章 23: Operation Market Garden
The next day, Shen Yi truly became a resident of the Slums District.
After selling Dracula's blood, Shen Yi's remaining BP was 2839 points. He purchased various things necessary for living. That included sleeping bags, food, etc…. After that, Shen Yi had 2500 BP left.
Shen Yi found that the Wolf Fang's ring was useless to him now, so he readily sold it to Hong Lang, earning a small sum of 300 BP.
After spending 1800 BP to add 5 points on to Vitality and 13 points to MP, his Main Attributes became: Strength: 4, Agility: 7, Vitality: 20, MP: 30, Will: 10. He basically only used long-range attacks as his main fighting method. This was also the newcomer's most practical choice after they entered the Bloody City. Before their abilities were greatly improved, they usually relied on guns to complete their missions, mainly adding attribute points to their Vitality.
In the blink of an eye, he only had 1000 BP left.
During the next few days, Shen Yi concentrated on training. As the Slums District had a low-level Training Ground, every day he went there to practice his Firearms Forte and skills. The low-level Training Ground was free of charge, and could withstand any attack from 80 damage and below.
The benefits of the infinite-bullets magazine was shown here. Not only was it useful in combat, but it also played an important role in training.
In addition to training his Firearms Forte, Shen Yi kept using Appraisal and the Despicable Healing Arts.
After nearly 30 days of practice and use, Shen Yi's marksmanship proficiency was greatly increased, but it still had some distance from going to the Advanced-level Firearms Forte. As for his Appraisal and Despicable Healing Arts, they had risen a level.
After the Despicable Healing Arts leveled up, the system prompted: "Despicable Healing Arts (level 2): Cost: 2MP. Has a high effect when used to treat foreign and bleeding injuries, recovers 40 HP. Has medium effect against penetration, tearing, shock, or injuries inflicted by skills, recovers 24 HP. Has low effect against body failure (like broken arm) injuries, poison injuries, etc…, recovers 4 HP. Has no effect against unique effect damages. Cooldown: 60 seconds."
As for Appraisal, leveling up to level 2 only raised the skill's Priority from the original 12 points to 14 points.
Priority was the parameter which decided the skill's activation/cancellation when two skills that had opposite effects collided. In this case, the skill with the higher Priority would take effect, while the skill with the lesser Priority would be canceled.
The Despicable Healing Arts had no Priority, while Appraisal's Priority was relatively low. Compared to them, the Vampire Touch's life-steal Priority effect was as high as 30. There was almost no equipments or skills at the same Rank that could resist the special effect of this weapon, anyone could see that the value of this weapon was not low. Unfortunately, in shooting movies, it doen't really play a role.
As for the remaining 1000 BP, Shen Yi saved it until the final day to make specialized preparations for the next Mission World.
Thirty days of tough training passed. The mission memorandum finally came.
Memorandum: "Immediately go to the transfer area, get ready to enter the Mission World.
Mission World: Operation Market Garden.
Preparation time: 1 hour.
Mission Mode: Team Cooperation Mode. Killing adventurers in the same side doesn't cause their property to drop . Damage dealt on attacking members has been reduced by 50%."
Operation Market Garden was an operation during the last years of the Second World War. It was an airborne combat operation, which was also the largest airborne operation in the history of human wars.
Operation Market Garden was suggested by the famous British Marshal, Bernard Law Montgomery.
At this point, the Allies had won a large war in the Normandy, while the German forces began to retreat along the eastern borders of the Netherlands, Belgium and France.
In order to end the war in 1944, Montgomery put forward a bold and risky plan – Operation Market Garden.
According to Montgomery's plan, the British 2nd Army launched a ground attack to Antwerp, while the United States' 101st and 82nd Airborne Division, the British 1st Airborne Division, and the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade, (amounting a total of 35000 airborne troops) would used the "Coup de main" tactic to invade a 63 miles deep into Eindhoven, Nijmegen and Arnhem, to seize a series of important bridges across the Rhine River. That would allow the army to drive straight from the Netherlands to the Germany's hinterland.
The Operation was actually divided into two sub-operations:
Market – The airborne forces, the First Allied Airborne Army, who would seize the bridges.
Garden – The ground forces, consisting of the British XXX Corps.
The war could have been said to begin fairly smooth. On September 17, 1944, Operation Market Garden began. At 14:15, the British 2nd Army's XXX Corps commanded by Lieutenant-General Brian Horrocks, ordered the Irish armored division to start the charge, loaded with strong firepower they quickly moved forward. After half an hour, the 101st Airborne Division had landed in Eindhoven. After some hard fighting, they successfully won the bridge near the south of the Wilhelmina Canal and captured the town.
On September 18, the XXX Corps arrived in Eindhoven, together with the 101st Airborne Division, after an intense battle, went through the bridge near the south of Wilhelmina Canal.
On September 20, the XXX Corps reached Nijmegen, united with the 82nd Airborne Division, had won the Maas River Bridge.
Major-General Roy Urquhart led the 1st British Airborne Division and the Polish 1st Independent Parachute Brigade and landed in the far north from the XXX Corps. But the XXX Corps was marching toward them with sights in their new target – Arnhem. The 1st British Airborne Division had to occupy the road bridges at Arnhem and the rail bridges at Oosterbeek, which also included the famous Arnhem Bridge.
However, the 1st Airborne Division met with the enemy's tenacious resistance. They not only failed to occupy the Arnhem Bridge which was extremely important, but also suffered heavy casualties during the German's frenzied retreat tactics. They ultimately lost the bridge before the XXX Corps arrived.
On September 27-29, the British attacked the south bank of Rhine, but was forced to switch to defense, failing to win the North Bank landing field. Until March of 1945, Rhine was still a barrier between the Allies and German territories, which couldn't be crossed.
Operation Market Garden had failed.
In fairness, the British Airborne Division's performance had been quite good. Due to the slow progress of the ground forces, the time that they had lasted, had already exceeded initial expectations. In this battle, among the 1000 soldiers of the Polish Paratrooper Brigade, there were nearly 700 casualties. The 1st Airborne Division in this "Market" operation, had nearly 7,000 who garnered injuries or were captured, with finally less than 2,000 people that could get out from the German's encirclement. At that time a field commander faced the Arnhem bridge that they could never reach and lamented, "I think we may be going to a bridge too far!"
Arnhem Bridge from then on was called "A Bridge Too Far."
As the ground was narrow, coupled with the German's crazy destruction of the bridge when they retreated, this made the 2nd Infantry Division's speed greatly fall. This was one of the most important reasons for their defeat. Highway 69, from Valkenswaard to Nijmegen, was later called "Hell Highway" by the Americans.
And now, Shen Yi was going to enter the world of Operation Market Garden.
"Wow, returning to days of the wars." Thinking about the battle, Shen Yi couldn't help but whistle.
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