Players Invade Cyberpunk

The gunfire and artillery roar in the valley continued unabated for an entire day, scaring the nearby nomadic tribes enough to flee with their families, moving as far as possible.

"You only advanced thirteen kilometers in a whole day yesterday?"

Olivia could hardly believe her ears.

The direct distance from here to Big Sur is not even over a hundred kilometers, driving quickly would take a few hours, yet this stretch of road managed to halt their several thousand strong force from making any progress for two whole days.

This was even after deploying a large number of military resources; if they relied solely on infantry, they might not even have crossed the first hill.

On the frontline, Walter felt like he was mired in a bottomless swamp, clearly, there weren't many people on each position, yet the attack was time-consuming and laborious.

After all, each of their positions was two or three kilometers apart, making it impossible to capture two high grounds in one fell swoop.

Doesn't preparing for an assault require time?

After capturing a position, you need to rest and tally the casualties on both sides, right?

Doesn't this back and forth take several hours?

Not to mention, the individuals on each hill were stubbornly resistant, holding their positions until the last man; too few opponents, they couldn't break through, too many, it became time-consuming and tiring.

Compared to these issues, the casualty numbers were relatively acceptable.

"Why don't you try bypassing them altogether and just ignore them?"

After all, it's not like there aren't other paths, why bother with small positions of just over a dozen people?

"It's because I couldn't bypass them that I went for a frontal assault."

Walter's lips were chapped, his demeanor exhausted, after a whole day he hadn't even closed his eyes.

After breaching the second hill, he realized it was a waste of time, so he decided to ignore the third position and sent infantry to skirt around the right side.

And the result?

As soon as night fell, a hundred-man unit preparing to rest and eat was ambushed by those dozen people.

The individuals occupying the third position abandoned it and descended under the cover of darkness to launch an attack on the hundred-plus soldiers, injuring or killing twenty to thirty persons on the spot, the rest, panicked and scattered before being rounded up by other allied units rushing over at the sound of gunfire.

A dozen people

dared to abandon their advantageous position, initiating an attack against over a hundred and achieving a major victory.

Such a tactic, Walter never heard of in his life.

In such circumstances, instructing him to ignore those positions and bypass them entirely would be exposing his backside for the enemy to target with impunity.

"..."

After listening to Walter's report, Olivia, who had been somewhat indifferent before, now had to admit that the enemies were far more formidable than Huang Ban had described.

These were not so-called unorganized mercenaries, but an army capable of being ranked across the United States.

An army

is nothing like armed groups, warlords, or bandits.

The organization, training, and combat capacity of the former completely surpasses the latter.

Armed organizations think about profits, bandits are just unorganized groups gathering, a warlord is just a bigger bandit.

An army has only one aim, which is to win the war, at all costs, and for this, the cost of training soldiers is far higher than the rest.

"And there's one more thing."

Walter said

"Our frontline advance is approaching the artillery units' maximum range, without subsequent artillery support, the efficiency of offensive relying solely on the two tanks and infantry fighting vehicles will slow further."

"Are you suggesting to move the artillery position forward?"

Olivia instantly understood what Walter meant.

"Yes."

Walter nodded

"Due to the influence of the two high grounds on the periphery, the artillery positions are severely limited in their firing range over the hilly area, so I suggest relocating the artillery positions to the valley area to ensure the subsequent attacks receive maximum fire support."

"..."

Olivia was somewhat hesitant.

Intuition told her the opponent still had cards up their sleeves, plus the units that night-attacked Light had yet to surface again, who knows where those guys are hiding now?

"What about Horizon Corporation's artillery positions? Did you find them?"

"Not yet, they haven't fired a single shot since yesterday."

Walter also found it strange, but when he learned that the two cannons actually belonged to Ulysses, until they were captured by the opponents, it became easier to understand.

"I suspect the number of shells they confiscated wasn't much, and they already exhausted them in previous battles, after all… they had offloaded quite a bit of arms and equipment in Night City, with limited stock on hand."

Mentioning this point, neither had any unusual expressions on their faces, as this sort of thing is commonplace whether in corporations or the Chaotic Blade Association, even New America.

If you don't get greedy, others wouldn't dare approach you with offers, and you certainly couldn't climb up the ranks.

Walter: "I also deployed two infantry fighting vehicles on the battlefield, the most powerful weapon they have is a recoilless rifle and mortar, posing minimal threat to armored units, even as the fighting vehicles reach the positions, no remote fire support appeared, all signs indicate they really don't have larger-scale armaments."

Considering they've organized their forces, using lives to obstruct our advance, the determination reaching this extent, there's no reason they'd skimp on a few shells.

Therefore, they must have used them up.

Olivia recalled that the intelligence from Huang Ban pointed out that this company currently only had light military production lines; after all, in Night City, even production was restricted from exceeding regulated weaponry, let alone simply passing through.