Chapter 35: What Year Is This? Still Charging With Bayonets Like Idiots?

"Damn it! Our home has been raided! Those damn useless idiots at the checkpoint!"

Listening to the familiar "Ura!" battle cry, Lieutenant Colonel Baker could easily guess what was happening.

The good news: No Black Eagle army had inexplicably betrayed the Empire; this wasn't some internal rebellion or a secret military purge.

The bad news: Those incompetent fools must have had one of their logistics depots raided by the "Russkies," and yet, not a single report had reached him until this very moment!

He was especially incensed by those damn checkpoints—how on earth had they been performing their inspections? They had actually let a massive force of disguised Russkies slip right past them!

He swore that if he survived this battle, he would hunt down those sentries one by one and execute them with his own pistol.

A group of players roared as they launched a bayonet charge, utilizing the speed boost from the charge to close the distance. Meanwhile, they flooded the communication channels, cursing their companions in the mechs as bastards.

"Fine, fine! So you get the meat and don't share with the brothers, huh?"

"You guys get to be the armored crew in front, having all the fun racking up kills in your mechs, while us infantry are stuck back here suffering!"

As for the rest of the Hanwu soldiers, they were still trailing far behind, struggling to keep up.

"Suka blyat, can someone tell me how Captain Vorontsov trains his men?"

A soldier asked in horror, looking at the others with confusion:

"It’s unbelievable. Even in our previous battles, Captain Vorontsov’s men always charged the hardest. And now, they’re still charging the hardest—we can’t even catch up to them!"

"No matter how you look at it, this isn't normal, right?"

The soldier couldn't wrap his head around it, his wide eyes filled with deep bewilderment.

He felt as though Captain Vorontsov’s men were blessed with divine power; surely, even the legendary Field Marshal Suvorov’s own men couldn't have performed any better!

The other Hanwu soldiers, while doggedly charging forward, silently agreed in their hearts.

They also wanted to know how Vorontsov's men were so ferocious—were they taking some kind of drug?

Furthermore, they really wanted to ask the Captain if he could wait for them to move together; they were tired of being the ones left behind to mop up the mess!

But they didn't know that at this very moment, Captain Vorontsov—whom they viewed as a burgeoning god of war—was also cursing under his breath in the depths of his heart.

"Damn it all! Are these players in such a rush to reincarnate?"

Andrei, driving a small truck and barely keeping pace with the players, couldn't help but despise the poor handling of the Black Eagle Empire's transport trucks while simultaneously wanting to berate the players.

Clearly, the order he had given was for them to sneak an attack from the rear, but with their incessant shouting, they had completely ruined any chance of a surprise raid.

However, looking at the soaring influence points on his dashboard and the players' constant cursing in the chat, Andrei guessed that the front lines were progressing reasonably well and that his two lone armored vehicles hadn't been wiped out yet.

This gave him a sense of relief. If the players had gotten his only two armored vehicles destroyed, he wouldn't even have a place to cry.

These weren't like the vehicles in *Battlefield*; once destroyed, you couldn't just get a new one at a spawn point.

These two vehicles were hard-won enemy captures; every one lost was one less he had.

Andrei was beginning to understand the difficulty of controlling players.

Back when he was just a gamer, he had never considered these issues from a commander's perspective; he had only cared about his own fun.

But now, Andrei realized: the players were having a blast, but he, the commander, was on the verge of a heart attack!

"Take out those damn infantry! They're fakes!"

A Black Eagle officer heard the battle cries and, seeing the soldiers charging down the hillside with bayonets, ordered the nearby machine gunner to fire without hesitation.

He had to admit, the Hanwu soldiers' bayonet charge was indeed heroic and intimidating.

But unfortunately for them, times had changed!

This was no longer an era where everyone relied on muskets and slow-paced exchanges of fire; back then, a bayonet charge from 300 yards away could break countless formations.

But now, charging directly into the crossfire of two machine guns was nothing more than meaningless suicide.

The heavy machine guns roared, and the players at the front of the charge were hit one after another, falling to the ground in an instant.

Some players died with their bodies relatively intact; though fatally wounded, they weren't dead yet and could still be revived by a medic.

Others had their heads blown off by machine gun fire and immediately respawned.

Seeing several players suddenly appear on the back of his truck, Andrei knew these reckless, charging fools were definitely having a rough time.

The regimental flag was held in Andrei's arms, effectively serving as a mobile spawn point for the players on this vehicle. The players who had just respawned on the truck bed turned around, complained that the truck was moving too slowly, and continued their bayonet charge forward.

The firepower of a regular army was far superior to that of game NPCs. It would be a miracle if this bayonet charge actually managed to reach the enemy line.

In the chat:

Brother Haonan: [F*ck! We got baited, don't rush! The firepower behind the hill is too heavy!]

Brave Ox: [The NPCs in this game are ridiculous. How can their aim be this good from so far away?]

The other players, seeing that the bayonet charge was ineffective, hurriedly threw themselves to the ground and pulled out their guns to trade fire with the distant machine gun nests.

They had hoped a single bayonet charge would cut through the enemy's entire line, but this sudden wall of lead shattered their mindless dreams of a glorious breakthrough.

Watching the exchange in the chat, Andrei couldn't help but roll his eyes.

Are real-life soldiers the same as game NPCs?

Game NPCs had terrible aim, the further away they were, the worse they got. But if a real-life machine gunner spent half the day spraying at an exposed enemy and couldn't hit a single one, he’d likely be executed by his own officer.

However, the fierce firepower of the Black Eagle unit didn't last long, as the two armored vehicles turned their turrets and targeted the machine gun nests that were slaughtering the players.

Truthfully, if left to their own devices, the armored crews really didn't want to change targets.

Because the rewards they got from using their machine guns to mow down fleeing officers were far greater than those for killing rank-and-file soldiers.

But there was no choice; at this rate, if they didn't take out the machine gun nests, the infantry behind them would never be able to charge up.

And if the enemy managed to sneak up with grenades and blow up the armored vehicles, that would be even worse.