My soldiers are all Fourth Calamities!

05. War, Birch Forest and New Recruits

As expected, Regiment Commander Sokolov approached Rochester and ordered him to quickly lead his troops to the trenches.

Surprisingly, all of these new recruits were willing to join Rochester's unit.

However, what worried Rochester was that he had assumed the trenches were somewhere not far away, but when Sokolov let them get on the truck, Rochester realized how difficult the defensive battle would be.

They were going to the front lines to build defensive fortifications.

As dusk approached, several trucks arrived. They climbed onto the trucks, and before setting off, Commander Sokolov gave each of them a cigarette.

But no one knew how to smoke, so they all handed them to Rochester on the bus.

But Rochester didn't smoke either. After thinking it over, he accepted it. After all, cigarettes would always be useful on the battlefield.

The players and the new recruits sat side by side, one after another, looking completely different. The players seemed excited, and perhaps this excitement made the fear on the faces of the new recruits lessen.

Especially Guo Ruhe.

While sitting in the truck, he touched everything. The game was top-notch, so realistic, and the soldiers seemed intelligent, or rather, they also had a sense of realism.

He kept communicating with the players, but because Rochester had set up many sensitive words, the overall conversation didn't sound inappropriate. He thought the players would complain, but to his surprise, at least the ten players he recruited were quite satisfied with it—perhaps because it brought a very good sense of immersion.

Amid the players' chatter, a new recruit joined the conversation, wanting to know how the war had started. This soldier looked to be only eighteen years old.

Several players initially wanted to explain war to the recruit from a more complex perspective, but they quickly abandoned that idea and opted for a more accessible explanation.

Guo Ruhe pondered for a moment and then said, "In most cases, it's because one country has seriously offended another."

The new recruit seemed somewhat confused. "A nation? I don't understand. It's like a mountain in Germany. It's impossible for it to offend a mountain, a river, a monastery, or a rice paddy in France. It's all highly unlikely."

Hearing the new recruit's explanation, the players scratched their heads. The misguided guy was surprisingly serious at this moment, and said in the simplest way possible, "Well, to put it simply, it's about the nation. A nation is a whole, a country."

"Country...country..." The recruit scratched his head. "I think I understand now. Military police, police, taxes...is this our country? Thank you for telling me!"

The recruit continued, "Then I understand. Our side is almost entirely made up of ordinary people, and the vast majority of those on the battlefield are farmers and workers from the Vistula Federation. So why are these farmers and workers fighting us, and why are we fighting them? Before I went to the front lines, I had never seen a Vistula, and most of them had never seen us either. Nobody asked them what they thought about the war, just like nobody asked us!"

Perhaps he had a sudden realization, or perhaps for some other reason, the recruit asked everyone on the vehicle again, "Then what is the purpose of this war?"

The man who went astray replied, "There must be someone who profits from the war."

"Okay, I'm not one of them." The recruit smiled innocently.

"You are not. None of the people here are."

"Then who is it?" the recruit pressed. "What good will it do for those people? I heard from the superintendent that we're fighting for the liberation of more people, but what about the Tsar? Doesn't he already have everything?"

Before the players could even speak, the new recruits started chattering amongst themselves.

"That's hard to say. Every great emperor needs to experience at least one war, otherwise he cannot make a name for himself in history."

"Generals are recorded in history because of war."

One of the new recruits agreed, "He's even more famous than the emperor!"

One of the recruits muttered, "There must be some people behind the scenes who made a fortune from the war."

The engine hummed, and the truck moved forward with a creaking sound.

The road was severely damaged, riddled with potholes, and the trucks bounced constantly. Several times, the new recruits nearly fell off the trucks, and they were terrified.

To calm these emotions, Anton said, "Don't be upset about it. So what if you fall? A broken arm is better than a hole in your stomach. Many people look forward to this kind of good thing, so they can go home."

These words relieved the new recruits, but they still clung tightly to everything they could, afraid of falling.

The truck drove into the artillery position, which was covered with a lot of bushes to prevent enemy aircraft from spotting the gun positions.

However, they will not stay here; they are going to a place further ahead.

The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder and even dense fog, a smell that made everyone's tongues taste bitter. After driving for some distance...

The echoes of artillery fire roared behind their vehicles, and the recruits' expressions changed imperceptibly. Even the players felt the tension in this atmosphere.

Rochester rubbed his hands together instinctively. Death loomed over him once more. Players could be resurrected after dying, but he was truly dead once he died.

This is already the front line.

Anton began, "That was a 30.5-centimeter caliber missile. What you heard was 'launch'—it exploded immediately."

Rochester couldn't help but wonder about Anton's identity; his composure was clearly not that of a new recruit, and his knowledge was not simple either.

Under Rochester's questioning, he learned Anton's full name—Anton Yudintsev—and his identity—a university student.

This name... Rochester just can't shake the feeling that something's off about it.

The muffled explosion that Anton had mentioned beforehand did not occur.

"The artillery fire is sure to be fierce tonight," Anton said.

The truck entered a sparse grove of trees.

After passing the mess hall and passing through the woods, they got off the truck, which drove back to pick up another batch of troops. Thick fog and smoke reached their chests and enveloped the grassland. The soldiers' helmets reflected a faint light in the moonlight.

Human heads and rifles stood tall in the white mist, their shadows and barrels bobbing up and down.

As we walked further, the fog dissipated, and the outlines of the heads became clear.

The top, trousers, and leather boots emerged from the milky mist.

Rochester's troops rushed to the trenches and began building fortifications.

Guo Ruhe was the most skilled among them, and the only one who knew how. He constantly guided these players and new recruits on how to build defensive fortifications.

After all, this game is truly realistic, so situations like generating dozens of sandbags or a large barbed wire fence in a few seconds are impossible.

To actually build it, players still need to do it themselves.

Rochester, who also didn't know how to set it up, watched Guo Ruhe from the sidelines.

Guo Ruhe first dug a basic pit, then threaded a smooth iron rod through the wire mesh and placed it into the pit... He then stretched a single strand of barbed wire into a taut straight line...

And so the group moved forward, the ground uneven and full of potholes. Warnings came intermittently from ahead:

"Note: There is a deep shell crater on the left."

"Watch out, there's a ditch."

Everyone's eyes were fixed on the ground, their feet and canes probing the path. The procession suddenly stopped, and someone's face bumped into the barbed wire in the hand of the person in front of him, who then angrily cursed.

They drove the iron stakes firmly into the ground at even intervals.

Two people in each group hold a roll of barbed wire, while the rest of the group unfolds it.

These barbed wire fences were covered with long spikes, which scratched almost everyone's fingers. After finishing all this, they retreated to the trenches to rest.

Players then began communicating in the chat window.

Rochester also learned some information from this: there is a game pod on Earth, developed by a game called "Internet," which can be played while sleeping and allows one to rest.

Additionally, the game appears to be twelve hours behind Earth time.

It seems dawn is approaching on Earth, and theoretically, these players should be heading back soon. This worries Rochester: what happens when the players log out of the game? Do they simply disappear? Or are they unrecoverable?

Rochester was still thinking when a shell exploded behind them, startling several recruits. A few minutes later, another shell exploded, even closer.

Rochester jumped to his feet. "The archery ranger is here!"

"Ordinary stray bullets or sporadic artillery fire are often random. The pattern of the impact points gradually shrinking and approaching our own positions indicates that the enemy is correcting the trajectory through test firing, adjusting the coordinates step by step, and preparing to carry out more intensive and precise fire coverage on this area."

Under Rochester's command, everyone spread out on their hands and knees as quickly as possible.

[Holding out in D3 trenches, the battle officially begins.]

A green shell shot up from the horizon, sending dirt flying high into the air.

A faint, elusive bright red stretches from one end of the horizon to the other.

The fireball exploded into a shower of white, green, and red meteors that fell to the ground.

The light illuminated everything as if it were daytime, shining directly on them, so that their clear shadows could be seen on the ground.

It swayed for several minutes before fading away and dying.

But immediately, a new fireball shot into the sky again, illuminating everything and turning green, red, and blue once more.

The storm of artillery fire condensed into low, muffled roars, then dissipated into clusters of explosions.

Countless bullets fired from machine guns flew in from above.

Beside Rochester lay a young recruit, his face still showing signs of immaturity. He covered his face, his helmet rolled to the side. Rochester picked up the helmet, the recruit looked up at him, then pushed him away. Like a child, he crawled over, burying his head under Rochester's armpit, pressing it tightly against him, his thin shoulders trembling.

Rochester neither scolded nor chased him away, letting the recruit stick close to him.

To make his helmet still somewhat useful, Rochester put it on his buttocks, not to mock him, but because that was indeed his most prominent feature.

Although there are few nerves and the skin and flesh are thick in that area, it can still hurt terribly if you get hit.