Chapter 698.3: Follow Me, Go Get Your Guns!
Hearing the tsunami of screams, the soldiers huddled behind cover were stunned. As far as they remembered, fewer than 1,000 New Alliance soldiers had landed at the port.
But listening to the eardrum-splitting cries, it felt like tens of thousands were charging their positions!
Even Commander Abhinan, directing from the backlines, was dumbfounded.
From his vantage point, he could see clearly that the cannon fodder rushing their lines weren’t New Alliance troops at all, they were lowly Moonfolk slaves!
Realizing what had happened, fury ignited in his heart. He clenched his fists.
Those despicable wretches!
They had actually handed weapons of the Empire to those vile slaves!
And those slaves were just as foolish, utterly unaware of what they were doing, willingly becoming cannon fodder for a band of brigands, stabbing the Empire in the back!
“Open fire! Blow those damn dogs to pieces!” Roaring his orders to the gunners, he retreated with his guard to avoid the oncoming storm.
Three 100-mm guns on the street belched furious flames. Three thick streams of tracers tore into the crowd, blasting a blood-soaked gap through it.
Yet the carnage didn’t drive the attackers back. Humans had an instinctive detachment from death that was either too close or too far away.
Especially when hot blood splashed their faces, seeing the hated enemy right in front of them only made the fury in their eyes burn hotter.
Those people had never been treated as human. The labels hung around their necks weren’t even worth as much as a two-headed cow.
In that case, they had no reason to treat them as human either.
“In River Valley Province, we skin hyenas and jackals and stew them into meat! We boil their bones into soup and feed it to dogs!”
“Charge! Let me see if you’re worth saving!”
That roar vanished soundlessly into the din. In less than 30 seconds, the enraged Moonfolk slaves crossed the shattered sandbag wall.
They moved even faster than the New Alliance mortars. In a few breaths, bayonets were plunged into the chests of the gunners, and curved fish-scaling knives smashed skulls again and again, avenging the hundreds of comrades fallen in the street.
Facing those furious beasts, both the garrison soldiers and the onlooking survivors were stunned into silence.
Terror filled Abhinan’s eyes. His limbs went cold and numb, his lips opening and closing without forming a word.
An aide who had withdrawn from the front stumbled over, disheveled, and cried out in panic, “Sir... those slaves have gone mad! We can’t match them with what we have! We should retreat!”
Several machine gunners who had barely escaped the front followed behind him.
Guided by drones, New Alliance mortars had precisely eliminated the machine guns hidden in houses in the slums.
Now they had fewer than 400 soldiers left. The rest had either fled or fallen. Any hope of counterattack was gone.
Abhinan gulped once. Despair etched every wrinkle on his face.
“Retreat...” he finally forced the word out after a long moment.
Being granted death by His Majesty would at least leave him with a whole corpse. If he were caught by those mobs, he would probably be chopped to pieces and thrown into the sea to feed the fish.
As soon as the order to retreat was given, the garrison soldiers who had been locked in brutal alley fighting with the mobs in the slums collapsed like a landslide. Their disgraceful flight, helmets and armor discarded, looked nothing like a regular army.
Laxi, who was leading the slaves forward, was also stunned by how badly those once-arrogant, well-dressed men performed when it mattered.
So this was what their oppressors really were, such utterly fragile trash.
“Advance!” Watching the garrison scatter and flee, Laxi roared at the freed slaves behind him. “Advance toward Rowell Camp!”
The answer was a series of ear-splitting, furious shouts.
“Charge!”
At the very moment the garrison collapsed, Sunir, the warden of Rowell Camp, had already seen it all from the southern watchtower. He had been standing there ever since the first artillery shot rang out.
When he saw the mobs crossing the roadblocks the garrison had set up on the main road, he immediately flew into a rage and cursed out loud. “That stupid mule! All talk when he’s bragging, but when it’s time to be useful, he can’t even deal with a bunch of cannon fodder!”
After cursing, cold sweat broke out across his forehead. He saw the mobs scattered through the slums converging toward Blackwater Street.
It was obvious they had set their sights on his camp.
Those reckless fools... They actually dared to reach into His Majesty’s pocket!
The jailers standing nearby were trembling, their backs soaked with hot sweat. “... Sir, what should we do?” one of them asked shakily.
There might well be people in that mob he had personally abused before, he didn’t dare get caught by them. If not for Warden Sunir watching him, he would have slipped out the back long ago.
In fact, he wasn’t the only one thinking that way. When they saw the mobs pouring in from the port, quite a few sharp-minded people had already guessed what was happening and taken advantage of the chaos to sneak out through the rear gate.
Sunir gritted his teeth. A trace of struggle flashed across his fierce face, but in the end, fear of authority won out.
Nearly 50,000 slaves were imprisoned in the camp, all His Majesty’s property. Not only the cheapest labor slaves, but also many high-quality, valuable goods. Even sold off cheaply, they could bring in 200,000,000 to 300,000,000 Dinars, almost equivalent to Port Gallon’s annual export value.
If that money were lost, even His Majesty would be furious. Even a lenient punishment would see Sunir’s entire family reduced to being slaves.
Cold sweat streamed down his face. Seeing the mobs already close at hand, Sunir shouted at the top of his lungs, “Prepare for battle!”
Despair flickered across the jailers’ faces, but under the glare of those ruthless eyes, they could only muster all their courage and howl miserably.
“Yes, sir!”
...
Normally, when a resident of Port Gallon sold off everything they owned and still couldn’t repay their debts, and the creditors pressed hard, the governor would, in His Majesty’s name, mercifully buy up the bad debt at a price the creditor could accept.
If the indebted survivor managed to repay His Majesty within the grace period, they would regain their freedom. If not, the infamous Rowell Camp would be their final destination.
The prisoners in the camp were more like merchandise, free for buyers to choose. Ordinary labor was usually priced uniformly and sold wholesale to interested purchasers, while those with special skills or decent looks were marked at higher prices for truly capable buyers.
The jailers in the camp generally didn’t openly torture prisoners. At most, they applied necessary corporal punishment to lazy slaves.
But it was inevitable that those who couldn’t be sold would be treated worse and worse. If no one bought them within a year, then no matter their talents, they would end up living in pigsties or sent down mines that no one ever came back from alive.
Thus, whenever the camp gates opened, prisoners from every block would tense up, rushing to the iron bars and craning their necks in hope.
But unlike every other day, the camp gates were tightly shut. It was utterly silent.
