Chapter Fifty-Two: The Bloody Battle (V)

Clang! Ah!

A Song dynasty soldier thrust wide, striking the back plate armor of a dwarf soldier directly. Under the tremendous force, the dwarf soldier let out a startled cry and staggered forward a few steps, then turned around furiously, glaring at the enemy who had caused him such distress yet failed to inflict any real harm.

At this moment, the plate armor on the dwarf soldier gave him an immense boost of confidence from its recent protection. Instead of fleeing, he turned back and engaged the Song soldier with his bayonet-equipped flintlock rifle.

Unfortunately, although the dwarf soldier bravely turned to fight, the Song soldier was not pursuing alone!

Before the dwarf soldier could fully leverage the advantages of his armor, he was pierced by four or five ensuing bayonets, turning him into a bleeding hedgehog.

Not far away, the dwarf soldiers who had halted their retreat witnessed the miserable end of their comrade's resistance, which only reinforced their determination to flee!

Some dwarf soldiers even discarded their weapons and armor on the ground whenever possible, just to outrun their peers and increase their speed!

After the pursuing Song soldiers eliminated a few dwarves who attempted to counterattack like iron cans, the remaining force of fewer than 20,000 dwarf troops collapsed even more thoroughly!

The Minié riflemen stationed in the rear were not to be outdone either, joining in on this rare opportunity to beat a drowning dog. Amidst the charging Song soldiers, they continually raised their rifles to take aim at any dwarf soldiers foolish enough to face them head-on!

One fearless dwarf soldier after another was shot down by the Minié riflemen mixed within the pursuing ranks. The resistance of the collapsing dwarf formation grew increasingly feeble, and their steel armor could no longer provide them with the courage to fight to the death!

The once-discernible dwarf phalanxes completely dissolved. No dwarf cared anymore about orderly retreats or any such trivialities that might waste precious time needed for escaping!

"Hmph, not bad. As expected, the combat will-power of our Song dynasty army is far stronger. Even if the enemy outnumbers us and possesses better equipment, they will still be routed by the loyal and brave warriors of Song!" Sun Li squinted his eyes as he observed the favorable situation unfolding before him. Those suicide soldiers had died extremely valuable deaths!

Just like that, fewer than 10,000 frontline Song soldiers chased the fleeing dwarf troops all the way until they reached the 50,000-strong second-echelon army of the dwarves!

On a battlefield involving over a hundred thousand people that required coordination, sudden situations like this made it exceedingly difficult for the supreme commander, Marshal Aglis, to transmit orders in time to the troops already deployed forward. Therefore, they had to rely entirely on the impromptu adaptability of the officers commanding these 50,000 dwarf troops!

Graduates of the Dwarf Empire's advanced military academies, these dwarf officers did not disappoint Marshal Aglis. Seeing the panicked dwarf routs running toward them—having discarded even their weapons and stripped off their clothes just to escape—they naturally could not stand idly by and watch them smash into their own battle formations!

They made a decision that was theoretically entirely correct, yet utterly inhumane and morale-damaging for an ordinary army:

"Dwarf warriors do not need cowards! Those dwarves up ahead who were routed by an enemy vastly outnumbered by themselves do not deserve the honor of a dwarf warrior! Only with their lives can they wash away the shame of throwing away their weapons in the face of the enemy. I order—fire upon all dwarf cowards!" the officer commanded.

"The honor of a dwarf warrior is higher than all else!"

Complying with the order, the dwarf soldiers shouted slogans while raising the flintlocks in their hands, pulling the triggers toward those wretched "dwarf cowards."

Bang, bang, bang!

"Hurry back to your battle stations! Have you forgotten the honor of dwarf warriors? Retreating cowards have no right to survive!"

While firing to massacre the retreating dwarves and prevent them from disrupting their own formation, dwarf soldiers and officers loudly berated the fleeing troops, demanding that they turn back and contribute to the Dwarf Empire—which, in reality, simply meant sending them back to die! Otherwise, they would be killed by their own people!

Choose between two deaths, make your pick...

The routing dwarves essentially faced this exact choice.

One has to admit that the minds of dwarves are indeed quite different from those of humans. Provoked by the gunfire of their own comrades invoking dwarf honor, quite a few routing dwarves actually obediently turned back to march to their deaths!

If this were among human factions, such retreating soldiers would at best avoid crashing into their own battle lines and simply flee in another direction...

However, these damned dwarf soldiers, filled to the brim with notions of honor, actually returned to collide with the pursuing Song soldiers. Many of the fleeing dwarves who had stripped to the waist and discarded their weapons even came back to fight desperately against the Song soldiers.

The pursuing Song soldiers could not help but inwardly mock: "Do you trash think you can fight us with your teeth?"

Having finished their amusement, the Song soldiers drove their bayonets into the chests of the returning dwarf routs without the slightest psychological burden...

Most of these dwarf routs who had turned back to die possessed no weapons. Bayonet-equipped flintlocks were simply too cumbersome and hindered them during flight!

They had to rely on fists, short legs—and yes, there were actually some who resorted to biting!

Therefore, how could elite Song soldiers, even numbering fewer than ten thousand, possibly be overthrown by the counter-charge of these routed dwarves?

In reality, aside from slowing down the charging pace of the Song soldiers, the only real effect of the dwarf routs turning back to fight was accelerating the efficiency with which the dwarves were being slaughtered.

The 50,000 dwarf soldiers of the second echelon were naturally not foolish enough to watch their compatriots be butchered by Song soldiers. They rapidly hauled forward the organ guns, tubular cannons, and rocket launchers that had remained unused in the rear, dragging them directly to the frontline. Since this era already featured gun-carriages, infantry-killing weapons lighter than heavy artillery could naturally be repositioned swiftly.

The sole achievement of these routing dwarves returning to throw their lives away was buying enough time for the second-echelon dwarf army to deploy their heavy infantry-killing weapons!

"Fire!"

Watching their large-scale anti-infantry weapons fully deployed, the dwarf officers completely disregarded the routing dwarves who had returned for honor, directly ordering them to fire upon the Song soldiers who were locked in melee—or rather, slaughtering the retreating dwarves!

These devastating anti-infantry weapons finally unleashed their utility. The entire chaotic battlefield looked even more wretched than if it had been blasted by explosive artillery. Lead shot, arrows everywhere...

Corpses bearing various wounds littered the mixed battleground. Upholding the era's characteristic poor accuracy, these large-scale anti-infantry weapons indiscriminately sent both the dwarf routs and the Song pursuers into hell together...

Well, to be fair, the dwarf soldiers operating the weapons probably wanted to clear their names in their own minds: we really were aiming at the enemy when we fired...

The remaining dwarf routs were completely finished this time. After experiencing a thorough devastation from their own empire's advanced explosive weaponry, the 50,000 dwarf soldiers seemed to feel the enemy had not yet been wiped out, continuously unleashing endless rounds of three-tier volley fire until there was not a single living organism left standing on the battlefield before them...

Naturally, the pursuing Song soldiers could not withstand such one-sided slaughter. Fewer than 4,000 survivors fled back and were subsequently arranged by Song officers to rest in the rear. Unless the battle reached a point where the reserves were entirely exhausted, these brave warriors who had completely annihilated the 30,000-strong dwarf army would not return to the battlefield.

Compared to the number of surviving Song soldiers who retreated, out of the initial 30,000 dwarf legion, fewer than 1,000 dwarf soldiers remained physically intact and uninjured...

The mental state of these surviving dwarf soldiers was worlds apart from the retreated Song soldiers; essentially, the surviving dwarves had all gone mad...

Dwarf commanders could no longer expect these troops, baptized by various steel armaments, to muster any remaining vigor for the Dwarf Empire...

The first contact between the dwarf army and the Song army concluded with a total victory for Song. A fully equipped, full-strength dwarf legion completely vanished after a single battle—vanished in every sense of the word—while the Song dynasty lost merely over 6,000 men.

Though an unreconciled Marshal Aglis still wished to commit troops to recoup these massive losses, his years of combat experience told him how heavily the loss of those 30,000 men would weigh on the 50,000 troops who had watched the entire spectacle from the rear. Send them forward to hold the line against the enemy's cooled-down artillery and march to their deaths?

Marshal Aglis did not believe the fate of these 50,000 soldiers would be much better than that of their predecessors! At the very least, their morale would not be as high as those who came before them!

The human bombs used by the Song soldiers had shaken the morale of the 50,000 unengaged dwarf troops.

Decisively, Marshal Aglis issued an order to defend, withdrawing beyond the enemy artillery range and breaking contact with the Song army.

Both sides returned to a state of stalemate. Sun Li, quite satisfied with the day's results and intending to continue depleting the enemy's living forces, decided against launching an overly aggressive attack—primarily because he preferred to avoid close-quarters combat with dwarf units holding solid formations!

The first day of battle concluded with the defeat of the Dwarf Empire, brought about by the fearless, suicidal resistance of the Song soldiers. Through this battle, Sun Li successfully narrowed the troop disparity between himself and the dwarves from a ratio of 120,000 to 90,000.

Wonder if there will be more good fortune like this tomorrow?

As sunlight once again flooded the earth, the second day of battle officially commenced. After a night of pacification and reorganization, the thick-nerved dwarves appeared to be in a much better mental state than on the first day.

Of course, this was also related to the dwarves' tactical adjustments.

Unless driven to absolute desperation, Marshal Aglis would never again let his troops engage the Song dynasty's human bombs in close-quarters attrition warfare!

On this second day of battle, Sun Li deployed 20,000 Song troops on the frontline, seemingly signaling that the frontline was no longer merely cannon fodder. Sun Li figured that any commander with a brain, having witnessed the suicidal human bombs of the Song soldiers, would never repeat yesterday's battle experience!

What kind of battle would unfold on the second day?