Chương 107: Snipe

Li Qinwu stood embedded within the third rank of the military formation. Thanks to his towering physique, he easily peered over the iron-clad heads of his soldiers to track the rapid closing of the enemy vanguard.

"Raise shields!!" He thrust the iron military whistle into his mouth, blowing a series of sharp, rhythmic chirp-chirp-chirp signals. Across the sweeping battle lines, the assigned company commanders caught the cadence and unleashed their own whistles. The piercing chorus resounded through the entire format, forcing the frontline conscripts to suck in a sharp breath of air and brace their bodies. The very next instant, the opposing vanguards collided with a deafening roar.

The chaotic, metallic screech of steel slamming into steel reverberated violently through the glade. Both sides were composed entirely of heavily armored "tin cans"—visored helmets locked tight, plates overlapping across their torsos, and dense chainmail shielding every joint. As longswords, battleaxes, heavy morningstars, and maces clashed, a continuous, dull bang-bang-bang echoed across the line. Yet, remarkably, barely any of the blows achieved a clean armor penetration.

Once a soldier was fully encased in high-grade plate armor, they became practically immune to standard cold weaponry. Even specialized anti-armor bludgeons required an absurd, near-superhuman amount of physical force to actually crack the tempered steel shells. Shield bashes proved equally ineffective; the rigid, curved design of the heavy plate was explicitly engineered to deflect blunt trauma.

Apart from a few profoundly unfortunate souls who took a massive morningstar directly to the crown of their helmets and dropped unconscious from the raw concussive shock, the front lines locked into a massive, grinding stalemate. The massed tin cans became completely entangled.

Their assorted weapons clattered harmlessly against the opposing plates, and because the geometric spacing within the phalanx was incredibly tight, the soldiers found themselves pressed chest-to-chest, leaving virtually no room to swing their arms with lethal velocity. The efficiency of the slaughter plummeted to absolute zero. As the seconds ticked away, several veterans grew completely frantic.

Casting their blunt weapons aside, they used their gauntleted fingers to claw at the narrow seams of the enemy's joints, physically dragging opposing soldiers straight into the depths of their own formation. Others were violently pulled off their feet, disappearing beneath dozens of heavy iron boots, crushed into the churned earth without any hope of standing back up. The front line devolved into a state of chaotic, suffocating madness.

Had the engagement continued in this uniform fashion, the noble coalition would have easily utilized their massive numerical superiority to grind down the Punisher Army's physical stamina. They would have eventually forced them to the earth, driven stilettos through their armor slits, and systematically devoured them block by block. Fortunately, the Punisher Army possessed an entirely different tier of high-efficiency warfare.

Keeping the whistle clamped firmly between his teeth, Li Qinwu blew a sharp, specialized pattern. Across the sweeping front, corresponding signals immediately chirped in response. Li Qinwu reached down, retrieved a massive demolition tube from his inventory, and sparked the fuse. Utilizing the sheer, monstrous strength of his frame, he lowered his center of gravity, coiled his muscles, and hurled the 13-kilogram explosive device with immense force.

The cylinder sailed over twenty meters through the air, crashing heavily into the tightly packed ranks of the human heavy infantry. Simultaneously, several Tier 5 system soldiers distributed along the line infantry replicated the action, utilizing their enhanced parameters to hurl five or six additional demolition tubes deep into the enemy's geometric squares.

The heavy iron cylinders struck the human ranks, knocking a few soldiers off their feet, but failed to elicit any immediate concern from the surrounding troops. The cylinders rolled unnoticed beneath hundreds of iron-plated legs as their internal fuses hissed down to the core. Then, they unleashed a catastrophic power that did not belong to the medieval laws of this world. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! A series of earth-shattering explosions erupted in rapid succession.

A tremendous shockwave tore through the glade, throwing shattered human bodies high into the canopy. Crimson mist and shredded armor rained down across the timber as the blast radius leveled the surrounding ranks like a scythe. The vast majority of those caught in the radius never stood back up, leaving several massive, smoking craters directly in the heart of the human formation.

"Ah... AHHH! MY LEGS! AHHH!!" A chorus of agonized, horrified shrieks tore from the surviving troops. Completely ignorant of what had just transpired, the human ranks dissolved into instant, frantic panic. Standing on the distant ridge, the aristocratic commanders widened their eyes, their faces turning a ghastly shade of pale. Count Mitheus's black warhorse reared violently in terror; he struggled mightily to bring the beast back under control before casting his gaze toward the front line.

The immaculate heavy infantry squares had been completely fractured by the blast, and the monstrous host was already seizing the initiative—advancing with rigid discipline, absorbing the disoriented human infantry into their ranks, and systematically driving long bayonets straight through their visor slits.

"Damn it all! What was that?! Was that high-tier magic?!" Count Mitheus screamed, his voice cracking with aristocratic panic. The court mage advisor standing beside him stared blankly at the rising smoke, his jaw slack. Hearing his lord's frantic demand, he shook his head in absolute bewilderment.

"No... that is impossible! There was not a single ripple of mana activation! No individual mage could possibly manifest an incantation of that scale without a casting circle!" Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions. Count Mitheus panicked completely.

"Then what is it? What in the heavens is happening down there?!"

"It... it..." The mage stammered, entirely unable to formulate a coherent theory. Before he could speak, the tactical landscape shifted once more. Along the extreme flanks of the glade, a series of thunderous, rolling cracks echoed from the depths of the Redcedar Woods, followed by dense plumes of chalky white smoke billowing through the foliage. Within the dense clusters of the human army, a fresh wave of agonized shrieks erupted as columns of soldiers dropped face-first into the dirt like felled trees.

Count Mitheus's eyes nearly bulged from their sockets.

"What is the meaning of this!! Did the enemy conceal an ambush within the timber?! What manner of weapon is that?!" The Count's assessment was entirely accurate. Prior to the commencement of the engagement, Li Qinwu had deliberately detached the original ten veteran companies of the Punisher Army—the units fully outfitted with masterwork muskets—and secreted them deep within the flanking timber line. Their explicit orders were to hold their fire until the demolition tubes detonated.

Now, the firearms were unleashing their full, terrible majesty. Firing directly into the exposed flanks of the human heavy infantry, the Goblins inside the tree line were entirely unburdened by rigid formatting requirements; they operated as independent skirmishers. Given how tightly packed the human battalions were, the Goblins didn't even need to coordinate formal volley fire—they simply engaged in continuous, rapid independent fire. BANG! BANG! BANG!

The sharp, deafening reports of musket fire echoed incessantly through the timber. Heavy lead balls tore through the air, smashing violently into the sides of the human squares, with virtually every single high-caliber slug punching through plate armor to claim a human life. The Union's newly manufactured muskets possessed an exceptional rate of fire, capable of executing roughly ten rounds per minute.

This continuous, unyielding rain of kinetic lead slammed mercilessly into the human lines, sending wave after wave of physical trauma through their ranks. The common human soldiers were utterly terrified. The thunderous roar of the firearms sounded exactly like localized claps of lightning, followed immediately by the mysterious, violent death of their comrades. They could not comprehend what manner of weapon was striking them from the shadows, nor could they see the attackers.

Fear acted like a drop of ink in a clear basin of water, spreading with terrifying velocity through the ranks. Just as the panic reached a tipping point, a second volley of demolition tubes was hurled into the center of the human host. The resulting explosions threw body parts into the sky, and the final remnants of the human army's morale collapsed. A catastrophic rout ensued.

The frontline heavy infantry desperately attempted to turn and flee, but the peasant militia at the rear—having not yet sustained direct kinetic casualties—were still blindly surging forward, compressing the center. Combined with the relentless musket fire tearing into both flanks, the human soldiers found themselves trapped in a literal meat grinder, unable to advance or retreat. They could do nothing but stand and absorb the horrific damage.

"Advance! Keep moving forward, you cowards! Do not retreat!" Count Mitheus bellowed at the top of his lungs. Even though the enemy possessed some manner of miraculous weapon, he firmly believed that his immense numerical superiority would allow them to crush the monsters if they simply forced their way through the kill zone. Yet, the bang-bang-bang of the muskets refused to slacken, and the cataclysmic detonations of the explosive tubes continued to shatter their geometric formations.

Ever since the firearms had materialized on the field, their absolute, single-shot lethality had instantly come to dominate the battlefield's ecology. The human forces were sustaining an unmitigated, horrific casualty rate. Deep within the timber, the Goblin musketeers methodically went through the motions: clear the pan, measure the powder, ram the ball, prime, and fire.

Free from the mental pressure of maintaining a rigid line formation and completely secure within the dense brush, their hands moved with exceptional celerity, filling the tree line with a dense, spectral white mist. While the sulfurous smoke obscured their direct line of sight, it mattered very little; the human forces were drawn up in such an absurdly dense mass that precise aiming was entirely redundant.

They simply leveled their barrels toward the general axis of the clearing and pulled the triggers—nearly every shot found a home. Over 900 Goblin musketeers distributed across both flanks of the Redcedar Woods maintained an unyielding cadence of fire, completely painting the margins of the Cedar Glade with human corpses.

Even after sustaining a horrific 10% casualty rate across the entire army in a matter of minutes, the common soldiers' morale hadn't completely disintegrated—but the regional lords had reached their absolute breaking point. If the slaughter continued at this pace, their personal household assets would be utterly wiped out. WOOOO— The retreat horns finally blared from the rear. The peasant militia, who had escaped the worst of the kinetic strikes, instantly shattered and began fleeing northward.

They were followed closely by over 2, 000 heavy infantrymen from the reserve blocks, who cast their heavy shields aside to run for their lives. However, over 1, 000 heavy infantrymen remained completely entangled with the Punisher Army's vanguard, entirely unable to extricate themselves from the melee.

"Curse them! Curse them all to hell!!" Count Mitheus trembled with an absolute, burning fury. In a mere handful of minutes, his most precious heavy infantry corps had lost over 1, 000 men to the explosions and gunfire, and another 1, 000 were currently being butchered without any hope of extraction. A loss of this magnitude effectively wiped out the accumulated military capital his house had secured over decades of rule. The surrounding vassals looked on the verge of tears.

"My Lord!" a minor baron stammered, his voice vibrating with terror.

"The rumors from Baron Zau and the refugees who fled Poloia... the claims that the monster army possessed a weapon that roars like thunder... it was all true! What are we to do?!" They had received ample warnings from the survivors of the southern campaigns, but their ingrained aristocratic arrogance had caused them to dismiss the claims as the exaggerations of defeated cowards. Now, they were tasting the bitter fruit of their ignorance.

Count Mitheus's face twisted through a succession of ugly expressions before he finally spat out an order: "Signal a full retreat! We fall back to the northern keeps and regroup—" Before the final word could clear his lips, a sharp, metallic wrenching sound echoed from his torso. An invisible, titanic force struck his chest, violently lifting his body off the saddle and hurling him backward onto the dirt. A wave of chaotic panic instantly rippled through the surrounding commanders.

Count Mitheus instinctively attempted to push himself up, but as he cast his gaze down at his magnificent, gilded breastplate, he discovered a ragged hole the size of a man's thumb punched clean through the steel. Dark, arterial blood was geysering out from the breach in rhythmic spurts.

"I... I am hit... ugh..." The physical strength rapidly drained from his limbs. His eyes rolled back into his head, and his body went entirely limp. Deep within the shadowed expanse of the distant tree line, Gobu Bow watched the human commanders descend into absolute, screaming chaos through his iron sights. He slowly lowered the elongated barrel of his masterwork sniper rifle. His assignment was officially complete.

Truth be told, if that particular human hadn't been wearing a set of plate armor so absurdly ostentatious and heavily gilded, he genuinely wouldn't have been able to discern which of the humans was the supreme commander.