Munitions Empire

Chapter 57: 57 Phantom of the Forest

In the dense jungle, a group of bandits were seated around a fire. They were tearing into chunks of meat cut from a half-roasted wild beast, expressions grim on their faces.

Nearby, the mountain forest was still filled with all kinds of strange sounds, alongside the crackling of wood burning fiercely in the fire. In this not-so-silent environment, it wasn't considered jarring.

"Boss, it's confirmed that Jack's group has been wiped out... Although they weren't with us, their deaths... were too gruesome," a middle-aged bandit with a scar on his forehead said, sitting beside the fire with a bow and arrows on his back, chewing on a piece of meat streaked with blood as he spoke.

Sitting there, the burly bandit leader Dos's face darkened, ignoring the noise of his men, merely bowing his head and eating his roasted meat.

These men had been truly rampant in the Vicious Forest for some years. Back in the day, Count Fisheo even sent troops to clear out the northern part of the forest's bandits, but with only moderate success.

The bandits, who came and left without a trace, hid in the mountain forests. When they encountered the military, they would scatter, making them hard to find.

Deploying troops into the mountains to search for these highwaymen was an unprofitable venture, so the officials of the Leite Kingdom were always reluctant to spend money and mobilize troops to deal with these ruffians.

Over time, the bandits lurking in the Vicious Forest had become true lords of their domain, and the Vicious Forest had turned into a lawless land.

Here, everyone had their own territories and, under normal circumstances, did not attack or annex each other's lands, because they all knew that if any group grew too large and managed to truly cut off the Vicious Forest's supply line, then they would all have no livelihood.

So, concerning the scale of their robberies, there was an unspoken agreement among them, and most of the bandit groups only had about ten members.

This size had been tested by long-term experience: too small, and they were easily betrayed or eliminated by their peers, or unable to complete their raids; too large, and they would draw official attention and military action, leading to trouble.

Among these bandits, the larger, more notorious, and more vicious groups were Jack's and Dos's.

One operated on the east side of the main thoroughfare in the Vicious Forest, the other on the west. With the route as their boundary, they usually kept out of each other's way.

The size of their groups had actually grown quite large; Jack had 25 seasoned bandits, and Dos had 28 equally nefarious criminals.

In the Vicious Forest, their fierce reputations were known to all, and smaller bandit groups did their best to avoid their main areas of activity.

However, recently, some bandits who had chance encounters began spreading what seemed like a laughable rumor, claiming that ghostly gunfire echoed through the Vicious Forest, and many bandits died mysteriously, making everyone very tense.

To confirm what was going on, Dos sent people to contact Jack, hoping to glean information from the other side.

The result—the returnee brought back shocking news—Jack's bandit group had been completely annihilated!

There were signs of bullets flying everywhere, and the bodies had gaping, torn wounds. Jack's body, which hadn't been consumed by wild beasts, was found along with his two ever-present Shireck Flintlock Guns, which had vanished without a trace.

Events seemed to be spiraling out of Dos's control, because the tragic evidence from the scene indicated that a large military force, as adept in mountain warfare as they were, was operating in the Vicious Forest.

Traditionally, when the military entered the mountains, they made no secret of it, marching along the main routes, with cumbersome wagons, transporting vast quantities of gunpowder and supply materials.

At that time, if the bandits stayed away from the main routes and hid deep in the forest, they could avoid military sweeps and preserve their strength.

Moreover, given the fire rate of the Shireck Flintlock Guns in the hands of the soldiers, after a single volley, the bandits had ample time to scatter and flee, making it almost impossible for them to be annihilated.

So, Dos had been unable to fathom why the military would take great pains to secretly cultivate a force that could operate in mountainous terrain, nor why they had suddenly taken an interest in exterminating the bandits in the Vicious Forest.

"Once we're done eating, clean up this place! Try to erase all traces as much as possible," Dos finally swallowed what was in his mouth and looked at a trusted subordinate, giving orders, "Ghosts definitely don't exist, I think it must be the work of the soldiers."

"I think so too," the second-in-command of the bandit group, also a burly man, sat across from him, nodding in agreement, "Not just Jack—remember the place we passed by last evening?"

Upon learning of Jack's bandits' total demise the previous evening, they dared not camp at the same place and instead moved to an alternate hideout.

On their way to the hideout, they had encountered a small group of slaughtered bandits. These bodies had been dead for some time, most of them swarm with maggots, exposing ghastly white bones.

Those who saw the scene felt sick to their stomachs, for although these bandits murdered and plundered, they never made it a habit to return to the scene of the crime to watch.

There were many white bones in the Vicious Forest, but there was a fundamental difference between skeletal remains and half-rotten corpses...

Especially this time, these corpses were not those of past merchants, but of their fellow bandits—under the sorrow of their loss, everyone sitting here inevitably harbored many pessimistic emotions.

"Damn it! Once this whole mess blows over, I must find out which bastard brought the military here, and I'll make sure he won't die whole!" one of the bandits cursed angrily in the distance.

Soon, such sentiments spread amongst the bandits, another with a longsword at his waist also had a fierce expression as he ground his teeth staring into the firelight, "And those officers and soldiers who came into the mountain, they deserve to die too!"

"Bang!" As the bandits were united in their hatred, cursing the soldiers, a sudden gunshot echoed through the forest.

Dos instinctively rolled on the ground, avoiding where he had been sitting and then barely raised his head to scope out his surroundings.

A bandit who had been shot slowly collapsed, clutching his chest, and suddenly the gunfire on the other side became more intense, like endless thunder.

One by one, bandits hit by bullets screamed as they fell, and in a flash, seven or eight were out of the fight.

The bandits' second-in-command drew his longsword with one hand, and with the other pulled a musket from his other side.

In such a place, it was actually very difficult to preserve gunpowder, so having a few muskets already made a bandit group outstanding.

As the largest bandit group in Vicious Forest, they had 29 people and four muskets—the size of their group was not insignificant.

However, after that first precise volley of gunfire, they already had seven or eight men lying on the ground. And these poor bandits had yet to fully recover from the shock of being ambushed.

They were always the ones laying ambushes; how could there come a day when they were the ones ambushed? Dos hid behind a large tree, half his face peeking out, stealthily observing everything around him.

He had to find the enemy shooters—the soldiers of the Leite Kingdom, who wore bright yellow uniforms, were actually very easy to recognize in the jungle.

But this time, he didn't see anyone in a bright yellow uniform. What surprised him even more was that he didn't see the conspicuous clouds of smoke that would spread near the muzzle of a gun after firing.

In this way, after a short silence, the second round of musket fire came again in dense volleys, crackling and echoing through the jungle.

It was then that Dos saw a blurry green figure flash past behind a clump of bushes.

He lifted his pistol, aimed at the bushes, but his hand shook, not daring to pull the trigger under his finger, lacking the courage to shoot back.

Before he could fire, the second-in-command of the bandits, who was hiding not far from the fire, sounded his musket. A loud "bang" abruptly echoed in the forest, followed by a plume of conspicuous white smoke where he hid.

This was the reason Dos lacked the courage to return fire—the white smoke was so visible that it was impossible to hide.

But what shocked him was that the terrifying figures who were continuously firing didn't emit any thick smoke at their firing positions! This made Dos involuntarily recall the legends about ghosts and spirits.

Suddenly, he saw his subordinate, the second-in-command who always charged at the forefront of battle, struck by a bullet from behind and fell to the ground with a scream.

He watched his second-in-command's blood soak his ragged leather armor, saw him struggle on the ground for a few moments, then breathe his last.

The third volley of gunfire reached Dos's ears, snapping his consciousness back to the gruesome battlefield.

Upon careful observation, he finally saw a faint muzzle flash and the almost imperceptible rolling smoke.

For the second time, he raised his musket, pointing at the direction where he had just seen the flash, and then hesitated again.

Because the screams and shouts had gradually subsided, in the bandit group of more than twenty, there were not many left standing.

Just before, an impatient coward tried to escape, only to fall to the ground after a few steps when a gunshot rang out, and without so much as a moan, died outright.

The scene gradually calmed down, fewer bandits returned fire or hid, while more and more bodies lay scattered in all directions.

After a moment, no further gunfire was heard, and in the silence that followed, a man dressed in gray-green military attire, with a bayonet-mounted rifle, pushed through the grass in front of him and slowly stood up.