There can't be a Harvest Moon in the RimWorld.

The pirates, emboldened by the unknown drug, possessed immense strength, but their shooting accuracy was hampered by their trembling, excited hands. The best way to defeat these skinny, wiry pirates was to close in and charge, disrupting their formation and cutting them off in an annihilation.

Unfortunately, the attackers are now in control.

Their column included a camel caravan, loaded with a large quantity of arrows, which was continuously replenishing supplies. Relying on their armor's almost absurdly powerful defense, they could completely ignore stray bullets and, under heavy fire, mow down the few pirates who managed to sneak into their position.

"Boss, there's something wrong with the armor these people are wearing!"

A pirate henchman popped out from behind cover to fire, but was forced back by the ensuing hail of arrows. A crossbow bolt flew close to his head and struck the earthen wall behind him, startling him so much that he raised his firing angle and fired all his arrows into the sky.

The bearded pirate behind him spat and cursed, "Damn it, their armor is so thin, how did it stop the bullets? Is it all made of Kevlar fiber?!"

The pirate henchman said, "How could that be... If we had Kevlar armor in this godforsaken place, we wouldn't be able to survive here anymore..."

The pirate leader also said in bewilderment, "We have absolutely no idea what they're up to! What's so great about this godforsaken place? They're robbing pirates... Are we the robbers, or are they the robbers?!"

The lowly henchmen, watching the Reverse Lightning forces gradually approaching in the distance, felt extremely confused...

The pirates never had a sense of responsibility to defend their territory. Faced with such a relentless attack, they all wanted to avoid the direct confrontation and advance by detour—in short, they wanted to run away.

It wasn't that they were frightened by these mysterious troops.

According to their observation, the attackers' exposed armor was confirmed to be a lightweight breastplate, along with iron gauntlets and greaves, and a light steel helmet.

These safeguards do not mean they are without flaws.

Despite the relentless barrage of fire, bullets would always manage to slip into the enemy's unprotected blind spots, inflicting damage. However, unless the wounds were fatal, someone would step forward to treat the injuries with strange herbs before continuing the fight.

Occasionally, some unlucky souls would be hit in the face or other vital areas and die instantly. This proved that what stood before them was not an invincible demon.

They simply felt that such a head-on battle was not worthwhile.

Suddenly, a pirate henchman dressed in red ran out from the winding alleys of Sabre Bay, shouting, "The boss is issuing new equipment! Everyone hurry up and get yours!"

The pirate henchmen and their leader exchanged a glance and quickly committed the shameful act of abandoning their position, disappearing deep into their territory.

…………

"Eaton, our arrow stockpile is running low. Shouldn't we switch to our ammunition stockpile?"

The fat man, wearing an oddly sized suit of armor, circled into the formation and spoke to Eaton, who was dressed exactly like a common soldier.

Eaton raised the crossbow, skillfully pulled back the bowstring, cocked it, nocked the arrow, and fired into the distance, completing these steps with effortless grace before turning to ask the fat man.

How much is left?

The fat man lowered his head to protect his torso. After all, the soldiers were wearing armor several sizes too big, which could only cover a few parts of his body, leaving much of his fat mischievously exposed.

"This speed will be exhausted in another half hour. You told us to hide our guns and not use them, but it will be too late if we don't use them now!"

Eaton frowned and surveyed the current situation.

The Reverse Lightning Legion has now formed a neat formation, steadily outputting firepower, advancing one kilometer forward, and keeping the pirates firmly within firing range. It can be said that they have made the most of both the timing and the terrain.

With most of their main force scattered and the pirates unaware of the magical armor that made them impervious to swords and spears, the ratio of casualties on both sides was almost one to ten, and the enemy was clearly showing signs of fleeing.

“No…” Eaton pondered, “Our goal isn’t just to defeat these people. If defeating them solved everything, they would have disbanded long ago. Look over there, our objective is to clear and occupy the harbor area in order to seize that spaceship…”

The fat man looked at the spaceship in the distance, a troubled expression on his face. "But... what if we run out of ammunition and still can't get close to the spaceship? If we don't leave behind any military equipment for retreat, we'll be stuck in a dead end!"

Eaton roared, "We had no way out! Don't you understand? If we don't win this battle, then we'll only be abandoned by Lord Seven! Would you rather live as a refugee in anonymity, or be captured and skinned alive by the loader's leader?"

"I just don't want to die in vain!"

The fat man, his face flushed, glared angrily, but couldn't utter a single word.

At this moment, the bald man stepped out of the group and stopped their conflict, speaking in a sorrowful tone.

"The sixth one is dead... An arrow pierced through the eye socket and into the skull, turning the brain into a complete mess... Eaton, the closer we get to the ship, the more the enemy is tightening their defenses. I suspect this is..."

Eaton opened his mouth, seemed to sigh silently, and said, "It's a trap, I know. But our strategic objectives are gradually being exposed, and all the schemes they've set up are plausible, just like when we ambushed them before... That's not what I'm worried about, but rather the problems that haven't been discovered yet..."

The atmosphere suddenly turned somber. Eton saw that the sun had already passed the halfway point in the sky and was beginning its descent. So, through his squad leader, he once again issued an order, and the entire army regrouped and headed towards the port, braving the enemy fire.

But the thing I feared most still happened.

As they crossed a cordon at the entrance of Sabre Bay, two figures suddenly appeared from the rooftops, yelling and throwing several oval-shaped objects at the attackers.

After flashing red light several times, the thing exploded into countless pieces, stirring up a wave of smoke and heat in the crowd, instantly engulfing the narrow alleyway!

Chapter 458 The Price of Victory

"Pretty!"

The two pirates on the roof couldn't help but high-five each other, then quickly scrambled back down and began fleeing towards the nearby houses to avoid being noticed. Three identical grenades were still hanging from their waists.

The pirate henchmen ran nimbly, excitedly asking their leader, "Boss, why didn't they bring out all this good stuff sooner?"

Blackbeard's pirate captain scoffed, "Isn't it all for the sake of making a name for themselves! They got these grenades from the pirate crew to blow up the walls of the Loader's Territory. Now they're wasting them here. I bet the captains are so upset they'll lose sleep over it!"

The pirate henchman leaped from one rooftop to the rooftop of another, completing a flanking maneuver. Once hidden, he said, "Such a troublesome enemy should have been brought out long ago. I'm definitely going to steal a piece of armor from that corpse later! Iron armor that can stop bullets at close range—this is the first time I've ever seen anything like it!"

The leader kicked the other man, saying, "This kind of good stuff is not for you! Even if you manage to snatch it, you have to give it to me first!"

"I might as well sell it to the merchants who just came! They're still in their territory, and they look very wealthy!"

"It's a 30/70 split, you get 30% and I get 70%, or I'll push you off the roof!"

The two were eagerly preparing to divide the spoils, but it wasn't until the smoke cleared that they saw the real results of their battle.

The once neat and orderly triangular formation was now empty in the middle, and many people were lying crookedly around it, struggling to stand up and helping their comrades.

The people at the epicenter of the explosion, though their armor remained intact, suffered severe injuries from shrapnel to their unprotected body parts. The intense shockwave at close range also completely destroyed their internal organs. They lay lifeless in a pool of blood that was gradually spreading.

"This armor... I must get my hands on it!"

The pirate leader's greedy gaze never left the armor on the corpse. He reached for the grenade at his waist, ready to throw another one.

But a sudden burst of gunfire alerted him. He instinctively covered his head and rolled over, unintentionally saving his life once again.

Several attackers emerged from the opposite side and quickly drew their guns, firing at the attackers' location. They used gunpowder weapons they had never used before, suppressing the grenadiers and preventing them from raising their heads, thus stopping the attack. Throwing grenades requires very close proximity, which ironically became their disadvantage.

In another direction, a few pirates tried to throw grenades while the iron was hot, but they were hit by a volley of bullets, fell off the roof, and the bombs they had pulled the pins from rolled to the ground.

The other one was startled by the commotion and carelessly threw the grenade away, hiding somewhere.

These two actions led to the explosion within the building complex. The sounds of houses being destroyed and buildings collapsing rang out continuously, collapsing an entire area like dominoes before the chain reaction gradually came to a halt.

In the chaos, the pirates tried to get closer several more times, but were all accurately sniped by the enemy, disrupting their route and returning empty-handed.

But just then, the other half of the pirates' planned attack began. Numerous cunning pirates, armed with their newly acquired weapons, emerged continuously from within Sabre Bay, launching a surprise counterattack...

…………

At the moment of the explosion, the soldiers near the grenade were still unaware of what was happening. The next moment, they were shocked by the huge shock wave, and many of them were gripped by fear.

In their memories, the loader's bombardment, akin to apocalyptic judgment, was an inescapable nightmare for these slaves. Although the power of the explosions was less than before, the devastation was far more intense, instantly stirring up the trauma in their minds.

Eaton immediately grabbed the fat man and the bald man and threw them to the ground, covering their heads with their hands and curling their bodies into a ball to avoid being injured by shrapnel.

After the explosion, he immediately got up from the ground, drew his pistol, and began to counterattack the pirate grenadiers. He also organized rescue and reorganization efforts, barely managing to survive the attack.

He turned around, grabbed the fat man from the ground, and roared in his ear, "Go back and distribute the bullets! The real attack is coming! Unless you want to die, don't hoard a single ammunition!"

Sure enough, after the grenade exploded, the pirates seemed to hear the bugle call to charge, and they poured out of their territory in droves to launch another attack.

With morale plummeting, Eaton ordered his remaining eight squads to enter the collapsed buildings, take cover, and launch a counterattack.

From then on, the two sides shifted from an offensive and defensive posture to a stalemate in the streets and alleys, and Eaton was unable to further expand its gains.

"Concentrate your firepower, attack the pirates in the middle, and clear the way forward!"

Eaton shouted orders for his men to charge forward, but the pirates skillfully concealed themselves among the ruins, making their attacks a waste of ammunition and yielding little progress.

Even more troublesome was that the weaknesses of the Reverse Lightning Legion's soldiers gradually became apparent. Their hastily learned, monotonous tactics were not well adapted to the flexible needs of urban warfare, and they were often lured into revealing their positions by enemy fire, thus becoming the target of concentrated fire.

If it weren't for their amazing equipment, they would probably have died dozens of times over.

On the other hand, the physical fitness developed using the Saitama training method is not truly extraordinary. They had been forced to travel overnight carrying over ten kilograms of equipment and then engaged in combat for a total of seven hours, and their physical strength was gradually failing.

The lack of emotional support did not reduce the negative effects of physical exhaustion, so their attacks became slow, and they could only move closer together in small teams, holding their ground and remaining vigilant.

"Where are the three squads we sent out? Why haven't they returned yet?"

The bald man also picked up a weapon and began to roam, acting as a supervisor and encouraging the soldiers to continue fighting. After completing a lap, he finally returned to the center of the urban warfare position and questioned Eaton.

Eaton's face was ashen; the current situation practically declared his operation a failure. His army had failed to force the enemy to scatter, and once the enemy rallied, his own predicament would be even worse.

Eaton looked at the bald man and said in a low voice, "Those squads? They're long gone..."

The bald man exclaimed in shock, "What! When did this happen?! Why didn't you tell me?"

Eaton gritted his teeth and said, "Do you really think I'm sending them to scout? The battlefield is so obvious, why would they need scouts!"

He slammed his fist against the wall and said heavily, "What I actually told them was to go back and report to the master that he needs to come here as soon as possible!"

"I guessed from the fact that the pirates' main force hadn't returned that the loader's leader hadn't stood by as expected. The three squads had been gone for hours, but none of them had come back, which meant they were probably all dead... The loader's leader really had colluded with the pirates!"

The bald man exclaimed, "Impossible! How could they be happy to see the pirates win?!"

Eaton shook his head: "They don't need to provide help, just hold off Lord Seven and stop our information transmission... I forgot the biggest flaw in this plan, which is the timeliness of information! If they hold off Lord Seven for more than a day, we will all perish here!"

"What good will this do him? If the magistrate comes tomorrow, victory will still be ours!"

Eaton's eyes held a complex mix of emotions. Looking at the shocked bald man, he finally spoke, "This is why I didn't want to tell you all... that mad lord had no intention of joining the pirates."

"He just wanted to use some petty tricks to kill us traitors here!"

"What he wants isn't victory, it's our lives..."

Chapter 459 Fault Zone

"He's doing all this just to kill us?"

After hearing all this, the bald man lowered his voice and repeated the same sentence, as if asking a question or talking to himself.

Eaton was already checking the bullets in his body, and said without any attempt to hide it, "You should know about the mad lord's vengeful nature, right? If he can eliminate us traitors without bloodshed, and at the same time thwart Lord Seven's plans, why wouldn't he be happy to do it? What's more, he can also take care of the pirates' scattered troops in the wasteland!"

The bald man said, "Then is there still hope for us?"

Eaton glanced at him and noticed his unusually calm expression, so he couldn't help but ask, "You don't seem that scared?"

The bald man smiled bitterly and said, "How could I not be afraid? I just don't want to die such a pathetic death."

Eaton couldn't help but laugh: "What a coincidence, that's what I was thinking too. Whether we survive or not, I don't intend to just sit here and wait to die. If you don't want to die either, then let's fight to the death together..."