This Game Is Too Real
Chapter 326: The Mountain of Spoils of War

Chapter 326: Chapter 326: The Mountain of Spoils of War

The icy bayonet slapped his face twice.

Lying on the ground pretending to be dead, Vabu knew he couldn’t hide anymore and finally opened his eyes reluctantly.

"Don’t shoot..."

He slowly moved his arms to either side of his head, palms up to show he was unarmed.

The soldier holding the rifle didn’t waste words, just kicked away the rifle beside him and coldly said,

"Get up."

Vabu honestly complied, quickly scrambling up from the ground, hands clasped behind his head, following the soldier towards the New Alliance position.

A few hours earlier, a drone had flipped Chief Bagro’s tank. Vabu, who had been charging with the armored convoy, was knocked unconscious on the spot.

Many of his comrades were dead or seriously injured, the few surviving were missing arms and legs, wailing and howling.

He was relatively lucky.

Maybe it was because of the Awakening, he only suffered some superficial skin injuries. By the time Bear Tooth led a thousand troops to launch an assault on the high ground, he had already regained consciousness.

However, Vabu didn’t immediately get up from the ground.

Especially seeing his comrades tumble down the hill one by one, fearing being pushed to the front line, he simply closed his eyes again and pretended to be unconscious.

With his eyes closed, he inadvertently fell asleep. When he woke up again, the comrades who had been bravely storming up the hill were now scrambling to flee back down...

With the bayonet pointed at him and his hands over his head, Vabu finally stepped onto the insurmountable high ground, but as a prisoner.

There were quite a few people stationed here.

The New Alliance had fortified the position—some prisoners were sent to dig artillery pits, while others trembled in fear, squatting in the pockmarked open spaces.

Seeing those people digging, a shiver ran through Vabu.

Was the New Alliance planning to bury them?

But then he thought it over, that didn’t make sense, after all, if they were to bury them, it wouldn’t be on the high ground but rather at the foot of the slope.

The northern hill was also aglow with campfires, indicating that the New Alliance’s main force had already occupied there.

Stealing a glance behind him, Vabu couldn’t help feeling a sense of despair, regretting why he had believed those rumors and joined the Chewing Bone Tribe.

There was neither endless wine and meat here, nor charming female prisoners or countless treasures.

Over the past six months, he had only seen rat droppings on the ground, rotting wood in the ditches, and hard-to-swallow green wheat and goat-horn potatoes... All of which, in the Bugra Free State, were garbage only slaves and scavengers would eat.

He had come to make a fortune, not to be cannon fodder.

Had he known it was this bad here, he wouldn’t have come at all!

"Go squat over there."

Hearing the voice behind him, Vabu, interrupted in his thoughts, didn’t dare resist and walked obediently over to squat next to other prisoners.

There, he saw many familiar faces.

A fellow Looter from the Bugra Free State looked at him in surprise and whispered,

"...Vabu? You’re still alive?"

Vabu responded in a low, bedraggled voice,

"I was knocked out by the blast and just woke up... What exactly happened to you guys?"

The man’s face showed a bitter expression.

"We took the high ground, but suffered heavy losses, and the New Alliance quickly launched a counterattack... people were everywhere on the mountain."

For ten minutes, he recounted the events of the battlefield, including the "cannon" flying overhead and the trenches filled with the smell of roasting meat...

Vabu listened, breaking out in a cold sweat.

At that moment, an officer suddenly approached.

The person telling the story immediately shut his mouth, and the others also stopped whispering among themselves.

Chu Guang saw an officer conversing with a soldier guarding prisoners, and soon a soldier strode swiftly up to the prisoners.

"We need two prisoners for a task assigned directly by the Manager," said the soldier. "Good performance may lead to sentence reduction. Is anyone willing to volunteer?"

The prisoners looked at each other, none daring to step forward, instead shrinking back timidly, fearing that this special task involved being put into the pot or having organs harvested.

After all, they were capable of such things themselves.

Vabu was equally terrified, but the possibility of a reduced sentence made him swallow his spit and cautiously raise his hand.

"I..."

The officer next to the soldier looked at him.

"Name."

"Vabu," Vabu quickly replied.

"From the direct lineage of Golden Tooth?"

"No..." said Vabu nervously, "I come from the Bugra Free State, I was previously a bounty hunter."

The officer nodded, said nothing, scribbled something on his notebook, then gestured cleanly.

"Come with me."

Although the battle had ended before noon, cleaning up the battlefield continued until sunset.

Not all looters had simply raised their hands and surrendered; some were hiding in the pine forest, or even pretending to be dead beneath the bodies.

Chu Guang assigned the battlefield cleanup task to the Second Corps and some other troops of players under LV5.

These army units were mostly newly established, not even having reached their full recruitment quota, but some of them included potentially promising players.

Whether or not they were currently useful, they were still worth cultivating.

As for the main army units, Chu Guang took them up the northern mountainside where they modified looter positions, and incidentally took over the supplies stored there.

The whole battle resulted in the capture of thirty trucks, including the supplies loaded inside them.

These trucks, standard-issue transport vehicles of the Expeditionary Army, were powered by a central high-power camel engine, slightly superior to New Alliance’s independently-developed "Electric Donkeys" in terms of load and all-terrain capabilities, also having lower operational costs but poorer mobility and noisier operation.

These trucks were suitable for large-scale, long-distance transport, such as cross-province merchant travel; Chu Guang planned to distribute half to the Merchant Guild and convert the rest to strategic reserves after repairs.

Apart from the trucks, Chu Guang was most pleasantly surprised by the twenty-seven Conqueror tanks—ten of which could still be repaired!

And from the wreckage of the others, they could salvage towers or engines unless affected by major incidents like ammunition rack explosions or ruptured fuel lines causing fires.

As for the captured weapons such as "Opener" rifles, "Falcon" assault rifles, Pu-9 submachine guns, Iron Fist rocket launchers, and various light and heavy machine guns including 60mm mortars—the infantry equipment was filling up two warehouses.

This was enough to arm half a division, and all these were now stocked in the New Alliance Armory.

Although players were generally reluctant to use these mixed-brand equipment with hard-to-find ammunition, selling it as trade goods to survivor settlements in the Eastern Provinces was an excellent option.

After all, not everyone favored high-tech corporate products.

Some simple, durable, and powerful equipment that could be maintained easily was far more useful than high-tech weapons depending on logistics...

Temporary camp.

At the entrance of the cave-like warehouse.

Looking at the small mountains of rifles and boxes of ammunition, and the Strength-type players bustling in and out loading the spoils of war, Chu Guang couldn’t help feeling a profound sense of gratitude.

"Thank the gifts of nature!"

This was more than just a great victory.

It was an absolute windfall!

"...It looks like they plan to head directly south after taking down the Pine Forest Pass with an all-out effort right to our doorstep. No matter how you calculate it, with their firepower and personnel arrangement, these supplies are clearly not meant for just two or three localized battles."

Following behind Chu Guang, Vanus also had a face filled with surprise; the quantity of equipment, ammunition, and other supplies here far exceeded his expectations.

Piling up so much material at the front line, it could only mean their ambitions are significant.

However, before he could finish speaking, Vanus’s raised eyebrows furrowed.

"...But rather than saying I’m surprised, it’s more like something unexpected."

"Unexpected?" Chu Guang turned to him, asking curiously.

"Yes."

Vanus nodded his head, walked to the warehouse door, picked up a rifle from the ground that had a golden eagle embossed on its stock, and fiddled with it in his hands as he continued.

"’Falcon’ assault rifle... the 21st Ten Thousand Troops couldn’t possibly have this."

It wasn’t only the 21st Ten Thousand Troops that didn’t have them.

The thousand team he used to lead didn’t either.

The army wouldn’t issue automatic rifles to clones because that was purely a waste; they would at most issue Pu-9 submachine guns or shotguns to some suicide squads in city battles or trench wars, but often they wouldn’t provide them with many bullets.

After all, clones, replenished every three years, were merely expendable; their survival time on the battlefield was just 10 minutes, and there was no need to equip them with excessive ammunition.

As for fire suppression, it could be left to special machine gunners.

"...The core strength of the army is the citizens who have received military training, who join the youth army and head to the very front lines of the battlefield before becoming junior officers. And this type of rifle with a golden eagle on the stock is the standard issue of the youth army, also a proof of their identity."

Looking at the rifle in his hand, Vanus’s expression was somewhat nostalgic as he set it aside. Although he became an officer right after graduation without any service in the youth army, he too received one when he was awarded his first medal.

"The 21st Ten Thousand Troops couldn’t possibly have this kind of weapon; their main task on the battlefield is to fill lines, and constructing fortifications and trench warfare are their special skills," Chu Guang said thoughtfully.

"Maybe besides the 21st Ten Thousand Troops, there are other deserters who have defected to the Chewing Bone Tribe? Like a thousand team from the youth army?"

Or it could have been bought from somewhere like the Bugra Free State.

It’s said that in the late stages of the war, a large amount of the army’s equipment flowed into there. Some of it was sold off as war trophies by the people of the Grand Canyon, and some was sold by the army’s own logistic officers.

As for making it themselves, that possibility was very slim.

After all, the golden logo doesn’t add damage to bullets.

Even if replicating, there was no need to replicate such unnecessary details.

"Not ruling out that possibility, although my gut tells me it’s very slim," Vanus pondered for a moment, then suddenly remembered something, "Speaking of which... where is their commander?"

Chu Guang wore a somewhat subtle expression.

"...Dead."

"Dead?" Vanus was stunned.

Chu Guang nodded.

"Yes, his left side of the brain was blown away, and over twenty shell fragments were found on his body... It must have been a 37mm high-explosive bomb that fell into the trench. Turns out that Bear Tooth was captured, along with his subordinate, a man called Tu Men, who was previously a centurion of the 21st Ten Thousand Troops."

Chu Guang found it rather absurd talking about this.

Previously, the centurions and others he caught couldn’t reveal anything crucial; he had originally thought of capturing someone of high rank for more information, but unexpectedly, they were wiped out by a stray shell.

He even considered making him a transport team leader.

After all, he had brought so much war bounty...

After listening to Chu Guang, Vanus’s face was filled with bewilderment.

Or rather, confusion.

A man who had once deserted, dying on a battlefield not his own, he pondered long and hard but couldn’t understand what Dylon was really after.

Chu Guang also didn’t understand why that idiot didn’t hide in an anti-cannon hole, but compared to such trivial matters, he now had more important things to consider.

"Let’s not worry about where these weapons came from for now, but regarding the next step in our plan, I’d like to hear your suggestions,"

Vanus knew what Chu Guang was asking about and took a moment to ponder before answering.

"Although we have annihilated five thousand of the Ya Clan’s men, there remain more than twenty thousand Looters in West State City. The terrain from Area Four to the southern part of the city is complex, making it difficult to exploit our mobility advantage. It’s not a good idea to push the front line directly into the city and engage the Looters in a street battle."

"My suggestion is to move the artillery positions from Qingstone County to a hollow five kilometers north of Pine Forest Valley, where they’ve prepared anti-cannon fortifications for us."

"If we can solve the problem with artillery, there’s no need to send in troops. This war could be over in no more than two weeks."

In the end, those guys are nothing but a bunch of Looters.

They gather together simply to form a group to rob others, releasing their animal instincts on this civility-collapsed Wasteland planet.

Of the more than thirty thousand Looters stationed in West State City, at least two-thirds came ’flocking to the fame.’

What holds their cohesion isn’t faith, culture, or traditions, and it certainly isn’t blood relations.

Once they can’t keep winning, the morale naturally dissipates.

Not to mention facing severe setbacks on the battlefield, enduring constant casualties, and seeing no hope of victory.

A "Looter’s Kingdom"?

That’s nothing but a pipe dream.

Probably only Skull Breaker·Golden Tooth himself would believe it.

After hearing Vanus’s plan, Chu Guang nodded in satisfaction.

Because he had the same thought.

"It seems we are on the same page."

He paused, then continued,

"However, just that isn’t enough, we need to bombard them not only strategically but also psychologically."

"Such as?" Vanus asked with interest.

"In addition to missiles and artillery shells, there are flyers and broadcasts," Chu Guang said with a faint smile, "We need to bombard more than just those filthy Goblins. We must also grab them by the ears and tell them—the unbeaten record of the Chewing Bone tribe has ended in our hands, we have crushed their most elite troops on the battlefield, facing us, they stand no chance!"

"... But we are an army of civilization, we won’t indulge in meaningless slaughter. We need manpower to rebuild the Wasteland, and we need help managing the prisoners of war. As long as they bring the flyers to us, or go to the local Guerrilla Team and surrender, we will give them a chance to start anew. And that’s also their last and only chance."

Goblin? What is that?

Vanus was stunned for a moment, not catching on immediately.

However, the idea of air-dropping flyers and setting up broadcasts in the city did light up his eyes. Having once served as a Centurion in the Army, he immediately saw the intent behind this move.

Those flyers would not only crush the morale of the defending troops but also disintegrate their organization, plunging the Looters into a pit of suspicion and despair as the siege approaches.

They would have to endure strikes from the New Alliance while dealing with broadcasts set up by the Guerrilla Team in the city, control the pervasive rumors, and check for ’Letters of Surrender’ hidden in their own pockets.

It might not even take two weeks.

They would see those Looters fleeing en masse or even surrendering...

The more he thought about it, the more brilliant he found the idea, and Vanus couldn’t help but praise it.

"This is a good idea... However, most of the Looters are illiterate, you might have to put some thought into making them understand what you’ve written on those papers."

Chu Guang smiled and shook his head.

"No need for any superfluous words."

"Some simple symbols will suffice."

If a problem can be solved with artillery, surely there’s no need for troops, but artillery does cost money.

Anyway, the war is already nearing its end, it’s naturally better to save where possible—printing flyers is better than printing money.

After this war, there will indeed be a lot more places where money will be needed...

-

(The nucleic acid test delayed me a bit, the latter half isn’t written. Four cases just popped up here in Wuchang where I just got over a fever, leaving me really anxious...)