Counterfeit Hero

Chapter 1541: Chapter 9 Volume 39: God or Devil

New Era 2064, January 5.

The battle that took place on Leifeng Star quietly, soundlessly shifted direction when midnight arrived.

Beyond human sight, the Goddess of Fate, barefoot with snow‑white, gleaming feet, stepped along a gravel path slick with flowing blood and drifted lightly toward the scene.

She stood at a crossroads, lost in thought.

Across the sky the light kept changing, and countless clashing Mecha, charging warriors and blazing flames fused into a fantastical mirage.

It was the Heavenly God’s apocalypse.

When the breeze stirred the Goddess of Fate’s white robe, she turned at the crossroads.

The tangled thorns of the new path parted beneath her pale feet and then closed up again behind her. Vines grew in mad profusion, sealing tight, blocking every gaze that tried to peer into the future.

Then all of it slowly melted away like ice and snow in the sun. Thread by thread, mote by mote, it dissipated and merged into history.

All of it silent, without a sound.

In that moment, deep in the vast universe, planets were still burning in War Fire. War between humans was still raging like a fever.

Fighters skimmed through the murky sky like vultures patrolling beneath a storm.

Ferocious Mecha crashed into the cities, like bloodthirsty beasts rampaging through a forest of steel.

Warships sailed through the silent starry void, their polished hulls shining in the light of the Constant Stars, hiding the savagery beneath their handsome exterior.

Soldiers fought and bled in muddy positions, officers pored over operational maps in low, damp bunkers, and politicians kept busy scheming, arguing, accusing.

Cities turned to ruin, lives vanished beneath the stars. What should happen, what should never have happened, was all happening.

Only long afterward would historians slowly close the thick volumes of war history and marvel at the wonder of fate.

They would stand by windows where the curtains stirred faintly, gaze at the flaming red sun either at the edge of the city or crowning the distant mountains, and imagine that on some such sunset day, that army which altered history cut across the Six Major Battlezones and pressed into the Sunset Mountain Basin.

Not even the most brilliant prophet had managed to foresee this.

Just as Bellif could not know, as he drafted his western offensive against Phoenix City, that a formation made up of soldiers from the very nation whose territory they had largely occupied, together with a band of desperadoes from the Free World, was step by step marching toward him.

This textbook rabble, led by a Fatty whose brain was not quite normal, delivered him a mortal blow on the nightfall of January 5.

At 9:20 p.m., the bandit army’s Second Armored Division 1st Group seized Maple Slope, blocking the advance route of Suss’s 21st Army Group.

After more than an hour of fierce fighting, the 1st Group smashed four Armored Groups of the Suss 2122 Division head‑on, then immediately pushed northeast, coordinating with three reorganized groups of the bandit army’s First Armored Division that had already swung around to the southeast flank of Suss’s 21st Army Group, launching a full‑scale assault on the Suss Army.

Although Peterlov promptly ordered his troops to build fortifications and adopt an on‑the‑spot defense, it was already too late.

This was a battle whose outcome had been decided even before it began. Peterlov, in his haste to seize 49 Peak, had given the watchful bandit army far too many openings.

First, his Logistics troops were still over a hundred kilometers away; the combat units not only lacked the material needed to construct positions, they were short even on Mecha energy and ammunition.

Second, the 21st Army Group, which had always treated speed as the key factor in the entire campaign, inevitably ended up with an overstretched formation during its long forced march.

By the time they were blocked by O’Neill’s 1st Group northeast of Maple Slope, the entire column straggled over more than thirty kilometers front to rear, in a state of organizational chaos, utterly unable to pull together into a coherent formation in a short time.

If he had been facing an ordinary enemy, Peterlov might still have had time to correct his mistake. Unfortunately, what he encountered was a pack of madmen whose average hand speed was fifty‑five actions per second, with actual control output over sixty actions per second.

These Mechanical Warriors, who kept growing stronger in battle, shattered all his illusions with lightning‑fast advances!

Under the bandit army’s pincer attack, the 21st Army Group was like a long snake nailed through its seventh inch, its bones shaken loose segment by segment.

In the darkness, officers could not find their own men, and warriors received no clear orders. Beside them, there was nothing but shellfire and the sight of comrades collapsing amid Fierce Fire.

Their established organization was broken up in the very first instant.

One Suss Mecha after another that tried to resist was slaughtered without mercy by the enemy. The routing soldiers carried their confusion and panic backward like a plague.

After cutting the Suss Army in half at the waist, Rashid ordered the 1st Group to drive the Suss rear‑guard northeast, while the 2nd and 3rd Groups launched a heavy assault toward Maple Slope.

In terms of specific tactical execution, he further instructed his units not to bother with the shattered troops on both flanks, but to concentrate all force on crushing any organized enemy resistance groups and positions.

This order pronounced the total rout of the 21st Army Group. Over the next half hour, the bandit army virtually broke through into the depths on the heels of the disintegrating units.

The hasty positions thrown up by the Suss people and the ad‑hoc resistance forces they organized were almost always smashed by the bandit army just as they were forming. With communications, command and other electronic systems being jammed, warriors had no idea what was happening ahead or how many enemies surrounded them.

When the fleeing troops in front appeared in their field of view, panic began to spread.

Chaos and terror in the night are two lethal poisons. Sadly, the 21st Army Group swallowed both doses down to the last drop.