Reports of Victory, Retreating Front Lines

As the last tongue of flame licked the end of the tunnel, the viscous Promethium fuel finally stopped spraying.

The entire side passage had been rendered unrecognizable. Its walls were charred black, countless carbonized mushroom remains clinging to them like black reliefs. The air was thick with the pungent stench of scorched protein, fungi, and plastic. The Cultists who had tried to set an ambush had not even left behind intact corpses.

The Player holding the Promethium flamethrower slowly lowered his weapon. Waves of heat still rolled from its nozzle. He let out a long, deeply satisfied breath, then shouted with all his might at the thoroughly purified passage:

"Awesome!"

His shout echoed through the tunnel, brimming with exhilaration. He turned around, ready to receive his teammates' admiring looks, only to discover something bizarre—every Player, including JK, had retreated more than ten meters away and was staring at him with complicated expressions.

His heart lurched.

Everyone knew that in any work of fiction, a scene like this meant extreme danger. Someone was slaughtering enemies from the front, yet failed to notice a deadly foe silently creeping up behind them.

He hurriedly spent several seconds laboriously turning his bulky body. The joints of his full-body armor creaked in protest. Yet after clumsily turning a full circle, he could not see a single living hostile target—only his teammates.

The flamer trooper fell into deep confusion. Through his heavy helmet, he shouted, "What's going on? Why'd you all run so far away?"

The Players answered in unison, "It's fucking too hot!"

As it turned out, during the brief few dozen seconds in which the flamer trooper had held down the trigger and kept spraying, the temperature around him had shot straight up to nearly seventy degrees Celsius—an environment no normal human could survive in. As for the side passage repeatedly scorched directly by that fire dragon... unidentified molten substances had begun dripping from the walls and floor, while the air itself warped from the heat.

One Player said with lingering fear, "My god, how long will it take for the temperature to come down..."

Another immediately poured cold water on that thought. "In such a cramped, enclosed environment, you want it to cool down naturally? Wait another ten thousand years."

"We'll probably have to grit our teeth and go through," a more experienced-looking Player analyzed. "Luckily, only the side passage took a direct hit. The main passage should be no more than eighty degrees. We don't have to worry about another ambush from the side passage. If we move fast and sprint through in one go, we probably won't get cooked to death halfway through."

At that moment, JK stepped forward a few paces and endured the heat as he said to the flamer trooper, "Brother, let our Company Commander wear your heatproof suit. We can't let him get burned."

"No problem!" the flamer trooper agreed without hesitation.

JK nodded, then asked, "By the way, how much merit did you get from burning all those mushrooms and Cultists?"

The flamer trooper immediately pulled up his system panel and checked. Then he painfully checked the merit value equivalent of the Promethium fuel he had just consumed. After calculating for a moment, he answered, "Hmm... it about broke even with what I used. You could barely call it a small profit."

The result surprised everyone, but JK seemed to have expected it. He concluded, "It looks like this flamer setup can theoretically be operated by one person, but if you want to actually make a profit, you still need the collective merit reward the system gives after completing missions. In other words, if you want to make money, you still have to act as a group and cooperate with each other."

One Player shrugged and added, "So far, this game hasn't had any way for individuals to get rich overnight. The more powerful a weapon is, the more terrifying its maintenance and ammunition costs become. This flamethrower is cool as hell, but it burns money just as hard."

Meanwhile, at the other end of this long Underhive passage, the Cultist commander responsible for guarding the Mid-hive elevator was nearly falling into despair.

He sat in the elevator's control room. On the tactical map before him, the red line representing his own defensive front was collapsing backward at an unbelievable speed. No matter how hard he racked his brains, he could not understand why these Astra Militarum soldiers had suddenly launched an assault under such circumstances.

"Madmen! They're all madmen!" He clutched his thinning hair and paced back and forth through the cramped space.

"They just captured the Chemical Refinery! They should be resting and consolidating their defensive line!"

Ammunition consumption, casualties, rebuilding production lines... weren't those things important? Didn't they need time to adjust and digest the gains from battle?! How could they dare to push deep alone, far from their positions, and attack a damned elevator while their rear was still unstable? Even if they captured it, what fucking benefit would it bring them? This did not conform to any military logic!

What this Cultist commander found most unbelievable was the sheer number of these Astra Militarum soldiers. Based on the scattered intelligence from the front, he had assumed the enemy had sent no more than a single company. With this tunnel's maze-like terrain, narrow passages, and countless turns, he had been absolutely confident that he could grind these arrogant Corpse Emperor lackeys down to nothing and make them pay in blood for their recklessness!

At first, the situation had indeed gone smoothly, just as he had imagined. His subordinates constantly sent back "good news" through their crude communicators:

"Commander! We repelled another charge! Took out at least seven or eight of them!"

"They suffered heavy losses in Passage Four! We wiped out an entire squad with explosive traps!"

"The enemy is forcing their way forward, but they're leaving bodies behind with every step!"

Although the front line kept retreating, that was all within his expectations—trade space for casualties. At this rate, by the time the enemy got halfway through, they should all be dead!

But as the battle went on, he realized something was wrong.

He looked at the rapidly retreating red line on the map, then compared it with the casualty reports recorded by the communications officer.

"You've reported killing at least dozens of Astra Militarum soldiers, so why hasn't the enemy's advance slowed down at all? Why is it getting faster instead?!" he roared into the communicator.

Naturally, this Cultist had no idea that Players could revive. Faced with a massive information gap and a barrier of understanding, he used his own logic—based on the Cult's poor organizational capabilities and internal infighting—to arrive at what he believed was the most likely explanation:

The bastards below were submitting false reports to placate him and shirk responsibility!

"Liars! A bunch of damned liars!" He slammed his fist onto the metal table with a dull boom.

Otherwise, there was simply no way to explain why their own side had supposedly won every single battle according to the reports, while the front line kept collapsing backward! Those cowardly trash must have broken the moment the enemy charged them, then fabricated false achievements to deceive him!

To be honest, this time he had truly wronged his subordinates.

His poor subordinates, treated as cannon fodder, really had not falsified anything. They had indeed knocked down the charging enemies again and again. They had watched those Astra Militarum soldiers fall after being hit, even blown to pieces.

They simply had no way of knowing that the Death Seekers they had personally killed would, moments later, return unscathed to join the charging ranks once more.

These enemies seemed tireless and fearless of death, assaulting without pause. Moreover, with each death and each renewed charge, they became increasingly familiar with the terrain, firing positions, and trap locations. Their attacks grew more practiced, more efficient, and more effective.