Meanwhile, at the "Morin Kampfgruppe" command post.
Morin, who had been on standby in the command truck watching the system map, saw a unit card refresh outside the 4th Battalion's position almost at the same time fighting broke out there.
[Kingdom of Greater Serbia - Royal Army 0th Special Pioneer Regiment - 2nd Battalion, 1st Company]
Although the naming convention was rather standard, the icon for this unit card was completely different from regular infantry, bearing a special symbol he hadn't seen before.
Hmm, it had a sort of "Monster Infantry" vibe from certain video games.
And the location where this unit card appeared was exactly on the perimeter of the 4th Battalion's northward monitoring position.
That was the only position along the entire defense line not garrisoned by the instruction unit, and he soon saw the white flare rising above it.
Morin's heart rate immediately accelerated.
"Kleist!"
He turned his head to his regimental adjutant and said rapidly:
"There's a situation at the northern monitoring position... They've already fired a white flare. The instruction unit isn't there... I'm going to take the 1st Company of the 1st Battalion and the cavalry regiment reserve to support them. The regimental headquarters is in your hands."
Kleist accepted command and nodded.
Manstein grabbed an ammunition allocation chart from the table and handed it to Morin: "Commander, 1st Battalion, 1st Company has completed ammunition resupply and is ready to move out at any time."
Morin didn't say much. He grabbed the double-barreled shotgun Cecilia had given him and an ammo pouch, jumped out of the command vehicle, and nimbly climbed into the passenger seat of a waiting 1st Company truck nearby.
The infantrymen of the reserve force were already boarded and waiting at the assembly point, and the riders of the Guard Reserve Cavalry Regiment were already mounted.
"Move out! Head towards the direction of the 4th Battalion's flare!"
The driver nodded, smoothly shifting gears and working the clutch. The radiant crystal truck roared out of its spot.
However, less than three minutes after the reserve force left the regimental headquarters, dense gunfire erupted almost simultaneously from the southeast and southwest.
At night, this kind of continuous, dense gunfire can often travel very far.
Sitting in the passenger seat, Morin immediately opened the system map upon seeing this.
Sure enough, several other red unit cards had refreshed in front of the Kampfgruppe's other positions—also bearing the designations of other companies from the 2nd Battalion, 0th Special Pioneer Regiment.
"They came prepared," Morin couldn't help but mutter softly.
These special enemies weren't charging blindly; there was a division of labor.
One company attacked the 4th Battalion, while the other two companies attacked his Kampfgruppe's defense lines at other locations.
This also indicated one thing: the opponent had either established contact with the two Serbian Second Army divisions he had blocked, or they had already conducted a round of reconnaissance from a distance during the day.
And striking simultaneously from three directions clearly showed they intended to disperse his forces.
What made Morin even more vigilant was this: if the opponent only sent these three companies from this battalion to conduct raids, and there was no infantry following up, that would be one thing. But what if these "Vukodlak" were merely the vanguard clearing the path, with Serbian infantry following behind to fill the lines?
Morin immediately reached into his leather satchel and pulled out the portable magitech communication equipment main unit, which looked like a large, flattened tin can.
"All battalions, attention. This is 'Mother Ship'! The monsters appearing in front of the positions in all directions are Serbian special combat units! I repeat, they are organized special combat units! Be vigilant for potentially following enemy infantry and prepare accordingly."
After repeating the message twice, he put the main unit away. As for whether the three battalion commanders heard it... that was up to fate.
At this moment, Morin felt he had never so urgently needed a batch of elite soldiers possessing "mana affinity."
"Looks like it'll be necessary to go push for that after we get back from this trip."
While this thought flashed through Morin's mind, flares continuously rose and fell in the night sky in the direction the convoy was heading, interspersed with the muffled sounds of explosions and machine gun fire.
To be honest, Morin was slightly nervous at this moment.
He found himself facing a situation where he couldn't personally control the entire battlefield for the first time.
He couldn't split into three "Superman Morins" and appear in three directions simultaneously. And the chaotic night fighting made it very difficult for the 105mm howitzer battalion to provide fire support; at this close-quarters strangulation distance, dropping shells would make it impossible to tell who was being blown up.
But this nervousness only lasted a few seconds.
Morin took a deep breath, suppressing the anxiety.
He had single-handedly trained the instruction unit according to the standards of the "Strongest Infantry on the Blue Planet."
From Liège to Amiens, from Paris to Vienna...
The combat intensity these soldiers had experienced and the absurd scenes they had witnessed couldn't be matched by any other unit on the entire Europa continent.
They didn't need him to hold their hands through a battle.
It was time he trusted them.
Having clarified his thoughts, Morin conversely relaxed.
He suppressed the urge in his mind to turn back, silently loaded two bear slugs into the chambers of his double-barreled shotgun, and rode the truck straight toward the northern position.
The 4th Battalion deployed there was the weakest link in the entire defense line.
Although the Guard Reserve Infantry had adopted the new training syllabus, they lacked the foundation of the instruction unit, and had also taken in a large bunch of unreliable Austro-Hungarian routed soldiers... So Hoffmann's side was the most prone to problems.
Meanwhile, at the position of the instruction unit's 1st Battalion.
Battalion Commander Wolf and his men discovered the situation regarding the attacking "Vukodlak" was actually quite similar to Major Hoffmann's side. After receiving Morin's order at dusk requiring all positions to lay makeshift landmines on the perimeter, Wolf didn't ask a single unnecessary question, directly ordering his men to lay the minefield.
Similarly, the number of night sentries was doubled.
So when the night sentries noticed movement on the perimeter and immediately sent up a flare, the 1st Battalion's reaction speed was even half a beat faster than the 4th Battalion's.
Mines detonated successively in front of the position. Orange-red fireballs burst open one after another in the dark night, flipping over several high-speed charging gray figures.
The instruction unit soldiers in the position indeed experienced a moment of "commotion."
But their "commotion" was completely different from that of the 4th Battalion and the Austro-Hungarian routed soldiers.
"Well I'll be, there really are monsters?"
"Last time it was a sea of skeletons, what is it this time?"
"I told you the Colonel was a prophet, whatever he says comes true..."
"Are you sure you don't mean he's a 'jinx'?"
As the soldiers conversed quietly, the voices of NCOs rose and fell across the position.
They weren't formulaic comforts, but genuine mutual encouragement—even absurdly carrying a hint of eagerness.
As the "founding core" of the instruction unit, almost every soldier in the 1st Battalion had experienced all the campaigns on the Western Front.
When facing the undead calamity in the city of Paris—the skeleton soldiers swarming the hills and plains, that multi-story flesh construct—how did they fight them back then? Didn't they just chew them up bullet by bullet?
Compared to those things, this bunch of monsters from the Balkan Peninsula could only be considered a "small scene"~
"Look alive, everyone! Don't lose face!"
1st Battalion Commander Wolf's voice spread through the trench broadcasting system.
"Our 1st Battalion rolled out of the mountains of corpses and seas of blood in Paris!"
As soon as these words were spoken, many veterans even grinned, then steadied their rifles or light machine guns even more firmly.
...Three hundred and fifty meters.
As the light of the flares spread, those gray figures running madly on all fours in front of the position were all exposed to the white light.
"Open fire!"
The volley fire of the instruction unit's 1st Battalion had one most distinct difference from other units.
Their MG14 light machine gun deployment density was twice that of a standard infantry battalion.
Because every platoon of theirs was equipped with four light machine guns—meaning one per squad—truly achieving combat centered around light machine guns at the squad level.
Adding those marksmen equipped with M1915 semi-automatic rifles, the firepower projection of the entire battalion's position within a 300-meter range could only be described as terrifying.
Tracer rounds, trailing long orange-red tails, poured out simultaneously from different positions in the trench, weaving an airtight barrage net in front of the position.
More crucially, those instruction unit marksmen with excellent night vision, after the first volley, quickly figured out the attack pattern through the trajectories of the tracers and the monsters' reactions after being hit—shooting the body was useless; they had to shoot the head.
And this intelligence was rapidly spread throughout the entire position by the NCOs.
So shortly after the defensive battle began, almost all the riflemen and light/heavy machine gunners of the instruction unit concentrated their firepower on the head regions of these monsters.
Although the probability of hitting a head at night was still not high, it couldn't withstand the massive firepower density.
Under the suppressive fire of numerous light and heavy machine guns, the barrage coverage gave these charging monsters simply no room to dodge.
Several "Vukodlak" charging at the front, after being hit in the skull by multiple bullets consecutively, crashed down heavily with their massive bodies, sliding several meters before coming to a stop.
"Once the head is smashed, they stop moving! Keep firing!"
A squad leader shouted to the riflemen beside him.
Just like that, over a third of the "Vukodlak" were gunned down in the open ground outside the position. Although the remaining monsters also rushed into the first trench, what awaited them was not the trembling defenders they expected.
The trench was completely empty.
There wasn't a single person at any position in the first trench.
These monsters paused in confusion for a moment—no prey?
In reality, the soldiers and officers of the instruction unit were simply too experienced.
Upon seeing the size, strength, and movement speed of the "Vukodlak" far exceeding ordinary humans, all the junior officers made the same judgment almost simultaneously: they could not engage in close-quarters combat with these things in the first trench.
Without needing an order from the Battalion Commander, the platoon leaders and NCOs of each platoon had already organized the soldiers to provide alternating cover and withdraw from the first trench, falling back to the second defense line to maintain firepower output, in accordance with the "elastic defense" subject in the instruction unit's daily training.
And in the first trench, another "surprise" was left for these monsters.
The first "Vukodlak" to rush into a trench corner had just stepped past the turn when, with a muffled "bang!", a trip-wire booby trap exploded at its feet. Shrapnel swept across its lower leg, blowing through the wooden plank wall at the corner along with it.
Immediately following, a series of explosion sounds came from various locations in the trench.
Before evacuating, the combat engineers attached to the 1st Battalion stuffed all their remaining explosives and detonators into the key nodes of the trench—corners, dugout entrances, and T-junctions.
Every location a "Vukodlak" might pass through was arranged with these "little darlings."
Although the lethality of these explosives wasn't enough to directly kill the monsters, it was more than enough to disrupt their charging rhythm.
The originally unstoppable gray flood was forcibly sliced into scattered individuals by the maze-like trenches and continuous explosions.
A few "Vukodlak," realizing there were traps in the trenches, chose to climb out of the trench directly, attempting to vault over the position and attack further to the rear.
But this was exactly what the instruction unit was waiting for.
"Fwoosh!"
A blinding orange-yellow flame jetted out from the trench below, licking right onto the monster climbing out over the trench lip.
The flamethrowers equipped by the combat engineer squads demonstrated their dominance in the current combat environment at this moment.
The coarse-woven cloaks on the "Vukodlak" instantly ignited under the scorching flames, followed by the grayish-brown hair covering their entire bodies—this dry, coarse hair became the best accelerant, the fire leaping high all at once.
"More hair, weak to fire" seemed to be a universal truth across all worlds.
The monsters engulfed in flames let out howls completely different from when they were attacking earlier...
If their previous howls were full of bloodthirsty brutality, the sound now was pure pain and madness.
Covered in fire, it rolled around a couple of times, then tumbled and crawled back into the trench—landing right on top of another of its kind advancing along the bottom of the trench.
The two monsters were instantly squeezed together, and the flames rapidly spread to the second one.
On the other side of the trench, a similar scene was playing out.
Two flamethrower squads took turns firing. Whenever a monster attempted to climb out of the trench, it was greeted by a blast of flame hot enough to soften steel.
The air above the position was instantly filled with a pungent smell mixing scorched fur and grease.
As for those "Vukodlak" scattered throughout the trenches, who neither dared to climb out nor could find any living humans, they became targets for "precision elimination" by the instruction unit infantry.
A combat team centered around an MG14 light machine gun carefully approached a monster along a communication trench between the second and first trench lines. The monster, having had one of its hind legs injured by a booby trap, was crouching at a corner eating.
"Left corner, fifteen meters."
The leading veteran NCO lowered his voice, raised his right hand, and made a gesture.
The light machine gunner set up the MG14 on the edge of the communication trench, the muzzle aimed at the corner.
Two semi-automatic riflemen knelt behind him, rounds already chambered.
The last soldier, whose arms were visibly thicker, pulled out a cluster grenade bound with cloth strips from his ammo pouch.
At the NCO's signal, after unscrewing the cap and pulling the fuse simultaneously, this soldier hurled the cluster grenade forcefully towards the corner.
"Thud!"
The heavy thud of the cluster grenade hitting the ground made the monster crouching at the corner snap its head up.
"Boom!"
But the next moment, the shockwave and shrapnel from the explosion forced the monster out of the corner. It stood up unsteadily, opening its fangs and charging toward the sound.
"Da-da-da-da—!"
The MG14 light machine gun and two semi-automatic rifles opened fire directly from fifteen meters away. Tracer rounds drilled precisely into the monster's face.
Seven rounds, eight rounds, nine rounds—the monster's skull finally shattered under the dense impact points. Its entire body crashed heavily into the communication trench.
"Next."
The veteran NCO with a scar on his face, his expression hardly changing, led the combat team to continue advancing along the communication trench.
The same tactic played out repeatedly at multiple locations across the position.
Utilizing the geographical advantage of the trench system, the instruction unit soldiers maintained a safe distance from the monsters at all times, leveraging their firepower advantage to eliminate the isolated "Vukodlak" one by one.
No close-quarters hand-to-hand combat, no bayonet charges, no unnecessary sacrifices.
Professional, calm, efficient.
This was the instruction unit.
Compared to the relatively smooth combat on the instruction unit's side, the 4th Battalion's position to the north could only be described as having become a living hell.
Although the Austro-Hungarian routed soldiers were forced to charge back to the position under the officers' prodding, not everyone truly dared to fight those gray monsters.
More people, after entering the communication trenches, hunched over and sneaked away under the cover of the crisscrossing trenches.
This behavior simply couldn't be stopped. The night trenches were in utter chaos, and the Saxon soldiers were busy fighting monsters, completely lacking the time to watch every Austro-Hungarian deserter.
When the gunfire thinned out slightly, the Austro-Hungarian officers did a rough count, only to find that of the over a thousand men who had returned, at least a third had disappeared without a trace.
"Bastards..."
Lieutenant Colonel Strauss gritted his back teeth, but had no time to curse anymore—another wave of monster howls came from the front.
The 4th Battalion's battle line was contracting rapidly.
Several key positions in the second trench had already been breached by the "Vukodlak."
Two of the three MG08 heavy machine guns were destroyed in the fighting—in close-quarters combat, these monsters directly lunged onto the heavy machine gun emplacements, flipping them over, men and guns alike.
The remaining one was still operating, but the cooling water in its water jacket had clearly boiled dry, resulting in a noticeable drop in its rate of fire.
Major Hoffmann was pulled back to the third trench by the battalion adjutant.
At this time, the 4th Battalion and the Austro-Hungarian soldiers had been completely scattered. Major Hoffmann only had about twenty people with him, consisting of battalion headquarters officers and guard platoon soldiers.
And although the attacking "Vukodlak" had also suffered considerable losses, those remaining not only didn't weaken their offensive, but became even more irritable due to the deaths of their companions.
"Battalion Commander, we cannot retreat past the third trench."
The battalion adjutant squatted next to Hoffmann, speaking very directly.
Major Hoffmann naturally understood the other's meaning.
The third trench was the final defense line. Behind it lay completely exposed open ground.
If they were forced out of the trench area, the speed and agility of those monsters on flat ground would be fully unleashed—when that time came, they wouldn't even be able to run.
"We nail ourselves here even if we die."
Hoffmann's voice had become somewhat hoarse.
He pulled the last magazine from the chest rig of a fallen soldier and pushed it into his own submachine gun.
Not a single Saxon soldier in the trench retreated.
They were Guard Reserve infantry. Although their combat experience couldn't compare to the instruction unit, the courage and honor in their bones as Imperial Guard troops would not be lost.
And those Austro-Hungarian soldiers forced into the position were also infected by this spirit of the Saxons—or rather, they also understood they had no way out.
Lieutenant Colonel Strauss led his remnants, speaking different languages, scattered across various locations in the third trench, mixed in with the Saxon soldiers.
Although their marksmanship was indeed sigh-inducingly poor, at least the gunfire was continuous, which could more or less cause some interference for the monsters ahead.
However, the howls of monsters came again from different locations in the fallen trenches ahead.
Clearly, these unusual enemies were "communicating," preparing to launch a final assault.
Hoffmann swallowed a mouthful of saliva tasting of rust, then turned to look at the battalion adjutant.
"Brother, are you afraid?"
"Afraid my ass..."
The joking battalion adjutant actually smiled:
"It's just a bit regrettable. There are still a few guys who lost bets and haven't paid me the money they owe!"
Hoffmann also smiled.
"If the charge whistle blows later, remember to follow behind me..."
Before he could finish his sentence, a "Vukodlak" suddenly lunged fiercely from the direction of the second trench, leaping directly above the third trench.
It crouched on the trench lip, its scarlet eyes looking down imperiously at the people below.
The white vapor exhaled from its snout mixed with a foul stench, smellable even from several meters away.
Immediately after, a second one appeared behind it.
The two monsters, one left, one right, blocked the two exits of Hoffmann's section of the trench.
The seven or eight people in the trench all raised their weapons, but everyone knew very well that in such a narrow space, once these two monsters jumped down simultaneously, they couldn't stop them at all.
Hoffmann resolutely raised the submachine gun in his hands.
"Everyone open..."
"Bang!"
A gunshot rang out from behind the position.
It wasn't a rifle, wasn't a submachine gun, and wasn't a machine gun.
The sound was muffled and heavy, the explosive force far more violent than a 7.92mm rifle round.
The head of the "Vukodlak" crouching on the trench lip preparing to jump snapped violently to one side. Its entire body subsequently lost its balance and fell straight into the trench with a "thud."
A figure followed the gunshot, charging out from behind the position.
That figure's speed was abnormally fast, far exceeding the speed of an ordinary person sprinting at full effort, so fast it caused a brief blur in one's vision.
The newcomer stepped onto the chest of the fallen "Vukodlak" in one stride, the muzzle of the shotgun pointing down—
"Bang!"
The second bear slug shattered the monster's head at a distance of less than half a meter.
Skull fragments and brain matter splattered out, splattering the trench wall.
The monster's body twitched violently twice, then stopped moving completely.
Hoffmann finally saw the newcomer clearly.
Officer's overcoat, a tall and straight posture, both hands gripping a double-barreled shotgun.
It was Morin.