Alien Arms Empire

Chapter 57 57 Ghosts in the Forest
In the dense jungle, a group of bandits were sitting around the fire.They were tearing at slices of meat from a half-roasted beast, with sullen expressions on their faces.

There are still all kinds of strange sounds in the nearby forest, accompanied by the crackling sound of burning wood, which is not abrupt in this not considered quiet environment.

"Boss, now Jack and his group are definitely killed...Although they are not the same as us, but they died...It's too miserable." A middle-aged bandit with a scar on his forehead, carrying a bow and arrow Sitting next to the fire, he said while chewing the bloodshot meat in his mouth.

Sitting there, Daos, the burly bandit leader's face darkened, ignored the noise of his subordinates, and just ate his barbecue with his head down.

These people have really been rampant in the vicious forest for some years.Back then, Earl Fischero sent troops to wipe out the bandits in the northern part of the forest, but the results were only mediocre.

These bandits came and went without a trace and hid in the mountains and forests. When they encountered an army, they would disperse in a rush. It was 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 Wright Kingdom have always been reluctant to spend money and use troops to trouble these villains.

Over time, these bandits who lingered in the vicious forest became local snakes in the true sense, and the vicious forest became a lawless place.

Here, everyone has their own place of activity, and generally they don't attack and merge with each other, because everyone knows that once the scale becomes large and the transportation line of the vicious forest can be truly cut off, then everyone will have nothing to eat ate.

Therefore, in terms of the scale of the robbery, everyone maintained a basic tacit understanding, and most bandit teams only had about ten people.

This scale has been demonstrated by long-term experience: if the scale is too small, it is easy to be blacked out by the peers or to be unable to complete the looting operation, and if the scale is too large, it will attract the attention of the officials and cause trouble to clear their troops.

Among these bandits, Jack and Dawes are the two bandit teams that are larger in scale, more famous, and fierce in style.

One of the two of them was active on the east side of the vicious forest traffic line, and the other was active on the west side, with the traffic line as the boundary, and no one would trouble anyone else on weekdays.

In fact, the size of the two teams is already very large. Jack has 25 experienced bandits in his hands, and Dawes has 28 equally vicious villains in his hands.

In the vicious forest, no one knows their vicious name, and some small bandits also try to avoid the main area where they operate.

However, recently, some bandits I met by chance spread a ridiculous rumor, saying that ghostly gunshots echoed in the entire vicious forest, and many bandits died without knowing why, which made everyone very nervous .

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

As a result, those who went brought back a piece of news that surprised Dawes——Jack's bandit group was completely wiped out!

There are traces of bullets flying everywhere, and holes in the flesh and blood can be found on the corpse.The body of Jack, who was not eaten by the wild beasts, was also found, and the two Cyric flintlock pistols that Jack never left were also missing.

Things seem to be developing in a direction that Dawes cannot control, because the traces of the tragic battle at the scene show that there is a large-scale army that is also familiar with mountain warfare and is operating in the vicious forest.

In the past, when the army 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 line and hide in the depths of the forest, they can escape the army's clearance and preserve their strength.

Moreover, with the rate of fire of the Cyric flintlock guns in the hands of the officers and soldiers, after one fire, the bandits had a leisurely time to disperse and escape, and there was almost no possibility of being gathered and wiped out.

So Dawes has been unable to figure out why the army has worked so hard to secretly cultivate a troop that can operate in the mountains, and why they are suddenly interested in exterminating the bandits in the vicious forest.

"After eating in a while, clean up here! Erase all the traces as much as possible!" Dawes finally swallowed what was in his mouth, looked at a capable subordinate, and ordered: "Ghosts definitely don't exist. , I think it should be done by officers and soldiers."

"I think so too." The second leader of the bandit team, a man of the same size, sat on the other side, nodded and agreed: "It's not just Jack, remember the place we passed by last evening?"

Yesterday evening, after learning that the Jack Bandits had been wiped out, they didn't dare to camp in the same place, and moved to another backup stronghold together.

On the way to the stronghold, they saw a small stream of annihilated bandit corpses.These corpses had been dead for some time, and most of them were already full of maggots, exposing the white bones.

Those who saw that scene were a little nauseated. After all, although bandits like them killed people and robbed them, they never had the habit of going back to the scene of the crime to observe it.

There are quite a lot of white bones in the vicious forest, but there is still a fundamental difference between skeletons and half-decomposed corpses...

In particular, this time, these corpses were not those of the passing merchants, but those of the bandits. Under the grief of the dead rabbit and the fox, everyone sitting here inevitably had a lot of pessimism.

"Damn it! When the real rumors pass, we must find out, which bastard has attracted the army, and I will let him die without a whole body!" A bandit cursed angrily in the distance.

Soon, such emotions spread among the bandits, and a bandit with a long sword on his waist also had a hideous face, staring at the fire and gnashing his teeth: "And these officers and soldiers who came into the mountains, they should die too! "

"Boom!" Just when these bandits were fighting against the enemy and cursing the officers and soldiers, a sudden gunshot echoed in the forest.

Instinctively, Dawes rolled on the spot, avoiding the seat where he was originally sitting, then raised his head slightly, and looked around.

A bandit who had been shot fell slowly while clutching his chest, and the gunshots from the other side suddenly became denser, like continuous thunder.

The bandits who were shot fell down screaming one after another, and seven or eight of them lost their fighting power in an instant.

The bandit's second leader 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 this kind of place, so the team with a few muskets is already the best among bandits.

As the largest bandits in the entire vicious forest, they have 29 people and four muskets, and their scale is not small.

But after the sharp gunshot just now, seven or eight of them were already lying on the ground.And these poor bandits haven't fully woken up from the shock of being ambushed yet.

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

He wanted to find the enemy who fired. Those Wright Kingdom soldiers were wearing bright yellow military uniforms, so they were actually very easy to identify in the jungle.

But this time, he didn't see the officers and soldiers in bright yellow clothes, and what surprised him even more was that he didn't even see the conspicuous clouds of smoke that filled the muzzle of the gun after firing.

In this way, after a brief silence, the sound of the second round of musket gunfire came out 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 group of bushes, but trembling, he dared not pull the trigger under his finger, and he didn't have the courage to shoot back the shot.

Before he could fire, the musket in the hand of the bandit's second leader who was hiding not far from the fire rang out.A bang of a gunshot echoed abruptly in the forest, and immediately after that, a cloud of conspicuous white smoke filled the place where he was hiding.

That's why Dawes didn't have the courage to shoot back. The white smoke was so conspicuous that he couldn't hide it no matter how he hid.

But what shocked him was that those terrifying ghost-like existences who had been firing on the opposite side did not have thick smoke spreading over the positions where they fired after firing!This made Dawes subconsciously recall the legend about ghosts.

Immediately afterwards, he saw that the second leader under his command, who always charged forward in every battle, was hit by a bullet from behind, and fell to the ground with a scream.

He saw with his own eyes that Erdangjia's blood stained his tattered leather armor, and he saw Erdangjia lay on the ground and struggled a few times, and he breathed out more and breathed less.

The third round of gunshots reached Dawes' ears, pulling 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 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 in the bandit gang of more than [-] people who can still stand now.

Just now, a coward who couldn't hold his breath and wanted to escape had just run a few steps into the distance, and fell to the ground after a gunshot, and died without even groaning.

The scene gradually calmed down, there were fewer and fewer bandits fighting back and hiding, but more and more corpses lying on the ground in disorder.

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

(End of this chapter)