Chapter 49: Fight to the Death Without Retreat

Zhang Shan had no idea how powerful the aftershocks of his heartfelt broadcast would be.

In the system, it merely prompted: 【Far Eastern Theater war support has risen to 100%!】

In reality, the Yamato invaders were shocked to discover that the Rossians of Red Tower City had gone mad.

When General Honda decided to commit his elite troops—the heavy infantry known as the "Demon Samurai"—he felt completely assured of victory. In terms of elite forces, the Guanbei Army held an absolute numerical advantage.

The strongest force in the Far East, the First Division of the Great Duchy of Bolivia, was still stationed in the capital and had not moved.

In Honda's view, Red Tower City contained no units capable of resisting the "Demon Samurai" formation in urban combat; all resistance would be crushed like rotten wood.

He was wrong.

Dead wrong.

Facing the towering, two-meter-tall, heavily armored elite demon soldiers, the Rossians no longer retreated, nor did they cower.

They brought out a variety of proven, makeshift weapons to deal with these massive iron behemoths.

The most classic among them were Molotov cocktails and infantry mines.

In any street or alley, or even in some obscure corner of a building theoretically already occupied by Yamato infantry, a firebomb might drop down at any moment.

With a muffled "bang," a fully engulfed human-shaped demon would appear.

"Aah—Aaaaaah—!"

Screams! Wails!

Struggling to strip off their armor!

But it was not that easy.

To prevent enemies from stripping away their protective gear, all the straps and buckles were placed in concealed locations. Furthermore, each set of heavy armor was custom-made for a specific samurai family, and without dedicated logistics personnel, it was virtually impossible to open.

Aside from gunning down the throwers, the accompanying infantry could do nothing at all.

As the old saying goes: "A suit of armor is passed down through three generations, and the man dies while the armor remains."

The thick, heavy armor was wreathed in flames, and the elite demon inside had already been roasted to a crisp. The searing armor stood silently in the middle of the road like a mute tombstone.

...

Inside a street command post belonging to a Homeland Defense Brigade, Lieutenant Sugihara, clad in heavy armor, had fought his way through an opposing Rossian infantry platoon.

When he led the charge into a basement, he froze.

A few crates of munitions were scattered loosely about the room.

At a glance, he recognized that the crates contained the exact same type of "Type 37 rifles" used by the Yamato forces, along with matching ammunition.

Sugihara cursed under his breath: Those logistics bastards are truly fucking garbage, how did they manage to let so much ordnance get looted?!

He looked toward an old Rossian man sitting atop one of the crates.

Sugihara sneered and casually tossed the severed head of a Rossian soldier—which had been skewered on the specially crafted metal blade of his right arm—onto the floor right in front of the old man.

The old man's body visibly swayed.

"My katana doesn't kill old men, get lost!" Knowing the other man wouldn't understand, Sugihara merely pointed contemptuously toward another door in the basement, telling him to get out. As for whether the old man would be killed by other Yamato soldiers the moment he stepped outside, that was none of Sugihara's concern.

The elderly Rossian indeed did not understand his words.

Nor did the old man flee. Instead, he rolled a cigarette using a piece of propaganda paper issued to persuade Rossians to surrender, brought it to his lips, and took a deep drag.

The red glow of the tobacco flared suddenly in the dim basement.

Since the enemy did not strike immediately, the old man spoke on his own terms.

"I had to pay money just to join the Homeland Defense Brigade."

"Huh?" Sugihara couldn't understand, and was starting to grow slightly annoyed.

"I've been a soldier all my life. The only thing I earned was the moniker 'Coward Alexander.' But I truly was a deserter."

"Hey! What are you blabbering about?"

"The previous emperor ordered me to fight the Turks, and I ran away."

"Hmm?"

"He ordered me to fight the Asgards, and I ran away again."

"What are you even saying?"

"But this is my hometown. So, I—will not run away anymore!"

At the exact moment this mismatched, language-barrier conversation ended, Sugihara's expression drastically changed, for he saw the old man pull open his coat. Dangling from his abdomen were two TM-38 anti-tank mines.

The Rossian phrase "Face This Way" and the handwritten Yamato characters scrawled upon them were blindingly glaring!

All of the old man's words had merely been a tactic to buy time, revealing the truth to the enemy just a split second before the fuse burned down to the end.

Seeing the fear-filled eyes staring out from the eye sockets of the enemy's demon mask, the old man smiled with a sense of fulfillment.

"Boom—"

A terrifying, deafening roar echoed from the basement.

...

No retreat! No surrender!

The Yamato forces discovered with horror that the combat will of the opposing Rossians was so resolute it could only be described as "manic."

As long as they had a single breath left, they would scheme for a counterattack.

More than once, they witnessed wounded Rossians pulling the pins of grenades to perish together with their enemies.

Or clutching modified anti-tank mines and leaping straight down from high-rise buildings, blowing an entire squad of Yamato soldiers into minced meat.

For a full week, the heavy casualties left the commanders of the Yamato 2nd and 9th Divisions utterly stunned.

"Are they insane?"

"They're fighting us to a standstill with that kind of equipment?"

"Madmen! A bunch of madmen!"

"If the entire Far East consists of resistance fighters like this, we'll never conquer the Far East in our lifetime!"

Lieutenant General Yoshikawa and the upper brass were beginning to grow fearful.

Logically speaking, after deploying elite units like Type-A divisions, the battle situation should have been utterly one-sided.

After all, apart from the core positions defended by the relatively conventional Boliriya 8th Division, the rest of the urban districts were guarded by third-rate troops like the Homeland Defense Brigade.

Even so, the casualty exchange ratio between the two sides was roughly three to seven!

Despite a ratio of one to over two seeming high at first glance, upon noticing that many Rossian soldiers didn't even have proper military uniforms, Lieutenant General Yoshikawa felt that his side was taking a devastating loss.

For several days straight, multiple streets in the southern part of the city remained in a state of constantly changing hands.

It was entirely possible for the frontline to call in before 9:00 AM stating an area had been captured, only to lose it again by 10:30.

Those streets belonged to an older district with complex terrain, numerous illegal structures, and built along a slope, making it inconvenient for tanks to enter. The only forces capable of participating were infantry and heavy armored infantry.

A battalion deployed in the morning would be battered to half-strength by midday and forced to withdraw and rotate out.

Moreover, the offensive could not simply be halted; the moment it stopped, the Rossian forces would find a way to decapitate the Yamato soldiers and hang their heads all over the streets.

It was a terrifying sight.

Yet precisely at this moment, General Honda pulled a bizarre stunt.

"What? Hold a grand victory parade for the troops? No, wait, Your Excellency, we've only captured a quarter of Red Tower City." Lieutenant General Yoshikawa was flabbergasted.

"The pressure from the homeland is immense. We must provide some tangible proof for the home front to see, otherwise those damned naval blockheads will take the opportunity to choke our supplies."

Those damned navy men!

Yoshikawa was shaking with rage: "Understood! General, sir!"

Thus, an utterly farcical scene unfolded.

In the south-central part of the city, along a frontline stretching several kilometers, the forces of both sides were interlocked in a vicious dogfight.

Right at the entrance of the South District Civil Affairs Bureau in the southern sector, hundreds of Yamato soldiers were assembled, holding their weapons high and shouting "Banzai!"

The embedded reporter, speaking into the microphone in an excited and dramatic tone, 'live-streamed': "Did you hear that, everyone in the Yamato homeland?! These are the cheers of our brave and fearless soldiers, having successfully captured the enemy stronghold of Red Tower City."