Chapter 611: Protected
Danny fired until the clip ran dry. Two more great shields went down.
He didn’t waste bullets on the Judgement Warriors. Their thin armor looked martial, but a flintlock round went through it without ceremony. Iron Axe had told them the calculus clearly: God’s Punishment Warriors were worth hunting—one could fight ten ordinary men, and every one lost was a loss the church couldn’t easily replace. The Judgement Army was chaff.
What he disliked about the machine gunners was simple arithmetic. Two live-fire exercises, one hour each, chests of ammunition poured into the air—and perhaps a hundred rounds actually found flesh. It made Iron Axe’s expression go flat with pain, and Danny privately agreed. An obscene waste.
He understood the Mark I’s value against swarms, the way it could arrest a charge before it reached the wire. But for kills, sharpshooters were more reliable.
One bullet. One enemy.
That was the standard he trained toward.
He pulled the empty clip and was reloading—smoothly, without looking—when he heard breathing behind him. He turned.
Malt.
“Damn it.” Danny’s voice came out low and tight. “I told you to stay put. That’s a direct violation of orders.”
“Lord Brian said a soldier never leaves his position except in exceptional cases,” Malt said, wiping sweat from his forehead, “so you’ve violated a military order too.” He smiled the way he always smiled, like the logic delighted him. “As your protector, I have to stay at your side.”
Danny held back the impulse with some effort. He grabbed a fistful of rounds from his pocket and slapped them down in front of Malt. “Fill the clip. Stay down unless it’s an emergency.”
“Yes, Captain!” Malt saluted, beaming.
After five more kills, Danny noticed movement in the enemy formation—a shift in its quality, the way a flock changes shape before it turns. The church commander had looked at the casualty numbers and adjusted. The God’s Punishment Warriors dropped their great shields and ran.
They were fast. Faster than horses. The ground between the church line and the trench was shrinking at a rate that made Danny’s jaw tighten.
The revolving rifles and the machine guns opened up together.
What happened next was not a sound but a pressure—as though a vast invisible hand had closed over the charging mass and squeezed. Blood mist bloomed in the yellow dust. Anyone the hand touched came apart: arms, chests, entire silhouettes reduced to sprawling shapes with the abruptness of extinguished candles. The advance slowed. Then it buckled.
One warrior kept running after a bullet took his arm. Danny tracked him over the sights. Then a ragged seam of dust—a machine-gun burst, a dozen rounds in a diagonal sash—crossed through the man’s chest. Blue blood fanned from his back. His ribs gave inward. He ran three more steps on pure mechanical inertia before the ground claimed him.
Too long in the same position, Danny thought, already beginning to shift—
“Captain, watch out!”
He turned.
A God’s Punishment Warrior had emerged from the curtain of dust, spear arm already cocked. Danny barely registered the throw before Malt hit him from the side, full weight, both of them going down hard into the trench floor.
Something struck the back of his skull. Then dirt fell.
The gunfire became distant, then muffled, then replaced entirely by a ringing that filled his head like water filling a jar. He lay still for a time he couldn’t measure.
When he came back, a teammate was crouched over him.
“You all right?”
He could only half-hear it. He managed a wave. Fine. I’m fine.
“Two men down—give me a hand.”
More hands came. Danny and Malt were dragged clear of the collapsed wall of earth. Danny looked at the trench edge and understood what had happened: the spear hadn’t cleared them. It had caught the lip of the trench, punched through the thin soil, and lodged in the wall. The dirt that buried them was the soil it displaced.
Then he looked at Malt.
The wound was the size of a bowl. Malt’s arm hung by a few cords of skin, the white of bone catching the light.
The teammates were already moving back to their positions—no one had the luxury of stopping. One man stayed, drew a dagger without ceremony, and cut the arm free. He sprinkled wound-herbs from his pocket, wrapped the stump in gauze. That was all that could be done until Miss Nana arrived; every soldier in the First Army knew the calculus: keep a man alive until battle’s end and she would make him whole.
Malt surfaced from unconsciousness with a small sound.
“Lie still,” the soldier said. “You’re not going to die.”
“Where—” Malt’s mouth worked. “Where’s Captain Danny?”
“Here.” Danny made himself move, made his weak limbs carry him to Malt’s side. “Why did you do that.”
It wasn’t quite a question.
“Because I’m your protector.” Malt’s lips moved slowly. “Of course I won’t leave you behind.” He looked up. “How did I do? I fulfilled my duty, didn’t I?”
Guilt rose in Danny’s chest—wordless, the kind that had no proper object. “Yes. You did very well.”
“Really?” Malt smiled at the difficulty of it. “This’ll be my introduction to Miss Nana.”
“That’s right.” The soldier glanced at Danny. “Can you take it from here? I have to get back.”
“Yes. Thank you.”
After the man left, Danny picked up his rifle from the dirt, dusted it, and stood.
I can still fight.
The enemy will pay for this wound.
But there was no enemy left to pay. Through the settling dust, the church army was running—backs retreating, formation gone loose and panicked, only their shapes visible through the haze.
From the trenches, the cheering started.
They had won.
Chapter 611: Protected
Translator: TransN Editor: TransN
Danny was constantly aiming, shooting, until the clip emptied. Another two big shields fell down. Danny would not waste his bullets on the Judgement Warriors. With the thin armor, the Judgement Warriors looked martial, but yet they could not even withstand the flintlock. Lord Iron Axe once said that the God’s Punishment Army was a dreadful opponent because one of its soldiers could fight against 10, but at the same time, they were scarce and troublesome to train, so they were the targets worth hunting.
The reason he disliked the machine gunners was that he felt those arrogant fellows, although they used exactly the same bullets as he did, shot with an astonishingly low efficiency.
During the only two times of live practice, a machine gun squad fired several chests of bullets within one hour, which even made Lord Iron Axe’s heart ache. But while checking the bullet holes, only around 100 bullets actually hit the targets. Danny felt it was totally a waste of resources.
Of course, he also understood the significance of the Mark I machine gun. At least while faced with swarming enemies, it could stop their attacking momentum. But in terms of hunting results, sharpshooters were more reliable.
One bullet for one enemy.
This was his aim for strict training.
Danny pulled out the clip, and skillfully reloaded it. When he was about to stand up and start shooting, he heard someone gasping. Looking over his shoulder, he saw Malt.
“Damn it! Didn’t I tell you to stay where you were?” He shouted at Malt, “You violated a military order!”
“Lord Brian said that a soldier can never leave his position lest for exceptional cases, so you’ve violated a military order,” saying this, Malt wiped the sweat on his forehead. “As your protector, I must stay by your side!”
“…” Holding back the impulse to beat Malt, Danny grabbed a handful of bullets from his pocket and threw them in front of Malt. “Fill the clip. Stay down unless there’s an emergency!”
“Yes, Captain!” the short guy saluted and said smilingly.
After Danny killed five enemies, there appeared to be some changes in the enemy’s troop.
The church commander probably believed that they would not make it to the trench if they kept on charging that way and so they made a change. The God’s Punishment Army abandoned their big shields and charged toward the trenches. They moved at such a fast speed that even horses would not outrun them. They were getting closer and closer!
The sound of revolving rifles and machine guns rang out at the same time.
Suddenly, some blood fog appeared in front of Danny. The dust rising from the ground was denser than the time when the cannons bombarded. It looked as if there was an invisible giant hand severely beat the group of charging warriors. Facing this unstoppable force, the enemy’s charging speed was greatly slowed down. Anyone touched by this invisible force was torn into pieces with blood splashing everywhere.
A soldier of the God’s Punishment Army kept running forward even after one of his arms was shot by a bullet. When Danny aimed his gun at him, a ‘sand snake’ composed of dozens of lines of dust sloppily passed through the soldier’s body, which was the unique trajectory of a machine gun. The soldier’s chest suddenly waved like a pool of water, blue blood splashed out
of his back, and his ribs were even broken by the scorching airflow of the passing bullets.
The soldier, though he lost his balance and was wrinkled up like a piece of rag, still managed to run for another three to four steps before falling to the ground due to the inertia. Danny noticed that his back had gone rotten.
“Watch out, Captain!” Malt shouted suddenly.
Danny was shocked. When he turned his head, he saw another soldier from the God’s Punishment Army, appearing from the boundless dust and holding a spear upright.
Then the soldier bent over and threw the spear at Danny.
He barely saw how the soldier threw the spear.
“Too careless. I’ve been so focused on observing the enemies that I attracted their attention. A hunter shouldn’t expose himself under the prey’s eyesight for too long,” Danny thought.
Before he could react, Malt heavily hit him on the body. Both of them fell on the trench ground. At the same time, a loud sound came above their heads.
Danny felt a pain came from the back of his head, and his body was completely covered by dirt.
Danny felt the sound of gunfires suddenly faded away, and an unbearable buzzing kept echoing in his ears.
After a long time, Danny recovered his senses. Touching the back of his head, he felt something sticky. “I must have hit on something hard when I fell on the ground. Since I could remain sober, it must be nothing serious.”
With his blurry eyesight, he saw a teammate coming to him.
“Are you alright?”
Danny could only vaguely hear it. He managed to wave his hand, indicating he was fine.
“Give me a hand. Two people are wounded,” the teammate shouted.
Soon, Danny and Malt were surrounded by more teammates and were dragged out of the collapsed pile of dirt.
At that moment, Danny noticed that the short spear had torn apart the edge of the trench, creating a crescent-shaped gap. It did not fly away over his head but instead it hit the trench edge, penetrated the thin soil, and struck into the trench wall. The dirt that fell on their bodies was from the spot where the spear’s hit.
When he looked at Malt, his heart suddenly clenched.
He saw there was a bleeding wound as big as a bowl on Malt’s shoulder, and his arm almost fell off, only a few strands of skin connected the shoulder, his white bones exposed.
“The spear wasn’t thrown in vain. It hit Malt.”
The teammates went back to the battle, leaving one soldier to take care of Malt. All the soldiers in the First Army understood that as long as a wounded soldier could survive till the end of the battle, Miss Nana would make him fully recover. So hemostasis and dressing was a compulsory course in the First Army. The soldier left pulled out a dagger, decisively cut Malt’s arm off and then sprinkled the herbs in his pocket on Malt’s wound before he wrapped the wound with gauze.
After suffering this treatment, Malt awoke from his coma, murmuring a faint groan.
“Lie still. You’re not going to die.” The soldier consoled him.
“Where is Cap-Captain Danny?”
“I’m here.” Danny clenched his teeth, upheld his weak limbs, and climbed to Malt’s side. “Why would you do that for me…”
“Because I’m your protector. Of, of course, I won’t leave you behind.” Malt’s mouth slowly opened and shut. “How did I do? I fulfilled my duty, didn’t I?”
Danny suddenly felt an unspeakable guilt surging from the bottom of his heart. “Sure… you did very well.”
“Really?” Malt smiled with a difficulty. “This will pave my way to meet Miss Nana.”
“That’s right. Both of you can meet her.” The soldier looked at Danny. “You can take care of him, right? I need to go back to my position.”
“Yes, I can… Thank you,” Danny said, nodding.
After the soldier left, Danny slowly picked up his gun from the ground, dusted off the dirt, and managed to stand up.
“I can still fight!”
“The enemy must pay for this wound with blood!” Danny thought.
However, the approaching army of the church was no more. In the pervading dust, the enemies were retreating in panic, and only their backs could be vaguely seen.
Cheers burst out from the trenches.
They had won!