Alien Arms Empire

Chapter 57 57 Ghosts in the Forest

 In the dense jungle, a group of bandits were sitting around a fire. They were biting into pieces of meat cut from a half-roasted beast, with sinister expressions on their faces.

There are still various strange sounds in the nearby mountains and forests, accompanied by the crackling sound of fire burning wood, which is not out of place in this not-so-silent environment.

"Boss, Jack and his group have definitely been killed now... Although they are not from the same group as us, their deaths... are too miserable." A middle-aged bandit with a scar on his forehead sat with a bow and arrow on his back. Next to the fire, while chewing the blood-streaked meat in his mouth, he spoke.

Sitting there, Daos, the burly bandit leader, had a serious look on his face. He ignored the noise of his men and just ate his barbecue with his head down.

 These people have been running rampant in the vicious forest for many years. At that time, Count Fischereau also sent troops to clear out the bandits in the northern part of the forest, but the results could only be described as average.

These bandits come and go without a trace, hiding in the mountains and forests, and disperse when they encounter a large army. It is really not easy to find them.

It is really not cost-effective to use a large army to find these bandits and thieves in the mountains, so the officials of the Kingdom of Wright have always been reluctant to spend money to use troops to find trouble for these villains.

Over time, these bandits who lingered in the Vicious Forest became real local snakes, and the Vicious Forest became a lawless place.

Here, everyone has their own territory for activities, and generally they do not attack or annex each other, because everyone knows that once the scale grows and the transportation line of the Vicious Forest can be truly cut off, everyone will have no food. have eaten.

Therefore, everyone maintains a basic tacit understanding on the scale of robbery, and most bandit teams only have about ten people.

This scale has been proven by long-term experience: if the scale is too small, it will be easy to be hacked by peers or unable to complete the plunder operation. If the scale is too large, it will attract official attention and lead to the liquidation of their troops, which will cause trouble.

 Among these bandits, the ones with the larger scale, better reputation, and more ferocious style are Jack and Dawes.

 The two of them operate on the east side of the traffic line in the Vicious Forest, and the other on the west side, with the traffic line as the boundary. On weekdays, neither one would cause trouble for the other.

 The scale of the two teams is actually very large. Jack has 25 experienced bandits in his hands, and Dawes has 28 equally evil villains in his hands.

In the Vicious Forest, no one does not know their evil reputation, and some small bandits try to avoid the main areas where they operate as much as possible.

However, recently there was a ridiculous rumor circulating among some bandits that they encountered by chance, saying that the entire vicious forest was echoing with ghostly gunshots, and many bandits died inexplicably, making everyone very nervous. .

In order to confirm what the news was about, Dawes sent someone to contact Jack, hoping to inquire about the situation from the other side.

As a result, the people who went there brought back news that surprised Dawes - Jack's bandit group was completely annihilated!

There are traces of bullets flying everywhere, and holes where the skin and flesh are torn can be found on the bodies. Jack's body, which had not been eaten clean by wild beasts, was also found, and the two Cyric flintlock pistols that Jack never left were missing.

Things seemed to be developing in a direction beyond Daos' control, because the traces of the brutal battle at the scene showed that there was a large-scale army that was also familiar with mountain warfare and was operating in the vicious forest.

In the past, when armies entered the mountains, they marched along the lines of communication with great fanfare, carrying heavy carriages and transporting large amounts of gunpowder and supplies.

At this time, as long as the bandits stay away from the traffic lines and hide deep in the forest, they can avoid being captured by the army and preserve their own strength.

Moreover, with the rate of fire of the Cyric flintlocks in the hands of the officers and soldiers, after one fire, the bandits had time to disperse and escape, and there was almost no possibility of being gathered and annihilated.

So Dawes still can't figure out why the army would go to great lengths to secretly cultivate a force that can operate in the mountains, and why they are suddenly interested in exterminating bandits in the vicious forest.

"After eating in a while, clean up here! Erase as many traces as possible!" Dawes finally swallowed what was in his mouth, looked at a capable man, and ordered: "Ghosts definitely don't exist. , I think it was the officers and soldiers who did it.”

“I think so too.” The second-in-command of the entire bandit team, a similarly sturdy man, sat on the other side and nodded in agreement: “It’s not just Jack, do you remember where we passed by yesterday evening?”

Yesterday evening, after learning that the Jack Bandits were completely wiped out, they no longer dared to camp where they were, and moved to another backup stronghold together.

On the way to the stronghold, they saw the bodies of a small group of annihilated bandits. These corpses had been dead for some time, and most of them were covered with maggots, exposing their white bones.

 Everyone who saw that scene felt a little nauseous. After all, although these bandits killed people and stole goods, they never had the habit of returning to the scene of the crime to observe.

There are a lot of white bones in the Vicious Forest, but there is an essential difference between skeletons and bones and half-rotten corpses...

Especially, this time, these corpses are not those of the passing merchants, but those of the bandits. Under the grief of the death of rabbits and foxes, everyone sitting here inevitably has a lot of pessimism. "Damn it! When this real news passes, we must find out which **** summoned the army, and I will kill him without any body parts!" A bandit cursed angrily in the distance.

Soon, such emotions spread among the bandits. A bandit holding a sword on his waist also had a ferocious look on his face. He stared at the fire and gritted his teeth and said: "And these officers and soldiers who came into the mountains, they deserve to die too! "

"Bang!" Just as the bandits were cursing the officers and soldiers with the same hatred, a sudden gunshot echoed in the forest.

Dawes instinctively rolled on the spot, avoiding the position where he was originally sitting. Then he raised his head slightly and looked around.

 A shot bandit slowly fell down, clutching his chest. The gunshots from the other side suddenly became denser, like continuous thunder.

 The bandits who were shot screamed and fell down one after another. In an instant, seven or eight of them lost their fighting ability.

The second-in-command of the bandit drew a long sword from his waist with one hand, and a musket from the other side with the other hand.

 It is actually very difficult to preserve gunpowder in a place like this, so a team with a few muskets is already the best among bandits.

 As the largest bandits in the entire vicious forest, with 29 people and four muskets, they are already quite large.

 But just after the sharp round of gunfire passed, there were already seven or eight of them lying on the ground. And these poor bandits have not yet fully woken up from the shock of being ambushed.

 They have always ambushed others, so how could they be ambushed one day? Daos hid behind a big tree, with half of his face exposed, secretly observing everything around him.

He wanted to find the enemy who opened fire. The soldiers of the Kingdom of Wright were wearing bright yellow military uniforms and were actually very easy to identify in the jungle.

But this time, he did not see the officers and soldiers wearing bright yellow clothes. What surprised him even more was that he did not see the conspicuous clouds of smoke that filled the air near the muzzle after firing.

Just like that, after a short silence, the sound of the second round of musketry came out intensively again, crackling and echoing in the jungle.

At this time, Dawes saw a green, vague figure flashing past behind a group of bushes.

He raised his pistol and aimed at the bush, but he was too trembling to pull the trigger under his finger and did not have the courage to fire a retaliatory shot.

Before he could fire, the second leader of the bandit who was hiding not far from the fire rang out. The sound of a gunshot echoed suddenly in the mountain forest, and then a conspicuous cloud of white smoke filled the place where he was hiding.

This is why Dawes didn't have the courage to fire back. The white smoke was so conspicuous that he couldn't hide it no matter how hard he hid.

What shocked him was that the ghostly and terrifying entities who had been firing on the opposite side did not even have thick smoke to disperse at the location where they fired! This made Daos subconsciously recall the legend about ghosts.

Immediately afterwards, he saw his second-in-command, who was always at the forefront of every battle, being hit by a bullet from behind, and fell to the ground with a scream.

He saw with his own eyes that the second master's blood dyed his tattered leather armor red, and with his own eyes he saw that the second master was lying on the ground and struggling for a few times, and then he lost more air and lost more air.

 The sound of the third round of gunshots reached Dawes's ears, bringing his consciousness back to the tragic battlefield.

After careful observation, he still saw the faint muzzle flash and the faint, almost unrecognizable billowing smoke.

 He raised the musket in his hand for the second time and pointed it in the direction where he had just seen the muzzle flash, and then he hesitated again.

 Because the screams and shouts of killing have gradually subsided, there are not many people left standing in the bandit gang of more than 20 people.

Just now, a coward who couldn't hold his breath and wanted to escape ran a few steps away, but fell to the ground after a gunshot, and died without even a grunt.

The scene gradually calmed down, with fewer and fewer bandits fighting back and hiding, and more and more corpses lying scattered on the ground.

After a while, there was no more gunshots. In the silence, a man wearing a gray-green military uniform, holding a rifle with a bayonet, pushed aside the grass in front of him and stood up slowly.

 (End of this chapter)