Chapter 57: Bridgehead Assault Failed, Fall Back to Defend the Town!

"Sulfur Rain of Fire!"

As the battle mage among the Black Hawk Empire's troops raised his staff, accompanied by the high-speed rotation of a magical array, a vast sheet of emerald-green fiery rain bombarded directly toward the ground.

"What the hell! This is way too cheap, right? How come even mages are showing up?"

Looking at the overwhelming rain of fire roaring down toward their mechs, the two players operating the Pacifier mechs couldn't help but curse.

Are they kidding? Fighting mid-battle and suddenly magic comes out! Is this the World War they signed up for?

Oh? You're saying mechs and cyborgs were there from the start, and there were even special soldiers using necromantic rifles beforehand?

Never mind then! This world indeed isn't the normal World War they knew!

Although the maneuverability of the Pacifier mechs was decent enough, facing the unrelenting tracking firestorm from the sky, even with the players trying their absolute best to control the mechs, they were ultimately drenched head-on by the infernal downpour.

The Pacifier mechs were never heavily armored units to begin with. Confronted by the spells raining down from above with ultra-high temperatures and thermite-like destructive effects, the top armor simply couldn't hold. In the blink of an eye, they were melted into piles of scrap metal by the firestorm.

The next moment, both players saw their visions go black as they found themselves in the waiting-to-respawn state!

Damn it! There are hackers! There are seriously hackers!

Not only was this unlucky mech wiped out by the enemy's wave of fire, but several cavalry players were also inexplicably annihilated by the fiery rain from the sky.

The lethality of this thing was truly staggering; within a small radius, it was simply more brutal than continuous artillery bombardment!

Ordinary players were finished the moment they were hit by one, and even cavalry couldn't handle taking a couple of hits.

Having lost the cover of the cavalry in the rear, combined with the loss of the players' mortars, the few players positioned at the bridgehead defense line who had been busy operating their warhorses in close-quarters combat against the enemy were suddenly plunged into a state of total isolation.

Although each of them fought as if possessed by the spirit of Zhao Zilong from Changshan, their long spears and sabers spinning like wheels of wind as they cut down soldier after soldier around them, facing the bullets flying in from all directions, these cavalry players eventually had to succumb to their fate, leaving behind only the riderless warhorses standing in place and entering a neutral state.

Looking blankly at the horses standing motionless in front of them, the recovering Black Hawk soldiers swarmed forward to investigate what was so unusual about these warhorses.

They had noticed earlier that whether it was the riders on the horses or the warhorses themselves, they all exhibited an extraordinary resistance to damage—even to the point of defying their understanding!

Therefore, they all suspected that this batch of cavalry might well be some sort of special cyborgs, both man and mount, just without the cybernetic modifications being as obvious as those of their own Black Hawk Empire.

Unwilling as they were to admit it, what did this imply? It meant the enemy possessed even more advanced cybernetic technology!

If they could bring these warhorses back, could they achieve some breakthroughs from the enemy's technology?

However, just as the Black Hawk soldiers touched the warhorses, as if time had paused and then resumed its flow, the previously motionless warhorses—which had looked just like robots—suddenly whinnied and began prancing wildly.

Judging by their appearance, these warhorses were clearly terrified, just like ordinary horses startled by fright!

"Strange, what is going on here? Why are these horses suddenly jumping around?"

"Forget it, stop thinking about it for now, hurry up and get these horses under control! Who knows what dark tech that damned Cambrian Empire used to manufacture such tough warhorses?"

A group of Black Hawk soldiers scrambled in a flurry, using all their strength to finally subdue the panicked steeds, while secretly feeling a wave of doubt in their hearts.

Were these truly the same warhorses that those cavalrymen had ridden earlier to wreak havoc upon them?

Compared to the terrifying might and ironclad discipline those warhorses had previously displayed, these horses now seemed no different from their own, save for perhaps looking a bit sturdier.

The Black Hawk soldiers did not know, and even Andrei himself did not know, that once these vehicle units summoned by him were captured by the enemy, they would completely lose all game traits and turn into standard units with performance and functions identical to historical counterparts.

Precisely because of this, when the Black Hawk soldiers captured these warhorses, the beasts were no longer the nuclear-powered steeds of the past; they were just ordinary horses.

It wasn't until the battle here had concluded that the Cambrian reinforcements from the rear finally arrived fashionably late.

There was no helping it; a 5-kilometer march took an hour for a normal army, and even with a forced march, it still took them close to half an hour to reach the spot. Otherwise, by the time they ran over, there would be no need to fight—they would have exhausted themselves to death first.

In contrast, those player-controlled guys riding horses and motorcycles had zipped past at flying speeds, making it look like they were playing Grand Theft Auto!

For this Cambrian army to rush over so quickly was already the result of them pushing themselves to the absolute limit.

Yet the arriving Cambrian forces couldn't play much of a role; the gap between the two sides was simply too vast.

Leaving aside the fact that the enemy Black Hawk army had several times the number of machine guns and consisted mostly of seasoned veterans with multiple combat experiences, just the mortars and infantry guns re-established by the enemy on the opposite bank of the river were enough to blow the light-footed Cambrian soldiers into a bloody mess.

After respawning from the rear, another batch of players who rushed over urgently tossed smoke grenades to block the enemy artillery's line of sight, and then attempted to act as ghosts in the smoke once again.

However, right at that moment, a prompt suddenly appeared in their vision: their previous quest to prevent the enemy from occupying the bridgehead position had been canceled, the original quest rewards were gone, and the new objective had shifted to leading as many troops as possible in a retreat to re-defend the small town.

Sea Crow: [Damn scoundrels! What is going on here? How did a perfectly good quest just disappear?]

King JiJi: [Probably because we failed to repel the enemy within a certain time limit. No choice, this wave of enemies is way too strong; this quest doesn't look like something that can be completed through normal means!]

Regarding the quest update, the players chattered in the chat room, pondering why their mission had failed this time and whether there was some trick they had failed to figure out.

Unfortunately, the players didn't know that this wave simply featured an enemy too powerful, exceeding their current combat capabilities.

Andrei had been monitoring the combat patterns on the players' side all along. Though far away and unable to see what was happening directly, he could roughly guess what the players were doing through the conversations in the chat room.

Still, dragging this fight out any longer was pointless; more and more enemies were pouring in, backed by artillery and spell suppression on the opposing side.

While the players could absorb the casualties, the allied troops could not. When Lieutenant Colonel Uner realized the bridgehead position could not be retaken, he immediately issued a retreat order, sending a courier on a fast horse to deliver the message.

Because of this, Andrei smoothly canceled the quest and recalled the players.