Chapter 17: Too Many Fear Knights, Unable to Hold On!

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“Holy crap, did someone just mention power-armored soldiers? Those damned things are back again?”

A player had just bayoneted a Black Hawk soldier charging straight at him when he suddenly heard Andre’s shout. Puzzled, he turned toward the depths of the smoke.

At that moment, another player ran over and shouted, “Boar Bro, the NPC just issued a warning! Grab your grenades and get ready for a bayonet charge!”

At the sound of that nickname, the first player’s face immediately darkened.

He regretted naming his ID “Blue-Haired White-Bellied Mountain Boar.” After seeing it, not a single person had thought of the cat-bug nickname he had intended. Every one of them genuinely took him for a mountain boar!

There was no time to dwell on it, however. He quickly gripped a grenade and prepared to throw it. During the chaotic melee in the previous trench, he and several other players had already figured out how to deal with these power-armored soldiers.

Put simply, these creatures were the equivalent of elite troops in a game. They had absurdly thick health bars, savage short-range firepower, and terrifying melee ability—a combination of sentinels and trench raiders.

Yet their weakness was the same as that of every other unit: a sustained barrage of grenades could blow them off their feet. Bayonet charges could still deliver the great equalizer as well. One thrust was all it took; whatever kind of monster stood on the other side, it would die all the same!

So long as they prepared in advance and gave these brutes no room to bring their strengths into play, power-armored soldiers were not actually that difficult to kill.

But just then, a player at the very front suddenly began flickering. At the same time, a string of frantic messages appeared in the chat.

Knowing Heaven Venerable: “Holy crap, that damned Dread Knight cut me down with one sword! Get a medic over here and pull me back up!”

“Everyone behind me, watch yourselves! I can see a huge force of power armor coming from the other side—at least ten of them!”

The moment the other players saw the message, they tensed up. Ten or more power-armored enemies charging in at once—this wave was going to be a serious test.

Then another player suddenly shouted excitedly in the chat.

Rice Noodle Cat: “Holy crap! Look what I got! The enemy dropped equipment! It’s a flamethrower trooper’s kit!”

In an instant, the chat was flooded with exclamations.

The players were baffled. What exactly was going on?

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They had not failed to get equipment drops from enemies they had killed before. But those drops had only ever been a few weapons carried by the enemy, and some items could not even be taken away.

For instance, one player had previously tried to strip the power armor from a slain power-armored soldier and use it himself, but the game simply seemed to offer no such option.

Andre could not figure out why, either. Perhaps they were just opening it the wrong way?

Regardless, this flamethrower trooper’s kit could be considered the first elite equipment drop in the game, so naturally it made the players green with envy.

Andre, who had secretly arranged the whole thing, pretended nothing had happened. He claimed he had no idea who had stuffed a flamethrower trooper’s kit into the enemy corpse, where it had somehow appeared for no reason at all.

Privately, however, his heart ached terribly. The damned thing was genuinely expensive!

Summoning or reviving a player cost him only one hundred influence points, but a single elite trooper’s kit required a thousand. It certainly lived up to the name of elite soldier!

After obtaining the flamethrower, Rice Noodle Cat received a flamethrower, three incendiary grenades, and a nearly useless stick intended for close combat.

Just then, the players fighting on the front line began shouting as well.

“Hurry! We need support! We can’t hold them!”

“There are too many enemies!”

At that moment, the players truly felt like crying.

A few power-armored soldiers, the archetypal elite troops, would have been one thing. But what kind of madness was it to have more than ten appear at once?

They threw over a wave of grenades. The explosions did seem to knock several of them down, but when the players turned around, Dread Knights were suddenly upon them from the flank, greatswords in hand!

Perhaps because they were wary of the Black Hawk soldiers still grappling with other Cambrian soldiers inside the smoke, the Dread Knights did not use the linked machine guns mounted on their wrists.

Even so, their greatswords, combined with their incredible speed, were more than enough to make them terrifying opponents.

Three players were cut down before they could even react. The medic who had rushed over to rescue them had only just raised one comrade with a small syringe when a Dread Knight struck both the medic and the revived player down with two blows.

These iron giants, capable of swinging a two-handed greatsword in one hand and moving with the speed of lightning, were truly invincible in close combat!

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“William, what are you looking for?”

A Dread Knight with a red feather stuck in his helmet and a golden cross emblazoned on his shoulder shouted toward his comrade behind him.

He could not understand it. The melee here was raging fiercely, so what on earth was this damned fellow rummaging around for on the ground?

“Sir, I’m looking for their syringes. I saw one of them get cut down by my sword with my own eyes, but then another fellow rushed over and brought him back to life with a single injection. That must be some kind of necromantic artifact!”

“If we take it back and hand it over to the scholars of the Osiris School, it will certainly earn us tremendous credit!”

Could that really be true?

He had been leading the charge just moments ago, too busy identifying friend from foe in the smoke to notice such details.

But if they truly possessed equipment of such remarkable quality, and could capture it intact, it might well be worth far more than wiping out this squad of savage Cambrian soldiers.

So he stopped paying attention to his comrade and prepared to raise his sword and resume cutting down the enemy.

At that moment, however, two grenades suddenly emerged from the smoke and came hurtling straight toward them.

From the very beginning, the Dread Knights in the area had not taken the grenades seriously. They merely rolled aside to evade them.

As long as they remained alert and were not caught by a grenade detonating at close range, they would not lose their combat effectiveness. At worst, they would suffer nothing more than a feeling of tightness in the chest.

Their sturdy power armor could block the vast majority of shrapnel. Although the components inside were highly delicate, the protective layer between the armor and its mechanisms would, in all likelihood, keep them from being shaken apart.

But then the two grenades suddenly erupted into enormous masses of flame, as though someone had detonated a tank of fuel. The surrounding area was instantly transformed into a sea of fire.

Two Dread Knights who failed to dodge in time were immediately drenched in flames. Before the others could react, a blazing dragon of fire surged out of the smoke and swept straight into their ranks.

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