mo spoke up, saying that a group of necromancers needed to be mobilized to support the front line, Lin Xiangming was the first to step forward.

He saw it all too clearly: this battle posed absolutely no great danger, and might not even pose a minor one.

He never looked at things, but at people.

He didn't understand anything about troop strength comparisons, rank differences, terrain advantages and disadvantages, or battlefield situations, but he understood Chen Mo.

Given this chairman's extravagant spending style but extreme concern for human life, if this position outside Crack Claw Canyon truly cannot be held, he will definitely try every means to rescue the people inside, rather than filling the area outside with people.

Besides, the lord himself said there would be medals and stipends!

Medals can increase your rank and salary, which is equivalent to money, so why not hurry up and get them!
Of course, at this moment, Macaja was unaware of all this. The centaur commander's previous negative impression of this fat man was completely swept away by this firm support.

After a brief exchange of pleasantries, Macaka briefed the other party on the latest situation.

Despite the relentless firepower from the Vast Ocean, the orcs persevered in digging longitudinal trenches, reaching a point just one kilometer from the Vast Ocean's territory.

Dig a little further ahead, and you'll find that a single charge could lead to a bloody confrontation.

Lin Xiangming nodded: "Commander Ma, before we came, the Chairman personally instructed me that our monks who returned to the cemetery are now your soldiers, and they will obey your command!"

"What do you think we need to do?"

Macaja chuckled and led the necromancer leader to the watchtower.

In the distance, newly dug trenches, with the soil turned up on both sides forming dark brown marks, resembled ugly giant centipedes, stubbornly and inch by inch winding their way towards the Hanhai position.

The closest trench is less than a kilometer from the outermost edge of the position. At its end, one can see a charred patch from repeated bombing, but it still stubbornly and crookedly extends forward.

"I'll have to trouble you mages to arrange some troops that can break out and go into the trenches to play with them."

Lin Xiangming rubbed his chubby hands together, his smile growing even brighter.

"Don't worry, this is our specialty!"

(End of this chapter)