“Very good! Keep pushing forward like this!”
The Britannian officer finally became excited, but this didn’t affect his judgment at the moment—although the group of Saxons ahead had fierce firepower, as long as these heavy infantry gathered together and pushed forward, the enemy wouldn’t be able to inflict rapid casualties.
The leading heavy infantrymen let out muffled roars, held their thick shields in front of them, and like small tanks, charged along the straight section of the communication trench.
The other comrades behind followed closely, their heavy combat boots stomping in the muddy water, making a heart-palpitating rumble.
As long as they charged within twenty meters, the two-handed greatswords and maces in their hands could smash this bunch of Saxon dwarfs who only knew how to shoot from the shadows into meat paste. However, just as they turned a corner and their field of vision suddenly opened up, the commanding officer froze for a moment.
There were no panicked Saxon infantry raising their guns to shoot as expected.
Standing at the other end of the communication trench blocking the way were only two oddly dressed guys—seemingly soldiers from what the enemy called the “Instruction Unit.” They wore the field-gray combat uniforms of the Saxon Army but wore different helmets.
The person standing in front didn’t hold a gun, but gripped a long iron pipe connected to a rubber hose. The dark nozzle at the end of the pipe looked like a water hose used to wash away mud at a construction site.
And the assistant shooter standing behind him was carrying two huge metal tanks on his back, nervously twisting open a valve.
“What is tha—”
Before the doubt in the Britannian officer’s mind could translate into words, the Saxon in front had already pulled the trigger. “Whoosh!!”
There was no time to react.
A dark red fire dragon, accompanied by the hissing sound of violently spraying gas, instantly filled this not-so-spacious trench.
Full plate armor crafted with special magitech processes indeed possessed a certain degree of kinetic and thermal protection capabilities. This was also the confidence these heavy infantrymen had in not taking ordinary infantry seriously on the battlefield.
But the problem was, this defense obviously had a threshold.
And the sustained burning, extremely high-temperature chemical flames sprayed by the Saxons’ military flamethrower obviously completely exceeded this threshold in attack effectiveness.
So the excellent thermal conductivity of metal began to play a role. The full plate armor originally used for protection and saving lives instantly turned into ovens under the flames. The thick plate armor wasn’t burned through, but they were heated to extremely high temperatures within a few seconds.
Those tough guys who usually didn’t change expression even when facing a hail of bullets were now letting out wails in the flames that didn’t even sound human. They wanted to take off their armor, but it was full plate armor, requiring a squire’s help to put on and take off, not to mention that even the belt buckles were already scalding hot. They wanted to roll in the muddy water to put out the fire, but that gel-like fuel didn’t extinguish in water at all; instead, as they rolled, it carried the fire to more places.
“Ahhhhh—!!”
The shrill screams instantly drowned out all noises on the battlefield.
Those dozen or so originally menacing heavy infantrymen had now turned into frantically twisting human torches.
The air was instantly filled with a nauseating burnt smell; that was the smell of grease, fabric, and flesh mixed together and carbonized. In the flames, the Britannian heavy infantrymen fell one by one unwillingly. And those two flamethrower operators, after confirming the targets had lost combat capability, coldly closed the valve.
Residual incendiary agent was still dripping from the nozzle, making “sizzle” sounds as it hit the ground.
They didn’t stop at all, stepping over those still-twitching, black-smoke-emitting charred corpses, and continued to advance toward the next section of the trench.
This “fire attack” drama was playing out everywhere along the entire battle line being pushed back by the instruction unit.
And this was originally one of the tactics in the instruction unit’s daily training. As time passed, most instruction unit officers had realized that the effectiveness of this weapon had actually always been underestimated.
So whenever they encountered stubbornly resisting strongpoints or heavy armor units blocking the way, the infantry of the instruction unit would very tacitly clear a path and shout loudly: “Bring up the flamethrower operators!”
Then followed a scalp-numbing hissing and screaming.
Of course, the number of flamethrowers was limited after all, unable to cover all areas simultaneously.
So some assault squads of the instruction unit would still run into tough nuts.
“We can’t get through ahead! Why are these Britannian blokes so tough!”
This was an important strongpoint in the first firing trench, originally used to guard against flank infiltration, with extremely tricky terrain construction. “Da-da-da-da…”
A burst of dull and highly rhythmic heavy machine gun strafing suppressed seven or eight instruction unit soldiers so much they didn’t even dare to raise their heads.
Bullets hit the dirt slope at the corner, kicking up large patches of dust and gravel. A recruit who just wanted to poke his head out to observe had half his ear sliced off by a stray bullet and was now covering his head, screaming on the ground.
“Don’t show your head! It’s a Vickers heavy machine gun! These guys opposite actually brought a heavy machine gun up during the attack, and even knew to mount it at the end of the straight section!” A squad leader leading the team spat out the sand in his mouth, looking extremely unlucky.
He just tried to throw two stick grenades over, but the opponent was obviously extremely experienced veterans.
As soon as the grenades were thrown over, they were bounced off into the open ground outside the trench like playing ping-pong by a shield the opponent picked up from nowhere, blowing up empty air with two “boom-boom” sounds.
Of course, this squad leader’s judgment wasn’t wrong; the opposite side was indeed all veterans.
And they were veterans of the Coldstream Guards, also one of the few teams in the attacking force that brought heavy machine guns.
“What about the flank? Can we flank around?”
“No! That communication trench on the flank was blown up, it’s a dead end now!”
Just as this squad leader was sweating profusely with anxiety, wondering whether to send someone to find the mortar team in the rear for blind fire coverage, a burst of heavy footsteps suddenly came from the ground directly above them.
That vibration felt like some heavy beast was sprinting wildly.
The squad leader subconsciously shrank his neck. Immediately after, he saw several dark figures carrying the sound of wind directly leap over the trench where they were hiding. That was… Lieutenant Colonel Morin?
And his guards?
Before these soldiers could react, that young Lieutenant Colonel running at the very front, while maintaining a sprinting posture on the crater-pitted ground, pointed to the heavy machine gun position that was frantically spewing tongues of fire and roared an order.
“Moritz! Suppress them with fire!”
“Yes!”
The answering voice was brief and muffled, like it came from an iron barrel.
Immediately after, that giant standing nearly two meters tall, wearing full heavy plate armor, displayed explosive power completely inconsistent with his body size. Moritz, this usually reticent General’s Guard member responsible for providing fire support as a heavy machine gunner, didn’t jump into the trench at this moment. Instead, utilizing the defense provided by the plate armor, he directly strode to the upper edge of that right-angle turn.
He looked down condescendingly at those Britannian soldiers below who were huddled behind shields, entirely focused on the corner ahead.
The Coldstream Guards machine gunner below was still roaring, suppressing the instruction unit soldiers ahead, didnt expect that the Grim Reaper would descend from above. Until that huge shadow blocked the sunlight.
That primary shooter subconsciously looked up, and what met his eyes was a steel giant completely wrapped in iron, with a muzzle pointing right at his forehead. “Da-da-da-da-da-da!!”
The unique roar of the MG08 exploding at such close range was simply like thunder.
There was no suspense.
The top-down strafing completely bypassed the frontal protection formed by stacked sandbags. The 7.92mm rifle bullets poured into that narrow machine gun position like a torrential rain.
Human bodies were as fragile as paper mache in front of heavy machine gun bullets.
That primary shooter’s head instantly exploded like a watermelon, followed closely by the assistant shooter beside him, and those few infantrymen behind who tried to raise their rifles to counterattack.
The narrow trench instantly turned into a slaughterhouse.
Blood mist exploded in the sunlight, mixed with minced meat and fabric scraps, dyeing that still-steaming Vickers heavy machine gun dark red. And other expeditionary force soldiers who reacted immediately raised their guns and shot at Morin and the others.
When four Plate Armor Supermen and an unarmored enemy appeared in their field of vision, 80% of the expeditionary force soldiers in this trench chose to shoot at Morin.
On a battlefield full of mud and steel, contrasted by those four tower-like plate armor guards, Morin, who didn’t wear any protective gear, looked simply like a piece of tender and enticing fat meat.
“That officer! That’s their commander!”
“Fire! Kill the one without armor!”
Roars rose one after another. The surviving Britannian soldiers on this defense line almost simultaneously turned their muzzles.
“Bang-bang-bang-bang”
The dense gunfire instantly merged together, bullets pouring toward Morin’s location like a swarm of locusts crossing the border.
Moritz beside him subconsciously wanted to turn sideways and use his thick plate armor to block bullets for the commander.
But just as he took a step, he saw those whistling metal projectiles, at a distance of a few centimeters from Morin’s body, seem to hit an invisible wall.
Transparent ripples rippled in the air, followed by a series of crisp impact sounds.
【Mage Armor】 + 【Shield】 + 【Arcane Ward】. These three layers of protection stacked together made Morin’s defense much higher than the four General’s Guard members beside him.
Several stray bullets even hit directly toward his face, but only stirred up a ring of light blue halos, unable to even blow a strand of his hair. “Cover me!”
Morin didn’t pause at all. After confirming the shield strength was enough to support this wave of focused fire, he loudly ordered while raising the double-barreled shotgun. Like a hunting cheetah, he directly jumped into the trench below that was packed with enemies.