Chapter Ninety-Four: The Frustrated Flying Eagle

The summit of Toad Rock was level, but its area was scarcely more than a thousand square meters. Aside from the mud-brick houses and stables built by the bandits, there was little open space outside. Under Eagle's command, the remaining horse bandits had hastily thrown together two simple barricades near the road entrance.

This was a level-twelve instance mission, and the bandits were poorly trained; they would give up resistance at the slightest pressure. The elite outlaws had already been finished off by One-Eyed Seven, so these two barricades were enough to give the remaining men the courage to keep defending.

To make the twelve surviving bandits useful, Eagle had put a great deal of thought into the defense. Once the barricades were finished, he had two men armed with the standard version of the Swift-Strike rifle take positions inside them, while the other ten mounted up and prepared to ride.

These bandits were terrible shots and carried poor weapons; only on horseback could they be of any use. Eagle and Pillar of Heaven had joined the horse bandits for more than a week, and after completing missions they had both learned beginner riding skills. Each of them had a horse of his own. If the players below dared to charge uphill, twelve horses rushing at once—let alone six players, even sixty—would be enough for Eagle to meet them head-on.

The earlier annihilation of the twenty horse bandits led by One-Eyed Seven had been due to the enemy's unexpected earth mines, and to the fact that One-Eyed Seven had possessed no command ability at all. This time the horse bandits were under Eagle's leadership. He would only fight with close-range charges and would never give the other side any chance to play clever tricks.

Yet the players below showed no sign of charging. Just as Eagle was wondering why, gunfire rang out from below, and the two female players who had climbed onto the watchpost were firing at the summit. Realizing what they intended, Eagle's face twisted into a cold smile. They had used this same trick before to seize the watchpost from that fool One-Eyed Seven, and now they still thought they could take the summit the same way? It was nothing but a dream.

The giant rock on the mountainside rose eight meters vertically, and with the built watchpost added on top, the total height reached about fourteen meters. From the watchpost one could see everything on the summit, but the straight-line distance from the post to the summit was over 220 meters, and to the cavalry line over 250. With the players' current marksmanship, hitting a target was nearly impossible.

There had been an element of luck in their seizure of the watchpost. A shot from a crude rifle had somehow killed a sentry, leading One-Eyed Seven to believe a crack marksman was involved and to make a wrong judgment. But now the distance was even greater, and with the players' abysmal shooting, even a hundred bullets might fail to hit a target. He did not believe they would be carrying a thousand rounds with them, much less be willing to spend such a fortune.

Eagle's judgment was not strange. A thousand rounds of ammunition cost two hundred silver dollars; in real terms, that was several hundred thousand yuan. Even rich people would not squander money like that for a single instance. His reasoning was not exactly wrong, but Chen Hao was rather unusual. He had made a great deal of money in the game through reselling and reloading ammunition, and after hearing that Bai Hu and the others had cleared an A-rank instance, they had brought more bullets than one could imagine.

Chen Hao had also climbed onto the rock himself. The three rifles were aimed at the summit, firing steadily and unhurriedly. Their first target was the cavalry line 250 meters away. By the time they began shooting, Eagle had already ordered the horses to scatter, making the chance of a hit even lower.

After the three had fired more than twenty shots without hitting anything, Eagle wore a cold smile. When they had fired more than seventy rounds with no effect at all, the smile on his face had already turned to surprise. And when more than a hundred shots had finally struck one of the horse bandits, his expression became one of shock.

Could the other side truly be so rich in ammunition that they could waste it so freely? Eagle quickly shook his head and dismissed the possibility. In a low voice, he said to the panicked bandits, "Their marksmanship is terrible. It took them more than a hundred rounds to hit just one man. No need to panic. Their bullets are almost gone."

The bandits felt that Eagle's words made sense, but standing there as living targets was hardly pleasant. They could only pray that they would not be unlucky enough to be hit, and that the bullets of the strangers below would run out soon.

Eagle could have ordered some of the bandits to hide inside the houses, which would have lowered the enemy's hit rate even further, but he did not dare to do so. He had only just taken over Toad Rock and possessed no authority; such an arrangement would only have angered the bandits left outside.

In this round of shooting, Chen Hao did not have a burst of luck. The bandit who was hit was struck by Rain Butterfly, whose shooting skill was the highest. After successfully hitting her target, she curved her lips in a faint smile. The first hit had been Chen Hao's, the second Rain Butterfly's, and a frustrated Liu Zixuan once again raised her rifle, increasing the pace of fire.

The three of them went through nearly sixty more rounds without striking a target, yet they showed no intention of stopping. The bandits had never really trusted Eagle's words to begin with. Watching the strangers below fire continuously, suspicion in their eyes grew ever stronger, though Eagle did not notice.

In real life, Eagle was only a basic-level soldier. If it were a matter of individual combat or commanding a small team, he would have had no problem, but he understood human nature poorly. Once One-Eyed Seven had been killed, these bandits had no leader, which was why they had obeyed him in the first place. What he should have done was establish authority through a small victory, not gamble on the enemy running out of bullets.

Eagle had confidently declared that the other side was almost out of ammunition, but the watchpost kept spitting out gunfire without pause. Each shot made the bandits' distrust of him deepen. If his judgment were ultimately proven wrong, the bandits would never listen to him again. Then he and Pillar of Heaven would have to rely on their own strength to contend with the several players on the mountainside.

Bang.

"Ha ha! I finally hit one." Liu Zixuan excitedly flashed a V sign. If the rock had not been so narrow, she would certainly have been jumping for joy.

This time, the bandit who was shot dead stood right beside Eagle, and even he could not help feeling a jolt of tension. In a low voice, he said, "The men in the barricades, keep a close eye on the players below. The rest of you retreat into the mud houses and take cover."

If everyone withdrew into the houses, the advantage of terrain would be lost, and they would have to fight the enemy head-on. Although the bandits still held the numerical advantage, they were so inept that they would collapse at the first blow, and Eagle had no confidence in fighting inside the houses. For that reason, he planned to have most of them retreat into the houses while leaving two men in the barricades to observe the situation. If the enemies below attacked the houses, the men inside could rush out to reinforce them at any time.

The watchpost on the mountainside stood at nearly the same height as the summit. The makeshift barricades could guard against enemies charging up the slope, but they were also within the watchpost's firing range. Monkey Three was one of the two players inside the barricade. He had never respected Eagle, and hearing his arrangement, he jumped out to say, "This outsider knows nothing and is just shooting blindly, getting two of our brothers killed. Don't listen to him."

"Exactly. He said the enemy was running low on bullets, and in the end he made us into living targets and got two of our brothers killed for nothing."

"That's right. If two men have to stay here, why should it be these two outsiders?"

"Brothers, fall back into the houses. Let these two outsiders stay here and play by themselves."

The remaining ten bandits swarmed into the mud-brick houses. Eagle gave a bitter smile. His arrangement had been correct, but the men under him were not disciplined soldiers; they were a rabble. Since he was not good at reading people's hearts, he was at a loss in such a situation. As for Pillar of Heaven, in real life he was a battle maniac, a straight-arrow type through and through, and he would be even less able to deal with these horse bandits.

Eagle suddenly felt that the higher-ups ought to have paired someone from a special department with a special forces soldier, so that the mission could be carried out more effectively. Soldiers like him and Pillar of Heaven only knew how to charge and fight. In the game, they did not have the same overwhelming force as in reality, and could not even handle a rabble.