The cultists let out fanatical battle cries, surging like a tide into the players' first line of defense. In their eyes, victory was already within reach. These new recruits commanded chaotically, with loose formations, and a single charge would be enough to utterly crush them.
However, they soon discovered that they had rejoiced too soon.
When the first wave of cultists stepped into the trenches, ready to harvest the scattered "Astra Militarum," they were met not with screams of fear, but with glinting bayonets and whistling laser fire.
It was as if they had stepped into a quagmire.
"For the Emperor!" a player shouted, leaping out from behind a "corpse," his lasgun blasting a hole through a cultist's chest at close range.
On the other side, a player whose abdomen had been pierced by a bayonet, before falling, held his enemy in a death grip and pulled the pin on a grenade at his waist. Amidst a deafening explosion, both of them, along with several surrounding cultists, were torn to shreds. A few seconds later, that player respawned perfectly intact in the same spot, picked up a new lasgun, and rejoined the battle.
The battle became incredibly bizarre.
The Astra Militarum, who should have lost organization and scattered after their commander was incapacitated, were launching attack after attack with a fearless fanaticism. The cultist army, which should have extinguished this position like a tidal wave, was instead entangled and torn to shreds by countless tenacious small forces.
The logic of the battlefield was completely inverted.
Sometimes, a squad of cultists paid a heavy price to finally reach the second trench, only to be horrified to find that a dozen or so people had suddenly sprung out of the first trench behind them, which should have been cleared, waving weapons, cutting off their retreat, and encircling them.
Sometimes, five or six players gathered together to form a fire team, but due to poor positioning and blocking each other's line of sight, they were instead scattered by a small group of cultists. But once these players were broken up and became individual operators, their combat power increased exponentially.
Cain, the leader of the Seventh Squad, was like an out-of-control killing machine. After being scattered, his ferocity was unleashed. His huge body charged through the cultist crowd, and each swing of his makeshift club brought with it a bloody mess of severed limbs. He alone single-handedly held off an assault from one direction, only to be focused down after killing dozens of cultists. But before long, he would roar back from death, continuing his slaughter.
Such bizarre scenes were playing out across the entire battlefield.
These "Astra Militarum" seemed to have no understanding of coordinated combat or positional tactics. For them, individual combat was what they were most proficient and skilled at, while group combat was something extremely unfamiliar to them.
Standing high above, Chaos Sorcerer Elias Holmes's smile had long vanished, replaced by an increasingly grim expression.
He couldn't understand it.
He completely couldn't understand the tactics of this unit. They had no discipline, no cooperation, and not even basic fear. They were like a group of madmen, fighting in a completely illogical way.
Casualties seemed meaningless to them, and breakthroughs in the front line didn't matter; they always managed to pop up from the most unexpected places, using the most barbaric methods to stir the front line back into a chaotic mess.
This small force of Astra Militarum was like a brass bean thrown into gears—unbreakable, uncrushable, indigestible—yet it made the entire war machine emit a teeth-grinding "grinding" sound, making its operation increasingly difficult.
"Useless! A bunch of useless people!" Elias watched his troops being constantly depleted without ever making decisive progress, fuming with rage. He once again condensed his psychic power, and a missile whistled down into the densest part of the crowd, blowing up several players, but more players immediately filled the gaps, as if nothing had happened.
"My master... Lord Elias..." A cultist warlord with a scar on his face gathered his courage and approached him, "Our warriors are suffering heavy losses, their formation... is very strange, the brothers are separated, charging like this will only increase casualties! We should regroup and attack from the flank..."
"Shut up!" Elias spun around abruptly, his eyes bloodshot with fury, purple psychic lightning arcing at his fingertips. "Are you telling me what to do? Are you saying that I, the great Elias Holmes, can't even defeat a bunch of new recruits?"
The warlord trembled with fear and immediately prostrated himself: "No, this subordinate wouldn't dare! It's just..."
"No 'just'!" Elias kicked him over, "I don't want tactics! I don't want schemes! I only want victory! I only want to stomp on the heads of these bugs in front of me one by one! My face, the glory of my Lord, must not be defiled by this trash!"
He had completely lost his temper.
For a parvenu like Elias, who had suddenly gained power through warp blessings, face was more important than anything else. Admitting his tactical failure was more unbearable than death.
He pointed at the chaotic battlefield below, letting out an unquestionable roar to all his subordinates: "Pass on my order! Everyone, charge! Charge at all costs! Retreaters, die! Hesitators, die! Use your flesh and blood to fill that damned trench! Grind them into dust!"
The order was relayed, and the sounds of whips and curses from the Warlords echoed from the rear of the cultist ranks. Under the threat of death, the already somewhat timid believers could only let out desperate roars again, surging towards the players' position even more frantically and chaotically.
The previous charges at least had basic formations and waves, but now, it had completely devolved into a disorganized, desperate "attrition tactic." The front and rear ranks were squeezed together, people pushing and trampling each other, only to escape the slaughter of the Warlords behind them, blindly rushing towards that meat grinder called the "Astra Militarum position."
And this, apparently, was exactly what the players wanted.
"Guys, they're completely messed up! Their formation is gone!" a player shouted excitedly, "Don't chicken out, just go for it! The chance to rack up merits is here!"
"Haha, this man has lost his head, he's just handing out kills!"
Robert was originally still bothered by his terrible command, but seeing this scene, he suddenly had an epiphany and understood something. He no longer tried to restrain the players' actions, but instead shouted loudly: "All squad leaders, attention! Abandon fixed defenses! All personnel, free attack! Stir them up even more!"
This order completely unleashed the players' true nature.
The entire battlefield became a huge, chaotic playground. Players no longer rigidly defended the trenches; they scattered in twos and threes, using ruins, corners, and every available piece of terrain to launch the most deadly harassment against the disordered tide.
A player had just poked his head out from behind cover, accurately picking off a cultist, and immediately ducked back; before the cultist's companions could react, another grenade flew in from a building on the flank, blowing them all over.
Melee fanatics like Cain were even more in their element. He no longer held a fixed position but roamed the battlefield, charging wherever the cultists were densest, like a tiger entering a flock of sheep, each appearance stirring up a bloody storm.
The cultists were completely bewildered. They were no longer facing a single defensive line, but enemies everywhere. They didn't know which direction an attack would come from, nor did they know if a grenade would suddenly fall into their safe zone the next second.
Chaos met chaos, but the players' chaos was an efficient, murderous chaos supported by immortality and individual heroism. The cultists' chaos, however, was a self-destructive chaos born of collapsing morale and incapacitated command.
Standing on the high platform, Elias watched as his troops, like chunks of meat thrown into a grinder, were devoured and pulverized bit by bit. His urging shouts became increasingly hysterical, and his face turned from flushed to ashen.