1421: It's over-we didn't block it! Prepare to face the might of the Scale-Father's claws!

"Bang!"

A piercing gunshot rang out. A burning-gold bullet screamed from the barrel and struck the compound eye of a soldier bug.

The spinning bullet bored into its eye and tore away a whole section of its carapace. But the hideous creature, like a locust, only shrieked and staggered backward. After multiple evolutions, even ordinary soldier bugs had been given a combat trait that dulled their sense of pain.

The grievous injury still couldn't stop it. Instead, it howled and charged at the assassin hiding in the shadows—but halfway there, a middle-aged man leaped up and smashed its head with a trenching shovel.

The blow was lethal. The shovel chopped through the cracked carapace and into its brain, finally stopping the soldier bug's rampage.

That gave Cheche No. 2, who had just fired, a moment to breathe. She hurriedly ejected the casing, reloaded, and searched the chaotic battlefield for her next target.

Her squad had already entered the Abyssal City's underground first level, led by the charge of the vanguard dragoons and those imposing iron bears. They were fighting brutal street battles in this shadowy city of goatfolk. The veteran players had already "cleaned" the place once over; even the disgusting fungal carpet and the worker bugs around it had been burned away.

That left the newbies with only the bugs that had survived the attack. But even those remnants were a tremendous challenge for them.

They had to deploy in squads if they wanted any chance of taking down the evil creatures that hid and ambushed them. If they were unlucky enough to run into an elite bug lying in wait, they were pretty much guaranteed to be wiped out.

But, well...

The newbies might have been bad, but when it came to their "abundant martial spirit," they were