Chapter 526: The Continuation of the War (4)
After organizing several more probing attacks, Vice Admiral Onigumo understood that sending more elite Marines to charge was nothing short of a suicide mission. The Marines were not so extravagant as to waste their own men's lives just to soak up the enemy's bullets.
He then issued a command that sent a chill down the spine of everyone present.
He ordered the Kingdom Allied Army to be driven forward to break the pirates' blockade of fire.
The moment the order was given, anyone who heard or saw it broke out in a cold sweat. They knew with absolute certainty that its execution would mean the deaths of tens of thousands. The previous charges had already proven the terrifying power of the enemy's artillery; the Marines had left behind over a thousand corpses before retreating in disarray.
And now, they were to charge again. Even though the main force this time was the largely useless Kingdom Allied Army, they were still living, breathing people. In that moment, the sense of justice in many hearts began to waver.
But then Onigumo spoke again.
"Either you go, or they go. Make your choice. What I want is to break through the pirates' wall of fire!"
His emotionless words silenced every Marine officer and soldier. Without another word, they turned to command the nearly forty thousand soldiers of the Kingdom Allied Army positioned behind them.
But the allied soldiers weren't fools. They knew they were cannon fodder, and their plan all along was to put in minimal effort, hiding in the back while cheering from the sidelines. The moment they realized the Marines intended to use their lives to absorb bullets, some immediately protested.
The one who dared to speak out met a grisly end. Onigumo personally beheaded him and hung his head from a flagpole.
All around, ten thousand Marines raised their bayonets, leveling them at the thirty-thousand-plus allied soldiers. Their fate, should they refuse, was terrifyingly clear.
Faced with the threat of death, they submitted. Gripping their weapons, under the command of Onigumo and a host of other officers, they began a death charge toward the Big Mom Pirates' lines.
Their initial trembling fear of death slowly gave way to a final, profound numbness. By the time deep night had fallen, a mountain of corpses had been piled on the path toward the Big Mom Pirates. After a full day and night of attacks, a conservative estimate put the allied soldier deaths at over twenty thousand.
Even so, the Big Mom Pirates' firepower showed no signs of diminishing, as if their ammunition was infinite.
Bang!
Inside the temporary Marine command tent, Vice Admiral Onigumo sat in the main seat, flanked by three other Vice Admirals and several Rear Admirals.
"It's been a day and a night, and we've only advanced a hundred meters! We are still three hundred meters away from the Big Mom Pirates. Are the Marines going to be stopped here, three hundred meters out?"
Onigumo's roar made all the surrounding officers bow their heads, their faces blank. The scar on his face twitched as he exercised the temporary command authority given to him by Kizaru.
"Continue organizing the Kingdom Allied Army to charge. Even if all one hundred thousand of them are wiped out, we must break their line of fire at any cost. As for the reports of insufficient manpower..."
Onigumo paused. With over twenty thousand dead, they now had only a little over ten thousand allied soldiers left. At the current rate of attrition, they wouldn't last until dawn.
"Go ask the commanders on the other fronts. Tell them to give us some of their allied forces. We must gather thirty thousand allied soldiers to exhaust the enemy's firepower in one final push!" Onigumo ordered, slamming his fist on the table.
"Sir!" came the unified cry from all the officers, including the three Vice Admirals of his same rank.
The Marines acted at once, dispatching men to the two nearby battlefronts to request reinforcements.
When the messenger arrived at the battlefield where the Rockefeller Pirates were engaged, the officer was stunned. The Marines on this front were being systematically encircled, partitioned, and slaughtered by the Rockefeller Pirates. They were completely on the defensive. Officers were scarce; after searching for some time, the messenger finally spotted a lone Vice Admiral trapped in the center of a defensive formation.
The messenger immediately ran over and explained his purpose.
"What did you say?" the hot-tempered Vice Admiral roared back. "I can barely hold on myself! Where the hell would I get reinforcements to send you? I was about to ask you for reinforcements! Get lost, get lost!" He shooed the messenger away and returned to directing the desperate defense.
The situation on his front was dire. With most of their officers killed, the few who remained were relying on sheer numbers to mount a desperate resistance. The only reason they hadn't been completely overrun was because it was night, and some of the Rockefeller Pirates' warriors had withdrawn to rest. After all, a large portion of their forces were still young, and the prolonged fighting had exhausted them. Taking advantage of the darkness and their dominant position, Esdeath had ordered them to fall back and recover.
Of the three main battlefronts, this was the only one where the Rockefeller Pirates were relatively at ease. This, of course, only applied to the lower ranks; the top-tier combatants were still locked in fierce battle. Esdeath commanded the remaining soldiers in repeated assaults against the Marines, Caesar was engaged with Sakazuki, and Tesla was tied down by a female Rear Admiral—the sister of the Great Staff Officer Tsuru, Rear Admiral Gion. These smaller skirmishes had gradually brought the situation under their control.
After that messenger returned, another reached the Whitebeard Pirates' battlefield.
Unlike the scene at the Rockefeller front, when Vice Admiral Momonga heard the messenger's request, he agreed instantly. He dispatched a contingent of elite Marines along with over thirty thousand allied soldiers to the Big Mom Pirates' front, leaving himself with less than ten thousand to continue the assault on Whitebeard's forces.
Though he lost over thirty thousand men, an incredible thing happened the moment they left the battlefield.
Freed from the burden of protecting the allied soldiers, with no rearguard to worry about, the Marines once again unleashed their true potential. They tore through the White-beard Pirate's lines once more.
It was a development Momonga had not anticipated.
Even the Whitebeard Pirates themselves were stunned. One of the commanders, having gathered his scattered subordinates, stared in a daze at the chaos engulfing the rest of their crew not far away.
"Did the Marines take the wrong medicine?" Jozu muttered, watching the turmoil with the few loyal men he had left.
"Captain Jozu, what should we do?" a crewman beside him asked, swallowing hard as he gazed at the pandemonium.
Jozu grit his teeth.
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