Free Web NovelChapter 463: Are All Newbies in Transia Monsters?
“Whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh whoosh”
The conical projectiles made peculiar shrieks as they broke through the air at high speed, like strange birds sweeping across the sky.
This disturbance was immediately caught by the Corpse Mage who was leading a team executing a flanking maneuver in the swamp.
The Corpse Mage, mounted on a skeletal warhorse, raised its head. Cold blue spirit flames flickered beneath its gloomy hood. Though its skin was shriveled like a mummy, one could still make out its facial features.
From that prominent nose bridge and sunken eye sockets, one could tell this fellow was a northerner in life.
Unlike other Corpse Mages’ withered frames, this one maintained its broad build even after resurrection, making it look particularly strange. Different from other Corpse Mages, it had a sharp bone knife hanging at its waist for close combat.
This made it look less like a Corpse Mage and more like a Netherworld Knight.
It quickly noticed six strange objects trailing white smoke through the sky, following standard parabolic trajectories as they hurtled towards its position. This made the Corpse Mage, with its rich war experience, immediately sense something was very wrong.
Although it had rarely seen such strange things before, it could roughly guess their purpose.
The Corpse Mage raised its gloomy, rotting staff to cast a spirit shield around itself while ordering its elite skeleton army to raise their shields in defense.
The advantage of undead creatures’ superior command execution was perfectly demonstrated here, in the blink of an eye, the entire formation had entered defensive mode.
Meanwhile, those strange artillery shells began their descent.
The buzzers mounted on the shells activated in the wind, their piercing sound growing more shrill as the falling trajectory accelerated. It was just like invisible phantoms swooping down from the sky, ready to devour the sacrifices offered to war in great gulps.
“Dwarven shells.”
The mounted Corpse Mage was unimpressed.
Though it had been dead for nearly 200 years, after its resurrection it had learned of the changes on the continent.
In its era, halflings and dwarves were already using such weapons in battle. To this spirit energy user, while such weapons were impressive, their killing power was clearly greatly overestimated.
As for killing undead with artillery shells, that was complete nonsense! The greatest advantage of death creatures was that they were cheap enough and had no morale to speak of, which minimized both the physical damage and terror that artillery could inflict.
When dealing with an undead horde, a good battle blade was more useful than a halfling rapid-fire gun.
Of course, the difference was merely that those brave enough to attack undead armies could choose their own way to die in battle, nothing more.
Thinking thus, scorning these halfling playthings, it watched with perfect composure as six shells crashed into its forward formation.
It wasn’t that it didn’t want to make more precise maneuvers, there was simply no need, and moreover, it didn’t have enough reaction time.
It had been ambushed.
Regrettably, this wouldn’t throw it into disarray, and the attackers had already exposed their position. Next it just needed to send out some skeleton vanguards with cavalry to charge over there.
“Boom”
A strange noise interrupted the Corpse Mage’s planned counterattack. Under its astonished gaze, the landed shells didn’t stupidly explode with shock damage, but instead after a muffled bang scattered dazzling flames in all directions like fireworks. Within the range of these flying sparks, any skeleton soldier that was touched by those burning sparks immediately burst into flames.
These bizarre flames took effect extremely quickly. Within the coverage area of six calibration shells, in just 10 seconds the Corpse Mage noticed it had lost at least several dozen elite skeleton warriors. freēwēbnovel.com
The death enhancement on their bodies could resist ordinary flame attacks, but seemed to provide absolutely no defense against these strange “fireworks”.
These things just looked like fire!
They were something more dangerous than flames, they could stick to bones and burn until everything combustible was completely incinerated.
How vicious!
This must be some kind of alchemical substance specifically effective against undead.
Before the Corpse Mage could determine the results, a second wave of six shells came flying in. Such rapid repeated fire completely overturned the Corpse Mage’s stereotypical impression of clumsy things like artillery.
This time it took countermeasures, ordering the skeleton army to immediately disperse, but an advancing formation of thousands couldn’t spread out that quickly in the swamp.
The death shriek of the second artillery barrage was closer, making the Corpse Mage feel as if that screech was unfolding right above its head. Looking up, it saw a shell trailing white smoke and making that strange howl as it hurtled down to land just over 10 meters away, then the white smoke exploded and scattered “fireworks” everywhere.
This shot was extremely accurate, landing right in the core of the Corpse Mage’s formation, letting it witness firsthand those scorching hot points of light raining down like falling stars onto its precious skeleton mage position.
Those with spirit shields fared a bit better, but those who hadn’t raised shields in time started smoking as soon as the light points touched them.
The death-enhanced bones offered no resistance against those scorching substances sticking and burning. Though they couldn’t feel pain, the physical destruction still greatly troubled the skeleton soldiers.
The Corpse Mage watched several skeleton mages try to cast ice storms to extinguish the strange fires on their bodies, but before they could complete their spells, their bones were burned through causing the entire skeletons to collapse into the muddy water.
This strange and shocking destructive power put the Corpse Mage on high alert.
Fortunately, of the six shells in the second barrage, only one landed near it. The remaining five shots deviated significantly but still landed among the skeleton army’s formations, causing the second attack to claim over 100 more skeletons.
These losses weren’t much to the Corpse Mage, but it had already realized the enemy’s actions could seriously disrupt its army.
It hesitated no longer, issuing orders through the command chain. Immediately a squad of skeleton cavalry galloped madly toward the firing position.
At this time on the high ground, Old Qin was cursing as he got the students moving.
“What the hell was that second volley? I told you to lower the barrel angle by 5°! How much did you adjust? Why didn’t you lower the barrel all the way into your crotch?
Damn!
Didn’t you learn math in university?
Hurry up and adjust!
That volley should have killed their commander with overlapping fire! Damn, we lost our chance.”
“Old Qin! Skeletons are charging over!”
Rainbow Cat shouted while gripping his monocular:
“Skeleton cavalry, nearly a hundred of them charging over, moving very fast. The swamp isn’t slowing their speed at all, we should run!”
“Run my ass! You coward.”
Old Qin angrily kicked Rainbow Cat in the butt, cursing:
“We’re over 10 meters up, they can’t climb up quickly, and we still have 54 shells! Damn it, shoot all these shells before they charge over!
Blow them up!
You lot! Have you figured out the angles?
I’m not commanding you anymore, fight independently, two people per tube. Since we can’t decapitate with precision fire, spread out the attacks.
Get your hearts out of your mouths!
We’re definitely not surviving today, but remember to take down plenty with us before we die.”
“Only 4 white phosphorus shells left.”
Three Jin Sweet Potato Wine shouted:
“The rest are high explosive shells. Old Qin, you use the white phosphorus, you shoot more accurately!”
“Damn, I almost forgot, I still have the Hammer and Sickle Team’s guns and ultimate weapons to give to the student party!”
Rainbow Cat, who had been kicked, was too busy to be angry now. Seeing everyone else busy firing shells enthusiastically one after another, he also reacted and hurriedly opened his spirit bag at his waist, throwing everything onto the high ground.
Besides several boxes of newly appeared replica Mosin-Nagants, there was also a large box. Rainbow Cat opened the box lid and exclaimed:
“Holy shit! An aerial bomb!”
“Hmm?”
Old Qin suddenly turned his head, and saw a small aerial bomb with its tip painted red in the box, making his eyes widen.
He thought to himself:
“Damn! What have my old subordinates been doing in this game? Why have they even made such an insanely dangerous thing?
That’s not right!
Transia’s industrial level shouldn’t be at the stage for this stuff yet.
You guys don’t even have aircraft yet somehow made aerial bombs first, this tech tree is more twisted than grandma’s foot bindings!”
“Ultimate weapon!”
The four student party members beside Old Qin showed no fear at all, while the newbies further away were even more fanatical. These guys were too excited experiencing gunpowder for the first time, now approaching the manic joy of a lifetime.
Sweet Potato Wine’s three roommates were so excited they stripped off their shirts, imitating movie poses as they sweated profusely while cramming those shells into the tubes to fire wildly.
Seeing bursts of fire erupting across the swamp ahead like a war movie spectacle, a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction unique to men arose spontaneously, making these guys laugh and shout taunts and curses.
Each one crazy beyond normal.
“Ultimate weapon my ass! This thing won’t detonate without sufficient drop height.”
Old Qin knew his stuff.
He cursed, quickly fired off his four white phosphorus shells, then strode over to the aerial bomb, casually grabbed the wrench from the box and rolled up his sleeves looking like he planned to dismantle this thing.
“Damn! Old Qin what are you doing? Keep firing! Keep firing! They’re surrounding us.”
Rainbow Cat held a Mosin-Nagant, trembling as he tried to fix the bayonet to the bayonet lug, but was too excited and scared to succeed after three attempts.
Old Qin watched with contempt, stepped forward to snatch the gun and bayonet, clicked it into place with one motion, but didn’t give it back to Rainbow Cat and instead slung it on his own back.
He knelt down, picked up the wrench to dismantle the aerial bomb’s nose, and said without turning:
“I need to remove the safety fuse from this thing, that way when they get close enough we can manually detonate it by striking the chemical compounds. Fortunately this thing’s technology is crude and backward enough, if it was actually WWII level stuff my modest skills couldn’t handle it.”
“What the hell did you actually do in real life!”
Rainbow Cat’s scalp went numb for a moment as he screamed:
“This doesn’t look like something a retired old man could do at all! You old guy, you didn’t come back from the Middle East did you?”
“Ha, I told you, I fought in war, just seen a bit more than you guys.”
Old Qin didn’t care about Rainbow Cat’s foul language at all.
He could already hear the sounds of skeleton troops climbing below the high ground, and could hear the whoosh of bone arrows flying in and the wails of student party members being struck by arrows.
A putrid wind blew around them, carrying the smell of the swamp, but to Old Qin it had a distinctive flavor.
That was the wind of war.
“Dreaming back to days of heroic youth, killing barbarians with iron horses and golden spears.”
This old fellow even hummed a few bars of some strange tune, really getting into the feeling.
But the next second, a howling flame strike spell descended from above.
That huge and sudden pillar of fire almost engulfed half the high ground, swallowing seven or eight of the student party members firing cannons enthusiastically and other newbies, tubes and all instantly consumed by the flames.
They didn’t even have time to scream before departing.
A burst of cursing immediately erupted in Sweet Potato Wine’s dormitory, three guys jumped up from their beds, threw off their helmets and started cursing at heaven and earth.
Their emotions clearly still lingered in that previous excitement. After cursing they gathered around the only surviving Sweet Potato Wine, surrounding his bed like some cult ritual, watching the helmeted Sweet Potato Wine on the bed.
Seeming to use this method to encourage their good brother to keep fighting in the swamp and not bring shame to their dorm.
“Cough cough”
Old Qin, who had been blown away by the flame strike’s shockwave, struggled to get up from the side. He shook his head feeling concussed, with sticky blood under his nostrils.
Fortunately this was in game, in reality taking a hit like this he probably wouldn’t even have a chance to make it to the ICU.
“Damn.”
He cursed, staggering forward to grab the hot twisted wrench and continue working on the displaced aerial bomb. Behind him the only survivors Sweet Potato Wine and Rainbow Cat had gone mad by now.
These two had also been caught by the flame strike, their clothes ignited making them look like scarecrows crawling out of a fire, but they still didn’t stop until firing the last shell as Old Qin requested.
This final shot was fired by Sweet Potato Wine.
By sheer dumb luck, it landed perfectly right under the advancing Corpse Mage’s feet with a huge boom, shattering the skeleton horse beneath the Corpse Mage and its guards.
Unfortunately it wasn’t a white phosphorus shell so couldn’t cause deeper damage, and the Corpse Mage thrown into the mud suffered no injury under its spirit shield.
However, the blue flames dancing in its eye sockets indicated its emotions were very unstable.
It had learned there were only 6 people on that high ground!
And though three had already been instantly killed by its flame strike, the remaining three could still cause it so much trouble!
What was that curved-fire artillery that could fire rapidly and flexibly adjust angles?
Why did these Transians have weapons that even halflings didn’t possess?
It grew increasingly curious about this.
Its curiosity about these “warriors” had already surpassed the orders it was meant to execute. Speaking of which, with so many shells exploding in this area causing such commotion, unless those vampires were all deaf they couldn’t possibly not notice, this ambush had effectively failed.
But no matter!
It would have many more chances to use the same trick.
Right now it just wanted to see these Transians with its own eyes. In its past memories, this land indeed produced fearless barbarians, but such flexible and fierce attacks didn’t seem like something traditional Transians could pull off.
If they really had such tactical execution ability, they wouldn’t have suffered so badly in every Black Plague.
Something it didn’t know about must have happened in that land.
“They’re climbing up!”
Sweet Potato Wine shouted.
Several skeletons had already climbed up before his eyes, these fellows gripping blades and spears as they charged to kill them. It was too late to run now.
The young art student looked back – Old Qin was leaning against the dismantled aerial bomb gasping for breath, his waist and abdomen torn open and still burning from that flame strike blast earlier.
This old guy only had one last breath left.
“Run!”
Old Qin threw the bayoneted rifle beside him to Rainbow Cat, gesturing for him to quickly run, he was ready to detonate the aerial bomb now.
As for Sweet Potato Wine…
Old Qin only had time to give a thumbs up to this young man who persisted to the end, before watching Sweet Potato Wine charge toward the pouncing skeletons with his rifle while screaming, flames still burning on his body.
His spirit was very valiant like a warrior crawling out of hell, but his combat technique was embarrassingly terrible, he was knocked down by a skeleton knight’s hammer in the first round.
Then accompanied by crude cursing, several grenades strapped to his body detonated, blasting the surrounding skeleton soldiers flying again.
Hmm, a final charge very fitting for a warrior’s posture, though ultimately useless.
Rainbow Cat had already taken advantage of the chaos to jump down from the high ground.
It wasn’t that he was scared.
Fighting to this point could hardly be described as cowardly. He had to get out of the aerial bomb’s blast radius, at least one person should survive right?
Old Qin’s health bar was already bottomed out.
His consciousness was somewhat blurry, seeming to dream back to the Xisha battlefield of that year, faintly able to see his companions’ postures as they charged with raised rifles.
Ah, those old guys were unlucky, hadn’t managed to hang on like him to catch these good times.
The skeleton soldiers gathered around, Old Qin had planned to detonate the aerial bomb immediately but suddenly realized these fellows weren’t attacking him, making him realize this might be an opportunity, so he pretended to be powerless and waited.
Soon, he saw a Corpse Mage with guards walk onto the high ground, that fellow staring at him with cold spirit flames, seeming to ask something.
But Old Qin no longer had the strength to answer.
He also didn’t need to answer anymore.
The moment the Corpse Mage approached, Old Qin’s face broke into a fierce grin, using his last strength to strike the chemical fuse on the aerial bomb behind him with the twisted wrench.
“Boom”
Terrible flames erupted in that instant, the “LeMay Joy Bomb” making its first roar on the swamp battlefield. The flames spread everywhere like meteors falling to earth, in that moment engulfing the entire high ground and everything around it in sticky burning fire.
And high in the air, Ah Yuen came to an abrupt stop in his rapid flight, staring dumbfounded at the exploding flames before him, his knife handle making a clicking sound.
“Damn!”
He cursed:
“Too late”
