Chapter 326.1: Loot, Loot Everywhere!

After being tapped by the cold steel of a bayonet on the face twice, Wabu, lying on the ground knew that he couldn’t pretend to be dead any longer. In the end, he could only reluctantly open his eyes.

"Don't shoot..." He slowly moved his hands to the sides of his head, palms facing forward, signaling that he was unarmed.

The soldier holding the rifle simply kicked away the rifle lying beside Wabu and coldly said, "Get up."

Wabu obediently complied, scrambling to his feet with his hands on the back of his head. He then followed the soldier toward the New Alliance's position.

A few hours ago, a drone had flipped the Company Leader, Bagro's tank, and Wabu, charging alongside the armored formation, had been knocked unconscious.

Around him, his comrades lay dead or maimed. Those who had survived were missing limbs, their painful cries echoing like howling wolves.

He considered himself fortunate.

Perhaps it was because of his awakening that he had only suffered minor wounds. By the time Bear Fang led the brigade in an assault on the high ground, Wabu had already regained consciousness.

However, Wabu didn't immediately get up.

Especially when he saw his fellow brothers rolling down the hill one after another, fearing that he might be pushed up to fill the offensive line, he simply closed his eyes and pretended to have been knocked unconscious.

But with his eyes closed, he unintentionally fell asleep. When he woke up again, the comrades who had just charged up the hill were now scrambling down the slope in a desperate retreat.

With a bayonet pointed at him and his hands on his head, Wabu finally set foot on the battlefield, but now as a captive.

There were quite a few people stationed around him.

The New Alliance had fortified their position, and some of the captives were sent to build artillery positions, while others nervously squatted in the uneven terrain.

When Wabu saw them digging pits, a shiver ran down his spine.

Were the New Alliance planning to bury them alive?

That was his first thought.

But on second thoughts, that actually didn't make much sense; even if those people wanted to bury them, it would be much easier to do it below the slope instead of on the high ground.

To the north, the hilltop was ablaze with campfires, indicating that the bulk of the New Alliance forces had taken control.

Casting a surreptitious glance behind him, Wabu couldn't help but feel a pang of despair. He regretted listening to those rumors and joining the Bonechewer Clan.

Here, there were no endless drinks or inexhaustible feasts, no enchanting female prisoners or countless treasures.

In the past few months, all he had seen were rat droppings covering the ground and rotting wood floating in the gutter, along with the unappetizing green wheat and shofar potatoes. Those were garbage that in the Bugra Free State, only slaves and scavengers would eat.

He had come to make a fortune, not to become cannon fodder.

If only he had known how dire the situation was, he would never have come!

"Go squad over there."

Hearing the voice behind him, Wabu, whose thoughts had been interrupted, didn't dare to resist. He walked over obediently and squatted down beside the other captives.

There, he recognized several familiar faces.

A marauder from the Bugra Free State, just like Wabu, looked at him in surprise and whispered, "Wabu? You're still alive?"

Wabu, battered and bruised, whispered back, "I got knocked out and just woke up... What happened?"

The man's face twisted with bitterness. "We charged up the high ground, but suffered heavy losses. The New Alliance launched a counterattack quickly; the mountain was swarming with their soldiers..."

For 10 minutes, he recounted the events on the battlefield, including the artillery flying overhead and the trenches filled with the smell of roasting meat...

Wabu listened, his cold sweat breaking out.

At that moment, an officer walked over.

The man telling the story immediately fell silent, and the others stopped their hushed conversations.

The officer spoke with the soldiers guarding the captives for a few moments before a soldier strode over to where the captives were.

"We need 2 volunteers for a mission assigned by the Administrator personally. Good performance could lead to reduced sentences. Anyone willing to step forward?"

The captives exchanged uncertain glances, but no one dared to come forward. Instead, they shrank back, fearing that this special mission might involve being thrown into a pot or having their organs harvested.

After all, they were capable of such things themselves.

Wabu was equally terrified, but when he heard the possibility of a reduced sentence, he couldn't help but swallow hard.

"Me..." He raised his trembling hand.

The officer standing beside the soldier turned his gaze to him. "Name."

"Wabu," he quickly replied.

"Are you from the Gold Fang lineage?"

"No," Wabu said nervously, "I'm from the Bugra Free State, I used to be a bounty hunter."

The officer nodded, scribbled something in a notebook, and then gestured for him to follow.

"Come with me..."

...

Even though the battle had ended before noon, the cleanup of the battlefield continued until the sun set.

Not all the marauders surrendered with raised hands; some hid in the pine forest, while others pretended to be dead under the bodies of the fallen.

Chu Guang assigned the task of cleaning up the battlefield to the Second Corps and some rookie corps below LV5.

Most of those corps had just been established recently, and some were not even at their maximum capacity, but they did have some potentially promising players.

Regardless of whether they were currently useful, they were worth nurturing.

As for the main force, Chu Guang led them to the northern hill to rebuild the marauders' positions and take control of the supplies they had stored there.

The entire battle had yielded 30 trucks, including the supplies stored in them.

These trucks were standard transport vehicles for the Army's Expeditionary Force, equipped with a powerful portable steam engine in the middle. They had a slightly better load-bearing and off-road capability compared to the New Alliance's self-developed Electric Mule. However, their manoeuvrability was lower, and they were quite loud.

This type of truck was suitable for large-scale long-distance transportation, such as cross-province commerce. So Chu Guang planned to allocate half of them to the Traveling Merchants Association and keep the rest as strategic reserves.

Apart from the trucks, what surprised Chu Guang the most was the 27 Conqueror tanks, and 10 of them were still in repairable condition!

As for the unrecoverable wrecks, aside from serious damages like ammunition rack explosions or ruptured fuel pipes that caused them to burst in flames, they could more or less salvage the turrets or engines.

As for the seized Ripper rifles, Hawk assault rifles, PU 9 submachine guns, Armor Fist Bazookas, shotguns, light and heavy machine guns, 60mm mortars, and other infantry equipment, they filled 2 warehouses.

It was enough to arm half a division, and now, it all went into the New Alliance's armory.

Although players were not very fond of those miscellaneous equipment with hard-to-find ammunition, selling them as trade goods to the survivor settlements in the eastern provinces was an excellent idea.

After all, not everyone preferred the Enterprise's high-tech gear.