The enormous recoil traveled down the rifle stock, splitting Peter's tiger's mouth and instantly numbing his entire right arm with agony. Blood even seeped from the web between his thumb and forefinger. Yet he did not retreat in the slightest. Gritting his teeth, he borrowed the rebounding force, let out a roar, twisted fiercely at the waist, and thrust his rifle again like a venomous snake darting out its tongue!
Harald burst into nearly crazed laughter, his voice piercing through the slaughtering cries of the battlefield. "Hahaha! What a thrill! What a thrill! To think that I, Harald, would end up fighting a common soldier! Come on! Let me see just how much Carnford's soldiers are worth!"
The two clashed in an instant, blade-light and spear-shadow weaving madly through the mud!
Peter was fighting purely on a surge of bloody courage and an obsession with avenging his comrades. Though his bayonet techniques had undergone rigorous drilling in camp, every move precise and disciplined, they still appeared immature and clumsy before a battle-hardened expert like Harald, one who had clawed his way out of mountains of corpses and seas of blood.
Harald's blade work was vicious, treacherous, and seasoned. Every slash carried the deadly instincts forged through years of life-and-death combat. He never followed any established pattern. One moment, his curved blade slid along Peter's rifle shaft like a venomous snake, aiming for his throat; the next, using the twist of his boots in the mud, he swept upward at Peter's completely unguarded abdomen.
"Pfft!"
Peter's left arm failed to evade in time, and the curved blade carved a gash so deep that bone showed beneath it. Blood instantly stained his dark-blue uniform red. The searing pain jolted his nerves, but the hatred in his eyes only grew fiercer.
He simply