Chapter 36 Dragon Blood (Two in One)
Hearing the news from his adjutant, De Leon's heart sank. Two chasseur battalions of more than 1300 soldiers lost nearly half of their combat effectiveness in just one round of bombardment. His face looked very gloomy under the dim light of the shelter, and the edge of the map in his hand was tightly clenched.
"Go and transfer the reserve battalion." He gritted his teeth and gave the order. There was no other way, so De Leon could only transfer the other chasseur battalion that was originally used as the second line of defense to fill the hole in the first line of defense.
At this time, Stephen came in from the entrance of the shelter carrying Moreno on his back. He was covered in mud as if he had crawled out of a quagmire, and at the same time he was shouting, "Lieutenant Colonel, our defense line is about to be breached, we need support!" His voice was mixed with despair and eagerness.
"Don't worry, corporal. Reinforcements will be here soon." De Leon saw Stephen, who was covered in mud, coming in and said calmly. He tried to appear calm. He knew how important this calmness was to other soldiers.
"Lieutenant Colonel, can you find someone to treat this recruit who is on my body?" Stephen continued anxiously, his voice almost trembling.
"Handed-blood?" Derian asked uncertainly when he saw the dim golden eyes of the soldier on Stephen's back. He didn't expect to see another handed-blood here besides himself.
"Hello, Lieutenant Colonel. My name is Moreno Rothschild." Moreno saw De Leon looking at him and responded weakly, his voice almost inaudible.
"Are you from the Rothschild family?" De Leon was really surprised this time. He didn't expect that the Jewish family that the Council of Elders used to control the entire European finance would dare to violate the Abrahamic Covenant initiated by the Council of Elders and join the army. He stared at Moreno, trying to find the answer from his eyes.
"I grew up in France, I consider myself French, and my family has made a lot of wealth in this country, so I want to do something for France." Moreno's voice was weak but firm, with an unyielding light in his eyes.
"I didn't expect there is a patriotic half-blood like you in the Council of Elders, but you are wrong about one thing. Your family didn't plunder a lot of wealth in France, but plundered the wealth of the whole of Europe," De Leon said, his eyes gradually turned cold, but then turned to the medic beside him, "Medic, take him down to bandage him and let him have a good rest."
"Have a good rest, kid. You will be indispensable in the next battle." Stephen carefully handed Moreno on his back to the medic.
"Let's go, corporal. We have to hold the front line until reinforcements arrive." De Leon picked up the rifle placed aside and called the other soldiers who could still fight in the shelter to go out, with firm but heavy steps. Stephen also went out with the rifle, he knew they had no way out.
On the other side, the attack was not as smooth as Lu Mingfei and his men had expected. The French soldiers quickly recovered from the bombardment and launched a fierce counterattack against them.
According to De Leon's defense deployment, the French army did not set up a continuous defense line in the Corre Forest, but set up a series of small outposts on the outskirts of the forest to form a cordon. Slightly behind was the main defense line, which consisted of independent fortifications, each group of fortifications could accommodate more than one platoon of troops, and then the support defense line, also known as the S line, and finally the R line, which was composed of concrete bunkers. De Leon's own headquarters was located on the R line.
Because the French positions were very scattered, the Prussian artillery bombardment was not as effective as expected, and the French resistance was stronger than they expected. The air was filled with smoke and the smell of blood, and the explosions around were one after another, which made people feel terrified.
"Quick! Throw out all the grenades! They are already down there!" The shouts of the French soldiers mixed with the sound of gunfire reached Lu Mingfei's ears. After a gunshot, the voice never sounded again.
Lu Mingfei calmly pulled the bolt, pointed the muzzle at another place where a sound came from, and pulled the trigger again. He repeated the action of pulling the bolt and pulling the trigger over and over again until no more sound came from the French position.
Originally, Lu Mingfei and his men had been staying in the trenches and being bombarded without feeling anything, but now that they were engaged in a head-on battle, the terror of their team began to show.
Lu Mingfei and Kaczynski deployed the sickle-weasel field, and every shot could take a life. The rest of the team were also veterans who had survived the dead, and they had rich combat experience. Their team was the elite among the elite in the Prussian army.
They were like a sharp knife piercing into the defense line formed by the French soldiers, but the attacks of the Prussian soldiers in other directions were hindered and failed to keep up with their offensive rhythm, which made them feel surrounded by the French.
"Damn, there's something wrong with this map!" Kaczynski tore the map in his hand into pieces, his eyes full of anger. They had been advancing forward just to find the headquarters where De Leon was. As long as they could destroy the French headquarters, those defense lines would be vulnerable.
"Kaczynski, we can't go any further." Lu Mingfei said in a low voice. He was exhausted from releasing the Word Spirit for a long time, and so were the rest of the team. They had launched the attack in the early morning until now, and the sun was about to set, without a moment's rest. Everyone was almost at their limit.
"Rest where you are and launch the attack tomorrow." Kaczynski pondered for a moment and gave the order to rest where you are. There was reluctance in his voice, but more of helplessness.
Lu Mingfei and his men hid in a trench dug by the French. These trenches were shattered by the bombardment in the morning. There was nothing inside except corpses, which were either blown to pieces or buried in the soil. The air was filled with the stench of rot and blood, which made people sick.
Lu Mingfei and his companions took out emergency rations that were almost as hard as stone from their backpacks and started chewing them. They had not had a drop of water since morning, and every bite felt like chewing tree bark, but they knew they had to replenish their strength.
When they were planning to take a rest, something unexpected happened. It started snowing heavily again. Lu Mingfei and his companions were all shivering with cold, but they could not make a fire. They had already penetrated deep into the French defense line and were surrounded by French people. They estimated that as soon as they made a fire, they would be besieged by the French.
The cold gradually eroded their bodies, and everyone leaned together to keep warm, passing on their faint warmth to each other.
Lu Mingfei and Kaczynski were on duty in the first and second half of the night respectively. Their words were most useful at this time, and if the French made any movement, they would be able to discover it at the first moment.
It was a dark night and the trench was completely silent, with only the occasional sound of wind and explosions in the distance.
At daybreak, French reinforcements finally arrived and they planned to launch a counterattack, but what they did not expect was that the Prussian army launched another artillery attack, and this time the scale of the attack was even larger than yesterday's.
The terrifying 420mm cannon made a loud noise, and the sound of the artillery fire that resounded through the sky could be heard several kilometers away, like the roar of a giant beast.
Because the reinforcements were preparing to launch a counterattack, they did not even hide in the trenches and were directly bombarded by the horrific artillery fire. This time the French army suffered more damage than the day before, and the soldiers were blown to pieces, screaming one after another.
The entire battlefield was like hell on earth, with blood and flesh flying everywhere, dirt and snow mixed together, and the ground became muddy.
De Leon sat in a chair in the R2 shelter and listened to his adjutant reporting today's losses. His face was haggard and his eyes were bloodshot. He personally led his men to resist the Prussian army's attacks again and again at the front yesterday and didn't sleep all night. Now he suffered another heavy loss.
He rubbed his temples hard, the pressure and fatigue in his heart almost made him collapse.
"Lieutenant Colonel, we must reassess the current situation," the adjutant's voice sounded in his ears, with a bit of tension and urgency, "The enemy's artillery fire is getting more and more intense, and our defense line may not be able to hold."
De Leon took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. He knew that at this moment, he couldn't show any sign of wavering. The soldiers needed a strong commander, someone who could lead them out of desperate situations.
"Lieutenant Colonel! Those Germans are coming!" A soldier ran into the trench hurriedly, sweat dripping down his cheeks, his expression full of fear and anxiety.
"Everyone who can still move, take your guns and go out to fight! We have no way to retreat, the only thing we can do is to defend our position!" De Leon stood up and smoothed the wrinkles on his uniform, his eyes determined. He walked out of the shelter again with steady steps. Inside the shelter, the small space was filled with gunpowder and the smell of blood, and the air was filled with the suppressed breathing of comrades. No soldier retreated, and all followed De Leon out.
This time, even the medics tightened their rifles and followed behind De Leon with expressionless faces. They knew that if they didn't repel the Prussian army, the wounded soldiers would not be able to survive.
"I'll go too!" Moreno stubbornly propped himself up. The dragon blood in his body allowed him to recover much faster than an ordinary person. Although his wound was still aching, the pain stimulated his stronger will to fight. If someone else had been injured, they would have to stay in bed for at least ten days or half a month, but he had recovered some mobility in just one day.
"Come on." De Leon wanted to refuse, but when he saw Moreno's determined eyes, he finally nodded.
Although the Prussian troops who attacked the day before were all elite, their attacks were mainly exploratory and their numbers were relatively small. This time they will launch a large-scale attack under the cover of artillery fire.
The rumbling sound of artillery echoed in the air, and the trenches seemed like they would collapse at any time due to the vibration.
In a fortress riddled with holes from artillery fire, the French machine gunner calmly aimed and pulled the trigger. The bullets were like messengers of death, quickly taking the lives of Prussian soldiers one by one. The enemies that came like a tide were constantly knocked to the ground, and blood flowed down the trenches.
However, despite the powerful firepower of the machine gun, it was ultimately powerless. During the ammunition change, a Prussian soldier carrying a can rushed to the fort, and the flames rushed into the fort like a giant python. Suddenly, a shrill scream came from the fort, which was the instinctive cry of humans when facing extreme pain, like the howling of evil spirits in hell.
The flamethrower made its first appearance on the historical stage, and this horrific scene was played out again and again in the Corre Woods. The flames engulfed the French troops in the trenches, and the soldiers enveloped by the flames did not die immediately, but struggled and wailed in pain for a while until they turned into a ball of charcoal.
The French soldiers who survived the bombardment fought bravely, but they were still vulnerable to the Prussian army, which outnumbered them by a large margin. Outposts and bunkers were taken out one by one, and only the R-line bunker guarded by De Leon was left struggling.
De Leon pulled the bolt again and again, knocking down the Prussian soldiers who were rushing in. But the number of enemies was too large. He saw a Prussian flamethrower running forward. He raised his gun, aimed, and pulled the trigger, but he only heard a "click" sound, and he had no bullets.
De Leon watched the flames engulf the trenches in front of him. The French soldiers inside crawled out of the trenches in pain, but soon fell down, their bodies twitching as they were completely devoured by the flames. A feeling of powerlessness surged into De Leon's heart.
"Lieutenant Colonel, we are running out of ammunition! What should we do?" Stephen asked anxiously while firing beside De Leon. Soon, the gun in his hand stopped making any sound and he was out of bullets.
"Lieutenant Colonel, you guys retreat, I'll stay and stop them." Moreno said calmly.
"Kid, what are you talking about! How can you stop them by yourself? Give me some bullets!" Stephen roared, and then began to rummage through Moreno's pockets, hoping to find some bullets.
"Don't look for it, I've run out of bullets. Don't worry, I have this, I can definitely stop them." Moreno slapped Stephen's hand that was looking through his pockets away and took off his necklace from his neck. On the necklace hung an exquisite glass bottle, with a drop of red liquid with a hint of gold in it, which looked magnificent under the sunlight.
"Mr. Lieutenant Colonel, you should know what this is. You can retreat without worry, I'm here." Moreno said firmly, holding the glass bottle, as if he had made a great decision.
"How could I not know... De Leon stared at the glass bottle blankly, with mixed emotions in his heart. The blood in it was dragon blood, and the first step to embark on the road to becoming a god was to swallow dragon blood.
Dragon blood will greatly increase the concentration of dragon blood in hybrids, turning hybrids into dragons. For hybrids that have successfully transformed, their physical strength and words will be greatly enhanced, and they may even have multiple words. They can almost be said to be dragons in human skin.
But dragon blood can also corrode a person's sanity. If one cannot stay awake under the influence of dragon blood, he or she will turn into a monster that only knows how to kill.
Back then, Deleon, known as the pride of heaven, swallowed dragon blood and embarked on the road to becoming a god. His strength did increase a lot in a short period of time, but his mind was often unclear, and he even went crazy enough to massacre a village. Fortunately, he was suppressed by the Council of Elders.
From that time on, he knew that he was not capable of completing the path to becoming a god. In order to slow down the erosion of the dragon blood and not completely turn into a monster, he stopped using the Word Spirit and even stopped igniting his golden pupils.
Later, he met a woman who haunted him. In order to be with her, he left the Presbyterian Church and completely distanced himself from the half-blood circle.
The village he massacred was in Verdun. In order to make up for the sins he had committed, he served as a member of parliament in Verdun for decades, always wanting to do something for the survivors.
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