Using landmines as hand grenades? What kind of Cambrian-era super-human is this?

"Colonel, with all due respect, aren't we taking a bit too much of a risk? What if the enemy has planted bombs on this bridge?"

Just as Lieutenant Colonel August finished giving his orders, an infantry battalion commander walked up to him with a deep frown and asked.

Hearing this, the colonel turned around and countered the battalion commander:

"Are there bombs on this bridge? Didn't you claim that you had already sent combat engineers to clear out all the explosives here when you attacked this place earlier?"

"Uh, well, that's true, but..."

Before the battalion commander could finish his sentence, Lieutenant Colonel August waved his hand dismissively and said:

"There are no 'buts'. Since your men already cleared the explosives, there is nothing to worry about. It's impossible for the enemy to have re-rigged the bridge with explosives in such a short span of time, is it?"

Clearly, Lieutenant Colonel August did not understand the creature known as players.

If he had any grasp of how players operated, he would have realized that while that previous Indomitable mech had shown itself and drawn the armored troops' attention away, the players had already seized those few seconds to plant the bombs.

For regular soldiers, planting explosives underneath the bridge would require running over, lowering themselves down inch by inch, and finally attaching the charges to the critical structural points.

For players, however, it only required pressing a random key to toss a bomb, completing the installation in a single second.

Watching the opposing Pacifier mech push forward rapidly through a hail of player gunfire while sweeping the area with four machine guns simultaneously, a few unscrupulous players who had just finished planting the bombs instantly broke into excited grins.

"Hehehe, oh yeah, here they come! The fools took the bait!"

"Wait, hold on, don't press the detonator just yet! Let a batch of the enemy cross first, and then blow up their prime units!"

"Just think about it—once their vanguard troops have crossed the bridge, we hit the big boom! Not only will it send their rear forces straight to heaven, but it'll also trap the guys who just crossed like fish in a barrel. Wouldn't that be way more satisfying?"

Under the direction of an experienced veteran player, several bomb-setting players huddled inside the trenches, fingers hovering, ready to detonate the charges at any moment.

Meanwhile, other players kept popping out of their defensive positions from time to time, laying down crossfire toward the flanks of the bridge to draw the enemy's attention and inflict a steady stream of casualties on the Black Eagle soldiers.

"With this much automatic firepower, it looks like we might have really hooked a big fish. This equipment configuration doesn't look like ordinary Cambrian troops!"

Observing the light machine guns and submachine guns repeatedly surfacing from the trenches, followed by wave after wave of sustained long bursts, Lieutenant Colonel August said excitedly to the officers around him.

Although he wasn't quite sure of the exact model of the weapons these Cambrian soldiers were using—feeling as though he had never laid eyes on such firearms before—

Whether it was the seasoned marksmanship of these soldiers or the sheer volume of automatic weapons they wielded, it was glaringly obvious that they were absolute elite troops, and perhaps even possessed Imperial Guard designations!

With this thought, a wave of eager anticipation surged in his heart.

Annihilating a ragtag militia versus annihilating an Imperial Guard-designated force were two entirely different concepts in terms of glory and prestige!

The former was utterly mundane, while the latter was enough to turn him into a household name and a national hero!

While Lieutenant Colonel August was busy talking, the lead Pacifier mech at the very front successfully clawed its way to the opposite side of the bridge and immediately began sweeping the street with its machine guns.

The crew huddled inside the mech weren't sure if there were anti-armor rifles lurking in the street, but the ferocious machine-gun fire would be more than enough to suppress any potential anti-tank firepower and cover the subsequent troops as they surged forward.

Right at that moment, a player leaped out of a trench in a flying dive, hurling an anti-tank mine that looked suspiciously like a rice cooker straight from his hands.

The next second, accompanied by a deafening roar, the Pacifier mech that had just charged up was instantly flipped over by the heavily-loaded anti-tank mine.

"What the hell... Where on earth did these Cambrian super-soldiers crawl out from?"

Watching the entire scene unfold through his binoculars, Lieutenant Colonel August felt that the soldier's maneuver was nothing short of absurd.

Setting aside just how suicidal it was to charge forward clutching an anti-armor mine at such close range, the sheer arm strength of that fellow was simply staggering!

If he remembered correctly, the anti-tank mines of the Cambrian Empire weighed at least ten kilograms!

So how on earth did this guy hurl a ten-kilogram monster as far as he did, launching it like a discus while executing a flying dive?

The player who charged out was naturally dead.

Though at such close range he wasn't instantly blown to atoms by the anti-tank mine itself, the machine guns of the other mechs promptly shredded him into a puddle of minced meat the very next moment.

Yet, even as he died, the corners of that player's mouth curved upward in an excited smile.

He wasn't smiling out of any noble sense of self-sacrifice; he was smiling because of the profit he had just reaped.

Blasting apart a single mech like that was enough to fund his respawn multiple times over, instantly depositing a massive bounty of merit points straight into his account!

Other players followed suit, eagerly trying to replicate the mine-tossing tactic. However, the Black Eagle armored troops, now thoroughly on guard, refused to give them a second chance.

Following a concentrated barrage of gunfire, the rash players who had just rushed out were killed on the spot, meeting a horribly gruesome end.

Targeted by at least twenty machine guns simultaneously, the nature of their final demise goes without saying—suffice it to say that only a few scattered fragments of flesh and blood could be found amidst the massive deluge of metal projectiles.

As the remaining five leading Pacifier mechs crossed to the far side of the bridge and began clearing out the surrounding trenches alongside the infantry, Lieutenant Colonel August wore a look of utter satisfaction.

That sudden Cambrian super-soldier who had popped out earlier was merely an anomaly.

Clearly, the war was still entirely under his control overall!

Yet right at that instant, gazing at the few mechs and roughly one platoon of Black Eagle soldiers that had just crossed the bridge, and then looking at the dozen or so mechs currently traversing the bridge alongside at least a full company of infantry,

the veteran scout player who had been patiently waiting for the right moment immediately gave the order to detonate the explosives.

The next instant, accompanied by a thunderous, earth-shattering roar, a massive explosion violently shattered the sturdy stone piers beneath the bridge.

The section of the bridge closest to the town seemed as though it had been heaved up by an invisible pair of giant hands, instantly rocketing into the sky, dragging along the vast cluster of mechs and soldiers currently crossing the bridge and hurling them violently into the air.

Even the Black Eagle soldiers further back, who had escaped the direct blast wave of the forward bridge deck, were knocked off their feet en masse by the sheer concussive force of the explosion.

Especially mixed within that shockwave were countless shards of flying metal and lethal fragments of stone and brick, which possessed a killing power at such high velocities that was every bit as deadly as bullets.

Gazing at the horrifying spectacle before him, which had transformed in a split second into a living hell, the binoculars in Lieutenant Colonel August's hands slipped from his grasp and crashed unheeded to the ground.