When the instruction unit's regimental artillery company and the 105mm field artillery battalion upgraded their equipment, Morin had the guns returned but kept a pile of 77mm and 105mm shells.
The quartermaster department had clearly never seen this kind of trick. Morin stubbornly insisted that their orders only specified "recovering artillery pieces" and didn't mention shells.
The officer in charge of the equipment exchange was so angry he laughed. In his over ten years of military service, it was his first time encountering a "bandit" like Morin.
But the instruction unit was the darling of the entire army.
The army high command and the Crown Prince placed high hopes on them, frequently checking on their status, and the unit's actual performance lived up to those expectations.
Under these circumstances, the quartermaster department didn't dwell on it. They were just shells, after all... If Colonel Morin wanted to play with them, let him play.
After keeping the shells, Morin had the engineers extract the charges. Combining them with detonators and tripwires, they rigged a batch of makeshift trip-wire landmines to bolster their positional defense capabilities.
If not for the constraints of the battlefield environment, Morin would have even tried making pressure fuzes, but he couldn't produce them on such short notice.
After the 12th Guard Reserve Infantry Regiment was attached to his command, considering he had no extra anti-armor guns or combat engineers to give them, Morin allocated a large number of these makeshift mines to the regiment.
Initially, Major Hoffmann, commander of the 4th Battalion of the 12th Guard Reserve Infantry Regiment, didn't think about deploying mines in front of his position.
He had never used this new weapon and worried about friendly fire during counter-charges.
However, after Morin received intelligence about the "Vukodlak" that afternoon, out of caution, he ordered all frontline units to bury the makeshift mines ahead of their positions.
Although Major Hoffmann still found the talk of "monsters" absurd, it was an order from the Kampfgruppe commander. Being a relatively cautious man, he had his men follow the paper manual provided by the regimental combat engineers to bury a batch of trip-wire mines in front of the position before nightfall, marking the minefield with small red flags.
He didn't expect them to actually come in handy...
Under the night sky bleached white by flares, Major Hoffmann finally saw the monsters being blown away with his own eyes.
Several monsters charging at the front tripped the wires. The makeshift mines fashioned from 105mm shells detonated instantly. The massive shockwave lifted them off the ground, hurling them into the air along with surrounding dirt and gravel.
"It's working! The mines are working!"
A young soldier beside him shouted excitedly. This was followed by a series of muffled explosions, as thick smoke and fire erupted again in front of the position.
The next second, however, the spotter's voice caught in his throat.
In the gradually dissipating smoke, a monster blown in half—no, rather its upper torso—propped itself up on two thick forearms. It continued crawling forward in a scalp-numbing posture.
Its lower half was completely gone, leaving a trail of dark red blood from the stump. Yet it still crawled, and not slowly either.
Even more absurd were the monsters that only lost an arm or a leg.
After a brief stumble, they let out even more terrifying howls than before and actually accelerated their charge.
Hoffmann gripped his binoculars so tightly his knuckles turned white.
If someone could observe the wounds of these monsters up close, they would witness a sanity-draining scene: a mass of writhing granulations frantically grew from the severed surfaces. They intertwined to cover the exposed blood vessels and muscles, staunching the bleeding at a visible rate.
While the Saxon soldiers in the position couldn't see these details, the sheer fact that "a monster blown in half can still crawl" was enough to induce a breakdown.
"I take back what I said this afternoon. This is not what I wanted to see..."
The battalion adjutant joked habitually, despite his pale face.
Major Hoffmann had no time to respond. The light from the flares was fading, and the gray shadows ahead were rapidly closing in. Four hundred meters... three hundred and fifty meters...
The speed was unbelievable.
Given the monsters' running speed, four hundred meters took only a dozen seconds. Hoffmann judged that in those dozen seconds, the mines might blow up a dozen monsters, but many more would pounce on the position.
Realizing this, he drew the Mauser military pistol from his waist and fired a shot into the sky.
The gunshot was the order to open fire.
The position erupted instantly.
MG08 heavy machine guns, MG14 light machine guns, and rifles—every weapon capable of spitting bullets roared to life.
After Morin submitted the patent for "tracer rounds" domestically, this special ammunition, which aided in aiming, quickly caught the military's attention.
Before the Balkan offensive began, the Fifth Army Group started adding tracer rounds to the ammo belts of their MG08 and MG14 machine guns.
As the 4th Battalion soldiers unleashed their full firepower, streaks of orange-red fire poured from the position, drawing countless dazzling ribbons of light in the night sky. They pointed precisely at the sprinting gray silhouettes.
"Bang, bang, bang, bang, bang!"
"Da-da-da-da-da-da!"
The gunfire merged into a continuous roar.
Guided by the tracers, the shooters constantly adjusted their aim. But identifying moving targets at night was incredibly difficult, not to mention the monsters' bizarre movements. Running on all fours with an extremely low center of gravity, they changed direction suddenly, causing many shooters to miss their leads completely.
Just as the first flare burned out, more flares shot into the sky. The pale light once again bathed the front of the position.
In that instant of alternating light and shadow, everyone saw the leading gray shadow leap high into the air.
The monster's form unfurled completely in mid-air. Its torso, twice the size of an adult human's, was covered in coarse, grayish-brown fur. The ends of its limbs bore extended, beast-like claws.
Reaching the apex of its jump, the monster crashed down toward the barbed wire in front of the position, accompanied by the gasps of the Saxon soldiers.
"Boom!"
The massive impact tore the barbed wire to shreds. Wooden stakes and iron barbs were uprooted and sent flying in all directions.
The barbs scraped across its fur, leaving it unscathed. Clearly, contraptions designed for human soldiers were useless against it. This "Vukodlak" acted like an out-of-control steam bulldozer, brutally smashing a large hole in the defense line.
The monsters following closely behind mimicked its actions. Some used their bodies to smash open the barbed wire, tearing several breaches in the line. More gray shadows roared and surged in through these gaps.
"Stop them! Use grenades!"
Hoffmann fired several shots at the leading monster.
The 9mm pistol rounds struck its thick chest like mud sinking into the sea. The monster's body swayed, but it showed no signs of falling. Its scarlet pupils locked onto Hoffmann. Emitting a deafening roar, it opened its blood-red, fang-filled maw and lunged.
However, as the saying goes, the nail that sticks out gets hammered down. The one charging the fiercest naturally drew the most fire.
Two nearby MG14 light machine gunners shifted their fire almost simultaneously. Guided by the tracers, surrounding riflemen also aimed their sights at this most conspicuous target.
Full-power 7.92mm rifle rounds, traveling at extremely high muzzle velocities at close range, drilled into the monster's body one after another. Each hit brought up a mist of dark red blood.
Under the dense rain of bullets, the charging monster finally slowed down, ultimately collapsing at the edge of the trench.
But against over a hundred monsters swarming the position, this kill efficiency was too low. Though monsters continuously fell in front of the line, more gray figures bounded over the ruined barbed wire and crashed into the first trench.
The Saxon soldiers defending the trench instantly felt a strong, foul wind wash over their faces.
In that moment, Hoffmann finally saw the true face of the "Vukodlak."
Hidden beneath the cloak was a body lying somewhere between a human and a wolf-dog. Gray, pointed ears sat atop a massive head, its snout elongated. The two rows of fangs in its mouth were as sharp as newly issued field daggers.
Its arms were nearly twice as long as a normal human's. The nails on its five fingers were long and black, gleaming with a cold metallic light under the flares.
But the most hair-raising feature was its scarlet eyes. They lacked pupils, consisting only of a murky blood-red that radiated a pure, mindless, bloodthirsty instinct.
A moment of life and death...
The guards around Hoffmann roared, raising their submachine guns and firing desperately to protect him.
The dense barrage sprayed by the MP14 submachine guns at point-blank range finally had an effect. The "Vukodlak" instinctively raised an arm to protect its head. But its other long-reaching arm swept out with the momentum of its charge.
Those five steel-like claws sliced right open the abdomen of the foremost guard.
Blood and innards spilled out instantly. The guard looked down at his stomach, opened his mouth, and crumpled to the ground, failing to utter even a single scream.
"Major, don't just stand there, fall back!"
Seeing this, the battalion adjutant grabbed Hoffmann by the arm and dragged him back. With his free hand, he raised the flare gun and pulled the trigger toward the sky. A white flare rose into the night, trailing flames.
Simultaneously, the reacting soldiers pulled the pins on their grenades and hurled them at the monsters swarming the position.
"Boom! Boom!"
Continuous explosions erupted along the narrow trench. Fire and shockwaves swallowed everything.
But the power of the stick grenades was much weaker than the makeshift landmines made from 105mm shells. As the smoke cleared, several monsters staggered back to their feet from the epicenter of the explosions.
They were covered in blood, their fur blown off in large patches, exposing dark red muscle tissue underneath.
Next, these injured monsters tilted their heads back and unleashed even more piercing howls. The pain from the explosions fully triggered their vicious nature.
They then engaged the Saxon soldiers in bloody close-quarters combat within the trenches.
In terms of combat experience, the Guard Reserve infantry lacked the flexibility of the instruction unit. Their rigid discipline meant that without orders to retreat, not a single man took a step back. They all rooted themselves in the trenches, fighting desperately against the monsters.
A Saxon soldier with an empty magazine had just pushed a new stripper clip into his Gew98 rifle when a massive gray shadow lunged from his side. He instinctively thrust his bayonet forward, but a claw swiped down, shattering his steel helmet and the head beneath it.
Another soldier, having no time to reload, swung his entrenching tool at a monster's leg. The blade struck its calf, but the wooden handle snapped in two with a crack. The enraged "Vukodlak" lunged forward, biting through his neck and sucking the spurting blood.
The outermost trench didn't hold for long. The officers in each sector were forced to direct their soldiers to fall back to the second line of trenches.
Meanwhile, the concealed MG08 heavy machine gun positions, deployed between the first and second lines, finally played their due role.
Multiple heavy machine guns opened fire from both flanks simultaneously. The dense rain of bullets swept through the monster pack, whose upper bodies protruded over the trench. Several monsters, having half their heads blown off by machine gun fire, finally stopped struggling, crashing to the bottom of the trench and moving no more.
Seeing this, the Saxon soldiers immediately understood that the head was the true weak point of these monsters.
But more injured "Vukodlak," under the control of their faint willpower, ducked into the corners and dugouts of the first trench. Then, they began searching for the corpses of fallen Saxon soldiers and their own kind.
Soon, the sounds of "Vukodlak" tearing flesh became clearly audible during brief lulls in the gunfire.
Even more horrifyingly, as they consumed large amounts of protein and blood, the bullet and shrapnel wounds on these monsters began to heal at a visible rate. Dark red granulations squeezed out of the wounds, intertwining, rapidly clotting, and scabbing.
They were using this method to replenish energy and repair themselves.
More than half of the first trench had fallen. Gunfire, screams, and monster howls mixed together, forming a mind-numbing nightmare.
In the third trench behind the defense line, the Austro-Hungarian soldiers began experiencing widespread unrest after hearing the gunfire and inhuman howls from the front. Many stood up, their eyes darting left and right frantically, their legs involuntarily shuffling backward.
"'Vukodlak' is here... The 'Vukodlak' is going to eat us..."
Someone started muttering. More and more people joined in, their voices shifting from whispers to wails. Panic spread like a plague among these routed soldiers.
A few quick-reacting Austro-Hungarian soldiers had already dropped their rifles and turned to run back—
"Crack!" A crisp gunshot rang out.
The leading Austro-Hungarian soldier shuddered and pitched forward onto the ground.
The men behind him instantly froze. Turning around, they saw the Saxon soldiers tasked with guarding them pointing their muzzles in their direction. The leading Saxon NCO was expressionless, the barrel of his submachine gun still smoking.
There were no warnings, no shouts. Because they weren't needed.
The expressions of the Austro-Hungarian officers became very colorful.
Beads of sweat dripped down Lieutenant Colonel Strauss's forehead. He knew perfectly well the Saxons weren't bluffing—that shot just now was the best proof.
Amidst this eerie standoff, a young 4th Battalion officer climbed out of the forward communication trench. This second lieutenant's face was covered in mud. His uniform was stained with blood belonging to who knows whom, and his chest heaved violently.
He rushed to Lieutenant Colonel Strauss in a few strides. Ignoring rank disparities, he pointed forward.
"Your men must go up and support us right now! The first trench line is about to fall!"
Lieutenant Colonel Strauss opened his mouth, wanting to say something but failing.
"What the f*ck are you hesitating for?!" the Saxon second lieutenant swore directly, roaring in Strauss's face:
"A soldier must have backbone!"
"This is your f*cking country! Your home! Right now, we Saxons are bleeding and dying at the front for you, and you guys want to hide in the back and run away?!"
"What kind of soldier are you? You're a coward! Every man under you is a coward!"
These words smashed into Lieutenant Colonel Strauss's face word for word. The surrounding Austro-Hungarian officers also lowered their heads; not a single one dared to retort. Because while the words were incredibly harsh, every single one of them was true.
Strauss's lips trembled for a long time. He was Viennese; his ancestors had fought alongside the Habsburgs to conquer the land. Even if he had lost the battle and fled, even if his unit had scattered into a disorganized mess—the word "coward" still stabbed his pride like a knife.
"Enough." Lieutenant Colonel Strauss gritted his teeth and turned to face the still-shivering Austro-Hungarian soldiers.
"All officers, listen to my orders!" His voice wasn't loud, but his usual authority quickly quieted the surroundings.
"That Saxon officer was right... This is our own land, yet we let others die for us." As he spoke, Strauss bent down and picked up a discarded rifle.
"I don't care how you fled back here, nor do I care how scared you are now... But from this moment on—even if we can't win at the front, pick up your guns and block them! Dying at the front is better than being shot in the back by our own people!"
With that, he turned to the Austro-Hungarian officers behind him. Those officers exchanged glances for a few seconds, then began conveying Strauss's words, along with the Saxon second lieutenant's original words, verbatim in Hungarian, Czech, and several other languages.
Silence reigned for a few seconds. Then, a dozen more Austro-Hungarian soldiers dropped their weapons and turned to flee.
"Da-da-da-da-da!" A merciless burst of gunfire rang out. The fastest runners crashed to the ground.
The one firing this time wasn't a Saxon, but an Austro-Hungarian captain. He handed the smoking submachine gun back to the Saxon soldier beside him, turned to face his terrified comrades, and roared a sentence in Hungarian.
The Saxon officers didn't understand Hungarian, but judging by the expressions on the Austro-Hungarian soldiers' faces, the meaning was probably something like: "Run again and I'll shoot you too."
Caught between the howling monsters in front and the dark gun muzzles behind, these cornered Austro-Hungarian soldiers were finally driven by their officers to charge toward the position with feral cries.
Though they ran crookedly, in impossibly chaotic formations, with appallingly bad aim—at the very least, they provided gunfire and numbers. The commotion of over a thousand men firing simultaneously could, no matter what, boost morale to some extent.
More importantly, these surging Austro-Hungarian soldiers gave the struggling Saxon soldiers in the position a chance to breathe. Many Saxon light machine gun squads that had been backed into a corner by the monsters used this moment of distraction to gain distance and re-enter their firing positions.
The riflemen wielding Gew98s also began consciously aiming for the monsters' heads.
While their accuracy wasn't high, whenever a few bullets accurately struck a monster's skull, those seemingly invincible gray behemoths would fall heavily like puppets with their strings cut.
This discovery slightly revived the morale in the position.
"Shoot the head!"
"Aim for the head! Aim for the head! Shooting the body is useless!"
The hoarse shouts of the NCOs echoed back and forth through the trenches.
Meanwhile, in a few corners and dugouts of the first trench, the monsters that had hidden away to consume corpses for self-repair were also discovered by the charging Austro-Hungarian soldiers.
A group of Austro-Hungarian soldiers surrounded the entrance to a dugout. Upon seeing a monster squatting inside gnawing on a corpse, they threw all their hand grenades in at once.
Four or five muffled explosions sounded inside the dugout, spewing thick smoke and minced flesh from the entrance. When the smoke cleared a bit, a bold Austro-Hungarian veteran peeked inside, then quickly pulled his head back.
"It's dead! Its head got blown off!"
This was the first "Vukodlak" killed by Austro-Hungarian soldiers in the entire battle. Though the method was incredibly clumsy, it worked.