The Northwestern Theater had a remarkably varied landscape, with forests as well as wastelands.
Across a dry wasteland strewn with yellow sand and withered grass, a group of more than a hundred people ran south for their lives.
Most of them were elderly people, children, and women. Only a dozen or so fighters remained who could actually fight.
Their clothes hung in tatters. Many had even lost their shoes while running, leaving their soles covered in blisters and cuts from sharp stones. Fear and exhaustion were written across every face.
Even so, none of them dared stop. They kept urging one another on as they fled.
Something was chasing them from the horizon.
From a distance, it looked like a moving black hill. As it drew closer, it resolved into dozens of enormous insects.
Each stood three or four meters tall. Their bristle-like limbs stabbed into the ground, propelling them forward at astonishing speed.
Sunlight gleamed on their dark-brown shells. Their huge compound eyes stared coldly at the fleeing crowd. The insect at their head was larger still: the front half of its rearing body alone stood two stories high, and each of its six arms gripped an oversized weapon.
"Damn it, those things are catching up! Run!"
A middle-aged fighter roared as he hauled a little girl to her feet after she fell.
His left arm had been severed and was bound up with nothing more than a leather strap.
Blood loss and exhaustion had left his face pale.
But he did not dare stop. If he stopped, he would die!
At the rear of the group, three fighters struggled desperately to buy time.
They fought as they retreated, their weapons nicked and bent, their wounds too numerous to count.
Suddenly, an insect's forelimb struck one of them. He