We Are the Main Force

Commissar Walter carefully toured the entirety of Sector 7 Position, from the temporary shelters at the front lines to the support area in the rear. His brow had never relaxed.

Everything here was far removed from what he imagined an elite force should be.

The fortifications were makeshift, the firing positions haphazard, and the soldiers undisciplined. He even saw several soldiers gathered together, using empty shell casings as gambling chips with great enthusiasm. Others loudly bragged about how they had just blown seven or eight enemies apart with a single grenade, their words carrying no reverence whatsoever for war.

Other than their high spirits—perhaps even excessive optimism—there was nothing commendable about this company.

Commissar Walter was baffled and confused.

He simply could not understand how a company whose tactical competence and military discipline, aside from morale, were comparable to armed workers from the Underhive had managed to utterly defeat those fearless Cultists in a head-on positional battle.

From the soldiers' chatter, it seemed they had even killed the Chaos Sorcerer commanding those thousands of Cultists. That was even more unbelievable. A psyker of that caliber would have required a terrible price to take down even if he personally led the charge.

"After that positional battle, the casualties must have been severe, right?" Puzzled, he casually asked Ruan Wenbo, who had been following beside him.

"Uh..."

That question genuinely stunned Ruan Wenbo. Were the casualties severe? They had been absurdly severe. Aside from him, the Company Commander, who had barely participated in the battle because he hid in the rear, every single player below him had basically died several times. The casualty rate was several hundred percent.

But could he say that? Tell an NPC Commissar that their company of fewer than a hundred people had suffered several hundred deaths in a single battle? Commissar Walter was not an idiot.

So Ruan Wenbo could only answer vaguely, "Yes, Commissar. Quite a few comrades... made glorious sacrifices."

Fortunately, Commissar Walter had only asked in passing and had no intention of pursuing the matter. What concerned him more was a practical issue. "How serious were your equipment losses?"

At that, Ruan Wenbo's eyes instantly lit up. This was right in his field of expertise! He hurriedly put on a grief-stricken expression and said, "Yes, Commissar! The losses were extremely severe! Our weapons and equipment were completely depleted in the battle just now. We urgently need resupply! We need at least two hundred Lasguns, two hundred sets of body armor, six hundred frag grenades, and—"

"Stop, stop, stop." Walter quickly raised a hand to cut him off, so exasperated by his outrageous demands that he laughed. "Are you making wishes to the Emperor? You're getting neither Lasguns nor body armor—not one of either. At most, I can divert some grenades from other units' allocations. Two hundred, no more."

"So few?" Ruan Wenbo's face immediately fell, disappointment written all over it.

"Heh." Walter gave a dry laugh. From some unknown pocket of his greatcoat, he pulled out an old, worn paper map folded many times over and spread it out before him. "Can you understand what this is?"

Ruan Wenbo leaned closer for a look. In his vision, the system panel's automatic annotation function immediately translated the archaic Gothic text and markings on the map into words he could understand. It was a detailed map of the lower industrial district of this hive city.

"I can understand most of it."

"Come on," Walter said. "Point out where we are."

Ruan Wenbo examined it carefully and soon found the marker for Sector 7 Waste Processing amid the maze of pipelines and building clusters. He pointed at it. "Here?"

"Not bad. You found it quickly." Walter praised him, then used his weathered finger to draw a pitifully small circle centered on their location. "This is the area we actually control right now."

Ruan Wenbo looked at the circle. If the entire map were a basketball court, the circle Walter had just drawn would barely be the size of a manhole cover. Saying it covered one-thousandth of the map would have been flattering it.

He swallowed and asked tentatively, "...Have we been separated from the main force?"

Walter put away the map, expressionlessly patted Ruan Wenbo on the shoulder, and spoke words that plunged him into an icy abyss.

"We are the main force."

Seeing Ruan Wenbo frozen in place, Walter stuffed the map back into his pocket. His tone grew heavy. "Now do you understand why I can only give you two hundred frag grenades, and why we had you strip weapons from corpses in the first place? The foundries producing military equipment were taken long ago. All we have left are these worthless corners that other factions see no profit in, yet are easy to defend and hard to attack. That is also why only Cultists are attacking us right now. Killing the Emperor's followers has symbolic value to them."

He paused and glanced at the players, who were still making a racket in the distance.

"Otherwise, if even a small squad of sensible Genestealers came, we might be finished."

"In the end, our current stand is nothing more than a slow death." Walter's gaze turned toward the hive city's upper levels and their eternally sunless dome, his voice thick with exhaustion. "There will be no supplies, and there will be no reinforcements. Consumables like artillery shells and grenades diminish with every use. All we can do is inflict greater casualties on the Enemy of the Emperor with all our strength before we are swallowed up."

Walter continued, "And that previous charge, though it looked like a resounding victory, did not actually deal much of a blow to the Cultists' living strength. Those heretics never lack expendable fodder... In the end, they will simply wear us down until we die."

Ruan Wenbo fell silent at those words. He realized that the victory he and the players saw was, in the Commissar's eyes, merely a delay to their defeat.

After remaining silent for a while, Ruan Wenbo suddenly asked, "Commissar, can I look at that map again?"

Walter promptly took it out and handed it to Ruan Wenbo. "It's yours."

Ruan Wenbo spread the map on the ground and studied it carefully. Then he pointed to a place marked [No. 9 Chemical Refinery] and said, "This place... isn't far from us, right? Even if we take it, the terrain wouldn't leave it isolated and impossible to support."

Walter looked at where he was pointing in surprise. "You want to attack this? The Cultists must have it heavily guarded. I cannot commit all our forces either, or we would be unable to hold the factory even if we took it. We must hold our existing position. At most, we could send one company—this would simply waste manpower."

Ruan Wenbo raised his head and looked at the Commissar. "But if we don't take a chance, we'll only die slowly anyway, won't we?"