Chapter 964: The Exhausted Southern Legion

Chapter 964: The Southern Legion at the End of Its Tether

The silent front was steeped in a grim stillness, the trenches carved into the earth like drawn blades ready to strike.

The Alliance had taken only five days to encircle Avent City with trenches, cutting off every possible tunnel leading to the outside world.

Soldiers of the Southern Legion standing on the front lines watched as engineering vehicles, fitted with tracks on both sides and half-man-high drills, rumbled through the earth with a ground-shaking roar, excreting trenches like feces right before their eyes.

Now the Alliance soldiers had gradually taken their positions, and the occasional cannon fire sounded like an ever-quickening drumbeat.

Barring any surprises…

This was the final battle.

Quincy felt no fear in his heart, no dread—instead, a faint sense of relief.

About half a year ago, the 34th Ten-Thousand-Man Corps he belonged to was routed near Reedpur County in the Lion Province of the Brahmin Province by the Skeleton Corps, and his nightmare began from that very moment.

First came the humiliation from the frontline soldiers of the 36th Ten-Thousand-Man Corps, then the disdain from the logistics staff at West Sailport.

Even though he had fought to the last breath, even though he tried to explain that his opponents were not Brahmins but Alliance volunteers, in the eyes of his compatriots, he could never shed the label of coward, forever a disgrace who had shamed the Varantian people.

When he took his injury discharge letter to Eternal Night Port, the compatriots there mocked him, asking why he didn’t just die.

Every young man in the Southern Legion surged to the front with loyalty and fervor, while he alone stood out of place, like a lone traveler walking against the tide on a highway.

Later, he was transferred to a sanatorium in the suburbs of Bartoya Province to recover, staying with other wounded soldiers pulled from the front.

Though the sanatorium had its share of madmen who occasionally lost their minds, most lay quietly on their beds, staring blankly at the ceiling.

It was only then that he, kicked around like a ball, felt a hint of peace.

But soon he realized it wasn’t peace.

It was oblivion.

Not just Tyl had forgotten them.

Almost everyone in the Southern Legion had taken part in this conspiracy of crime, tacitly pushing them—these "failures"—to the fringes of society.

They were like sugarcane pulp spat out of a juicer, tossed into a trash bin lined with a white plastic bag, left to rot slowly in a corner unseen by all.

Yet ironically, just as he was about to resign himself to the rest of his life, those who had abandoned him fished him out of the trash bin and pinned a Centurion’s medal on his chest.

The Southern Legion had reached the end of its rope.

Having burned once, they had to burn again.

Quincy had no other thoughts; he silently loaded his rifle.

Hurry up—

End this torment!

The indiscriminate artillery fire finally drew near. The roaring explosions and billowing smoke made the rookies behind the cover all change their expressions in unison.

Some even wet their pants.

And just then, a hoarse roar burst from the intermittent broadcast.

"Soldiers! Behind us lies Avent City!"

"There live your parents, your children, your beloved!"

"Our enemies want to erase us from this planet! We must not let them succeed!"

"What we defend today is not just the glory of the Legion! But the honor of Marshal Julius! The dignity of the Varantians!"

"Fight! Descendants of Julius! Let them see with their own eyes that Varantians are invincible!"

The young men who had wet their pants rekindled fighting spirit in their eyes; old men past their prime tremblingly reached out, painfully picking up rifles propped against the cover.

But Quincy’s heart remained unmoved.

He had heard such words too many times, long numb to these stirring speeches.

Suddenly, a strange thought crossed his mind.

Perhaps—

The survivors of Avent City back then had said similar things.

History, like a circle, had unknowingly come full circle.

"Prepare for battle—!"

Almost at the same moment that hoarse roar rang out, a shell landed near the cover not far from Quincy.

Two rookies, emboldened by their commander’s shout to lean out and fire, were caught in the blast, flying backward like kites with broken strings.

"Take cover! Stay in the bunker! Wait until they’re close before firing!"

Quincy glared with bloodshot eyes at the terrified new recruits, a roar forcing them back into cover.

Shell after shell rained down, washing their position from head to toe.

At the same time, dozens of bulldozers roared their engines to life, their massive blades piled high with sandbags stacked like small hills, advancing toward the defenses on the outskirts of Avent City.

Quincy, peering through the gaps in the cover at the Alliance’s formation, felt his pupils contract sharply—clearly never imagining they could use such a trick.

An anti-tank infantryman shouldered a Panzerfaust rocket launcher and pulled the trigger at one of the bulldozers.

The speeding rocket struck the shield-like sandbag wall squarely, but only burst into a string of orange-red sparks, not even causing a ripple.

These shaped-charge warheads, designed to kill hard armor with metal jets, were utterly useless against sandbags.

The Southern Legion’s tanks were spent; almost nothing remained in Avent City but infantry and light armor. Faced with such a contemptuous tactic, the Southern Legion’s officers were left utterly helpless.

Soldiers of the Death Corps stepped out of their trenches, rifles in hand, following these cheap and effective bulldozers.

On the other side, the armored column of the Skeleton Corps launched its assault!

A line of Chimera armored vehicles, trailing milky-white smoke screens, charged ahead at the front, their 37mm rapid-fire cannons sweeping the bunkers within the city with bursts of fire.

Streaks of orange tracer rounds danced across the ground, pinning down the thousand-man corps stationed at the city’s edge.

The bulldozers advancing with the frontal assault finally neared the edge of the position. The vanguard, leading by example, shouted into the communication channel.

"For the Alliance!"

"Oorah!"

The bugle calls and battle cries rang out in unison. Nearly a thousand players from the Death Corps surged out of cover almost simultaneously, charging at the Southern Legion’s positions just steps away.

The distance between the two sides was less than ten paces!

Facing the gradually cross-firing lines, a single wall of cover had become useless.

But no matter—

Close-quarters street fighting was exactly what the Death Corps excelled at!

Almost at the same moment the Death Corps launched their charge, the machine guns on the Varantian positions began to rattle "rat-tat-tat."

Under the Alliance’s suppressive fire, they had lain low among the ruins for a long time, and now they finally had their chance to emerge.

Deadly tracer rounds, like willow catkins scattered by the wind, flew against the clamor of artillery toward the Death Corps, reaping several lives in just a few breaths.

Yet in those same few breaths, Alliance shells, as if guided by eyes, landed near those machine-gun bunkers.

The roar of explosions and billowing smoke rose and fell in waves, flickering flames almost licking the edge of their own front line, hurling machine-gun bunkers and nearby concrete fortifications into the air together.

The Southern Corps' recruits were stunned dumb by the blasts, while the veterans stood agape, every last one of them.

Including Quincy—

Watching the Alliance soldiers charging at the very edge of the artillery barrage, his face was etched with disbelief.

These guys...

Aren't they afraid of death?!

The truth was exactly that.

The soldiers in gas masks and bulletproof armor charged headlong into the Southern Corps' hail of bullets as if they feared nothing.

First line of defense engaged!

Alliance soldiers storming into the concrete ruins immediately clashed in close-quarters combat with the Southern Corps troops hiding behind firing positions!

Gunfire erupted in waves—the roar of shotguns, the rattle of submachine guns and rifles.

A gas-masked soldier was riddled by a machine gun, but before he hit the ground, another gas-masked soldier rushed up, blasting the gunner's skull apart with a shotgun.

The entire battlefield was chaos!

Blood and brains splattered everywhere, clinging to the shattered concrete positions.

Even the most fanatical soldiers under Tyr were terrified out of their wits at this moment.

These bastards seemed unkillable!

Under the Death Corps' fierce assault, the first line of defense was soon torn open.

Without a moment's hesitation, the Mole, watching from a distance, seized the opportunity and immediately gave the order to attack.

Thirty Chimera armored vehicles, flanking twelve tanks, drove in like a steel-forged dagger, stabbing straight through the wound the Death Corps had cut.

"Hahaha! Die!"

The gunner crouched inside the Chimera pulled the trigger, and a dozen 37mm armor-piercing incendiary rounds wiped out an entire ten-man squad hiding behind cover in an instant!

From the trenches buried under rubble, the stench of burnt meat wafted out, and blackened corpses lay strewn across the ground.

A Southern Corps soldier lying among the dead raised a rocket launcher to retaliate, but the safety distance prevented it from penetrating the Chimera's armor, and he was instead shot in the head by infantry following the armored vehicles.

Facing the armored units that had pushed right up to them, the still-resisting Southern Corps soldiers fell into despair—either launching suicidal charges or dropping their weapons and fleeing to the rear.

The battle quickly shifted from white-hot to one-sided, and the distant artillery fire gradually ceased.

In less than half an hour, the two player corps had taken the main southern entrance to Avint City and shattered the three thousand-man units stationed there.

Edge Drifter gathered the captured prisoners in a relatively open space, then directed the remaining brothers to use sandbags from bulldozers to build a simple defensive position, wary of the Southern Corps soldiers who had retreated to the rear regrouping and counterattacking.

But that possibility was actually slim.

From the equipment seized on the front lines, the weapons and ammunition of these three thousand-man units combined couldn't match those of the Eternal Night Port garrison, and the quality of the troops was even worse—many were clearly just sent to the front to pad the numbers.

If this had been half a year ago, such a siege would have taken at least half a day to see a result.

After a brief interrogation of the prisoners, Edge Drifter walked over to Brother Mole and shared the intelligence he'd gleaned.

"...The ones we just fought were three thousand-man units under the 200th Ten-Thousand-Man Corps of the Homeland Defense Force, commanded by a ten-thousand-man leader named Baldwin."

"Baldwin?" A flicker of surprise crossed Mole's face. "That name sounds familiar."

Edge Drifter grinned.

"The 37th Ten-Thousand-Man Corps of the Boro Province Theater, the great victory at Akale County—we captured Woolf of the 36th Ten-Thousand-Man Corps and let the 37th, which came to reinforce, slip away... Remember? An old acquaintance."

Hearing "the great victory at Akale County," Mole finally recalled the name and showed a look of realization.

"Oh, oh, I remember... bullshit! Damn it! I was still waiting to respawn when you fought that battle!"

Back then, it was that war criminal named Woolf who, with the 36th Ten-Thousand-Man Corps, had taken his head.

But that guy didn't end well either—he's now serving time in the prisoner-of-war camp at Golden Harbor.

"Haha." Edge Drifter laughed heartily. "Seems like it!"

That battle was the turning point of the Boro Province Theater and the Death Corps' first engagement there.

At the time, the *Survivor's Daily* in Golden Harbor had devoted three full pages to describing the entire battle—the river bend littered with corpses, blood flowing like a river!

And it was then that he had met Isher...

Thinking of that departed friend, Edge Drifter's laughter gradually faded, and the smile on his lips unknowingly drooped.

Along this journey, some people had suddenly vanished.

"...It's already the final battle; I thought they'd pull out something new."

Glancing at Edge, who had lost his smile, Mole could guess he was probably thinking of someone, so he tactfully changed the subject.

"What new tricks could they have? If they really had something, they'd have used it by now."

A portable anti-tank missile with tracking capability might count as one.

With that, the Southern Corps had managed to knock out two of their Type 3 tanks.

But even so, what of it?

Total war is a clash of systems; one or two pieces of equipment or a few strong individuals can hardly sway the course of a war.

Even strategic-level weapons like "Death Agent" couldn't do that.

Edge Drifter still seemed unwilling to give up.

"But isn't that how most games work? The strongest always come at the end..."

Mole in the Canyon made a helpless expression.

"You said it yourself—'most games.'"

RTS games aren't like that.

Neither are strategy, management, or farming games.

Take *Civilization VI*, for example.

Once a player unlocks nukes first, unless they're going for achievements, a cultural victory, or a space race, the game is essentially over.

The snowball carefully rolled in the early game becomes a curse that compresses playtime in the late game; the optimal solution is just to start a new game... And that's an inescapable curse for any strategy game.

But watching the snowball grow bit by bit is still interesting—if no matter how you rolled it, it stayed the size of a booger, what meaning would all the hardships along the way have?

"As for me... I just want to see what's five light-years away, to see if A-Guang actually baked that pie."

Edge Drifter scratched the back of his head.

"What I'm more worried about now is whether there'll even be an open beta."

Mole laughed.

"Haha, what difference does it make? The Wasteland Era is about to end."

Of the fragmented corps, only the Southern Corps remains, that stubborn mule stuck in the old era. From now on, there shouldn't be any opponent that forces the Alliance to go all out.

The Eastern Empire? The New Federation?

Consider him a rival, I suppose.

Bharata?

By the time they've had their fill of battle royale, who knows how many decades will have passed.

Of course, if A-Guang wanted to pull a stunt now, he could rename the game *Starry Sky OL* or *New Era OL* and launch another closed beta.

But what the hell was that guy after, going through all that trouble?

Even now, he had no idea which mysterious company developed the game—or maybe, as the rumors said, it was a blind box gifted to human civilization by a higher intelligence.

Perhaps A-Guang…

didn't actually exist?

That strange notion suddenly popped into Mole's head, and he felt a sudden urge to draw a doujinshi.

It had been so long since he last drew that his hands had grown clumsy.

Just as the two old-timers were lamenting how damn fast time flew, and how they'd nearly cleared the game without ever knowing what happened between Crow and the mutant leech that day, Irena, having finished cleaning up the battlefield, prepared to lie down at the mobile save point.

At that very moment, he spotted a familiar face among the prisoners crouching on the ground and couldn't help but stop.

Looking at the grimy young man, he called out.

"Hey, haven't I seen you somewhere before?"

Quincy, crouching on the ground, lifted his head and stared blankly at Irena, clearly stunned as well.

Gradually, his expression shifted.

"You… you're…"

"Oh, I remember now," Irena said, a mischievous smile spreading across his face as he mimed a gunshot with his hand. "You're that rookie from the… 34th Ten-Thousand Corps."

It was fate, really—back then, near the railway station northwest of Reedburgh County.

The entire Skeleton Corps had been whittled down from full strength to just him, and the 34th Ten-Thousand Corps they'd clashed with was the same—only one survivor left.

Since the strategic objective had been achieved, killing him or not made no difference, and Irena, out of a sense of destiny, had let him off. He never expected to meet again.

Quincy, however, was utterly dumbfounded, staring at him with an expression of incomprehension.

That look seemed to ask why.

"…You're still alive?"

He had seen with his own eyes the 36th Ten-Thousand Corps' rocket artillery blanket the entire position!

The searing heat had turned even steel into molten iron!

How could this guy possibly still be alive?!

Irena didn't answer his question, instead muttering to himself while pinching his chin.

"Alive… hmm, that's a very interesting question. As they say, only with death is there life, so can someone who can't die truly be considered alive? This question has troubled me for a long time. What am I to 'this world'—a glutton?"

After pondering for a while without an answer, he crouched down and patted the young man's shoulder with a smile.

"How about you think about it for us? After all, once you get to the New Era, you'll have plenty of time to do that."

Quincy stared at him blankly, then slowly nodded.

He had heard rumors before about the Alliance using clones in combat, but he'd never seen such a clever clone.

Seeing this NPC so obedient, Irena smiled and placed a piece of candy in his hand.

"Think of it as a down payment. Don't thank me—I got it from Big-Eye, hahaha!"

With that, he waved cheerfully, slung his rifle over his shoulder, and walked off whistling a tune.

A crack had appeared in the sturdy fortress, and the ever-closer sound of artillery gave the survivors huddled in the ruins hope that it would all end.

At the same time, to the north of Batoya Province, a massive amphibious assault was also underway.

The 117th Ten-Thousand Corps, which had been forced to defect to Verant Province months ago for refusing to fire on their own countrymen, had now returned under Commander Baifeika, charging ashore in landing craft.

Watching the warships lined up across the sea, Commander Muir of the 10th Ten-Thousand Corps of auxiliary troops wore an expression of utter despair.

That was the South Sea Alliance fleet!

In the moment of his hesitation, the long, thick naval guns and cruise missiles had already rained down on his position.

The roaring artillery shredded the beachhead fortifications into fragments, and the 117th Ten-Thousand Corps once again set foot on the ground they had fled!

Charging onto the beach, besides infantry, were "Alligator" amphibious armored vehicles produced on the North Island of the South Sea Alliance, along with "Sea Lion" power armor powered by deuterium-tritium fusion reactors!

Faced with this tide of steel crashing ashore, the 10th Ten-Thousand Corps collapsed at the first contact, unable to mount any effective resistance before being scattered.

At the same time, impassioned shouts echoed through the 117th Ten-Thousand Corps' communication channel.

"For the glory of Marshal Julius!"

"For the glory of the Verants!"

"For liberation!"

"Let us save our compatriots from hell! Crush these rats!"

Now that the Verant Alliance had withstood the refugee offensive launched by the Southern Legion, and the Alliance from the East had arrived at the gates of Avant City, they no longer needed to hold back.

The Triumph City Consul, "Pangolin," delivered a speech from the steps of the Glory Institute, condemning Tyl for a series of crimes including fabricating the West Sail Port massacre and using civilians as bullets, and on behalf of the Verant Alliance, declared war on Tyl and his cronies!

The 117th Ten-Thousand Corps was just the first to land; soon, twenty more corps would head to the front!

Unable to withstand the ferocious assault, Muir could only retreat toward Avant City.

The Verant Alliance's forces advanced southward like a splitting bamboo, echoing the Alliance that had already breached the outskirts of Avant City!

And it wasn't just on the ground—

The encirclement and destruction of the Southern Legion's steel airships continued as well.

With the Academy's help, the Alliance successfully mounted phase cannons onto trains. Faced with an irreversible defeat, ten of the Southern Legion's remaining twenty airships had already defected.

Half of them joined the Eastern Empire, while the rest fled to Triumph City.

Now Tyl was like a tiger with its teeth pulled out, locked in a cage—with no chance left to turn the tables.

Even his trump card, the "Death Agent," had been suppressed by physical isolation measures in southern Verant Province, reduced to a joke worse than Lowell's red soil.

He had squandered the Southern Legion's last card.

There was no one left to charge with him one more time…