Chapter 79 The Tilted Balance
Sandcastle is one of the major cities in the Foster Alliance, so the temple is naturally not too small. The more developed the city, the larger the temple. Essinger's Temple of Chaos and Order is almost as big as a small city, and the temple of this sandcastle is definitely larger than the previous large village. The Spider Fortress doesn't care whether it's a temple or not, it rushes directly towards the huge building complex.
The roads in the temple were designed for people, and they were widened appropriately for the sake of style. Something as big as the Spider Fortress cannot walk on the roads, so when he enters, he must step on the surrounding buildings.
Several players were rushing to transport important items in the temple. Suddenly, a hole was punched in the roof, and a thick metal leg fell from the sky and stepped into the hall. Before those players could react, the leg was lifted up again, and a large piece of the roof was pulled off. Large pieces of bricks fell from the roof, causing the people below to look for shelter.
The terrifying destructive power of the Spider Fortress has given the Foster Alliance a headache, but their more troublesome problem is yet to come. The Invincible Fortress finally fully recovered. This guy was even more barbaric than the Spider Fortress, completely destroying everything he passed like a bulldozer. Not even large pieces of rubble could be found.
Less than a minute after the destruction of the two ground fortresses began, a large number of wasp golems and poisonous fly golems in the sky joined the ground attack. Outside the city, Ashford could see the flames in the city skyrocketing, and the sound of explosions could be heard from time to time. Determining that the enemy could no longer use any weapons of mass destruction, Ashford issued the final attack order. Under the cover of the Zerg fortress, hundreds of thousands of troops began to rush towards the city. Their mission was to sweep away the enemy's effective forces and completely destroy the city. Although the Zerg fortresses are very powerful, they are fortresses and are too big for individual soldiers, so they cannot be used for mopping up. The real main force is still the regular route army.
In terms of the quality of the soldiers alone, Ashford has a certain advantage. In terms of numbers, both sides are about the same. The only advantage of the Foster Alliance is that they are defensive and have city walls and cannons to rely on. However, this advantage is now gone. The Zerg Fortress has long destroyed all the forts and large sections of the city walls. The current city is actually the same as There is not much difference between a stone forest and there is no defensive advantage at all. If we have to say that the Foster Alliance has any advantage, it is that they are more familiar with the terrain.
While Ashford led the men to attack the sand castle, the other three route armies were also busy with their own work.
Although Essinger's road is theoretically responsible for the ten largest and most thoroughly defended cities. But Essinger's own unparalleled attack power completely overwhelmed all these cities. The battles between Essinger and these cities are not siege battles at all, because both sides are cities, and the enemy's defensive advantages are not reflected at all, and they are at a disadvantage in the face of Essinger's ultra-long-range weapons. Because of Essinger's powerful combat power, his attack methods became extremely fast. While Ashford was still fighting for the sandcastle, Essinger was already looting her third target in an orderly manner.
The second army route transported by shuttle aircraft may be the most difficult of the four routes. Although they are first in terms of flight speed, this army only has air transport capabilities, not air combat capabilities. In other words, their entire army. With the transportation capabilities of the shuttle aircraft, this ground force can carry some siege weapons, especially large-caliber artillery, but after all, they lack suppressive weapons, and the Fourth Route Army is really attacking the city. The other routes all used their own advantages to avoid the opponent's advantages. Ashford's side is already carrying out the cleaning and finishing work of the sand castle, but the second route army is still fighting for the city wall, and the most casualties are on their route.
The third road is Ashford Road, and the situation of the sand castle is basically no longer suspense. All that's left is cleanup.
The fourth route is an all-air force team composed of large monsters and a large number of flying creatures, including a large number of totem dragons from the guild. The flight speed of this army is medium, but their fighting method is too tricky. The all-flying force can completely rely on its powerful battlefield maneuverability to attack any weak points of the enemy at will, while the enemy can only run back and forth to plug the leaks. At this time, they had begun a directionless and chaotic attack over the second city. The enemies in the city had no idea what to do. To deal with enemies like them, neither battle formations nor cannons were used. The city wall is not as good as a threshold.
The Fourth Route Army basically carried out the attack according to the planned plan. And two routes were obviously much faster than expected. Even Ashford, who seemed to be playing more tiringly, was actually playing faster than planned. Only the second lane was actually playing as planned.
The harassment unit where I was located bit the enemy like mosquitoes, and the coalition forces composed of the British and French guilds were so disturbed by my harassment. At first, we kept harassing their personnel, which was bearable. Later, they started to panic after we discovered their heavy weapons troops.
The players around me and I discovered traces of heavy weapons in a large number of camouflaged carriages when the enemy was halfway through the journey. Later, we discussed a disability tactic. Our plan is to eliminate or reduce the number of enemy units one by one in the hope that the enemy will not be able to use multiple units together. For example, our current goal is heavy weapons. We just need to get rid of all these things. When the enemy attacks a city, they must pile up people. Our target after heavy weapons is tentatively auxiliary mages. But what to do specifically can only be decided after the heavy weapons are eliminated. Anyway, it is not their turn now.
Heavy weapons. As you can tell from the name, they are heavy. These big guys are bulky and it is almost impossible to transport them as a whole, so they are completely disassembled into multiple components and transported separately. We used our various advantages to continuously harass these heavy weapons troops. The enemy's heavy weapons lost as much as one-fifth in these ten kilometers. At this speed, they cannot reach the first Iron Crusaders city. The troops no longer have heavy weapons.
The enemy either doesn't want to drive us away, or they just can't help it. Our mobility is so good that they can't catch up. Small reconnaissance and defense forces are always killed by us, and large reconnaissance is a waste of time. The enemy who really has no choice but to let us make trouble.
During the harassment battle along the way, the enemy finally saw their first target, which was a small city in the Iron Cross. From here onwards, all the cities behind are owned by the Iron Crusaders. From now on, the enemy's large forces will continue to encroach on the Iron Crusaders' cities.
After seeing the city, we stopped harassing them and instead moved inside the city to participate in the defense. The enemy has no idea that there are more than 100,000 tons of explosives buried under the city. As long as the player responsible for detonating the explosion inputs a little bit of magic power into the crystal stone in his hand, the entire city and everything within a radius of ten kilometers will be destroyed. The powerful shock wave completely destroyed it.
If these explosives are to have maximum effect, the enemy must be concentrated as much as possible. The closer they are to the city, the better the effect we can achieve. It is for this reason that our harassment teams entered the city. We wanted to lure the enemy into the city, and the entire army poured in. Although it is impossible to deal with all the enemies at once, at least it can reduce their number by one-tenth.
At first, I was very worried that the enemy would discover our situation and refuse to get close to the city. But it turned out that I was worried for nothing. The enemy was completely in a posture of pressing forward with a large army and planning to break through in one fell swoop. The flood-like army actually bypassed both sides of the city and then converged on the other side of the city to form a ring surrounding the entire city.
The Iron Crusaders player responsible for defending this city said to me: "It seems that the enemy is planning to attack from four directions at the same time."
I nodded: "What the British and French guilds are worried about is the funds gained from betting, not the NPCs that they spend money to buy. In comparison, these NPCs are not valuable enough, so they will use this attack method regardless of casualties." .”
"Then what should we do? Resist and evacuate immediately?"
"No." I objected: "We can't retreat too fast, we must continue to resist. If you really think it's dangerous, retreat, but don't retreat all at once. In the end, we continued to persist and retreat slowly until the enemy penetrated deeply. We evacuate the entire city after that, and then the world becomes quiet with a bang."
"I'm worried that the enemy will be in a hurry to search for items as soon as they enter the city. What if they find explosives?"
"The enemy is not a guild. If the supplies are not divided until the end of the war, it will be easy to get messed up. Therefore, their combat discipline may have stipulated that no robbery is allowed during the battle. Forces formed by alliances like them usually do it after the fact. Collect and distribute loot uniformly. Avoid disputes that damage the alliance. So if they really start rushing to find things to grab after entering the city, that would be better. The breakdown of their relationship is more useful than our bombs killing hundreds of thousands of people. many."
"Understood." The city leader of the Iron Crusaders nodded to express his understanding.
After successfully surrounding our city, the enemy immediately began to attack the city. They also knew that their progress was much slower. Although they don't have the same communication equipment as our guild. But it's not a problem to go offline and make calls, so they know very well that our attack has started long ago, and we have already defeated several cities. Due to time pressure, the British and French alliance had to speed up the attack pace. This is why they set up this attack formation that will definitely cause heavy casualties but relatively fast speed.
As soon as the attack started, the enemy used only a dozen or so cannons. This was the most frustrating part for the opponent. Despite their careful protection along the way, we destroyed only a dozen cannons. As a result, they now have plenty of ammunition but no cannons to fire these ammunition.
Because there is no long-range weapon support. The other party had to pile up people honestly. But what excites them is that the actual casualties are far less than expected, and only we know the reason. This city is a big bomb. The remaining defense forces are just pretending. The number is pitiful. Even if we are included, it will not be much better. Therefore, although the enemy's tactics are inappropriate and lack of fire cover, the casualties are still not Very big.
A trap is a trap after all, and we guards had no intention of living or dying with the city. When we see the enemy starting to attack the city, we make a symbolic defense. The walls were soon breached. After a large number of enemies entered the city, we began to rely on buildings to fight them in street battles. The buildings in this small city are very dense, and we have blocked several main roads with barriers. As for those small alleys, there is usually only room for two people to walk side by side, so the advantage of large numbers of enemies cannot be used at all.
Although the street fighting effect is good, there are too many enemies after all. Soon they began to abandon the narrow alleys and go directly to the roofs to fight us. In order to prevent the back road from being cut off, we quickly started to advance towards the last defensive position in the center of the city. There was a tunnel leading directly to the outside of the city, and rails had been laid in advance and unpowered iron wagons similar to those used in coal mines were placed. Everyone gradually retreated to the last room, leaving some unimportant NPCs to block the enemies. We players quickly entered the tunnel.
At this time, the city was completely covered by the enemy's army. The streets, alleys, and even the roofs were full of people. As soon as we entered the tunnel, we immediately jumped on those iron carts. These things may not look big but they can be packed very well. There were many golems and NPC soldiers in our raiding force, and there were quite a few people in total, but in the end it only took dozens of iron wagons to load it up.
The tunnel gets deeper as it goes outwards, so the tin cart does not need power. Once it is full of people, it will run forward by itself when you release the brakes, and it will run faster and faster. The enemies outside quickly killed the NPCs we left behind and rushed down, but when they entered here, they only had time to see the last iron car carrying people turn the corner ahead.
There were a lot of iron wagons piled up next to this starting point. The enemy who was chasing us immediately carried those wagons to the side of the track and planned to chase us. But they ran out of time. When they had just lifted an iron car onto the track, there was a sudden muffled sound from the passage ahead. This is not the sound of explosives detonating in the city, but the orbit-sealing explosives we activated. We only activated this part of the explosives after we were far enough away. The explosives collapsed a large section of the passage, blocking the pursuers and the coming larger shock wave behind us. Activating this explosive is also equivalent to activating the explosives in the city, because they are connected. It's just that the delay is different.
The way forward is blocked, and the enemy can only give up the pursuit. A team leader suddenly discovered that there was a door in this room. He immediately went over curiously and opened the door. Originally, he thought that such a hidden place would be filled with good things, but when the door opened, they were all dumbfounded.
The explosives in the game are made by mixing crystal powder and some other things. It is completely different from the explosives in reality, so the explosives will not have the names of real explosive types such as TNT or C4. However, although there are no common names for explosives, and the names printed on these explosives do not remind people of explosives, the prohibition of open flames signs printed on many boxes in the warehouse and the top of the warehouse The hanging words "Dangerous Goods Warehouse" written in red German still made these people guess what was in the warehouse.
Just as they were frightened by the things in the warehouse, suddenly a small door opened in the corner. Inside the door was a fixed crossbow. On the crossbow was a crossbow arrow with an arrow as thick as a carrot. . The team leader took a look at the arrow, and just when he realized something was wrong, the arrow's arrow suddenly burst into flames in front of him. There is phosphorus on the arrow. The door was originally a vacuum. After it was opened, air would flow in. The phosphorus would spontaneously ignite after contacting the air for a few seconds, igniting the burning object on the arrow. At the same time, the flames raised by the burning object burned away the ground above. A rope. "Oh, no!" the team leader shouted in panic, but the situation was irreversible. The burned rope originally pulled the crossbow string, and the crossbow arrows would automatically fire as soon as the rope was broken. The angles are all aimed in advance. The flaming crossbow shot without any deviation into a pile of explosive boxes in the front.
boom. The building in the middle of the city suddenly rose into the sky. All nearby British and French alliance personnel were thrown away by the shock wave of the explosion. These people have not yet landed, centered on this building. The surrounding area suddenly exploded simultaneously, and a large group of players and NPCs were lifted into the sky to join the flying crowd. The third explosion occurred two seconds after the first two, but this explosion was the most complete. The entire city and the nearby land arched upward together, and then collapsed downwards. The city was instantly reduced to ruins, and the location where it had just been turned into a regular pit. Nearly a million troops of the British and French alliance were completely engulfed in the raging flames and debris shooting everywhere. No one could stop an explosion of this level. The player's defense is nothing compared to city-level weapons. Even if my defense is hit by a city-level weapon such as a magic crystal cannon, the probability of survival is no more than 20%.
There are three types of people who witness this spectacular sight, and the reactions of these three types of people vary greatly.
The first part is about the reporters who were closest to the explosion. The massive increase in players of "Zero" has forced many television stations and other media to frequently report on major events in "Zero". This time the Anglo-French guilds engaged in such a big gamble and eventually turned into personally participating in the war regardless of their image. In addition, this was a power division war in Germany. How could the media miss such a big thing. Reporters who were near the battlefield at that time captured a large number of shocking images from different angles. In reality, unless an atomic bomb explodes, there would not be such a large-scale explosion for people to see. It is different in the game. There is no scruple here, and it is no problem to engage in such a city-destroying explosion. The reporters grabbed the news and went offline to spread the news. This news means money to them, so their expressions are excited.
The people in the second part were us. When the explosion started, we had already come out of a secret exit outside the city. This place is far away from the ready, and we can't actually see the situation clearly. However, we already know that there are many enemies in the city, so our reaction is excitement.
The third part is the Anglo-French Guild Alliance. The expressions of these people now are almost as if they want to cry without tears. Just now they were rejoicing that they had only lost less than a third of the expected casualties in capturing the city. However, a few seconds later the casualties suddenly reached n times the expected number. The loss was close to one million, which was almost one-twelfth of the number of troops. Such a large attrition occurred in such a micro-city, but as a result, we have not yet obtained control of the city. This loss can only be described as immeasurable. Among the three parties, this one had the most painful expressions. After the explosion, many people were still looking at the big pit with their mouths open and at a loss.
I saw that I no longer needed to take care of the situation here, so I simply took everyone and left the scene. The Anglo-French alliance's army suffered such heavy losses, and its internal organization must have been in chaos. They have to stay here for at least three to six hours to reorganize their troops before moving on to the next target, and it seems that they will also have to re-plan their attack plan for the next city.
Compared with them, the four-pronged army on our side seems quite relaxed. Essinger still maintains its consistent level, solving city by city. If the defense is not strong, send people down to rob and destroy it. If the defense is too strong and may endanger your own safety, just use super weapons to blow up the city from high altitude. Although this method is more expensive, it is safe. The progress of the shuttle aircraft on the second route is still relatively slow. Their pure army organization seems to be better at steady and slow attacks. Now they seem quite inappropriate when talking about speed. Essinger has already attacked the seventh city, but they are still attacking the second city along the way.
The third group led by Ashford was delayed for a long time in the first city, but it picked up speed later, and it took a while to capture the third city. The air cavalry on the last road are also relatively fast. They have already reached the fifth city, and they will be halfway done by destroying this city.
The better our situation is, the more anxious the British and French guilds will be. Taking the initiative to participate in the war is already an act of losing face and asking for money. Now if we can't even get the money back, we will really lose everything.