“Beep—!”
“The enemy is counterattacking! Prepare to fight!”
Morin blew the whistle hanging around his neck and roared at those around him to get ready.
The soldiers of the Instruction Assault Battalion, still exhilarated by the smooth breakthrough, instantly snapped back into ‘battle face.’
They quickly halted their advance, and in squad units, they sought cover and constructed temporary defense lines on the spot.
The Assault Troops from other infantry regiments following them had not yet adapted to such a rapid switch from offense to defense, but seeing the actions of the Instruction Assault Battalion, they instinctively followed suit.
The Instruction Assault Battalion’s ‘legendary aura’ since the start of the war, coupled with the trust forged during the charge, made them instinctively choose to obey.
Erik and his assault unit stopped in a collapsed communication trench.
Tensely, he half-crawled on the ground, and with his comrades, dragged over a few Gaulish corpses to pile up in front, aiming their rifles at the area ahead, which was still shrouded in smoke.
Before long, they saw the enemy.
Countless blue figures appeared vaguely through the smoke ahead.
They crawled out of shell craters, emerged from destroyed trenches, and surged from reserve positions further back.
The sheer number of these Gaulish soldiers was vast, like an endless tide.
Many of them were wounded, their blue uniforms stained dark red with blood.
Some had blood covering their faces, while others had broken arms hanging limply at their sides.
Some had even been flung by the blast wave and were limping on one leg, yet still stubbornly charged forward using the other.
The weapons in the hands of these Gaulish soldiers were varied: rifles, pistols, and some even held only an entrenching tool or a bayonet.
But all of their faces carried the same expression of an almost insane resolve.
“For Gaul!”
“We have nowhere to retreat! Paris is behind us!”
“Kill the Saxons!”
A Gaulish officer, brandishing a saber, charged at the front, roaring hysterically.
Immediately, countless soldiers followed him, howling like beasts.
The sound was filled with hatred, fury, and reckless madness.
Two waves—
One was the Field Gray, flush with morale after breaking the defense line.
The other was the Gallic Blue, backed into a corner and fighting with nothing left to lose.
They slammed fiercely into each other on this scorched land, which was still slightly hot from the recent shelling!
“Open fire! Open fire!”
Morin roared the command, simultaneously dropping prone behind some sandbags and pulling the trigger of his light machine gun first.
“Tat-tat-tat-tat-tat—!”
The Instruction Assault Battalion soldiers near him, and more soldiers from the Assault Troops, also opened fire from behind various covers.
A massive volume of automatic weapons fire created dense, invisible whips of fire that lashed out fiercely at the blue tide.
The Gaulish soldiers charging at the front burst into bloody flowers on their chests, falling down in swathes.
Blood and mud mixed together, staining the ground an even deeper shade of dark red.
But the people behind them seemed oblivious to the deaths of their comrades.
They stepped over the bodies of their comrades, continuing their furious charge forward, their expressions showing no fear, only a more intense madness.
As the distance between the two sides closed, the battle entered its most primitive and brutal phase.
In this kind of flesh-and-blood grinder of a clash, so-called tactics and techniques lost much of their meaning.
What mattered was the contest of will and courage, a test of which side could endure greater casualties, and which side would run out of blood and life first.
Fueled by the dual beliefs of ‘defending the core territory’ and ‘the capital is behind us,’ the Gaulish soldiers displayed a terrifying will to fight.
But the Saxons’ preparations for this Final Offensive were clearly more thorough.
Just as the Gauls’ charging wave was about to crash upon the defense line constructed by the Assault Troops’ automatic firepower, a unified roar came from the rear of the Assault Troops!
“Greater Saxony!!!”
“Hoo—! Ha!!”
Immediately following, on this breakthrough point, less than 2 kilometers wide,
Over 160 soldiers of the General’s Guard, wearing heavy plate armor and wielding various weapons, surged past the foremost Instruction Assault Battalion soldiers, directly confronting the Gaulish front line!
General Mackensen had concentrated all the General’s Guard within the First Army Group in 48 hours and committed them entirely to this offensive.
These ‘Plate Armor Supermen’, whose heights generally exceeded 1.9 meters, had specialized armor that could easily deflect bullets fired from the rifles in the hands of the Gaulish soldiers.
And the specialized automatic weapons in their hands, modified from MG08 heavy machine guns, were like the Grim Reaper’s scythe, carving a bloody path through the dense crowd with every burst!
Other General’s Guard soldiers who were not equipped with automatic weapons raised their Saxon Greatswords, which were enchanted just like their armor, brandishing lethal, cold light in the air.
Each powerful, sweeping slash around their body could easily cleave nearby charging Gaulish soldiers and their rifles in two!
They were like a herd of prehistoric behemoths charging into a flock of sheep, shattering the charging formation the Gaulish soldiers had desperately managed to gather with the most savage and brutal force!
Behind them, dozens of Knight Squires wearing Magic-powered Armor also joined the fight.
While the Knight Squires were not equipped with automatic firearms, the Magic-powered Armor they wore granted them strength and speed far exceeding ordinary people.
One second they were behind the General’s Guard, but in the next, they were like cannonballs, smashing directly into the most densely packed group of Gaulish soldiers, unleashing a storm of blood and gore.
Every swing of the Knight Squires’ swords or War Hammers brought with it a shower of severed limbs.
As auxiliary troops for the Armored Knights, they might have been mere supporting characters or ‘extras’ in the civil war between the Armored Knights.
But when their opponents were transformed into ordinary mortals, the Knight Squires in powered armor were an unshakable force—at least for now, that was the reality.
Although they had not undergone coordinated training, the Knight Squires and the General’s Guard soldiers quickly formed numerous fighting teams on the front line, centered around a Knight Squire and supported by several General’s Guard soldiers.
They were like an impregnable reef. No matter how fierce the Gaulish tide was, it could not move them an inch; instead, it was shattered by them.
The Instruction Assault Battalion and the Assault Troops, who had been under immense pressure, now became supporting actors.
The pressure on Morin and his men immediately decreased significantly after these elite units entered the battle.
They only needed to split into multiple combat teams, follow closely behind these ‘supermen’, and use their automatic fire to clean up the scattered stragglers who slipped through.
Erik and the following Assault Troops soldiers watched, dumbfounded.
Their reactions were clearly slower than those of the Instruction Assault Battalion soldiers. They were still prone, watching the legendary elite units carve through the enemy ranks like gods descending from heaven.
“Stop lying on the damn ground!”
“Follow up and keep attacking!”
“Pay attention to target identification, don’t hit friendly forces!”
Soon, some of the Instruction Assault Battalion soldiers turned back, urging the Assault Troops soldiers to re-engage the offensive.
They looked at these somewhat bewildered ordinary soldiers, unsure what to say.
Hearing the voices of the Instruction Assault Battalion soldiers, Erik and his comrades scrambled to their feet, then advanced while raising their rifles to fire at the already defeated Gaulish soldiers ahead.
At this point, Morin also saw the distinctive crested ‘Siegfried Type 1’ piloted by Leonia von Fortis, the Teutonic Knights Grand Master, about 200 meters from their position.
This prominent Armored Knight, leading fifteen other Teutonic Knights’ Armored Knights in a wedge formation, crashed head-on into the oncoming Gaulish Armored Knights.
The Grand Master displayed a terrifying combat ability. The battle report claiming she achieved ’12 consecutive kills’ was clearly no exaggeration.
Every time Morin managed to glance in the direction of the ‘mecha battle’, he would see another wrecked Gaulish Armored Knight near the Grand Master’s Armored Knight.
“Holy cow, is that this world’s Char or Amuro?” Morin couldn’t help but marvel internally.
However, just as the First Army Group’s ‘Blade’ Assault Group was about to completely rout this round of Gaulish counterattack and breach all their defense lines,
A sudden anomaly occurred in the area where Morin and his troops were located.
Four General’s Guard soldiers at the very front had just used their heavy machine guns and greatswords to help a Knight Squire breach a makeshift Hotchkiss heavy machine gun position set up by the Gaulish soldiers.
Before they could even pull their swords from the bodies, the ground beneath their feet suddenly and without warning split open with a giant fissure!
The chasm was deep and long, easily more than a dozen meters, like a monster lurking underground opening its massive maw.
The General’s Guard soldiers and the Knight Squire were caught completely off guard. They, along with dozens of Saxon and Gaulish soldiers fighting around them, screamed and tumbled into the gap.
Immediately following, to the horror of everyone watching, the fissure in the ground began to slowly close, as if controlled by an invisible hand!
“Rumble—”
Mud and rocks churned, filling the deep chasm again and completely swallowing everyone who was struggling and screaming inside.
In an instant, the ground returned to its flat state, as if everything that had just happened was merely an illusion.
But the disappearance of the four General’s Guard, the Knight Squire, and dozens of soldiers was a reality witnessed by everyone!
This bizarre and terrifying sight stunned everyone on the battlefield.
At the same moment, a set of diamond-shaped markers, representing extremely high-risk units, suddenly appeared on Morin’s system map!
[Gallic Republic Combat Mage Unit – ‘Sentinel’]