37: Chapter 37 Battle

The wasteland night,

had no moon; only the massive gas giant in the distance, emitting a faint and sickly ghostly blue glow at the edge of the skyline, barely illuminating the dried-up riverbed.

The eastern bank of the riverbed.

Three Z-shaped interlocking field trenches had been fully excavated.

Fifty-four players, like a pack of lurking wolves, were quietly distributed within the trenches.

Lin Li wore a voluminous cloak, concealing the Medical Exoskeleton beneath.

Carrying his halberd, he led Black Rat and over thirty dejected Mountain Tribe members slowly into the position.

As they approached,

Lin Li saw players in the trenches crouching and scurrying back and forth from time to time, seemingly distributing some secret weapons.

He walked closer to take a look.

ikun True Fan, his face covered in black soot, was carefully pulling out simple Molotov Cocktails made from glass bottles or ceramic jars from a broken wooden crate, handing them to several strength-oriented players at the very front of the trench.

"Old Liver, you front-liners have high strength attributes and can throw far. Listen for the command in a bit, and smash all these little darlings into the middle of those greenskins!" True Fan instructed with a chuckle.

Liver Emperor took a glass bottle and sniffed it; an extremely pungent smell of gasoline hit him in the face.

"Good stuff, made with the gasoline you guys just refined this afternoon?" Liver Emperor's eyes lit up.

True Fan nodded proudly:

"This is a Napalm Bomb mixed with scrap rubber and animal fat! Once it sticks, even water won't put it out. It's a pity time was too tight and the quantity is too small. If we had a few hundred, fighting these greenskins would be child's play."

"Awesome! Give that kid Slaanesh a few too!"

Meanwhile, on the other side of the trench,

Praise Ming Shen was mysteriously pulling the two-point-three-meter-tall Tauren Makabazi into a corner.

"Cowboy, those mass-produced Logging Guns are impossible for your hooves to even reach the trigger. This thing is something I specially customized for you on the Constructor this afternoon. Take a look?"

Like showing off a treasure, Ming Shen pulled out an extremely rugged-looking Double-barreled Shotgun from behind his back.

But the most terrifying part of this gun was its caliber—a full 40mm! Those two dark barrels were practically two miniature hand cannons!

Makabazi's huge bull eyes instantly widened.

He grabbed the giant shotgun; the slightly modified, oversized trigger guard was just enough to accommodate his thick fingers.

"Holy shit! Awesome! Old Ming, I love you!"

Makabazi was so excited that even his bull nose was snorting steam.

"Get lost! My sexual orientation is perfectly normal!"

Ming Shen pushed him away in disgust, then brought out a heavy iron box:

"These are the bullets. All hand-crafted by me. The ones with red shells are Buckshot, filled with steel balls, used for clearing large areas of Squigs and Gretchins; the green ones are Slugs, for blowing greenskin heads off at close range. Use them sparingly!"

"Got it! Just watch how I blow those greenskins' balls off in a bit!"

Just as the players were excitedly checking their gear,

“Zzt... zzt...”

A faint sound of static suddenly came from the pv terminal badges hanging on everyone's chests.

This was a new feature Lin Li had urgently asked 73 to add before the battle:

Within a three-kilometer radius of the Shelter, all players wearing a pv terminal could achieve voice communication similar to a local area network radio.

As soon as the communication channel was connected,

A player who usually didn't talk much asked weakly:

"Brothers... we're usually just armchair generals on our keyboards. We've never actually fought a trench battle with hundreds of people. How do we do this? Do we wait for the NPC officer to come and command us?"

The channel fell silent for a moment.

At this time, some sharp-eyed players spotted Lin Li standing behind the trench with a group of natives.

"Don't count on the NPC! Look at the people the officer brought behind him!"

A veteran pro-player scoffed in the channel:

"This is a hardcore game touted as 100% realistic! Do you think the system would be kind enough to send an NPC to hold our hands and teach us how to fight? The NPC is likely just here to symbolically oversee the battle! Do you expect him to block a greenskin charge with those few dozen broken firesticks? We have to handle this battle ourselves!"

Just as they were leaderless,

"Ahem."

Two extremely steady coughs suddenly came through the channel.

"Brothers! If you can trust me, how about giving me a try at commanding this battle?"

The speaker was Player Pi She, who had previously had three fingers cut off in the sewers.

Pi She's voice carried an air of absolute confidence:

"I might not have been a soldier in real life, but I'm a Paradox-level pro-player. Games like 'Hearts of Iron' and 'Europa Universalis'—I know them like the back of my hand. This kind of hundred-person level line infantry plus trench warfare, I have experience! What do you say?"

"Old She is reliable! We'll leave it to you!" Ming Shen was the first to voice his support.

"Go for it! If things go south, we won't blame you!" other players chimed in one after another.

"Good! Thanks for the trust, brothers!"

Pi She immediately entered the zone, his tone turning professional instantly. "Now, I'm issuing the first directive!"

"Everyone, immediately form tactical squads of 6 to 12 people based on weapon range and melee preference! The entire field will be divided into five squads!"

"Finish communicating within one minute! Squad members, gather with your elected captains! Captains, immediately report your defensive sector positions and ammunition counts to me in the channel! Fast! Move it!"

"Copy that!"

Almost in the next second,

The fifty-plus players in the entire trench, like an activated precision war machine, instantly began operating at high speed!

No shirking, no bickering.

Teaming up, assigning sectors of fire, counting ammunition—everything was conducted with extreme excitement yet in an orderly fashion.

Standing in the rear, Lin Li watched this scene, the corners of his mouth beneath the mask curling up slightly.

"Recruiting that Paradox war criminal was indeed the best decision I've ever made."

Meanwhile, Black Rat and those thirty-plus Mountain Tribe scavengers standing behind Lin Li had expressions like they'd seen a ghost.

"Brother Black Rat... are these people crazy?"

A subordinate swallowed hard, pointing at the players in the trench ahead who were checking their guns while letting out fanatical laughs.

"They're about to face hundreds of frenzied greenskins, so why do they look... even more excited than those greenskins? Are they some kind of extreme blood-sacrificing cultists?"

Black Rat was also breaking out in a cold sweat; he had never seen an army with such terrifying, even pathological, morale in his life.

Lin Li ignored the terror of these natives.

He just turned his head and swept an extremely cold gaze over Black Rat.

"Take your people and lie down behind that mound on the left wing. Do not fire without my command, and do not retreat a single step."

Lin Li didn't expect these thirty pieces of junk automatic rifles to be of any help at all; as long as these guys didn't flee and disrupt the players' formation, he'd be counting his lucky stars.

"Yes, yes, yes! We definitely won't cause trouble!"

Black Rat felt as if he'd been granted a reprieve and hurriedly led his subordinates, crawling and scrambling to hide behind the mound on the left wing, not even daring to peek out.

Lin Li checked the time on his pv terminal.

Eight twenty-five.

“Thump.”

The tremor of the earth arrived as expected.

The next second,

On the dunes across the dried riverbed, a terrifying roar that tore through the night sky rang out!

"WAAAGH!!!"

...

"They're here!!! The greenskins are coming!!!"

In the trench, someone was the first to shout.

Immediately after, the fifty-four members of The Fourth Calamity responded with howls, as if they'd been injected with chicken blood!

"For the Emperor! For the Administrator!"

"For the exoskeletons! Kill!"

"WAAAGH back at them! Whoever flinches is a coward!"

They shouted all sorts of things, but every roar was laced with an extreme thirst for battle!

"Everyone, quiet!!!"

In the pv terminal, Pi She's extremely stern commanding voice instantly suppressed all the noise!

"Brothers! Listen to me! Our ammunition is extremely limited! Less than a hundred rounds per person on average!"

Pi She tightly gripped the spear in his hand, his eyes fixed on the green shadows emerging like a tide on the opposite bank:

"Remember! Wait until they're close to fire! Let them get within eighty meters!"

"Everyone, switch to semi-auto mode! Conserve ammo! Prioritize focusing fire on those massive Orc Boyzs and Nobs! Leave the Squigs and Gretchins to the shotguns and fire bottles!"

"And the most important point: only hits to the head and heart are fatal! Crippling them is useless!"

"Understood?!"

"Understood!"

The players quickly racked the bolts of their Heavy Stubbers, accompanied by a series of extremely crisp metallic clacks.

Most people rested their barrels on sandbags, turned off the full-auto safety, held their breath, and aimed dead ahead.

In the darkness,

The surging torrent of greenskins drew closer and closer.

Three hundred meters... two hundred meters... one hundred and fifty meters...

"Holy crap..."

Lying in the front row, Flash looked through the iron sights of his firearm at those behemoths moving as if on flat ground through the swirling sand, their speed incredibly fast, and couldn't help but swallow hard.

"Don't these greenskins get tired? They've charged this far, and their speed hasn't decreased at all?"

"Nonsense."

Beside him, Liver Emperor sneered while holding his gun,

"Greenskins are pure biological weapons! They're muscle from head to toe, and their energy conversion rate is terrifyingly high! These are meat grinders born for war!"

"Damn, I wish I were a greenskin."

Flash licked his dry lips,

"High damage with the left fist, high damage with the right fist, no need to use your brain for anything, just charge through everything."

The distance between the two sides was rapidly closing amidst an extremely oppressive silence!

One hundred meters!

Ninety meters!

Eighty meters!

When the first extremely strong Orc Boyz, covered in scrap metal, stepped across the eighty-meter dead line!

"FIRE!!!"

Pi She let out a lung-bursting roar in the communication channel!

“Bang bang bang bang bang—!!!”

In an instant!

Over fifty 12.7mm caliber Heavy Stubbers simultaneously spat out half-meter-long tongues of searing orange-red flame into the night!

The deafening roar of gunfire instantly tore through the dead silence of the wasteland night sky!

Like fifty roaring fire dragons, they wove an airtight net of death, ruthlessly blanketing the charging greenskin tide!

It was an incredibly shocking metal storm!

The kinetic energy of the large-caliber, full-power bullets was terrifying.

Flesh and blood instantly flew within the greenskin horde a hundred meters away.

The Gretchins and Squigs charging at the very front, if even grazed by a bullet, had their limbs severed instantly.

If hit in the torso, they would explode on the spot like balloons filled with blood.

Even for the thick-skinned Orc Boyzs, charging while tanking bullets was no easy feat.

The propellant for this batch of bullets was a high-energy explosive treated with acid nitration, resulting in extremely high muzzle velocity.

A thumb-thick bullet hitting an orc would leave a fist-sized blood hole.

Their proud muscular defense was ruthlessly torn apart.

Although such wounds weren't fatal, the powerful stopping force still caused their charging formation to falter.

As for those unlucky greenskins who were headshotted, their hard skulls were blown off, sickly green brain matter splashed everywhere, and they became corpses after a few struggles.

"WAAAGH."

The heavily damaged greenskins grew even more frenzied.

Among them were also 'I-think-so' guns temporary cobbled together by Mekboys.

In the darkness, occasional flashes of chaotic fire appeared.

A pile of scrap iron, nuts, and unknown metal fragments slammed into the players' position along illogical physical trajectories.

“Thud.”

A player's shoulder was hit by a piece of pig iron; half his body went numb instantly as blood gushed out.

But no one retreated, and no one was afraid.

"Aim for the heads, target the big ones," Pi She continued to command calmly in the channel.

However, not all players could remain rational.

On the left side of the trench, Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh had completely forgotten Pi She's order to use semi-auto to conserve ammo.

His left hand tightly pressed down on the scalding barrel shroud, his right arm firmly tucked the stock, and he directly flipped the Logging Gun's selector to full-auto, then squeezed the trigger all the way.

"Aaaaah. Refreshing. This is what you call a machine gun."

Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh shouted, his eyes red with excitement.

The recoil of the Heavy Stubber made his whole body shake, but he had no intention of letting go.

Although the Logging Gun's fire rate couldn't match modern machine guns, a twenty-five-round magazine wouldn't last more than a few seconds in full-auto mode.

“Click.”

The bolt locked back on empty.

Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh panted, his left hand trembling as he knocked out the empty magazine, quickly inserted a new one, and squeezed the trigger again.

In less than a minute of engagement, he had burned through all the magazines he carried.

He smacked his lips, wanting more, and turned to look beside him.

Flash was lying on a sandbag, honestly firing three-round bursts with high accuracy.

Beside him, three full magazines were neatly stacked.

Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh chuckled and, under the cover of darkness and gunfire, stealthily reached out and swiped a magazine.

Inserted, chambered, and fired wildly again.

“Eh?”

Flash finished a magazine and reached for a spare, only to be stunned.

"Where are my bullets? Where did such a large stack of bullets I put here go? Do we have Blood Raven canned goods here?"

The interlocking fire net of fifty heavy machine guns had, in just a few minutes, cleared out the large numbers of Squigs and Gretchins at the very front.

However, those massive Orc Bosss, wearing thick scrap metal armor, were still sprinting through the hail of bullets.

Bullets hitting them only produced sparks or got stuck in their thick muscles.

The distance between the two sides closed by another thirty meters in seconds.

"First squad, throw the bottles," Pi She roared in the pv terminal.

Wanna Sleep with Slaanesh had just finished the stolen bullets and was about to reach out his sinful hand again when he heard the command.

He laughed loudly and threw the scalding Logging Gun at his feet.

He turned and pulled out a Molotov Cocktail filled with napalm, lit the rag wick, swung his arm wide, and smashed it into the dense orc formation.

"Taste some wasteland-special incendiaries."

A dozen or so Molotov Cocktails exploded one after another in the greenskin ranks.

Searing flames instantly flared up, illuminating half the night sky.

Against dense Squigs and Gretchins, this kind of area-of-effect weapon was practically a dimensional strike.

Flames spread across the greenskins.

Water couldn't put it out, and slapping it only made the fire stick tighter.

Screams and the burnt smell of roasted meat mixed together.

But the remaining orc elites continued their charge; even with raging fires burning on them, the murderous intent in their eyes didn't diminish in the slightest.

Only twenty meters remained.

The firelight illuminated the hideous faces of the orcs.

Most of the players' ammunition was running dry.

"It's my turn to step up."