usatvline Chapter 58 Sniper Corridor
Chapter 58 Sniper Corridor
Chapter 58 Sniper Corridor
08:45 AM.
Arthur was still giving instructions, but his expression grew increasingly grim.
It wasn't because his brain was overloaded; quite the opposite, it was because his prized RTS system was functioning too perfectly and too cruelly at that moment.
There was no fog of war, no data delays. In this complex urban environment, his omniscient vision still penetrated all brick walls and floors, projecting all life activities within a ten-kilometer radius into his mind with astonishing clarity.
[Warning: Enemy unit density exceeds the warning threshold (EnemyDensityCritical)]
[WARNING: IFF (Identification Friend or Foe) distance too close (Proimity < 5m)]
[Tactical Situation: Full-scale Melee (TotalMelee)]
On the tactical map in his mind, the once clearly defined battle lines no longer existed.
The red dots representing the enemy were like a tidal wave, the entire 10th Armored Division flooding into the city's capillaries like a torrent. Meanwhile, the green and blue dots representing the Anglo-French forces were like isolated islands in a storm, surrounded, infiltrated, and divided by the red ocean.
They mingled together.
In those multi-story buildings and ruins, red and blue dots overlapped densely. Often, the first-floor lobby was crowded with charging Germans, while at the second-floor stairwell, several French soldiers were desperately throwing grenades; even in the same basement, red and blue dots were locked in close combat, extinguishing and colliding.
This is precisely the core tactic that Arthur had previously proposed to General Jensen – the "embrace tactic".
They proactively tightened their defensive lines, letting the Germans in and allowing them to engage the defenders in a fierce battle.
Only in this way would the German army's devastating heavy artillery dare not fire indiscriminately; only in this way would the German army's terrifying numerical advantage of tanks be offset by the complex visibility of the ruins.
He succeeded tactically. The German heavy artillery—whether 210mm mortars or 150mm howitzers—never fired again after the German infantry entered the city.
But this is a style of fighting that will lead to the extinction of one's lineage.
This means that every company, every platoon, and even every individual soldier in the 12th Motorized Division will lose rear support and be forced into absolute isolation.
Arthur gritted his teeth, staring at the blue islands on the map that were being slowly swallowed up by red. He didn't need to see the scene to know that every second, countless soldiers carrying out his order were being riddled with bullets by enemies many times their number in those corners he couldn't support.
This is the price of having a God's-eye view: you have to watch your pieces being eaten one by one in order to win a game.
Just then, a strange feeling crept up Arthur's spine.
It's the feeling of being watched by a cold-blooded animal. It's chilling, like having thorns in your back.
He was standing at a gap in the ruins of a makeshift command post, trying to observe a crossroads two hundred meters ahead through binoculars. That was a crucial point connecting the East Station and the City Hall, and a necessary route for the German advance.
"Major! The 3rd Company's communications have been cut off! We need to send someone to check on their situation!" A French captain rushed over to report anxiously.
"Wow!"
A young British soldier volunteered. He looked to be under twenty, with a youthful face, and clutched a Webley revolver tightly in his hand.
Arthur glanced at him. It was a face full of vitality and courage.
"Be careful. Stay close to the wall." Arthur patted his shoulder and pointed to the broken wall ahead. "Don't linger in open areas."
"Yes, sir!"
The young messenger saluted, then crouched low and dashed out of the cover like a nimble leopard.
He ran very fast and moved with precision, skillfully using the shadows of the ruins to avoid potential firing positions.
Just as he was about to run across that open area, which was less than five meters wide, and about to enter the shadow of the safe building on the other side, *snap*!
A sharp, short sound, like a whip lashing the air, suddenly rang out.
That wasn't the roar of a rifle; it was a sharper, more deadly sound.
In Arthur's view, the young messenger who was running suddenly froze.
His running motion instantly distorted, as if he had been struck hard on the head by an invisible hammer. His helmet, trailing a plume of red and white smoke, flew high into the air and spun around.
His body, propelled forward two steps by inertia, then fell straight down on the gravel-strewn street like a piece of rotten wood.
There were no screams. There was no struggle.
Only a terrifying, fist-sized hole on the back of his head, bubbling with blood.
He died. He died instantly.
Arthur's pupils contracted sharply. Almost instinctively, he retreated into cover, his heart pounding.
That wasn't a stray bullet.
A stray bullet wouldn't have hit so accurately, wouldn't have shattered the child's skull so precisely at the last second before he was about to enter the safe zone.
That's a sniper!
Sergeant McTavish roared, his voice laced with obvious terror: "Everyone take cover! Get out of the windows! There's a sniper!"
A deathly silence of panic instantly descended upon the entire defensive line. Soldiers who had dared to peek out of the windows and fire moments before now all shrank back behind the walls as if electrocuted.
That voice was the most terrifying nightmare for any veteran.
It means that a kind of death god has appeared on the battlefield, one you can't see, but who can take your life at any moment. It has turned this already chaotic ruin into a huge, one-way transparent hunting ground.
The air seemed to freeze.
Arthur leaned against the cold concrete wall, panting heavily. The image of the young messenger's brains splattered open haunted him. It was the greatest mockery of his "omniscient and omnipotent" command.
He failed to pinpoint the other party's exact location.
"Strange thing—"
Arthur frowned.
Given the absolute precision of the RTS system, he should have been an omniscient and omnipotent god within a straight-line distance of ten kilometers. Just an hour ago, he could clearly see the birthmark on the buttocks of a German logistics soldier urinating five kilometers outside the city, and could even read the German trademark on the cigarette pack that the SS officer was holding in his mouth.
But at that moment, as he swept across the ruins, he felt an unprecedented sense of "blurriness".
No matter how much he exhausted his mental energy, forcibly pushing the RTS macro lens into the depths of the shadows on the third floor of that building, the data fed back to his retina was still a despairing "blank".
The system did its best to render the texture of every broken brick and the burrs on every broken wooden beam, but it lacked only the "enemy".
If it weren't for the soldier's body still lying there, Arthur would have truly believed that there were no enemies there.
There was no red dot, no highlighted outline, not even the faintest thermal imaging signal. The sniper seemed to have used superb camouflage skills to turn himself into a "dead pixel" that the system could not analyze.
For the first time, Arthur realized that his omniscient vision had a "resolution bottleneck"—the opponent's stealth level was too high, which directly caused the system to experience severe frame drops and rendering failures during the judgment process.
Immediately afterwards, a red warning box he had never seen before, carrying an extremely dangerous aura, exploded in his mind:
[WARNING: High-risk tactical target detected]
[Perception determination: Failed]
[Cause Analysis: Target Stealth > Commander Reconnaissance]
Arthur's pupils contracted sharply.
Attribute suppression!
This means that the opponent is not an ordinary grunt, but an elite BOSS-level unit whose "camouflage" and "stealth" skill points are higher than his "reconnaissance" level.
[Type Classification: Sniper]
[Approximate area: Quadrant C4, distance 280-350 meters]
On the tactical map of RTS, there are no specific red dot coordinates.
Instead, a huge, glaring dark purple skull symbol floated in mid-air above the ruins three hundred meters ahead.
The area included three partially collapsed four-story buildings, the ruins of an abandoned clock tower, and countless piles of rubble. There were at least two hundred windows, crevices, and shadows that could have allowed people to hide there.
The system simply circled a red circle with a diameter of one hundred meters, coldly telling him, "Death is inside. But I don't know which window he's in."
"asshole----"
Arthur slammed his fist against the wall.
280 to 350 meters. This distance might be a bit far for an ordinary rifleman, but for a German sniper equipped with a high-magnification scope and who has received professional training, it's practically like shooting at a stationary target on a firing range.
The area they were in was perfectly within the enemy's firing range. Anyone who tried to cross this street or lingered at a window for more than three seconds would become a ghost marked by the purple skull.
This is a veritable "sniper corridor".
"Sir, we're being suppressed."
McTavish crouched as he ran over, a gash on his face—a souvenir of a sniper bullet that had grazed his scalp. Blood streamed down his cheek, making his expression even more ferocious.
"That bastard has taken control of the entire intersection. The connection between the second and third rows has been cut off. Our men get shot in the head the moment they show their faces. Four are already dead."
The Scottish tough guy's tone was filled with frustration and anger. He wasn't afraid to fight the Germans hand-to-hand with bayonets, but this battle against an invisible enemy left him powerless.
"Did they try to suppress it with machine guns?" Arthur asked.
"I tried it. That idiot had barely set up the Bren gun and fired half a magazine when his hand was pierced. That German guy is a pro; he's messing with us."
Arthur closed his eyes, forcing himself to calm down. His brain raced, frantically calculating the data streams from the RTS system in his mind.
Calling for artillery support?
No. The few French Type 75 mortars are currently busy suppressing the German tank assault and have no time to spare.
Moreover, the area is too large, and indiscriminate shelling would only waste ammunition.
Should we send a commando team to infiltrate the area?
That was suicide. On that open field, the commando team would be sitting ducks.
The only solution is to fight poison with poison.
Use hunters to fight hunters.
Arthur suddenly opened his eyes and looked at McTavish beside him: "Go and get Williams for me."
McTavish was taken aback at first, but then immediately understood. As an old comrade-in-arms who had fought alongside him in Azhabrook, he knew all too well what it meant for his superior to mention that name.
"That Welshman?"
McTavish wiped the blood from his face, glanced at the desolate intersection in the distance, and a cruel smile crept across his face. "Understood, sir. This kind of unseen, intangible dirty work is really only something that quiet guy can do. That guy's been thirsty for the No.4 (T) sniper rifle he's been carrying all this way."
"Have him clean the scope, Sergeant."
Arthur straightened his soot-blackened collar, his tone resolute: "Before joining the army, he was the best deer hunter in all of Wells Highlands. Since we can't see that German bastard, let's send our top hunters to deal with him."
Arthur pointed to the blurry purple skull mark on the map, his eyes icy: "Tell him I've found him the biggest prey ever. A very tough buck, wearing an SS helmet."
Moments later, Williams slipped into the makeshift command post like a ghost.
Without a word, Arthur pulled Williams to a safe blind spot next to the firing port and pointed to the blurry ruins in the distance.
"Look at me, Williams."
Arthur's voice was deep and he spoke very quickly, his tone carrying a rare seriousness and frankness: "Although I cannot give you the exact location."
"That German bastard is hiding very well; we can't find him." Arthur pointed to the gloomy building in the distance. "He's in that half-collapsed department store—the core area is concentrated between the third and fourth floors, which is quadrant C4."
Arthur stared intently at the ruins, the purple skull mark still looming over the entire building in his mind: "There are at least two hundred windows and gaps there. But I can't see which one he's behind. It's a blind spot for me."
Arthur turned his head, stared into Williams' eyes, and poked hard at the large red circle drawn on the simple tactical map with his finger: "I can only take you to the entrance of the hunting grounds."
"The rest depends on your deer-hunting eyes to find him from those two hundred damn shadows."
"Don't let him get away."
Williams did not speak.
He glanced at the red circle, then at the monstrous ruins in the distance. His eyes, always half-closed...
His eyes, filled with coal dust, did not show fear due to the lack of information; instead, a hint of excitement, typical of an old hunter encountering a formidable foe, flashed in them.
He didn't need the shepherd to tell him where every single hair on the wolf was. Just telling him which mountain the wolf was on was enough.
He nodded silently, gripped the rifle wrapped in layers of burlap, and turned to disappear into the shadows of the ruins.
09:30 AM, attic of a two-story building.
Williams lay on the broken sofa and slowly peeked out of the shadows with the No.32Mk.1 3.5x scope.
The world is brought closer through the lens.
But he was faced with a complete mess.
Major Arthur's voice echoed in his mind, but it wasn't precise navigation; it was just a vague direction: "Department store—third to fourth floor—he's in that shadow."
Williams held his breath, his eyes, accustomed to tracing the coal seams in the pitch-black mine, pressed tightly against the eyepiece.
on.
The camera slowly pans.
The first window — empty.
Being too revealing is a graveyard for beginners.
The second window was empty. The view was limited, and the field of vision was insufficient.
Williams' gaze swept over the complex ruins. There were broken beams, crumbling floors, and countless dark craters created by the explosion. Each hole was like an eye, coldly watching the street.
Finding the German in this chaos is like finding a motionless hare in a thicket of bushes.
But he is patient.
He lay on the highlands of Wales for three days and three nights, just waiting for the old stag to sneeze.
"If I were him—if I were a professionally trained German sniper—"
Williams was silently strategizing in his mind.
"Where would I choose? Where can I block the road, avoid a counterattack, and quickly relocate after firing?"
His crosshairs swept over those conspicuous locations, finally stopping at a corner on the left side of the third floor.
There stood a broken load-bearing column, blackened by smoke, blending perfectly into the surrounding shadows. At its base lay a pile of red rubble.
Between the broken bricks and the pillars, there is a very inconspicuous, dark crevice shaped like an inverted triangle.
An ordinary person would overlook it. But in Williams' eyes, the gap was too "perfect".
It is shrouded in deep shadow, where sunlight cannot reach; its opening is extremely small, just enough to accommodate a gun barrel and a scope; and its front is naturally camouflaged with broken bricks, so no matter how it is fired, no dust will be raised.
That was an excellent killing position.
It was purely a hunter's intuition, that sixth sense honed through countless hunts, that made the hairs on the back of Williams' neck stand on end.
He sensed it. There was something inside. Even though he couldn't see anyone, he could smell that familiar scent.
"Found it————"
Williams silently recited a phrase to himself. Although the camera lens only showed darkness, he was certain that the biting "mad dog" was hiding in that hole.
This is the hunting ground.
Williams took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled, emptying his lungs. His heartbeat slowed, and his breathing became barely perceptible. He felt as if he had become part of the ruins, a lifeless stone.
The hunt has begun.
That's it for today, 8 chapters still owed.