The dazzling light blotted out the afterglow of the setting sun, and it seemed as though two suns had appeared amid the fiery evening clouds.
One hung on the horizon, while the other hovered overhead.
The one overhead in particular was so blinding that it resembled the high beams of a vehicle inside a tunnel.
Everyone on the Enlightenment Society's positions instinctively raised their heads and looked toward that dazzling light.
In that single instant, blood seeped from every pair of pupils, and all vision was lost.
"Don't look up! Don't look overhead!"
Their officers' intermittent roars came through the communications channel, and the personnel on the positions hurriedly averted their eyes.
However—
It was already too late.
That scorching light took more than their sight. It would take everything from them.
They were neutron rays dozens, perhaps hundreds or thousands of times more powerful than a solar flare!
High-energy particles released at tremendous speed formed a plume beam in the sky, like a cascading waterfall of light!
That deadly beam pierced through the protection of the geomagnetic field and atmosphere, descending indiscriminately upon the surface and spreading an unprecedented aurora across the skies above the equator!
The Enlightenment Society soldiers crouching in open-air shelters were the first to suffer.
Exposed to the high-energy neutron plume, they felt only a sudden warmth. Then every cell in their bodies seemed to boil in an instant, the light faded from their eyes, blood poured uncontrollably from their noses and mouths, and they embraced eternal death in a heartbeat.
Across positions stretching hundreds of kilometers, soldiers in exoskeletons died in swathes. Mutants holding large-caliber rifles writhed on the ground, howling helplessly at the invisible enemy.
Even genetically modified soldiers wearing powered armor could not help dropping to one knee in agony before vomiting