Chapter 26: Kill Them All—Leave No One Alive!

Fortunately, Andrei's words carried some weight; upon hearing them, the flamethrower operators quickly stowed their weapons.

Perhaps it was because, at the very moment Andrei spoke, a prompt appeared in the players' system interface:

[Warning: Your current actions are highly likely to cause a decrease in favorability with an important NPC!]

Seeing this, the few flamethrower operators who had been on the verge of slaughtering the enemy hastily put away their weapons and automatically retreated to the back of the formation.

They had no desire to see their hard-earned favorability—which they were still struggling to figure out how to farm—plummet. After all, if Andrei were to trigger some critical special quest or offer unique equipment that they ended up locked out of due to a low relationship, it would be a total disaster.

As for anything beyond that favorability? Sorry, but outside of those metrics, Andrei was just a game NPC. Players were here to play, not to be played by the game; if there were no tangible benefits, why would they listen to an NPC?

Still, as they put away their flamethrowers, the players couldn't help but marvel at how advanced the game's physics engine was. It felt as though they could interact with everything in the environment—from the way the flamethrowers ignited surrounding objects to the way bullets left craters in the ground. Such intricate details made the players sigh at how realistic the game felt. If it weren't for the fact that even the gore and violence were rendered with such realism, necessitating private distribution via small pop-up links, the developers would have already gone public!

Even without the flamethrowers, the Black Eagle soldiers in the village were no match for the players. At this hour, the Black Eagle troops had long since turned in for the night; apart from a few sentries on the outskirts, who remained fully armed? Since Andrei’s team had already neutralized the sentries, it wasn't until they stormed into the village that the Black Eagle soldiers began to scramble out.

But these disheveled, sleepy-eyed soldiers, who had no idea what was happening, were hardly a match for the fully equipped players. A hail of gunfire cut them down as they reached their doorways, and any who tried to fire from windows were quickly suppressed by the players' rapid-fire automatic weapons. Compared to the rank-and-file soldiers, the players were overwhelmingly well-armed, wielding everything from submachine guns and light machine guns to assault rifles.

These firearms, coupled with aim-assist systems, made the players in close-quarters combat arguably more effective than battle-hardened veterans. Whenever they spotted an enemy, they simply snapped their reticle over and unleashed a burst, and the target was finished.

Beyond the players, the subsequent waves of Cambrian soldiers were also slaughtering the Black Eagle troops without mercy. Having witnessed the horrific state of the village upon their arrival, every one of them was burning with suppressed rage.

To the players, the scene they had witnessed earlier was merely game background—narrative flavor text provided by the developers to emphasize the villainy of the Black Eagle Empire. But to the Cambrian soldiers, this was the enemy actively murdering their own kin, their brothers and sisters.

"Kill them all! Leave none alive!" the Cambrian soldiers roared, their eyes flashing with unadulterated hatred.

Some Black Eagle soldiers, trembling at the commotion outside, tried to hide in their rooms and surrender, but the vengeful Cambrian soldiers gave them no quarter, driving bayonets into them right where they lay in their beds.

Two Cambrian soldiers dragged out a man dressed as an officer. He was screaming and shouting something incessantly. Because Andrei understood the Black Eagle language, he could tell the man was babbling about some sort of convention. However, the enraged Cambrian soldiers cared nothing for conventions; they only wanted blood.

After dragging the officer into the street like a dead dog, the two soldiers raised their rifle butts and brought them down with brutal force. Amidst a fading chorus of screams, they smashed the officer's head into a pulp. Only when the man was thoroughly dead did the two soldiers let out a pained, guttural cry.

"Andryusha, why?"

At that moment, Andrei heard a sorrowful voice behind him. A hand gently gripped his arm, and a voice asked, "I don't understand. Why did they invade our country and try to kill all of our people?"

Andrei turned to find Yelena, a medical nun from his unit. In the glow of the village fires, he could see her eyes were red; she had clearly been crying.

Andrei sighed, shook his head, and said in a heavy tone:

"Who knows? I want to know why these invaders do what they do, too. Perhaps it is simply to prevent any future trouble."

"This is what I said before: if we are conquered and simply submit, we will lose our final shred of dignity and humanity. We will end up as nothing more than slaves to be slaughtered at will."

"We must win this war. If we become a conquered people, our fate will be no better than the villagers we found here."

Just then, a beam of green light suddenly shot out from nowhere, sweeping across two Cambrian soldiers walking down the street.

The two soldiers had just finished killing the officer and were in a state of post-adrenaline exhaustion, their minds blank. Caught completely off guard, they were struck by the green beam.

In Andrei’s horrified gaze, the soldiers let out harrowing screams. Then, as if their bodies were dissolving, their flesh began to slough off and melt away at an incredible speed. In the blink of an eye, nothing remained of the two soldiers but their skeletons, still standing in the street.

The skeletons did not collapse. Instead, green flames erupted within their empty eye sockets, and they lunged straight toward Andrei.

"Damn it! What the hell!"

Andrei’s soul nearly left his body. He scrambled to draw his pistol and fired repeatedly at the lunging skeletons, but the bullets struck their bare bone with no effect. Even when Andrei landed a shot directly into one of the skulls, it merely staggered for a moment before charging again.

Seeing this, Andrei grabbed Yelena and retreated rapidly. It was fortunate that these skeletons were slow, otherwise, they would have been in serious trouble.

Just then, with a crisp crack of a rifle shot, the two skeletons suddenly froze. Andrei looked back and saw Boris walking toward them, his rifle raised, having just shattered the skull of the soldier in the distance who was wielding a necromantic weapon.