SEC 16. Treat them as they treat you.
16. Treat them as they treat you.
As the red dots on the map were cleared one by one, only Krasnov remained. Krasnov was completely unaware of all this—he was riding his horse and collecting things from the villagers' homes—anything of value.
Rochester's troops also began to find places to ambush, and when he arrived at the Rochester troops' designated position, gunshots rang out!
"Bang! Bang! Bang!"
The horse reacted quickly, and upon hearing the gunshot, it was instantly startled and moved Krasnov in a large-scale manner.
The villagers fled in panic, all heading home.
In the end, only one shot hit Krasnov in the shoulder. He let out a wail, then gripped his horse tightly and began to look in the direction from which the gunshot came. He soon spotted Rochester.
Krasnov suddenly raised a hand, and some blue light gathered in his hand.
Magician!
But before he could unleash the strange magic, another bullet struck his thigh, interrupting his spellcasting.
Krasnov's face turned pale, and he rode his horse into the forest outside the village.
"Run! Run!" Krasnov shouted, the fear of death making him whip his horse mercilessly.
Blood loss and the extremely poor sleep of the past few days had made his vision begin to blur. Krasnovler turned his horse and saw a group of people riding towards him from the forest.
On Rochester's and the players' maps, numerous red dots were also spotted approaching them.
"Their reinforcements?" one player exclaimed.
"They came from the forest, so it shouldn't be them. It should be another White Army." Rochester looked at the dozen or so red dots that appeared on the edge of the minimap.
But Krasnov, who was already in a panic, was clearly unaware of this. He had previously received intelligence that there was a group of friendly troops here, and that his son was also here, but at this moment, his fear of death made him deny that.
If those friendly troops were really here, the village wouldn't be so clean, and the enemy troops wouldn't have been able to hit him at such close range.
So when he saw a man in the ranks ahead, with his cloak open and saber in hand, riding towards him, Krasnov guessed that it was no ordinary enemy soldier, and so he tightened the reins.
He could vaguely make out an excited face, the eyes of which shrank in the wind.
Krasnov's horse leaped up, rearing on its hind legs repeatedly. Krasnov pulled out his Mauser rifle from his wide belt and shouted, "...Come on, come on, let me give you a taste..."
Krasnov fired several shots at the ever-growing black cloak.
The horse ran a few more steps before collapsing.
"They really are untrained people. Is this the kind of troops the enemy sends to the battlefield?" Krasnov thought intermittently as he watched the enemy make no counterattack.
He saw the cavalry behind the man, all of them wearing black cloaks.
He thought to himself that this must be an enemy cavalry unit hidden in the forest, and he would trade one life for another with them, even if it meant death.
So Krasnov loosened the reins and flew over like a kite.
As before, he slung himself off the saddle, laughing as he brandished his saber.
Just like before, he rushed towards that person.
As before, he felt a body soften under his knife, just like the child, falling to the ground without struggling.
He stopped and began firing his gun at the remaining cavalry.
Rochester's troops noticed this strange scene in the village.
"Is this some kind of internal strife?" Guo Ruhe speculated, looking at the scene before him and the red dot that had just disappeared from the map.
"It looks like it, but it probably isn't. The cavalry in front don't seem to have any desire to attack."
Krasnov continued firing at the cavalrymen who weren't attacking him, until he ran out of bullets and a panicked cry rang out, at which point he finally stopped.
"Captain Krasnov! Captain Krasnov!"
In a daze, Krasnov seemed to realize something.
Krasnov dismounted, pulled the binoculars off the dead man, looked at the two legs that were still twitching slightly, and in horror went to pull up the trouser leg of the man he had killed.
There is a birthmark the size of an egg on my lower leg above the ankle.
Krasnov was stunned, and then slowly, as if afraid of waking him, he turned the head, which was growing cold, over so that the face was facing upwards.
His hands were smeared with blood gushing from the dead man's mouth. He examined it carefully, then awkwardly grabbed the thin shoulders and cried out, "Hey, my good son! My Nikolka! My son, my family! My own flesh and blood! Wake up, wake up, please?"
Krasnov's face darkened further. "Why don't you say a word? Even a stammer would have been better... even a stammer would have been better... stammering..."
Krasnov looked at those lifeless eyes, then collapsed, barely managing to open his bloodshot eyelids, and swayed his limp body, completely at his mercy…
Krasnov's son opened his mouth and made a "PAH-pah" sound, one of the few syllables his mute son could produce, and the most standard word he could utter.
Krasnov couldn't believe what he had done. He hugged his son tightly and kissed his cold hands.
"I'm coming to be with you right now, don't be afraid."
"I'm coming to be with you right now, Daddy's coming to be with you right now!"
Before anyone could stop him, Krasnov pulled the Mauser pistol from his son's waist, then bit the wet barrel with his teeth and shoved it into his mouth.
"Bang!"
He fired a shot...
Other terrified people were left behind.
The players were clearly stunned by this scene.
"Did Krasnov kill his son? Or did he kill the child in a different way? Hmm..."
"hiss..."
"What do we do now? To put it bluntly, is the mission complete?"
Rochester stared at Krasnov's corpse, momentarily speechless. He had never expected the plot to unfold this way. The mission was indeed completed, but clearly, a new mission was on its way. There was a White Army force here, and quite a large one at that.
With Krasnov's last breath, Rochester's mission was complete.
[Task: Teammate's Request (Task Completed)]
[Gain personal ability points: [1]]
[Captain Krasnov, a high-value unit, has been eliminated]
[Gained Reputation [350]]
Since the side quest is considered complete, the player's quest is also considered complete, and a quest completion notification will pop up on the player's screen.
Each person then earned [40] more merits.
Rochester turned his attention to the mission's outcome. He could only pity Krasnov's plight, but he felt no sympathy whatsoever.
There must be something hateful about a pitiful person like Krasnov.
To Rochester's surprise, the man turned out to be a captain, and a captain was worth far more than a can of food. His reputation also reached [2000], and the reputation shop unlocked a new section—the Armored Zone, where a can of food immediately caught his eye.
This [2000] is enough to replace a can of food, except that the performance of this can is...
[Imitation of KPzW-19]
The original product was a substandard one that the Vistula Federal Army imported from Britannia in 1919. It was originally designed for use in Britannia to suppress colonial uprisings, but it was phased out due to unstable power output from the power core and defects in the heat dissipation system.
Even so, the "Redvet Alliance" was in dire need of development, its industrial level was backward, and it could only imitate it.
Despicable!
Rochester was speechless; it would have been more straightforward to just give the players a new set of equipment.
Rochester also noticed that as his reputation increased, he could unlock more and more items in the shop. Along with the canned food, he also unlocked a familiar weapon, the "M1918T-Gewehr Replica Rifle".
The earliest anti-vehicle weapon, its only drawback is that it is also a copy.
Rochester glanced at the cavalry in the distance and decided it was time to give the players a little treat and upgrade their equipment to prepare for what was to come.
With a thought, a new interface appeared on the players' screens—the Merit Shop.
"Is it finally coming?"
"Finally, I can upgrade my equipment!"
Players quickly opened the shop and began browsing, soon finding an anti-cavalry "artifact".