Road To The Crown 238 Retreating

17th July 1574 early afternoon

It was only a matter of time before Ostros forces would overcome the advantage of my weapons and reach the barbed wire. Yet as I watched them pressing forward while using any means possible to s.h.i.+eld themselves from the onslaught of my rifles, not even stopping themselves from using the bodies of their fallen comrades in the form of s.h.i.+elds!

Yet while this small ploy of theirs managed to buy them a few more steps towards the wired line, they quickly had to move on to looking for another trick. Maybe it was caused by the fact how relatively well-trained this first army of mine was, or maybe thanks to them overcoming their blood baptism earlier, while the enemies were still closing towards the first line of defence, the rate of their progress slowed down considerably.

But it lasted only for so long. After nearly a quarter of an hour of the continuous fighting, the first group of Ostros soldiers reached the bared wire. 

And they stopped.

Because this kind of punny fence wasn't capable of stopping fully armed, and at times, armoured men! 

Yet it was far more than enough to stop them in place for a moment. It didn't matter whether they would slash the wire with their swords, cut the fence itself to the pieces, or even if they push the entire thing down! All that mattered, was the fact that they had to stop to do even a single of those activities!

"Everyone! Fire at once!"

Now came the crucial moment. 

While the casualties on the enemy side were mounting for a long time already, as long as the enemies would manage to break through the condensed lines of fire that my men were creating just now, it would be the end of my small army.

Crushed by an overwhelming numerical advantage. Was I willing to let such shameful records to stain the paragraph dedicated to my person in future history books?!

NO!

"Everyone, empty out!"

This order was something that was the most beloved exercise of all my men, regardless of their rank or length of service. Yet I wasn't surprised by that fact at all.

After all, who wouldn't want to joyfully pull the trigger of their rifle all the way to the back, allowing the automated mechanisms to do the work and wreak havoc wherever the muzzle of the gun was pointed at?

With the enemies just a few meters away, still struggling to get past either the dead bodies of their friends or through the barbered wire, an insanely loud salvo, simply couldn't have anyone missing their shots!

One by one, twice in the span of three second, the entire group of people that were currently closest to the barbered worse, would be pushed away several meters. 

In just a few moments, continuous salvos of my rifles managed to push the enemy to the back, revealing the scale of the carnage we caused to the eyes of my men. Just a single look at their expressions was enough to tell me, that while the enemy attack didn't manage to break them, the sight of this poor, b.l.o.o.d.y battlefield was the straw that broke the camel's back.

"I want to go home…"

Hearing this small sobbing coming somewhere from my flank, I had to fight the urge to order one of my officers to silence the faint-hearted soldier. As much as fearing the death could be excused in the war, cowardice in the face of the enemy was akin to a betrayal!

"Everyone!"

Seeing how quickly the entire situation was deteriorating, I realised that there was no point in wasting our time in this place anymore. While the kill number was great, it didn't even come close to what we would have to do in order to clean up the area from all the Ostros sc.u.m!

"Fall back!"

Rather than pressing forward, as soon as the order was given, all my men orderly reloaded their weapons before placing the makes.h.i.+ft explosives in various parts of the reaper gun mark two and moving back to the line of a small forest.

BOOM!

In just a few moments, a huge eruption forced everyone's attention towards my now empty camp, where the silly remnants of the complicated machinery that allowed the operation of my machine guns, were now scattered apart as nothing more than a bunch of useless sc.r.a.ps!

Yet even after the enemy forces finally formed the pursuit unit, nothing really happened!

With my forces retreating without even a hint of hesitation all the way back to the Marketplace, by the time when the chase unit finally found our exact location, we were already fortifying the outskirts of the marketplace!

After returning from the battlefield and refiling our supplies, I realised that a small ploy of mine, an offer to the merchants to rent their bodyguards, hauled a rather nice group!

Yet rather than dealing with them myself, I simply set Pavlo to organise them, while moving back to the headquarters tent in order to figure out the next steps of my plan.

"The probing attack went as expected. The one surprising thing is the incredibly huge lethality ratio for the enemy soldiers. From what we learned, even after receiving what others would consider being a fatal hit, those monsters kept attacking, until the very last bit of energy was drained out of their bodies. We suspect and use of witchcraft!"

As much as I hated to even take the option of some magic interfering in this fight, I wasn't really allowed to do so. If I had a system of my own, then what if my theory of other people from the modern times wreaking havoc in this place was true? What if it was just an effect of someone else's system?

That's why, rather than taking the shortcut of just thinking about the stuff logically, I continued to just walk around the map table in circles, trying to force those few of my remaining grey cells in my brain into coming up with a brilliant idea that would allow me to break out of the current pinch!

Yet just as I was about to make some hasty decisions that would most likely result in the first few of my men dying in battle, good news finally arrived!

"Sir, they are moving out with their full force! We expect them to arrive here in single day time!"

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