Chương 118: The First Glimmer of a Military Soul

The massive iron sally ports of Poloia ground open as four field artillery pieces, hitched to swift war-spiders, rolled out onto the plain. Spearheading a strike force of 310 system troops, Li Qinwu advanced within five hundred meters of the enemy front lines and opened fire, using a relentless kinetic bombardment to disrupt the human forces. The whistling solid shot smashed through the excavation details, instantly claimining a handful of human lives.

However, the human resolution to complete the earthworks remained absolute; they dug simultaneously from multiple vectors, with several labor divisions deliberately excavating behind the reverse slopes of the low ridges where direct artillery trajectories could not reach them.

With thousands of independent trench heads driving forward across the plain all at once, Li Qinwu found himself playing a frustrating game of tactical whack-a-mole; the moment he suppressed one sector, three others would make massive progress elsewhere. Furthermore, the human infantry had adopted a dispersed skirmishing layout that bore a striking, historical resemblance to a modern "three-three" fire team system.

The soldiers kept low, scattering themselves across natural depressions and geographical blind spots where direct musket fire could not touch them. Scanning the scattered field through his optics, Li Qinwu's eyes lit up. Ha! What a textbook blunder! With the enemy forces spread so incredibly thin across the plain, if he led a concentrated shock force to sweep through their lines, he could establish a massive local numerical superiority and systematically shatter their forward screen.

Yet, the moment he led his elite detachment into the field to close the distance for a sweeping musket volley, a sea of hidden human skirmishers suddenly materialized from the surrounding dips and trenches, aggressively wheeling around to enact a massive pincer movement against his flanks. Shocked by the sheer speed of the human coordination, Li Qinwu immediately aborted the advance, guiding his men in a rapid retreat back behind the safety of the city walls.

Standing atop the high battlements to re-evaluate the battlefield, Li Qinwu realized that the human deployment was subtly structured in a massive, interlocking triangular formation. The moment a strike force attempted to compromise any single tip of the triangle, the remaining two apexes would instantly mobilize to launch a coordinated flank assault. It was a flawless tactical doctrine designed specifically for a massive melee-centric host to trap and neutralize a compact, highly mobile ranged detachment.

Li Qinwu scratched his head in genuine bewilderment. He couldn't shake the feeling that every single operational pivot the human army executed was frustratingly correct—it was as though the enemy commanders possessed a wealth of generational experience regarding the systematic suppression of elite, ranged-heavy armies. The late Donovan Kingdom:"Are you referencing my historical trauma?" Left with no elegant strategic solution, Li Qinwu could only accept the reality of a conventional war of attrition.

The human defensive paradigm was too rigid to crack with a single clever maneuver. Following a full morning of non-stop labor, the human trench network achieved structural viability. The soldiers could now huddle completely beneath the surface of the earth, methodically tunneling toward the curtain walls of Poloia in absolute safety from direct fire. Watching the deadly earthworks creep ever closer to his ramparts, Li Qinwu felt a knot of anxiety tighten in his chest.

He was entirely powerless to halt their forward momentum from a distance. When darkness blanketed the landscape, the human industry did not slacken for a single moment. Massive showers of displaced earth continued to fly out of the trenches beneath the starlight, indicating that Count Fischer had implemented a continuous, twenty-four-hour shift rotation for his diggers.

Li Qinwu knew with absolute certainty that the moment the trench matrix reached completion, his strike force would be permanently locked inside the city, entirely stripped of the strategic breathing room needed to attrit the enemy's numbers. Leveraging the absolute advantage of his system troops' pristine night-vision against the structurally blind humans, he organized a midnight sally, surging across the plain to plunge directly into the dark trenches for a brutal melee.

"Keep the formation tight! Do not lose your spacing! Kill them all!!" Roaring a command to the warriors flanking his rear, Li Qinwu was the first to leap into a forward trench line, his heavy boots violently crushing a human digger who hadn't even heard his approach. The trench section was occupied by a handful of human laborers who had discarded their heavy plate armor and sidearms to facilitate their excavation work.

Witnessing a massive, heavily armored goblin warlord materialize out of the midnight gloom, they were nearly paralyzed with pure, unadulterated terror. Wielding his heavy hand-cannon in his left hand and a massive executioner's axe in his right, Li Qinwu transformed into a veritable tiger amid a pack of wolves, hacking through the trench line in a storm of severed limbs. The system troops pouring in behind him were equally devastating.

Clad in thick, interlocking heavy plate and wielding black-powder muskets tipped with long bayonets, they opened fire at point-blank range, methodically liquidating the surrounding human reinforcements. The sharp, rhythmic crack-crack-crack of musket volleys echoed across the pitch-black plain. Operating within the claustrophobic confines of the earthworks, Li Qinwu cut a bloody swath through the defenders, claiming over a dozen lives within seconds as his squad successfully secured the forward trench line.

However, the human main body responded with terrifying speed. Massive detachments of bowmen and crossbowmen scrambled to reinforce the sector, dropping flat along the lips of the adjacent trenches to unleash a heavy hail of projectiles into the position Li Qinwu had just captured. Yet, because Li Qinwu and his system soldiers were encased from head to toe in high-grade, heavy steel plating, the conventional arrows and crossbow bolts simply clattered harmlessly off their breastplates.

With less than twenty meters of open dirt separating the two opposing trench lines, the human archery division unleashed a full, synchronized volley that achieved an absolute zero-percent casualty rate against the goblins. In stark, brutal contrast, when the system musketeers poked their barrels over the lip and delivered a rolling volley of their own, over thirty human archers were instantly torn to shreds.

Seeing that the defenders in the opposite trench had been completely pinned down, terrified to even raise their eyes above the dirt, Li Qinwu issued a roaring command to his line:"All units!! Reload! Reload right now! We are surging across the gap! Press your barrels directly against their chests before you pull the trigger!!"

Understanding the brutal efficiency of the directive, the musketeers immediately ceased casual fire, their claws moving in a synchronized, mechanical blur to ram fresh powder and lead balls down their barrels. Li Qinwu quietly counted down twenty seconds in his head. Estimating that the load cycle was complete, he vaulted over the earthworks, leading the charge across the open strip of dirt.

"Surge!!" The heavy musketeers erupted into a guttural war cry as they charged home. Hearing the terrifying approach of the heavy infantry, the human crossbowmen frantically stood up to unleash an emergency volley. However, the heavy bolts simply ricocheted off the goblins' charging plate armor with a flurry of bright sparks.

Before the human soldiers could comprehend the failure of their steel, the heavy musketeers had already reached the lip of their trench, peering down at them from above with cold, predatory eyes. They leveled their long barrels directly into the pit, pressing the cold steel muzzle attachments literally inches from the humans' faces. BANG! BANG! BANG! BANG! A catastrophic, point-blank execution cycle tore through the trench.

In a single fraction of a second, over fifty human archers were completely erased from existence, leaving the earthwork entirely devoid of living defenders. Peering down at the mountain of mangled crossbowmen, Li Qinwu let out a long, exhilarated breath. He felt as though he had finally cracked the absolute operational code of early firearms: equipping highly disciplined shock troops in heavy plate armor and deploying them for extreme, point-blank musket execution yielded an unmitigated, high-efficiency slaughter!

"Haha! Magnificent work, soldiers!! Reload immediately! We press onto the next line!!" Feeling the sharp, rhythmic impacts of heavy crossbow bolts clattering against his backplate, Li Qinwu knew that the adjacent human units had locked onto his position. He prepared to replicate the same extreme-close-quarters execution tactic against the next trench. If you encounter this story on Amazon, note that it's taken without permission from the author. Report it.

However, right at that precise moment, the grand alarm bell atop the central battlements of Poloia began to ring, its deep, heavy CLANG-CLANG-CLANG echoing ominously across the midnight landscape. Li Qinwu's expression hardened. Abandoning all offensive designs, he roared a hasty command to his unit to break contact and execute a high-speed withdrawal back toward the open sally ports.

The activation of the alarm bell meant that the goblin spotters stationed on the high towers had detected a massive, fast-moving human division executing a deep pincer encirclement across the dark plain, signaling the strike force to retreat before the window slammed shut. Though Li Qinwu's strike force was comprised of the absolute elite of his army, they simply lacked the numerical mass to survive a coordinated envelopment by several thousand heavy human infantry.

The moment his path of retreat was severed, his finest soldiers would be systematically ground down and annihilated. The human camp undeniably possessed an exceptional tactical mind; they had established a permanent, high-efficiency flanking doctrine.

Every single time Li Qinwu launched a midnight raid, before his shock troops could inflict an unsustainable level of casualties upon the digging details, the human flanking columns would materialize on his horizon, reducing his lightning raids to nothing more than superficial scratches. Furthermore, Li Qinwu noticed a deeply concerning trend: the operational reaction time of the human flanking columns was accelerating with each passing engagement.

During his initial sallies, he had the luxury of slaughtering the enemy for over ten minutes before needing to pull back; now, he barely possessed a five-minute operational window before he was forced to sprint for the gates. He realized that the human command structure had established a dedicated Quick Reaction Force (QRF). These elite entities were organized into highly mobile combat groups numbering between one and two thousand soldiers, heavily armored and wielding broadswords.

They were stationed either along the reverse slopes of the nearby ridges or hidden inside deep reserve trenches just behind the main lines. The absolute second the sound of musket fire and artillery echoed across the plain, these QRF divisions would sprint outward along the left and right flanks, racing at a breakneck pace to cut off the approach vectors back to the city walls.

If Li Qinwu's retreat was delayed by a single fraction of a minute, these heavy infantry blocks would plug the gap, trapping the goblin vanguard in a vice-grip to be devoured at leisure. However, Li Qinwu was not a simple amateur to be outmaneuvered indefinitely. Having endured several cycles of these midnight traps, he had thoroughly mapped out the operational logic and deployment paths of the human Quick Reaction Force. If they wanted to play a game of speed, he would simply make the QRF his primary target.

A casualty was a casualty, regardless of which unit it belonged to. He orchestrated his counter-trap with absolute precision. First, he ordered 900 heavy musketeers to conceal themselves just behind the massive iron framework of the city gates. He then personally led his standard 310 system troops out into the open plain, deliberately projecting the illusion of another routine, isolated midnight raid.

The human sentries stationed along the observation posts had their eyes permanently glued to the city gates, immediately spotting Li Qinwu's detachment the moment they crossed the threshold. However, the human command willfully chose to allow his strike force to advance deep into their lines; they were utterly confident in their ability to out-sprint the goblin warlord, eager to ensnare his elite unit in a final, decisive encirclement. It was a high-stakes gamble.

If they failed, they would lose a few dozen common conscripts working the trenches; if they succeeded, they would completely liquidate the core elite of the demon army and potentially execute the enemy commander in the field. The operational sequence proceeded exactly as before. Li Qinwu's advance was intentionally leaked, allowing his detachment to plunge into the forward trenches and engage the human excavation details in a loud, chaotic melee.

The moment the distinct crack of black-powder firearms shattered the night air, the hidden human QRF divisions leaped out of their reverse-slope trenches, sprinting across the dark earth toward the walls of Poloia like athletes competing in a high-stakes thousand-meter dash. Just a little further... if we can just anchor ourselves beneath that stone wall... every single sprinting human soldier thought, their hearts pounding with absolute adrenaline.

The goblin spotters atop the city walls immediately identified the twin dust clouds of the flanking columns and aggressively hammered the alarm bell. Deep within the trench lines, Li Qinwu heard the heavy clanging and immediately ordered a general retreat. However, during this specific withdrawal, the system soldiers noticeably moderated their pace. They deliberately dangled themselves just ahead of the human QRF, maintaining a parallel velocity that made a successful encirclement seem tantalizingly close.

Seeing that the demon raiding party had failed to vanish back into the gates with their usual breakneck speed, the human QRF commanders were filled with a profound, aggressive ecstasy. We have them! This time, we actually caught them! They bellowed at their men, forcing their lungs to the absolute limit as they sprinted even harder.

Yet, because their entire consciousness was hyper-focused on running down Li Qinwu's retreating line, none of the human officers noticed that the primary gates of Poloia had swung wide open once more. Four massive war-spiders surged out into the darkness, towing heavy field artillery pieces behind them, closely followed by a massive, silent wave of 900 heavy musketeers.

The moment the reinforcement division cleared the shadow of the walls, they sprinted directly toward the flank of the incoming human QRF, halting exactly three hundred meters away to form up into a massive, linear firing wall with a mechanical, jaw-dropping efficiency. The moment the firing lines snapped into perfect alignment, the goblin officers unleashed a chorus of sharp commands, and 900 heavy muskets were brought up to the shoulders of the soldiers in a single, terrifying motion.

By this point, the human QRF had closed the distance to roughly two hundred meters, their twin columns numbering over a thousand heavy infantry, perfectly positioned to wrap around Li Qinwu's bait detachment. The human conscripts were trembling with pure, unbridled excitement. We've caught them! We've finally caught them! However, in the very next heartbeat, a cataclysmic, thunderous roar that rivaled the wrath of a god shattered the midnight silence.

A massive, concentrated wall of lead projectiles tore through the night air, slamming directly into the dense ranks of the human Quick Reaction Force. A massive, horrific spray of crimson mist erupted across the field as dozens upon dozens of human soldiers were violently swept off their feet, their agonizing screams filling the dark. Simultaneously, the four field artillery pieces unleashed a devastating, synchronized blast.

At a mere two hundred meters, a sweeping hail of over four hundred individual anti-infantry shrapnel balls tore through the packed human ranks like a scythe through ripe wheat, completely liquidating entire lines of infantry in a fraction of a second. The moment the cannons cleared their barrels, the disciplined crews instantly hitched the hot artillery pieces back onto the war-spiders and sprinted back inside the gates.

They knew they would not have the operational window to execute a secondary reload cycle; it was far more efficient to clear the field immediately, ensuring they did not clog the narrow sally ports during the final infantry withdrawal. The surviving members of the human QRF were violently jarred from their adrenaline-fueled tunnel vision, their minds reeling as a wave of absolute horror washed over them.

They finally realized they had run headfirst into a calculated slaughterhouse—the demon main body had field-deployed right beneath their noses! The forward momentum of the entire column dissolved in an instant as panic gripped their hearts. Li Qinwu did not grant them a single moment to recover. Leading his 310 system soldiers in a sharp pivot, he slammed directly into the staggered left flank of the human pursuit force.

He hurled two heavy demolition charges into their center, the explosive concussions throwing their remaining organization into absolute chaos, before ordering his musketeers to surge forward for extreme-close-quarters execution. A single shot for every single human face. The 900 heavy musketeers who had delivered the initial volley completed their high-speed reload cycle in perfect unison.

At the sharp, piercing blast of the charge whistles, they unleashed a guttural roar, charging straight into the fractured remains of the left human column to execute their own point-blank execution sweeps. This single, coordinated shock-firing cycle completely erased the thousand-man human left flank from the face of the earth! Witnessing this unmitigated annihilation, the human right flank column was thoroughly paralyzed with raw, primal terror. Merciful Gods...

that was over a thousand of our finest heavy infantry... wiped out in less than five minutes! The sheer, incomprehensible lethality of the demon army shattered their psychological reserves into absolute dust.

"Run... RETREAT!!!" An anonymous officer let out a terrified, cracking shriek, and the remaining QRF column instantly dissolved into a chaotic, desperate route. Watching their comrades perish in a matter of minutes had entirely liquidated their command structure and disciplinary bonds; they cast away all pretense of military order, throwing down their weapons and shields in a frantic bid to outrun the specter of death.

They ripped off their heavy iron helmets, unbuckled their cumbersome breastplates mid-sprint, and scattered a fortune in high-grade military hardware across the dirt as they executed a thoroughly spectacular, unmitigated rout. The heavy musketeers advanced methodically across the blood-soaked field, using their long bayonets to clean up the wounded human remnants left behind.

Within a single, brilliantly orchestrated tactical sequence, they had claimed the lives of over a thousand elite human infantrymen, while their own casualty ledger remained absolutely untouched. Zero dead. Zero wounded. The sheer, monumental scale of this asymmetric triumph sent a profound shockwave of adrenaline through every single goblin warrior on the field.

For the first time in their existence, looking down at the field of human steel they had so casually dismantled, an absolute, unyielding realization crystallized within their minds: We are invincible. Li Qinwu flicked his greatsword, casting a heavy spray of crimson blood off the steel blade. Looking across the ranks at the flushed, intensely ecstatic expressions of his soldiers, an immense wave of pride and martial fervor surged within his own chest.

He hoisted his massive blade high into the midnight sky, his voice booming across the plain like a clap of thunder:"THE PUNISHER ARMY!!! MIGHTY!!!" The heavy musketeers froze for a single beat, before simultaneously thrusting their black-powder firearms into the air, unleashing a deafening, unified roar that shook the very foundations of the valley:"THE PUNISHER ARMY!!! MIGHTY!!!"

"THE PUNISHER ARMY!!! MIGHTY!!!"

"THE PUNISHER ARMY!!! MIGHTY!!!" The repetitive, rhythmic roars rolled across the landscape like a gathering storm, a dense, palpable wave of absolute military spirit surging straight into the heavens. At this precise moment in time, the heavy musketeers thoroughly comprehended the true, cosmic power of a unified military collective.

They understood with absolute certainty that so long as they stood shoulder-to-shoulder as one cohesive machine, they possessed the power to shatter even the gods themselves—and the mountain of human steel rotting at their feet was the absolute, undeniable proof of that truth.