008 Wave

At 6:40 in the morning, Pauli Kehill lay prone on the Outland front line with a steel rifle in hand. Snowflakes struck his skin like branding irons. He could not feel the slightest chill—only bursts of stinging pain.

The Frostplate 105th Composite Division, to which he belonged, had maintained absolute silence for the past four hours. Without guidance, maps, or communication, they had crossed the heart of the cataclysmic storm. Between blizzards and white sand, they moved like an army of the dead.

And their opponents were the real dead.

The Entropy Annihilation Apostle—Cain Goethe—had been the Commander-in-Chief of Zhengxu's Third Army Group in life. Five years ago, he and his men had been swallowed by the Entropy Sovereign's storm during a military exercise.

Since then, Azure Planet had lost a valiant general, while the Entropy Sovereign had gained a hateful lackey.

They were positioned on a plateau 6,400 meters above sea level, less than a thousand meters from the Malefic Calamity in the sky. The air was exceedingly thin here, and Malefic Calamity's rate of erosion was far faster than elsewhere.

Yet this would be the battlefield that decided Azure Planet's fate.

Pauli lay motionless in the snow. Beneath his camouflage net hid chrome-plated blood vessels. He could not distinguish hot from cold, nor tell east from west. Self-heating rations rested against his chest, but he did not dare take them out to eat.

Flocks of birds formed from Malefic Calamity constantly flew overhead. In life, they had been such free creatures. Some had been called eagles, symbols of freedom and courage. Some were falcons, swift and nimble. Others were hawks, immensely strong and fiercely savage.

But when Malefic Calamity swept across Azure Planet centuries ago, it had swallowed them all, stealing their freedom and spirit and turning them