Chaos Against Chaos

The Cultists let out fanatical battle cries and surged into the Players' first line of defense like a tide. In their eyes, victory was already within reach. These new recruits had chaotic command, loose formations—one charge would be enough to crush them completely.

However, they soon realized they had celebrated too early.

When the first batch of Cultists stepped into the trenches, ready to harvest those scattered "Astra Militarum," they were met not with terrified screams, but with gleaming bayonets and screaming lasers.

It was as if they had stepped into a quagmire.

"For the Emperor!" a Player shouted as he leaped out from behind a "corpse," blasting a hole through a Cultist's chest with his Lasgun at close range.

Elsewhere, a Player whose abdomen had been pierced by a bayonet clung desperately to his enemy before he fell, pulling the grenade at his waist. Amid a thunderous explosion, the two of them, along with several nearby Cultists, were reduced to mangled flesh. Yet seconds later, that Player respawned at the same spot completely unharmed, picked up a fresh Lasgun, and threw himself back into battle.

The battle became utterly bizarre.

The Astra Militarum, who should have lost all organization and scattered in panic after their commander was incapacitated, instead launched attack after attack with fearless fanaticism. The Cultist army, which should have overwhelmed this position like a tidal wave, was tightly entangled and torn apart by countless small but stubborn forces.

The logic of the battlefield had been completely reversed.

Sometimes, after paying a terrible price, a group of Cultists would finally charge into the second trench. Just as they prepared to catch their breath, they would discover in horror that more than a dozen people had suddenly popped out of the supposedly cleared first trench behind them, waving weapons as they cut off their retreat and surrounded them.

Sometimes, five or six Players would gather together in an attempt to form a fireteam, only to mess up their positioning and block one another's lines of sight, allowing a small group of Cultists to scatter them with a charge. Yet once those Players were dispersed and became individuals fighting on their own, their combat effectiveness increased exponentially.

Big Eagle Cop, the Squad Leader of Seventh Squad, was like an out-of-control killing machine. Once he was separated from the others, his ferocity was instead unleashed. His massive body rampaged through the Cultist ranks, and every swing of the crude club in his hand sent bloody, mangled limbs flying. By himself, he held back an assault from one direction. Only after killing dozens of Cultists was he brought down under concentrated fire, but before long, he would roar back from death and continue his slaughter.

Such absurd scenes played out across the entire battlefield.

These "Astra Militarum" seemed to have no understanding at all of coordinated combat or positional tactics. To them, individual combat was what they understood best and excelled at most, while fighting as a group was something utterly unfamiliar.

Standing on high ground, Chaos Sorcerer Elias Holmes had long since lost his smile, replaced by an increasingly gloomy expression.

He could not understand it.

He could not understand this army's tactics at all. They had no discipline, no coordination, not even basic fear. They fought like a pack of madmen, in ways that defied all common sense. Casualties seemed meaningless to them, and it did not matter if their lines were breached. They always emerged from the most unexpected places, using the crudest methods to stir the battle line back into a complete mess.

This small Astra Militarum force was like a bronze bead thrown into a set of gears. It could not be smashed, crushed, or swallowed, yet it made the entire war machine creak painfully as it ground to an ever more difficult halt.

"Trash! You're all trash!" Elias flew into a rage as he watched his troops be steadily worn down without ever making decisive progress. He gathered his psychic power again, and a missile howled into the densest crowd, blasting several Players away. But even more Players immediately filled the gaps as if nothing had happened.

"My master... Lord Elias..." A scar-faced Cultist Warlord gathered his courage and approached him. "Our warriors have suffered grievous losses. Their formation... it's very strange. The brothers have been split apart. Charging like this will only increase our casualties! We should regroup and attack from the flank—"

"Shut up!" Elias whirled around, his eyes bloodshot with rage as purple psychic arcs danced over his fingertips. "Are you telling me how to do things? Are you saying that I, the great Elias Holmes, can't even defeat a bunch of new recruits?"

The Warlord shuddered all over and immediately fell to his knees. "No, I would never dare! It's only that—"

"No 'only that'!" Elias kicked him to the ground. "I don't want tactics! I don't want schemes! I only want victory! I want to stomp in the heads of every one of those bugs before me! My honor, my master's glory, cannot be sullied by this pile of trash!"

He had completely lost his head.

For an upstart like Elias, who had suddenly gained power through the blessings of the Warp, face mattered more than anything. Admitting that his tactics had failed was harder for him than dying.

Pointing at the chaotic battlefield below, he roared an unquestionable order at all his subordinates: "Pass on my command! Everyone, charge! Charge at any cost! Those who retreat, die! Those who hesitate, die! Use your flesh and blood to fill that damned trench! Grind them into dust!"

The order was passed down, and the rear ranks of the Cultists rang with the sounds of Warlords' whips and furious curses. Those followers who had already begun to shrink back could only let out desperate howls under threat of death and surge toward the Players' position once more, even more frenzied and even more disordered than before.

The earlier charges had at least possessed basic formations and waves. Now, it had completely devolved into a reckless, disorderly tactic of feeding in troops. The front and rear ranks crushed together, people shoving and trampling one another just to escape the Warlords' blades behind them, blindly rushing toward the meat grinder ahead known as the "Astra Militarum position."

And this was clearly exactly what the Players wanted.

"Brothers, they're completely falling apart! They don't even have a formation anymore!" a Player shouted excitedly. "Don't hold back—just go for it! Our chance to farm merit is here!"

"Hahaha, this BOSS has lost it! He's just feeding us kills now!"

Ruan Wenbo had been worrying over his terrible command, but when he saw the scene before him, inspiration suddenly struck. He no longer tried to restrain the Players' actions. Instead, he shouted, "All Squad Leaders, attention! Abandon the fixed defense line! Everyone attack freely! Make them even more chaotic!"

This order completely unleashed the Players' instincts.

The entire battlefield became a vast, chaotic playground. The Players no longer stubbornly defended the trenches. They scattered in groups of two and three, using ruins, corners, and every piece of terrain they could exploit to launch the deadliest harassment against that disorderly tide.

One Player had barely poked his head out from behind cover before he precisely picked off a Cultist and immediately ducked back down. Before the dead Cultist's companions could react, another grenade came flying from a building on the flank, blasting them off their feet.

Melee maniacs like Big Eagle Cop were even more in their element. No longer holding a single position, he prowled the battlefield. Wherever the Cultists were densest, he charged straight in like a tiger crashing into a flock of sheep, and every appearance set off a bloody storm.

The Cultists were completely bewildered. They no longer faced a single defensive line, but enemies everywhere. They did not know which direction the next attack would come from, nor whether the supposedly safe ground beside them would suddenly receive a grenade the next second.

Chaos had met chaos. But the Players' chaos was an efficient chaos of slaughter, supported by immortal bodies and individual heroism. The Cultists' chaos, meanwhile, was a chaos of self-destruction born from shattered morale and failed command.

From the platform, Elias watched helplessly as his troops, like chunks of meat thrown into a grinder, were slowly swallowed and crushed apart. His urging roars became increasingly hysterical, while his flushed face gradually turned livid.