Empire of Shadows

Paul carried his rifle and came to the firing port. Countless black shadows were writhing in the darkness, rushing towards the defensive line.

Although he had mentally prepared himself, he couldn’t help but break out in a cold sweat when he saw this scene!

The world in his eyes seemed to be spinning, and the soldiers who were charging with their bodies bent were like demons hidden in the darkness.

He became extremely nervous, pushed the muzzle of his weapon out of the firing port, and then directly pulled the trigger.

He pulled the trigger several times in a row without any effect, and only then did he notice that the safety was not off.

After he had turned off the safety, he was so nervous that his fingers were twitching a little. A whole magazine of twenty-five bullets was fired in an instant.

“Fuck, do you still remember your training?”

“Calm down, aim, and then pull the trigger once. Don’t fucking shoot them all!”

The trench was filled with the roars of the instructors. It has to be said that these roars might have some effect. Paul, trembling, took off the magazine, then put on a new one, and then tilted his head, trying his best to calm himself down, aim at the enemy, and then pull the trigger!

He didn’t know if he had hit or not. He only knew that he was performing the mechanical shooting from his training.Gunshots, cannon fire. The battle only lasted for thirty minutes.

Thirty minutes later, the enemy retreated like a tide.

The shattered searchlights were replaced with new lenses, and once again they continuously illuminated the entire battlefield.

The moment the officer announced the end of the battle, Paul almost couldn’t stand steadily and fell to the ground.

He took out a cigarette with trembling hands, put it in his mouth, and lit it.

The nicotine could not very well soothe his nervous emotions, but it was better than nothing.

His compatriot next to him sat leaning against him. “I was scared to death.”

Paul let out a puff of smoke. “Me too.”

“They are clearly very far away from us. Why do I feel scared and nervous?” Paul looked at his still trembling hands with some confusion.

The adrenaline began to recede. He felt tired, uneasy, afraid, nervous, all kinds of negative emotions. His hands were trembling even more than before!

His compatriot shook his head. Not far away, another soldier was also squatting against the wall of the trench. “Because the moment they rush to us is the moment we die.”

“We are fighting against death!”

There were still some sounds in the trench. Some people were feeling uneasy and afraid like Paul, but there were also some who were feeling excited.

These people were all talking, until they heard this sentence, and then they immediately became quiet.

Yes, the moment the enemy rushes to their faces is the moment they die in battle.

After more than ten seconds, Paul said loudly, “That moment will never come!”

His loud voice seemed to give people some courage to face this even worse situation. Then someone followed up and shouted, “That’s right, no one can defeat us, the Federation will win!”

The soldiers in the trench were shouting “The Federation will win” at a little after three in the middle of the night. In the command post behind the defensive line, the officers and generals were summarizing this first foreign battle.

“Too many problems!”

The one in charge of this defensive section was a lieutenant colonel. His expression was very serious, without the excitement of having repelled the enemy.

This night battle had exposed many problems.

“The soldiers are too nervous. Many of them didn’t even see where the enemy was before they had finished their bullets.”

“Now we are only on the defensive side. If we are on the offensive, the supply line will be longer, and the supply will be more difficult than now. We must optimize the problem of nervousness when shooting.”

One of the officers said, “We can have the arms supplier provide two modes of weapons, burst fire and single shot.”

The lieutenant colonel nodded. “This is a good idea. I will report it to the commander-in-chief.”

“Our observers are very unfamiliar with night battles. We have to find a way to ask the Slad people if they have experienced night observers, and have them come over to teach our observers.”

“To let the other side get close to the defensive line before being discovered is too dangerous!”

“They don’t know enough about us. This was just a probing attack. If they had directly pressed on with a large number of troops, we might have already been broken through.”

When this problem was brought up, the people in the room all fell silent.

No one had thought that the other side could get so close. Maybe the other side’s commander was also annoyed now why it was just a probing attack. If he had sent everyone out, they would have already broken through the direction and let the entire northern flank of the battlefield be cut off and fall into chaos.

Unfortunately, there were no ifs. But this made the lieutenant colonel very dissatisfied!

“The company on duty tonight will all be punished. The company officers will be punished double.”

A few of the officers said “yes” with a dejected look. The others looked at them with sympathy.

“I hear someone also injured their own people by an explosion?”

“What were you guys doing?”

“They can even get such a basic thing wrong. Next time, is it possible that they will directly throw a bomb on our command post?”

The lieutenant colonel was losing his temper with a kind of not-so-angry anger. The atmosphere in the room was always very serious.

He listed many problems: the soldiers’ unfamiliarity with the battlefield, their unfamiliarity with combat.

Tension, unease, fear. Too many things made this “debut” look as bad as the watery shit of a dog with diarrhea!

It was terrible!

In fact, the terrible things were not over yet, because the battle had happened in the middle of the night. Under the effect of various emotions and hormones in the body, people were not drowsy, but on the contrary, they were all very energetic.

They chatted until the sky was slightly bright, and only then did they begin to fall asleep.

Those on the night shift were indifferent. What could you say when someone was staying up with you until dawn?

You could only say “good brother,” but for the soldiers who needed to patrol during the day, it was a bit bad.

They had just fallen asleep not long ago when the assembly bugle was blown. They were pushed up one by one and lined up on the open ground.

At this time, the hormones in their bodies, due to rest and other reasons, began to be completely metabolized and disappeared. The aftereffects of overdrawing their physical and mental strength were immediately revealed. Each of them had no spirit.

The officers looked at them and didn’t know what to say.

Last night, more than three hundred people had died in this defensive section, mainly concentrated in the first half of the battle.

Those people had directly gotten close and launched an attack, causing a large number of casualties. After the Federation’s army had reacted and joined the battle, the casualty situation immediately dropped.

Overall, it was that the soldiers were too unfamiliar with the battlefield, and also too nervous. And some soldiers had already had some mental problems.

Some soldiers had been dry heaving violently, or constantly hiccupping. Some had also had their attention scattered, or would occasionally go crazy.

The priests had already begun to play a role. They held the Bible and told the soldiers that all of this was to fight for the glory of God. After death, they would not go to hell, but on the contrary, would enter the kingdom of heaven.

At the same time, they needed more cigarettes.

Originally, in the military supply bag, each person only had ten cigarettes a week, but now it seemed that ten cigarettes were not even enough for them to smoke in a day. They needed more things that could soothe the soldiers’ emotions.

And also things that could help the soldiers fall asleep.

Some soldiers were so nervous at night that they couldn’t fall asleep. Insomnia was troubling them. Too many unexpected problems were happening.

There was also the problem of medicine. They needed a faster-acting painkiller. If someone was shot and then started to scream, it would make the nearby soldiers all fall into the imaginary “I’ve been hit” illusion.

Several soldiers, after the battle was over, behaved as if they had been hit. They also insisted that they felt that they had been shot and had severe pain.

But after checking their whole bodies, no wounds were found. The doctor believed that this might be an emotion of “I’m also injured” produced by excessive tension and fear.

There were some areas in the weapons that needed to be improved, and some Slad instructors were also needed.

Although the Slad people were constantly being beaten back, they had rich combat experience, which the Federation people did not have now.

A large amount of battlefield information was gathered together and sent back to the Federation.

The federal government did not publicly announce how many people had died in this one night, but only emphasized that “we have repelled an attack by the Dantra invaders.”

Some newspaper reporters also followed suit and changed the concept. They said that what the Slad people could not do, the federal people, who were on the battlefield for the first time, had done.

This kind of propaganda was still very useful for the domestic federal people who did not know the specific situation. They were all immersed in the emotion of “the Federation will win,” and firmly believed that victory was just a matter of time.

Only the top brass of the Federation knew how many troubles they needed to solve.

The Department of Defense, the military, and Congress were all examining these problems and trying to find solutions from them.

On February 8th, a more intense battle broke out again on the northernmost battlefield of the Tanfit continent. This time, the Dantra people had also used armored vehicles and tanks. Fortunately, although the federal people did not have rich experience, their equipment was indeed excellent.

The two sides fought a see-saw battle on the battlefield for nearly five hours before the Dantra people finally retreated.

This time, the casualties of the federal army were very heavy, because the Dantra people had not only sent armored vehicles and tanks, but their artillery had also begun to bombard the defensive line.

A sharp whistling of wind was constantly coming from the sky, and then the torn corpses and the soil were blown into the air together.

Paul had been scared silly in the battle. A shell had exploded less than ten meters away from him.

If it had been a little more off, and had landed in the trench, everyone would have died!

At this moment, he felt the insignificance of human power in war. It could not play any role at all!

This was a hard battle. After the battle was over, there were thousands of casualties.

Although they might have also killed one or two thousand enemies, this kind of battle loss ratio was unacceptable to anyone!

A more serious problem had appeared in the soldiers’ emotions. Many soldiers were shouting that they wanted to go home!

To be able to die at any time, for them, was really too terrible. They had not come here all to dedicate themselves!

The cruelty of war was gradually being revealed. These soldiers, whose psychological quality was not good enough, had completely collapsed.

And their collapse also caused the morale on the defensive line to become low.

After a discussion between the Department of Defense and the military, soon Admiral Miles had told Lance to load the “small can of wine” he had prepared and transport it to the front line as soon as possible!

To say it was a “small can,” it was actually a flat metal bottle, the kind of small flask that could be put in a pocket.

Its price itself was not cheap, compared to a metal bottle and a glass bottle, but in it was a wine worth twenty dollars, so it became not so expensive.

Lance had given them a discounted price, twenty and fifty cents.

When Admiral Miles saw these wine bottles, he couldn’t help keeping one for a while, since it seemed like it might cater to certain people’s hobby.

He also took the initiative to take a sip. The alcohol content of over forty degrees was a little strong for the people of the Federation, but for the soldiers on the front line who needed it to relieve their emotions, it was just right!

“The bottle is not bad, but the wine is very ordinary!” Admiral Miles gave Lance a very objective evaluation.

Lance didn’t care about this. “If you are willing to give the soldiers a thousand-dollar bottle of wine, I guarantee that its taste will immediately be raised by several grades!”

Admiral Miles was stunned for a moment, and then he shook his head with a smile. “No, this is enough!”

Although he knew very well that the more expensive the wine, the more you would definitely earn, but their Congress would definitely not approve it.

For each soldier to spend an extra two hundred a month was already very reluctant. If they raised it again, even if the congressional side could get a little more, they would have to consider the consequences if these things were exposed.

Or rather, it would definitely be exposed. The matter of giving the front-line soldiers wine could not be hidden. They could still hold on to the pressure of two hundred, but a thousand was really unbearable.

“I hope this batch of wine can really change some of the situation on the front line!” Admiral Miles finally let out a sigh.

Lance did not know much about the situation on the front line, but for them to be so strongly urging to send the wine up just a few days after the battle, the situation was definitely not optimistic.

This was a good opportunity to know the inside story. “Is our situation not good?”

“The newspapers have been saying that we are winning victory after victory, and have repelled two of the enemy’s all-out attacks.”

When Admiral Miles heard Lance say so, he couldn’t help but laugh, a very helpless kind of laugh. “We have already lost seven or eight thousand people, but as far as we can count, they may have only lost one or two thousand.”

“The huge battle loss ratio has made our morale very low. The Department of Defense is re-evaluating the development trend of the battlefield.”

“And soon we will also have to join the battle.”

The army had encountered trouble as soon as it landed. The navy’s side certainly couldn’t just do nothing. On the one hand, they had to move around to ensure the safety of the supply lines. On the other hand, they also had to bombard the coastal cities of the Dantra Republic.

As for whether they would hit ordinary people, whether they would cause innocent civilian casualties.

Alright!

This is fucking war. There are no right or wrong and innocent or not innocent labels. As long as they are the enemy, they all deserve to die!

Only the victor can, after picking the fruits of victory, accuse the loser of massacring civilians. Before a winner is decided, both sides are devils!

This terrible bad news had indeed not been disclosed in the newspapers. This could also be considered a strategy.

“You’re also going to the front line?”

“Me?”

Admiral Miles thought for a moment, and then slowly nodded. “A small-scale battle doesn’t need me, but once a large-scale battle breaks out, I will definitely be on the front line.”

“I will be with my children!”

Although this old guy was a little greedy, he was ultimately still a good general, from the perspective of the people of the Federation.

Lance opened another box, took out a box from inside, and handed it to Admiral Miles. A very beautiful packaging box.

“What’s in this?” Admiral Miles asked.

Lance motioned for him to open it and see. Only then did Admiral Miles open the box curiously. When he saw what was inside, he immediately couldn’t help but pick it up and hold it in his hand, unable to put it down as he turned it over and over.

A golden, with an ivory mouth, small flask. Unlike those square, flat small flasks, this one was round, and its belly looked fuller.

On the outside of the flask were some pictures related to war.

The feel of the gold was particularly warm and moist, but it did not seem heavy. It was also very comfortable to hold in the hand. Of course, if you put it in your pocket for a long time, it would definitely be a little heavy.

“Thank you, I like it very much!”

He did not refuse out of politeness, but directly put it in his pocket.

Of course, he also kindly reminded, “The other generals over there…”

Lance nodded slightly. “They are all prepared.”

He looked at Lance and sighed lightly. So young, so experienced. Sometimes there was really nothing to say.

Soon the first batch of “tension relievers” was shipped. This time, they used speedboats and arrived at the battlefield after the third blocking battle.

The intensity of the third battle had risen another step. Shells, armored vehicles, tanks, mortars, and the constantly advancing soldiers.

Two of the defensive lines had even been broken through at one point, but they were quickly retaken by soldiers who were several times the number of the enemy!

The main force of the Dantra people was on the main battlefield. This was just a part of the people, but for the Federation, this was the main battlefield!

And the Department of Defense and the military had already passed the opinion of increasing troops, and would continue to increase troops to 700,000.

The casualties in this battle were even more tragic. Although the casualties on the side of the Dantra Republic were also very tragic, for the federal soldiers who had just come into contact with the war, the continuous heavy setbacks had already made them a little afraid of battle!

The military police, the priests, were all brainwashing them, instilling in them the idea of being born for battle and dying for battle.

But it was still very difficult to alleviate people’s sad and pessimistic emotions. What they needed was not someone to tell them “you will be happier after you die,” but to find a way to vent properly!

In the morning, Paul got up from his bed with a cold face. He dressed neatly and stood by his bed. There were many strangers in the tent.

In less than half a month, many people around him had already been replaced.

Including his compatriot, who had also died in the last battle.

To this moment, he could still clearly remember that he and his compatriot were shooting at the enemy, the two of them talking to each other to relieve their nervous emotions while pulling the trigger.

But suddenly, his compatriot had stopped talking, and then had slowly turned his head to look at him.

He had subconsciously looked at his compatriot, only to see that half of his head had been blown off. The blood and gore had splattered all over the trench behind them.

Then the next second, the compatriot who had been talking and laughing with him had collapsed on the ground.

And he, on the other hand, was still numbly repeating the action of aiming and shooting…

(End of a Chapter)