Dark Sand: My Players Are All Actors
Chapter 88 - 83: Ranger’s Raid

Chapter 88: Chapter 83: Ranger’s Raid

North of the county town, within the bandits’ camp.

The Eastern Barbarian General with a body radiating thick dark aura waved his iron fan as he continued to command the bandit soldiers in their attack.

"Strange, why is the resistance of the native phantoms so stubborn this time?

"A mere small county town, not some impregnable fortress, yet we can’t break through!"

"Could it be that this new Reclaimer has a special power to strengthen the native phantoms?

"Yet these natives aren’t just strengthened; they seem like incarnations of the Reclaimer!"

From a demonic perspective, this battle was shrouded in malevolence at every turn.

Powerful demons are difficult to kill outright, wandering through different slices of history, even able to share some memories.

Thus, this leading demon also had memories of battling with Reclaimers.

In its memory, the battles where Reclaimers reclaimed slices of history were quite blunt and simple; although the Reclaimers used native phantoms to aid them in fighting, in most cases they relied on the power of the Reclaimer to eliminate a large number of demons alone.

For the demons, the strategy was just to concentrate all efforts on killing this Reclaimer and continually draining his power.

Under traditional combat modes, the outcome between Reclaimers and demons was quite simple and direct, though occasionally mixed with some tactics, but overall, it was a form of battle that compares strength and skills.

The native phantoms only played roles in confusion and assistance; no Reclaimer ever really regarded them seriously.

But this time, the situation was peculiarly strange.

Each of these native phantoms possessed extraordinarily high combat strength, with fighting skills that appeared nothing like those of natives; more dreadfully, they possessed a will to fight even stronger than the demons!

Demons were at most fiercely fearless and brutally violent, but the issue was that they tended to be very foolish with questionable intelligence. However, these native phantoms not only feared no death and were completely immune to the psychic powers of demons, but they also knew how to use tactics and could precisely calculate how many demons their lives could take out!

Moreover, they seemed to be able to use the Reclaimer’s power, and although their fighting strength seemed like a super-micro version of Reclaimer’s power, gathered in such numbers, they were not to be underestimated!

The county town was already in a precarious state, full of flaws, yet as the demon-controlled bandits struck from all sides, having already breached two city gates and several sections of the city wall, they were shockingly held in a deadlock!

What’s more crucial was, as many demons had already penetrated deep into the city after suffering heavy losses, they hadn’t even seen the shadow of that Reclaimer.

They only found several likely suspects like the skilled martial soldiers on the city walls, the scholar who severely injured many demons with his righteous aura, and the assassin who assassinated the Wandering Warrior near the market and so on.

However, taken individually, each of these figures seemed to carry a hint of the Reclaimer, but upon closer inspection, they seemed not quite right.

"Continue the siege!

"Turn the entire county upside down; I refuse to believe that we can’t find that Reclaimer!"

The Eastern Barbarian General waved his fan, and the bandits outside the city continued their relentless assault.

But at that moment, a clamor and battle cries erupted from the rear side of the bandit formation!

The Eastern Barbarian General could hardly believe his eyes.

A force of about a thousand troops had charged out from within the county town and even reached the flanks of these bandits!

Initially, these bandits were relentlessly attacking the city, fiercely engaging with the soldiers on the city walls; suddenly, a mysterious group struck from the rear, throwing them into complete disarray.

While these demons knew no fear, being slain in large numbers could still disorganize their formation!

Moreover, this thousand-man team consisted solely of strong Ranger players. Under the leadership of Yun Ying, their movement technique was very agile. They did not engage the bandits at close quarters, but simply struck swiftly and moved to another spot constantly.

Although there were a few bandit leaders riding horses in their midst, most had already charged into the city. In terms of simple fleeing, ordinary bandits indeed couldn’t catch up with these Rangers.

The Eastern Barbarian General stared at this group of Rangers, his expression filled with confusion again.

Such a small battalion of a thousand wasn’t likely to cause too severe an impact—after all, these bandits were all possessed by demons, and knowing no fear, they wouldn’t retreat just because of this.

What concerned the Eastern Barbarian General was the leader of these Rangers, who appeared highly likely to be that Reclaimer!

This person was nimble, skilled with the sword, not only leading from the front but also successfully escaping every time danger approached.

Such combat prowess and command ability did indeed resemble that of a Reclaimer, only... his strength seemed somewhat weak, far from being at a level where a Reclaimer could unleash devastating might and slaughter widely.

"I’ll go kill him."

The Monk Soldier, wielding a large halberd, wanted to personally deal with these Rangers.

The Eastern Barbarian General raised his hand to stop him, "No, you go to attack the city! These people are very agile; you might not be able to catch up with them.

"I’ll handle these myself."

The Monk Soldier nodded, said nothing more, and with heavy steps, continued to launch the attack on the county town alongside the bandit soldiers.

...

At this moment, the battle inside the county town was intensifying!

Bodies of bandits lay everywhere, especially below the city walls and in the archways of the gates, where players and bandits continuously clashed, resulting in a scattered field of corpses.

Players’ bodies disappeared after they died, but the bodies of the bandits did not, making the scene look extremely brutal!

The players in charge of defending the city walls and gates were all fighting bloodily, covered in blood, and most of them were already wounded.

Under normal circumstances, by now, they should have been exhausted and on the verge of a morale breakdown.

However, the attacking demons found, instead of collapsing, these people grew even braver in battle!

With the power of the Restorers and the strong righteousness of the scholars doubling up, these players had stamina far superior to that of ordinary residents, and they didn’t feel tired even after prolonged fighting. As for the wounds on their bodies, they had gotten used to them with suppressed pain sensation; the pain from their wounds instead boosted their fighting spirit.

Most importantly, their morale was unbreakable.

When they were outnumbered, they didn’t feel fear, since death just meant starting over; when they had the upper hand, they rushed forward even more eagerly, otherwise they would be a step slow and other people would snatch their kills!

Even though the game had no leaderboard or leveling-up by beheading mechanism, as carefully selected beta testers, failing to kill several bandits in a battle was something laughable!

And then many demons witnessed a rather absurd scene.

Many soldiers when heavily surrounded, were actually overjoyed.

Finally, no one to compete with me for kills! The innate skill, "Spirit of the Charge", could finally be utilized perfectly!

What? You say being surrounded could lead to death?

Joking, just resurrect if dead; after all, there’s still another life. Besides, even if both lives are lost, killing enough enemies is all that matters!

Such fighting will, could only be described as unfathomable.

And those demons who managed to break through the defense lines and entered the town suffered unimaginable torment.

Demons trying to search for Restorers were attacked by assassins hiding everywhere near the market and residence areas. These assassins, invisible and deadly, ensured that even if some demons got early warnings, at the most, they could only manage a one-for-one fight since activating an assassin’s "Fury of the Common Man" guaranteed the kill even if struck.

These bandits were not much stronger than the players, and they faced well-prepared assassains, leaving them almost no course of action.

And those bandit leaders who rode horses into the city soon paid dearly for their recklessness.

A few elite player squads treated them as walking armories, or hunters seeing a fat pig in the wild.

Some players drew the aggro with shields, some stabbed with spears, slashed with swords, while others shot arrows or hurled spears from afar, the isolated leader was quickly turned into a sieve!

Until the moment they fell from their horses and died, these demons couldn’t understand.

In theory, given the considerable disparity in strength between enemies and us, a charge should have made these native phantoms retreat, right?

But why didn’t they retreat, and instead got even more excited?

Until their bodies died and they turned into black smoke dissolving into nothingness, they couldn’t figure out this problem, only seeing those people happily dividing the spoils, stripping off the armor and great cross spear from their bodies, giving them to the players who had exerted the most effort and showed the greatest strength in the "hunt."

Also, some players found that the Eastern Barbarian’s sabers seemed very effective, and they abandoned their standard-issue weapons for sabers.

Moreover, a small squad of bandits lucked through the area ambushed by assassins and broke into the core area of the town.

Then they saw a scene that even shocked the demons.

The open space ahead had been empty, but in the next second, suddenly more than a hundred people appeared!

Just in time to catch this wave of resurrected players!

These bandits clearly couldn’t comprehend how these people appeared out of thin air, but they understood the smiles on the opponents’ faces.

The players were obviously thrilled. Just resurrected and someone already delivered themselves to the door?

What are you waiting for, grab the weapons! There were only so many bandits who had broken through, if they were slow to act, they wouldn’t even get a sip of the soup!

...

The Eastern Barbarian General, controlling the bandits organizing the siege outside the city, found the situation on the battlefield increasingly slipping from his control.

In his memory, battles between demons and Restorers usually ended in more losses than wins, and in most cases, when a Restorer decided to reverse a historical segment, his power would exceed the demons in that segment.

But losing like this wasn’t the way demons typically lost!

Previously, when demon attacks failed, it was often because the Restorer’s individual strength was too formidable, such that all demons piled on him couldn’t win and were single-handedly killed by the Restorer.

As for those native phantoms, they merely served as a slight diversion.

But now, with the authentic Restorer yet to appear, the demon army was already showing signs of defeat!

This small town had not been captured yet, swallowing up the demon forces like a bottomless pit.

Those bandits who rushed in disappeared completely without a trace, uncertain of what exactly happened inside the town, whether they fell into an ambush or a trap.

And yet, the town defenses seemed to be faltering several times, but these native phantoms resolutely counterattacked and reclaimed, the defenses at the city walls and gates still held up, although occasionally some bandit soldiers broke through, there was no sign of collapse at all!

Instead, the strength of the demon forces had nearly halved.

At this rate, the Eastern Barbarian General had no doubt that these locals might indeed surge out of the city and launch a counterattack!

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