Trench Bolts and Magic

Chapter 187 Keywords: Mage with submachine gun flanking maneuvers
The truck bumped along the cobblestone streets, speeding towards the defense zone of the 1st Company.

When Morin arrived at the temporary company headquarters of the 1st Company, only a few communications soldiers and clerks were busy working.

A clerk saw Morin and quickly came to greet him.

"Commander! Why did you come in person? Sergeant Klaus is on the front line!"

Morin nodded, without pausing, and walked straight through the building that served as the company headquarters, heading towards the direction where the gunfire was most intense.

He quickly found Klaus directing the battle behind a sandbag bunker.

When Klaus saw Morin, a look of grief appeared on his face, and he let out a long sigh.

"Battalion Commander, Sergeant Bowman has been killed in action."

Klaus's voice was choked with emotion.

"He and a heavy machine gun squad hadn't even had time to evacuate from the building."

Morin's heart skipped a beat. He knew that Klaus was referring to the soldier's tag that had just disappeared from the system map, but he never expected that Sergeant Bowman was among them.

Bowman was one of the oldest soldiers who had followed him through all the fierce battles, but he never expected this.
He opened his mouth, but found himself at a loss for words. In that instant, he seemed to have accepted the fact.

In the end, Morin simply nodded expressionlessly and said:
"I see."

He suppressed the surging emotions in his heart and refocused his attention on the battle situation in front of him.

He peeked out and quickly scanned the battlefield.

The situation was worse than he had imagined.

Lacking the suppressive fire from the high ground, the Gallic soldiers had successfully penetrated into the middle of the barbed wire formation.

Taking advantage of their numerical superiority, they engaged in fierce firefights with the training assault battalion soldiers in the buildings on both sides, and continued to try to storm the buildings.

On the street not far away, Gallic engineers were also working hard to cut through barbed wire, and it looked like they were about to clear a complete passage.

Behind them, the two 75mm magic cannons were like the sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of all the defending soldiers.

Morin quickly glanced at the system map and realized that he had to find a way to destroy those two magic cannons.

These 75mm cannons, enhanced by magical technology, were clearly far more powerful than the '75mm Miss' he knew.

In urban warfare, such artillery that can fire directly at brick and stone houses is a devastating blow.

This thing is like a B-4 howitzer from another world that has entered Berlin; it's completely unreasonable.

A bold plan quickly took shape in his mind.

"You guys keep the line going, I'll go over and take out those two cannons."

Morin's voice was soft, as if he were talking about something trivial.

Klaus was observing the enemy engineers' progress through his binoculars and had the others focus on the units that were destroying the barbed wire when he heard Morin's words. He turned around abruptly, his eyes wide with shock.

"Battalion Commander! What did you say? You want to go alone?"

"No way! That's too dangerous!" Klaus refused without even thinking. "If anyone's going, it'll be us! I'll take a commando team!"

Several soldiers nearby who were changing magazines also chimed in.

"Yes, Battalion Commander, you can't go!"

"Let's go! We guarantee we'll complete the mission!"

Morin shook his head, his gaze still fixed on the two faintly visible magic cannons in the distance.

"The First Company can't do without you; you need to be here to command the overall situation."

He turned to look at Klaus, his expression serious.

"Furthermore, you don't have any magical shields, so moving around on the streets makes you too conspicuous and could result in heavy casualties."

"When I act alone, I'm a smaller target, which makes it easier to maneuver around others."

After saying that, Morin didn't wait for Klaus and the surrounding soldiers to react. He crouched down, left the cover, and disappeared into the nearby street.

"battalion commander!"

Klaus shouted anxiously, wanting to rush over as well, but found that in that instant he could no longer see Morin's figure, and it was too late to chase after him.

He slammed his fist into the sandbag, sending sand flying everywhere.

Then he raised the binoculars again, directing his anger and worry toward the distant enemy.

"Riflemen, listen up! Keep a close eye on those engineers! We absolutely cannot let them break through the barbed wire!"

On the other side, Morin, who had broken away from the 1st Company's defensive line, was now moving swiftly through the ruins and shadows like a Hakimi.

In the two days leading up to the start of the battle, he had already led his officers to survey this defensive zone of the 1st Company countless times.

He knew exactly where there were shortcuts to get through quickly, where there were broken walls to climb over, and which buildings had internal structures that could be used for detours.

At this moment, guided by the system map, which resembled 'Gaode Map', he easily evaded the reconnaissance range of all the Gallic soldiers, and quickly circled towards the target location along hidden paths that they had not even noticed.

Soon, he arrived at a narrow alleyway, about seven or eight meters wide, that was completely blocked by barbed wire and roadblocks.

The Gallic soldiers considered this a dead end, an impassable path, so they did not attack.

Without pausing, Morin slipped into a building on the side of the street.

He quickly climbed up to the third floor and came to the window of one of the rooms.

Outside the window, a makeshift "aerial passage" made of two sections of wooden ladders swayed precariously across the alleyway, connecting to the window of another building opposite.

Morin took a deep breath and, without the slightest hesitation, flipped over and climbed up the wooden ladder.

He spread his arms wide, like a tightrope walker, carefully maintaining his balance as his feet moved swiftly across the swaying ladder.

Below is a fence covered with barbed wire and obstacles; a slight misstep could send you falling through.
But Morin's expression didn't change at all. A few seconds later, he successfully reached the other side of the street and nimbly climbed through the window.

In this way, through several hidden passages like these, Morin stealthily circled around to a building behind the Gallic soldiers' attacking column.

He peered cautiously out of a broken window on the first floor, peeking out half his head towards the bustling street outside.

There were still many Gallic soldiers in red and blue uniforms on the street, launching an attack.

All their attention was focused on the training assault battalion's defensive line at the other end of the street, and no one expected that an enemy would appear behind them.

A little further ahead, there were two 75mm magic cannons that were slowly advancing.

This thing normally requires four to six mules to pull, but in the fierce and narrow street fighting, it is obviously impossible to bring horses in.

The artillery crews were chanting and laboriously using collected sandbags to pad the back of the cannons.

They were trying to use this method to eliminate the sandbag bunkers that were giving their infantry a headache with direct fire.

Morin calmly observed everything, memorizing the enemy's location, number of people, and weapon configuration.

He checked the magazine of the MP14 submachine gun in his hand and confirmed that it was full.

Then, he reached out and unfastened the buckle of the magazine pouch on his chest, making sure he could reload in the shortest possible time.

Everything was ready. Morin took another deep breath and released the spell he had prepared the night before.

A semi-transparent blue shield instantly enveloped his entire body, flashed briefly, and then gradually disappeared.

This is [Mage Armor] enhanced by the 'Spell Power' feat.

After confirming that the icons representing [Mage Armor] and [Arcane Protection] at the bottom of the field of view were both at full value, and after glancing at the back of the street where there were no other Gallic soldiers for the time being, Morin crouched down and crawled out through a hole blown open in a building.

Using the mountains of corpses and debris on the street as cover, he crept slowly toward the unsuspecting Gallic soldiers and artillery crew ahead.

His movements were so light that he made almost no sound, and his presence was minimized amidst the chaotic background noise of the battlefield.

He quickly arrived behind a pile of corpses less than thirty meters from the last Gallic soldier and quietly lay down.

This distance is within the optimal killing range of submachine guns and grenades.

Morin did not rush to fire.

He gently took off the backpack from his back, revealing a dozen or so neatly stacked egg-shaped hand grenades inside.

He took out these deadly 'iron balls' one by one, carefully placed them on the ground in front of him, then glanced at the Gallic soldiers who were still attacking, and expressionlessly picked up a grenade.

Now, it's time to give them a big 'surprise'.

Morin got up from the ground and knelt on one knee behind the pile of corpses. He skillfully hooked the pin with his right index finger and carefully considered the delay and parabola of the grenade.

His primary target was the two 75mm magic cannons that were increasing their downward angle.

Once we can disable these two artillery pieces that pose the greatest threat to the defensive line, things will be much easier.

He seized the opportunity, pulled the pin sharply, swung his arm back, waited a second, and then threw the grenade with a standard throwing motion.

The grenade traced a perfect arc through the air, passing over the heads of the unsuspecting Gallic infantrymen ahead, and flew precisely towards the two artillery crews who were struggling to push their cannons.

"boom!"

The 3-second delayed grenade exploded in mid-air, and the hot fragments and shockwave instantly swept across the area.

The gunners who were pushing the cannon had no time to react before they were knocked to the ground by the sudden explosion.

Screams and wails erupted, and a large number of people fell down around the two magic cannons in an instant.

The explosion, like a thunderclap from a clear sky, stunned the Gallic soldiers on the entire street.

"Where did the grenade come from?"

"Enemies! Enemies!"

The crowd was thrown into chaos as the soldiers looked around in panic, trying to figure out where the attack was coming from.

However, Maureen gave them absolutely no time to react.

As he threw the first grenade, his left hand swiftly grabbed the second one.

Pull the ring, throw!
The movements are done in one go.

The second grenade landed precisely among the group of artillery crew members who had been knocked down.

"Boom!"

Another loud bang, and flames and thick smoke rose up again, with blood and flesh flying everywhere.

Morin transformed into the 'Jade-Faced Grenade King' and mechanically threw grenades one by one.

The dense crowds became the perfect targets for grenades, and each explosion could take away several lives.

Just as the Gallic soldiers were disoriented by the two grenades, Morin suddenly stood up from behind the pile of corpses.

The MP14 submachine gun in his hand let out a deathly roar at that moment.

"Da da da da da da!"

Instead of firing long bursts, he used precise three-round bursts to deliver lethal 9mm bullets one by one to the still-stunned Gallic officers and soldiers.

A Gallic captain who was trying to regroup suddenly had three puffs of blood burst from his chest, his expression frozen in that moment, before he fell straight backward.

Another soldier who had just seen Morin's figure raised his rifle when his head was smashed to pieces by a bullet, and red and white matter splattered all over the gun.

The arrival of Maureen completely shattered the psychological defenses of these Gallic soldiers.

They couldn't understand why the enemy commander had appeared behind them like a divine intervention.

"The enemy is behind us! The enemy is behind us!"

A young soldier watched as Morin slaughtered his comrades like cutting melons, and shouted as he raised his rifle and aimed at Morin.

His actions triggered a chain reaction.

His actions also led many soldiers around him to aim at the figure at the rear of the column and open fire.

At a distance of several tens of meters, it's difficult for these soldiers and their rifles not to hit the target.

But the next moment they were horrified to discover that blue sparks flew out in front of the figure in Saxon military uniform, blocking all the bullets.

"A mage... He seems to be a mage!"

"Why would a Saxon mage be here?"

The Gallic soldiers fired in desperation, only to find that their shots were ineffective. The enemy calmly changed to a new magazine and then began to fire at them again.

Morin did not waste a single bullet; with each volley of short bursts, one or more Gallic soldiers inevitably fell.

He was like an efficient and ruthless butcher, reaping the lives of those who were already in a state of panic.

Meanwhile, at the other end of the street, on the 1st Company's position, Klaus and his soldiers were also stunned.

They watched helplessly as a sudden explosion erupted behind the enemy lines, throwing the attacking Gallic soldiers into chaos, from which they were then felled one by one.

"That's...that's the battalion commander," a soldier muttered to himself.

Klaus held up the binoculars, his hands trembling slightly.

He clearly saw that in that chaotic street, Morin, alone with a submachine gun, turned the Gauls' attack upside down.

A mixture of awe and fervor surged within him.

"What are you still doing?"

Klaus snapped out of his daze and roared at the soldiers around him, "Fire! Give them a good beating! Don't let those Gauls get away!"

The order was given, and the 1st Company's defensive line, which had been silent for a moment, erupted into deafening gunfire once again.

Meanwhile, Morin also evaded the Gallic soldiers' attacks and hid in a narrow alley blocked by barbed wire and obstacles, then found a building with a special mark in an inconspicuous place.

Then, using the first-floor window sill and the bricks that had been pried open beforehand, they quickly climbed up to the second floor and crawled inside.

When the Gallic soldiers caught up with them to the alleyway, they were puzzled when they saw that the alley was empty.

Just as they were wondering if the Saxon mage could fly, the sound of a light machine gun suddenly rang out from the building's windows.

(End of this chapter)