Don't Mess with That Dragon-Chapter 479 - 033: Ravaged by Firepower (Second Update)
The Neutral City built by the Beastmen was utterly vulnerable.
It wasn’t just Torres who thought so; other noble generals and their soldiers believed it too.
With a contact battle that collapsed at the slightest touch, everyone from generals to soldiers was filled with complete confidence.
"Advance the whole army!"
According to the map’s route, once they crossed the mountains ahead and proceeded about five more miles, they would reach the location of the Neutral City.
Torres looked up at the sky, knowing there were still half a day until nightfall.
Enough to make a decisive push and capture the opponent’s city!
The grand army marched forward majestically, advancing along an unknown plain, with steep mountains on both sides, forming a massive gourd-shaped entrance on the ground.
This gourd-shaped valley plain, two to three thousand meters wide, was more than enough for the army to pass through.
Passing through this giant gourd valley plain formed by the surrounding mountains, they would cross a narrow gorge and several mountains to reach another plain.
After that, an endless grassland stretched straight to the Neutral City.
The topography was somewhat strange, giving an indescribable feeling.
However, without stories like Zhuge Liang’s fire attack on the Vine Armored Troops or the advent of modern weapons, such terrain hardly played a significant role.
Even though this world wasn’t lacking in military strength, they hadn’t developed many battle strategies in warfare.
At least according to the understanding of this world’s commanders, ambushing in such a gourd-shaped terrain wouldn’t allow the enemy to form a suitable formation in the face of a well-prepared army, thus placing them at a disadvantage.
As a result, the allied forces didn’t even reconnoiter the area and directly entered the gourd valley plain, intending to pass through the mountains.
In fact, they didn’t expect that there would be an ambush ahead.
The previous contact battle had left the soldiers fully satisfied, collapsing at the slightest touch, leading everyone from noble officers to regular soldiers to believe that the result of this war was inevitable.
Before them awaited not war but a wealthy city with open gates.
Some greedy nobles even regretted, feeling that they should have directly invaded without alliance, knowing Neutral City’s forces were so trivial.
Conquering the Beastman’s city alone would yield greater benefits than combining forces.
A deep sense of regret poured inside them.
Sharing the spoils with thirteen factions could never surpass the benefit of claiming it all for oneself.
The noble generals were brimming with confidence, and the soldiers imagined the great benefits this campaign might bring as they carelessly entered the Gourd Plain.
Then,
they faced the devastating artillery fire firsthand.
Boom! Boom! Boom...
In the earth-shattering explosions, two hundred cannons hidden in the mountains spewed terrifying flames, and shells fell like meteors from the sky, striking the army with lightning speed.
Rumble!!!
Before they could react, a series of explosions began.
Flames shot skyward, soldiers hit by shells were blown apart, charred into cinders. The blast wave swept through, flinging soldiers within meters into the air.
The dense shrapnel from the explosions scattered like a torrential storm. Soldiers fell like wheat being cut, with blood splattering everywhere.
Two hundred shells descended upon the densely packed army in the Gourd Valley Plain within a short time, unleashing waves of Flame Storms, engulfing the landscape in warfare fumes mixed with shredded flesh.
In an instant, the entire army of fifty thousand was struck senseless.
Thunderous explosions roared by their ears; even if they weren’t killed by the bombardment, their ears buzzed, heads spun, and vision blurred, as if filled with floating specks, while their insides churned from the intense shelling.
The first wave of artillery fire had already claimed thousands, with many more severely wounded and incapacitated.
The dense army faced the barrage of two hundred Alchemy Cannons, losing nearly a fifth of its troops. 𝐟𝕣𝕖𝐞𝐰𝕖𝚋𝐧𝗼𝚟𝐞𝕝.𝗰𝐨𝐦
This was an incredibly terrifying number,
but in such situations, it was typical.
A tightly packed army of fifty thousand, caught off guard in the Gourd Plain, bore the full brunt of the artillery attack.
But this was not the end.
Ten seconds later, the cannons in the mountains were reloaded.
Boom! Boom! Boom...
Another round of artillery fire descended like a meteor shower, bringing a Purgatory-like catastrophe to the world.
Accompanied by deafening explosions, the Flame Storms swept once more, shaking the earth, cracking the soil, and flinging it skyward, seemingly dragging the entire world into Purgatory.
This time, while the results were not as brilliant as before, the damage was still extensive.
Then, the third attack unfolded again.
Until the fourth round, the fifth...
A total of ten rounds of bombardment, over two thousand high-explosive shells, rained down on the vast Gourd Valley Plain, leaving it scorched, with craters sunken into the charred landscape, and the once verdant surface covered in gray dust.
Smoke filled the air, obscuring vision.
The ground was littered with bodies, each covered in dust from the shell explosions, appearing like clay figures.
Less than a fifth of the soldiers remained standing.
The rest were either killed directly by the blasts or fainted from the deafening explosions, lying on the ground.
Scattered soldiers stood bewildered on the devastated land, covered in dust, weakly gripping their weapons, staring blankly around them, with thoughts rising in their minds:
Who am I,
Where did I come from,
Where am I going?
At the center of the battlefield, Torres pushed aside several bloodied and mangled corpses from his body, stumbling as he stood, looking around with shaky legs.
The roaring in his ears still echoed, leaving his mind completely blank.
The whole world seemed dimmed, and the buzzing tinnitus almost shattered his scarce consciousness.
"Where is this... Did we suffer a magic attack... was it a Forbidden Curse?"
Torres spoke tremulously.
All around him lay bodies, and no one else stood upright.
Several groaned painfully on the ground; bodies scattered everywhere didn’t reveal whether anyone fainted from the thunderous roar.
As the command center of the middle army, during the final rounds of free-fire attacks, it suffered concentrated bombardment, leaving no one unscathed from the intensive shelling.
