On the northern front of Gobol, countless bomb craters are scattered across the entire battlefield. There are few intact trees here. Most of the big trees have only bare trunks standing crookedly in front of the two armies.
If you look carefully, you will see that there are several corpses lying in a mess under almost every big tree. Because there are always people who think that these big trees can be used as bunkers, allowing them to survive for a few seconds in the rain of bullets.
In fact, most of these places are the focus of attention of the opponent's machine guns and hunting sharpshooters. People hiding here will be killed quickly, even faster than those soldiers who simply lie down.
The entire battlefield was full of ups and downs. In fact, the field of vision was not particularly good. As long as he lay down carefully and then got up and jumped forward, he could avoid most bullets hitting him.
But people are like this. When facing great terror, when facing death, how many people dare to stand up bravely and take steps forward?
The battle lines have been in a stalemate like this for almost a month. Everyone feels that this war is almost coming to an end.
No one can break through the enemy's defense line. Everyone can only sit in the trenches and listen to each other's cannon fire and count the days. This kind of war is about who can persevere. This is obviously very boring and hopeless.
Maritime transportation has been completely chaotic, and the prosperity of the Endless Sea has long since disappeared. Most of the trading ships that can still be seen today belong only to the Tang Kingdom.
Datang Group's shipping department now owns a huge number of transport ships, and the trade on the endless sea is still uninterrupted by relying solely on these merchant ships.
However, there are only a few prosperous routes left, and everyone agrees that merchant ships traveling on these routes cannot be attacked, and these routes are not considered war zones.
As a result, Dorne's goods had to be shipped from Rewind Port and transported by sea. Gobel's transport ship took a large circle and took the route of the Chu Kingdom. The merchant ships of the Ice Empire didn't care and just took a detour to the Mirage Kingdom.
Naturally, no one dares to touch the route from Bunas to Long Island and to the East Bay. Just look at the terrifying 305mm cannon on the side of the five-meter-high ship. No one in their right mind would dare to touch it. It would challenge the sea power of the Tang Kingdom.
Just kidding, the entire fleet here is not enough to defeat one other's warships. Who wants to cause trouble for themselves at this time?
What's more, even if there are no such terrifying battleships, everyone is unwilling to provoke the Tang Kingdom.
Everyone is buying artillery shells and weapons and equipment from the Tang Dynasty to supplement the losses on the front line. If they offend the Tang Dynasty at this time, wouldn't they be crazy?
Just a few days ago, the Lions Empire had loaned 3 million gold coins to Datang Group to continue the war on its border.
The situation here in the Kingdom of Dorne is slightly better, because of the rubber trade, there is relatively ample funds in hand.
However, Dorn's envoy is still walking around in Bunas, hoping to apply for a loan of more than 10 million from Datang Group.
This money is not what they urgently need, but what they don't want to be borrowed by the Lains Empire! In their opinion, as long as they borrow a little more, the Lions Empire will not be able to borrow so much.
As the war stalemates, its influence has begun to spread to the economic field. People's livelihood problems, which were originally improving, have begun to break out in various countries.
The prerequisite for passing on the crisis is victory. If there is no way to gain benefits from the war, then the impact of the war itself will only make domestic conflicts worse.
Corruption problems in the Nanla Empire began to gradually surface. The people were very dissatisfied with the decadent empire, and turmoil began to occur in some areas.
It's just that the war has only broken out for half a year, and most of this dissatisfaction can still be suppressed and controlled, so the Nanla Empire can still manage to maintain it.
The same problem also occurs in the Leans Empire, which is expanding very fast and has an unstable foundation. In the Gemelin "area" within the Leans Empire, it is generally believed that the new emperor intentionally sent them to die on the front line.
The people in the newly occupied areas are unwilling to join the army and fight, thinking that it is deliberately targeting them; the people who originally came to the special areas also have ideas. They believe that people in the new territories such as the Gemelins should not enjoy privileges. If the Gemelins do not go, They come and no one goes.
In addition, traditional areas such as Beiling, Jade City, and Bunas are not under his own control. Although the Beiling troops with strong military strength are nominally affiliated with the Laines Empire, they have long been semi-independent. Laines I has recently been destroyed due to these Things are very angry.
The Kingdom of Dorne is also facing enemies from both sides. The north has to withstand the pressure from the Lions Empire, and the south is at war with the Goblin Kingdom. The battle is called passive.
The original raid battle has turned into the current positional battle. Even if they have the Empire's twin heroes Bolton and Strauss, the situation is not optimistic.
Strauss had no choice but to go to the northern front to deal with the 100,000 troops of the Reins Empire, and Burton could only fight fiercely with the Gobel Kingdom in the south.
Both sides used airships and anti-aircraft guns to intercept them. The losses were heavy. Even the officers and soldiers of the airship unit were like the death squads. They never returned and became disposable consumables.
In such a general environment, Bolton felt that it was best for the Kingdom of Dorne to make peace with the Empire of Lines, so that they could withstand the pressure back to back. At least both sides could save half of their ammunition and half of their troops!
It's a pity that this idea was aborted before it even started: the Lions Empire actually formed an alliance with the Goblin Kingdom, and they wanted to attack from both sides and carve up Dorne.
There was no roar of artillery on the battlefield today, and everything seemed peaceful. But all Dorne commanders knew that such calm often meant the beginning of a bloody battle on the battlefield.
Sure enough, the brief calm on the battlefield was suddenly broken by the sound of artillery, and Gobel's bombardment began.
It was completely different from the long, careless and sporadic sound of gunfire from the previous few days. This time, Gobel's gunfire was so intensive that it was terrifying.
There were hundreds of shells falling in the first round, and the Kingdom of Dorne's first-line defense position was almost instantly submerged and smashed into a cloud of black smoke and flying rocks.
The Dornish garrison, which had not figured out what was going on, was immediately hit by a second round of artillery shells.
The soldiers in the trenches were almost buried alive by the mud raised by the shells. There were loud explosions of large-caliber shells everywhere, and the ground under their feet kept shaking and shaking, as if the end of the world was coming.
"Damn it! Aren't the Goblins ready to live their lives anymore? Can they transport so many artillery shells to the front line in one month? Will they not fight next month?" Looking at the rising smoke column in the distance, a Dornish man The division commander complained in confusion while holding the telescope.
The officer standing next to him also couldn't believe his eyes. He stared at his own position that seemed to be swallowed up and shook his head: "I'm afraid they have been hoarding ammunition reserves for at least a month and took them out to fight. It’s really a big investment.”
"So the opponent will launch an attack soon... and it will be an attack of unprecedented scale, regardless of the cost..." The division commander continued to look at the position in the distance with his telescope, as if talking to himself.
Then, without looking back, he ordered: "Send the message to General Bolton and ask for reserve support... Let the three regiments behind prepare for battle... The first-line defensive position may not be able to be defended."
"Yes! Understood!" After hearing the order, the officer immediately shook the phone next to him and asked the operator to help him connect to the headquarters.
Such a complicated telephone system is naturally not cheap, and it is actually very inconvenient to use. But even so, it is the most advanced telephone system sold by Datang Group.
This is the "preferred" model that has been reduced in size, improved in design, and improved in reliability for the purpose of militarization.
At this moment, on the Gobel Kingdom's position, at the gap in the trench that had been secretly filled earlier, a giant steel behemoth was slowly driving towards the distance.
Following this behemoth was another equally huge chariot with a pointed shape in front of it, which looked like a ship traveling on land.
The Cyric 1 tank is a war weapon developed by Cyric Group engineers themselves. This time they can really guarantee that this thing does not rely on the technology of the Datang Group.
Cyric, who was completely crossing the river by feeling his own way, designed his first tank to be similar to the A7V (German World War I water tank).
They didn't make overhead tracks, basically they just never thought of anything like that. Another reason for them to use a short track design is that the cost of the track itself is not cheap.
The final product is actually a four-cylinder model. If you want to say that it is completely an A7V, it seems not that accurate.
This thing is equipped with two gasoline engines, and there are machine gun nozzles on all sides, but it is only equipped with one artillery, which is installed directly above the tank, using the most correct single turret layout!
The idea of Cyric designers is... to copy the turret design of new warships, so that the artillery can flexibly adjust the firing angle. In order to copy it more thoroughly, the body of this thing is in the shape of a boat.
The artillery on the top is used to attack and destroy enemy bunkers, so it is just a short-barreled 70mm caliber gun equipped with simple aiming equipment.
According to the assumption, the tank itself is driven very close to the enemy's position and directly aims and fires, so the aiming equipment is dispensable.
The weapons used to deal with enemy soldiers are the six machine guns on this land cruiser: one in the front, one in the back, and two on the left and right. The distribution is very reasonable.
All in all, this thing is just like the water tank in World War I, full of imagination and more steampunk in appearance.
Seeing their own secret weapon appearing on the battlefield, all the Goblin soldiers cheered crazily.
Instinctively, small human beings are full of fantasy and love for this war machine with huge size and reinforced iron bones.
Amidst the cheers, the rapid bombardment that had almost exhausted the reserves finally stopped. These tanks, or chariots, slowly rushed through the mud towards the horizon where thick smoke was still rising.
At first there were two cars in one car, but later it became five cars and ten cars. Completely different from previous armored vehicles, this thing's off-road capabilities are still very good.
At least it won't get stuck in soft soil, or lose basic mobility because one of its wheels is hit.
Of course, the track chain is not an indestructible thing. It is just immune to attacks by light weapons such as machine guns.
But this is already a huge improvement, not to mention that the exposed area of the tracks of Cyric's tank is actually not large, so the possibility of being hit is very small.
Soldiers protected by steel plates one centimeter or even several centimeters thick can attack the enemy with machine guns unscrupulously. The closed and cold environment gives them the courage to challenge the enemy's intensive firepower.
As a result, while swaying, these steel monsters approached the trenches of the Kingdom of Dorne, which also kicked off the first battle of the armored forces' assault on the trench defense lines.
At first, the Dornish soldiers who had just crawled out of the floating soil only saw these "armored cars" from a distance.
Just like in the past, they think this thing is just their own rags to make things difficult for them! Under normal circumstances, they don't need to take action themselves. These heavy gadgets will be paralyzed on the battlefield by themselves, and then destroyed by weapons such as mortars.
Take a look at the wreckage of armored vehicles scattered on the battlefield, and you will know that using such things to attack enemy positions is as unreliable as performance art.
But as the target gradually approached, everyone became panicked: because they could clearly see that these huge guys were not as bulky as they imagined.
These armored monsters rolled over craters and broke tree trunks, and not even barbed wire could stop their advance.
When the soldiers panicked and started firing at these armored behemoths with their weapons, they found that their bullets seemed useless.
No matter where they fired, they could only see a patch of sparks, and the opponent's dense machine guns fired condescendingly, suppressing everyone until they couldn't even lift their heads.
"Quick! Call for support! We can't hold it anymore!" Seeing that most of a hidden concrete bunker was destroyed by a single shot, the commander of the Kingdom of Dorne stationed on the position finally understood that it would be very difficult for his soldiers to fight in this battle. Won as easily as ever.
When a Cyric tank ran over the first trench of the Kingdom of Dorne, the Dornish soldiers in the trench collapsed.
Like dark clouds covering the sky, the body of the tank blocked the sky above him, and the rolling tracks kicked up dirt. The shock that all this brought to them was really too great.
As a result, Dorne's soldiers began to retreat. They had to abandon a trench, and they were stationed in this trench more than two meters deep without taking a step back for more than a month!
