Chapter 45: Lieutenant Colonel, we should fall back into the town!

"Colonel, the enemy's firepower is too fierce, our men can't even lift their heads!"
"I'm begging you, let us pull the troops back into the town first! If we keep fighting like this, all our men are going to end up dead!"
As soon as Andrei walked into the headquarters, he saw a company commander desperately pleading with Lieutenant Colonel Unel.
The company commander's uniform was stained with large patches of blood, though it was clearly not his own, otherwise he would already be dead.
At this moment, the tall man looked as if he were on the verge of tears.
"No, how can we abandon the outer defensive line so quickly? Tell the men to hold..."
Lieutenant Colonel Unel frowned, his expression quite grim. But before he could finish, Andrei hurried over and interrupted:
"Colonel, with all due respect, I believe ordering the soldiers to retreat into the town is our best option right now!"
"You know as well as I do that the enemy's armored forces have overwhelming firepower. The trenches we set up on the perimeter are practically useless and are being entirely suppressed by the enemy!"
"Continuing to leave the soldiers in those trenches is just sending more men to their deaths."
Seeing that it was Andrei, the tension on Lieutenant Colonel Unel's face eased slightly, having initially thought it was just another subordinate talking back.
Yet, regarding Andrei's suggestion, he still insisted:
"But the battle has only just begun. If we abandon all our outer positions now, how are we supposed to fight the rest of this engagement?"
"We must maintain enough depth and margin for maneuver in our operations. If we retreat like this, it won't be long before the enemy completely bottles us up right here in the headquarters!"
Hearing this, Andrei took a deep breath and replied with as calm a tone as he could muster:
"No, Colonel. Compared to the positions, our primary concern right now must be the soldiers!"
"Our perimeter positions were never designed to defend against armored units. Keeping the soldiers there will only subject them to the fierce onslaught of a hundred machine guns."
"If we fall back into the town, we can use its complex terrain to restrict the mobility of the enemy's armor. At the same time, we can hurl bundle grenades and Molotov cocktails from the windows to attack their armored vehicles."

"Colonel, with all due respect, pitting infantry against armored forces in open terrain is by no means a wise move!"
Lieutenant Colonel Unel's jaw tightened. Although on a subconscious level he wanted to order a retreat, his sense of honor prevented him from simply surrendering the position.
After all, according to the traditional military doctrines of the Cambrian Empire, abandoning positions without a fight was the act of a coward!
Just then, however, a squad of soldiers rushed in carrying several stretchers, every single soldier upon them severely wounded.
"Quick, someone help! His bleeding won't stop! Where are the medical nuns?"
The shout had barely faded when Elena, a medical nun who had just finished treating a wounded soldier on the other side of the room, hurried over, spinning frantically in a flurry of activity.
Andrei had initially thought medical nuns were a relatively common unit, but to his utter surprise, apart from Elena whom he had seen in his own company, he hadn't laid eyes on another one anywhere else.
At the very least, not a single medical nun was assigned to the reinforcement regiment led by Lieutenant Colonel Unel.
A soldier appeared to have been struck in the abdominal aorta; a gaping wound passed straight through his midsection from front to back, and blood was spurting out as if from a fountain.
Yet as Elena arrived, a soft glow emanated from her hands, and the blood vessels in the soldier's abdomen rapidly knitted together while his flesh began to heal.
However, before the wound on his abdomen was even half-healed—with his internal organs still visibly exposed—Elena hurried away toward another casualty.
"What's going on? Why aren't you saving my brother?"
The soldier who had carried him in asked Elena with an anxious expression, but she simply pushed him aside and shouted:
"Don't get in my way! He's not going to die now; you've got several more on the verge of death waiting right behind you!"
Elena moved with extreme speed. Perhaps because her healing capability was not infinite, she did not strive to fully heal the soldiers, merely ensuring their injuries reached a non-fatal state before rushing to the next wounded man.
Even so, a soldier suffering from massive internal hemorrhage died right on his stretcher; by the time Elena rushed back over, his heart had already stopped beating.
Unlike many scenes commonly depicted in television dramas, at this moment, no one grieved over the soldier's death—or rather, there simply wasn't time for grief.
The stretcher team that had just carried the man back turned right around and ran back toward the battle lines, while Elena, confirming the man was dead, merely turned to tend to the next casualty.

Because space was limited, the field hospital and the headquarters had been combined into a single location. Witnessing this scene, Lieutenant Colonel Unel finally nodded to Andrei and said:
"You're right. We should let the enemy enter the town and then deal with them! I'll order the soldiers to blow up the bridge..."
"Sir, let my men handle the task of blowing up the bridge! I have two demolition specialists under my command who are quite skilled,"
Andrei saluted the colonel, spoke quickly, and then dashed back toward the frontline.
Simultaneously, he issued a new quest within the system:
[Side Quest: When the enemy's vanguard troops cross the bridge, blow it up with explosives to deal the enemy a heavy blow! Participants: Unlimited. Reward: 1,000 merit points!]
No sooner had the quest been issued than several support player units sprang into action.
"Quick, cover me! Let me plant these explosives at the base of the bridge!"
A support player carrying a satchel charge shouted excitedly to the others. Although they didn't understand the intricacies of demolition techniques, it didn't matter; as they approached the bridge, exclamation marks would prompt them precisely where to set the explosives.
However, with the enemy's firepower currently so ferocious, getting close to the bridge was no easy feat.
A reckless support player had barely charged forward when he was simultaneously targeted by multiple machine guns, instantly being shredded into a pile of gore before running back to respawn.
The rest of the players found providing cover equally difficult, as the enemy armored vehicles lined up on the opposite riverbank unleashed such fierce firepower that the players were completely suppressed.
Right at that moment, a crisp artillery report suddenly rang out, and an armor-piercing shell struck an enemy Vanguard mecha dead center.
The stricken Vanguard mecha crashed heavily to the ground, erupting first into flames before detonating in a violent secondary explosion that blew its two mechanical arms flying through the air.