9: Chapter 9: Only One Person Charges In

Jack's eardrums were assaulted by the sudden sound of the bugle charge.

The high-pitched, tearing sound was not pleasant; it carried the tremor of metal frozen stiff, yet it felt like a pump of boiling mercury being injected directly into one's veins.

His body reacted faster than his brain. The instant he heard that long note, the muscles in his legs tensed, he engaged his core, and violently yanked himself out of the ice pit where he had been lying all night.

"Charge—!!!"

The surrounding mountains roared. The sound, erupting simultaneously from thousands of chests, even drowned out the roar of the tank engines.

Jack held his rifle, his footing slipped, and he stumbled a few steps forward.

His adrenaline spiked, and the edges of his vision were slightly flushed red from the rush of blood.

This was what he wanted. This was how the game should be.

Not lying in the snow like an ice stick, not gnawing on potatoes that tasted like gravel, but holding a gun, charging down the slope, and putting a burst of bullets into the enemy's head.

A few dark figures sprinted ahead.

They were the vanguard soldiers of the company, moving with extreme agility, leaping and weaving through the knee-deep snow, using reverse slopes to evade the beams of the American searchlights.

Jack followed closely behind. The 'footwork' he had boasted about countless times in his livestream was now maintained purely by instinct.

He ran twenty meters.

Jack suddenly felt that something was wrong.

The sound was wrong.

Although the mountainsides were filled with shouts of killing, the activity coming from their direction was too thin.

An entire reinforced company—over one hundred and twenty men—was lying prone on this slope.

Normally, when the charge was sounded, even if it wasn't a sea of people, there should at least be waves of snow rolling and earth-shattering footsteps.

But behind him, it was terrifyingly quiet.

That dead silence felt like an invisible giant hand grabbing the back of Jack's collar.

He could even hear his own heavy gasps stretching in the air.

Jack abruptly stopped, his boot soles grinding two deep furrows into the hard crust of the snow. He turned his head.

The wind was still blowing, swirling snow powder around.

On the slope where they had lain prone all night, there were only a few scattered figures who had just managed to stand up, their movements stiff and sluggish, like rusty clockwork toys without oil.

More people—the vast majority—were still lying there.

Maintaining their firing posture.

Maintaining their concealment positions.

Motionless.

"Hey..."

A dry syllable escaped Jack's throat.

"What are you all doing? Charge! Can't you hear it?"

No one answered him.

The soldier who had been running ahead of him also stopped, glanced back, and then resolutely turned around,

Charging down toward the steel behemoths alone, quickly disappearing into the chaos where night and firelight intertwined.

Jack did not follow. A huge sense of panic made his limbs ice-cold, colder than when he lay in the snow pit.

He ran back to the familiar snow hollow, one foot deep and the other shallow, against the direction of the charge.

"Squad Leader! Stop aiming!"

Jack rushed to the prone figure beside him and reached out to pull the Squad Leader's arm.

"The bugle has been blowing itself ragged! That's the main force of the US Army, stop lying down, get up and fight!"

His hand met something hard.

The sensation wasn't like grabbing an arm under a padded coat; it was more like grabbing a tree root buried in the earth.

The Squad Leader did not turn around.

He was still lying there, that old muzzle-loading rifle resting steadily on the snowdrift, his cheek pressed against the buttstock, his left eye closed, and his right eye staring fixedly at the highway below through the sights.

It was a textbook-perfect prone shooting position.

Only his eyelashes were covered in a thick layer of white frost, fused into a sheet of white crystal, completely sealing his eyes shut.

Jack pulled hard.

The Squad Leader's body swayed slightly with the force of his pull, but it didn't fall apart; the entire body tilted like a statue before slamming heavily back into the snow.

A dull thud.

Jack's hand froze.

During that slight movement, the Squad Leader's cheek, which had been pressed against the buttstock, separated from the wood.

In that instant, a patch of adhered skin was violently torn away, remaining on the cold wooden stock.

No blood flowed out. The wound was grayish-white, already frozen solid.

The Squad Leader didn't move. He couldn't even let out a muffled groan.

Jack gasped for breath, white mist erupting from his mouth and nose, obscuring his vision. He wildly waved his hands to disperse the mist and scrambled toward another figure.

"Little Shandong! Little Shandong!"

The sixteen-year-old boy was not far from him.

The boy who had just been sharing potatoes with him, talking about 'going home to grow sweet potatoes.'

Little Shandong was lying on his side, still clutching the half-eaten small potato tightly in his hand.

He wasn't aiming his rifle; instead, he was curled up in a fetal position, seemingly trying to keep the last bit of body heat for something held close to his chest.

"Stop sleeping! Get up and run a bit, you'll warm up!"

Jack's voice trembled as he reached out to pat Little Shandong's face.

The moment his fingers touched the skin, Jack snatched his hand back as if electrocuted.

Stone cold.

It wasn't the coldness of the surface skin; it was a bone-deep chill radiating from within.

The hardness, the texture—it was clearly a piece of rock.

Little Shandong's eyes were half-open, his pupils cloudy, covered by a thin film of ice.

His expression wasn't painful; a slight upward curve remained at the corner of his mouth—the expression he had just worn while bragging to Jack.

That expression was frozen by the minus forty-degree severe cold, turned into eternity.

"Stop pretending..."

Jack knelt on the ground and tried to pry open Little Shandong's fingers.

"Didn't you say you still have to go home? Your little sister is still waiting for you... You haven't even finished that potato..."

The small fist was clenched tightly.

Jack exerted immense strength to pry open just one finger.

*Crack.*

The knuckle made a crisp sound—the protest of a bone frozen brittle.

The potato, which should have retained body heat, rolled out.

It was already as cold as a lump of iron.

Jack stared at the rolling potato, his mind going blank.

A prompt box suddenly popped up in the lower right corner of his vision:

[Current Company Status: Combat Casualties 112 / 120]

[Cause of Death Determined: Hypothermia.]

[Stealth Mission Complete, not discovered by US forces.]

No one was shot.

No one was blown up.

During this quiet night of lying prone—during the night Jack complained about the cold, complained about the hunger, complained about the poor equipment—

These more than one hundred men, in order not to expose their position and to wait for this bugle call, had frozen themselves to death right here.

That soldier who charged out just now, and those few stumbling figures.

They were the only living people left in the entire company.

Down the mountain, the US heavy machine guns began to roar, and the tank muzzles spat out huge fireballs.

The sound of explosions echoed in the valley.

Those sounds felt very far away from Jack.

He knelt in the snow, surrounded by silent ice sculptures.

The wind blew across the Squad Leader's frosted eyebrows, stirred the thin corner of Little Shandong's coat, making a rustling sound.

They heard the charge.

Jack was certain they heard it.

Because when Jack had tried to pull up the Squad Leader just now, he found that the Squad Leader's completely frozen finger was gripping the trigger so tightly that it had even deformed the hardened trigger guard due to excessive force.

That obsession to shoot, to charge, was still burning even at the moment his body completely ceased to function.

"Ah..."

Jack opened his mouth, wanting to howl, wanting to vent, but no sound came out.

His throat felt blocked by something, or perhaps filled by the vast snow and wind.

In the livestream room, five million online viewers watched the streamer kneeling in the snow.

Watched the soldiers, who even as ice sculptures, still pointed their muzzles downward.

Watched the distant sky ablaze with fire, while this place was as silent as a grave.

Not a single bullet comment appeared.

No one was typing 'Noob' anymore, no one was typing 'Garbage Game' anymore.

Jack took off the VR headset.

The light of the real world stung his eyes—it was the soft light from an expensive e-sports room, warm and bright.

The air conditioner was still blowing twenty-four-degree warm air. The can of cola on the desk was still bubbling.

Jack was still trembling. The coldness emanating from his marrow made his teeth chatter.

He looked up at the camera.

His face, usually cynical and always wearing a mocking smile, was now twisted into a knot.

Tears streamed down his cheeks, without warning and without sound.

He wanted to speak, wanted to explain to his fans why he hadn't charged, wanted to say something cheeky to ease the suffocating atmosphere.

But the moment he opened his mouth, broken whimpers uncontrollably escaped.

He grabbed the half-full can of cola on the desk, intending to take a sip to calm his nerves.

The cola entered his mouth—sweet, cloying, with the sting of carbonation.

In that instant, he gagged with a loud "Waaah."

Jack spat the cola all over the desk.

He hunched over the desk, covering his face with both hands, his shoulders shaking violently. In the room where nothing could be heard but the hum of the air conditioner, he cried like a child who couldn't find his way home.