On the ridgeline.
Thirteen Reincarnators charged at full speed.
At the head of the group, Blood Claw wore a vicious grin. Beside him ran a cyborg whose Mechanical Arm gleamed coldly, a man wreathed in flames, and a purple-skinned woman...
Three minutes earlier, Mechanical Arm had scanned the enemy: a force of just over four hundred, plus three intimidating-looking aircraft and three clunky tanks. There wasn't a trace of any Reincarnators among them.
To a group of Reincarnators, that kind of lineup was a joke.
"An army without any Reincarnators dares to stand in our way?!"
"Everyone, make this quick!" Blood Claw roared.
The moment he finished speaking, a piercing shriek rang out from the sky.
Blood Claw looked up, his pupils shrinking.
Three Valkyries dived from high above. The twin Autocannons mounted on either side of their fuselages unlocked in an instant, while the rocket pods beneath their bellies erupted in flame.
"Get down! Move!"
Too late.
Explosive bolts and high-explosive rockets rained down like hail.
The moment their cores struck, they detonated. Two Reincarnators at the front tried to raise energy shields, but the shields had barely begun to glow before aircraft cannons tore through them.
Fragments of the shields scattered like glass.
"Impossible! How could my Rank A ability shield be shattered by one volley?!"
Another volley followed. Blood and shattered bone splattered across the rocks, instantly baked dry by the heat until they turned dark brown.
A third Reincarnator took a direct hit from a rocket and blew apart in a cloud of blood before he could even scream.
Wherever the metal storm passed, it carved furrows of charred earth.
After one dive, only nine of the thirteen remained.
Fu Haoran frowned. "Four dead in one dive? Is this what Reincarnators are capable of?"
"Maybe they're just the weakest grunts," Lucifer put in.
Fu Haoran's heart tightened.
Right. It could be a probing attack. The main force might still be behind them.
Elsewhere, Blood Claw poked his head out from behind a rock, panting heavily.
Damn it, what kind of firepower was that?
Luckily, the three aircraft had already swept past. Their dive paths meant they couldn't turn around right away.
If they could use that opening to charge into the enemy ranks and mingle with the soldiers, the other side wouldn't dare shoot at their own men!
"Charge!" Blood Claw howled. "We'll be safe once we get in among them!"
The remaining nine kept running. Blood Claw, transformed into a werewolf, Mechanical Arm, Fire Brother with his flames, and Poison Girl with her toxins all used their abilities to try to break through.
But...
Vmmm—
A low hum came from ahead.
From the corner of his eye, Blood Claw saw the turrets on four metal platforms swivel toward him. Twin Heavy Bolters and twin Las-cannons took aim.
No—not just aiming.
Locking on!
The next moment, the Wolf Spiders opened fire.
The twin Heavy Bolters spat rocket-propelled explosive bolts at an incredible rate, the scorching rounds streaking straight for Blood Claw like soul-reaping chains.
Thick beams of light shot straight at him.
Blood Claw shifted into his werewolf form, dropped to all fours, and zigzagged wildly.
It was no use.
Every time he changed direction, the Wolf Spiders' logic engines predicted his movements precisely. Bolts and beams skimmed past him, leaving deep bloody gashes.
"Shit! What the hell are those things?!" Blood Claw roared. "Why are they targeting me?!"
The other seven glanced at him but said nothing.
One of them even edged away, deliberately leaving Blood Claw completely exposed to the barrage.
Mechanical Arm glanced at Blood Claw, then said quietly to the flame-wielding man, "Forget him. These automated turrets won't switch targets once they've locked on. We might as well let him be a meat shield."
Fire Brother sneered. "At least he'll die for a good cause."
Poison Girl even slowed down, deliberately falling half a step behind.
Their group had only been thrown together temporarily. The Reincarnators came from different instance worlds and had barely teamed up because they were on the same side.
If the system didn't punish them for killing one another, they would've already turned on each other.
Now that Blood Claw was drawing all the fire?
Perfect.
Better him than me.
"Brother Blood Claw, hang in there! We'll charge ahead!" someone shouted, though he ran even faster.
Blood Claw trembled with rage, but he didn't even have time to curse. He could only dodge with all his might.
The Wolf Spiders never took their guns off him.
After all, their logic engines would keep their sights trained on the first target to enter range until they killed him. Only then would they switch targets.
The ground positions drew closer and closer.
The remaining seven finally reached a point three hundred meters from the front line.
Then they saw the formation facing them.
More than three hundred soldiers stood in neat rows on open ground.
No cover. No dispersal. They just stood there stiffly, guns raised.
The first row even knelt on one knee, while the second stood behind them—the standard firing-line formation.
A tall Reincarnator laughed scornfully.
"Are these soldiers idiots?" he shouted to his companions. "They've lined up to be sitting ducks. We could charge once and wipe them all out!"
Another Reincarnator, who specialized in speed, even put away his weapon and swaggered toward the formation, taunting them with his footwork. "What a waste of time. We don't need to go all out against such weaklings."
They'd seen plenty of native armies like this.
A battle line from the flintlock era thought it could stop a group of Reincarnators?
What a joke.
Wade stood in the center of the formation. Without changing expression, he raised his hand. "For the Emperor!"
Then he swung it down sharply.
"Fire."
Hundreds of red Laser beams lit up at once.
Dense beams of "flashlight" light wove together into a vast net, instantly covering the seven people a hundred meters away.
The Reincarnator leading the charge didn't even have time to take a defensive stance before a Laser burned through his head.
His body charred rapidly like a sheet of paper set alight. He toppled to the ground, scattering a pile of blackened ash.
The Reincarnator who'd put away his weapon and taunted the soldiers was hit in both legs by the Lasers. His scream had barely left his lips before the follow-up Laser beams tore him apart, leaving no intact limbs behind.
"Shields!" someone shrieked as he raised an energy barrier.
It was no use.
The Laser beams pierced straight through the shield and burned a fist-sized black hole through his chest.
"What kind of weapon..." His voice cut off.
Seven people.
One second.
All of them fell, leaving only seven piles of charred remains that still smoked.
They hadn't managed a meaningful resistance.
The commander of the Leman Russ Tank had just shouted the order to fire. The cannon breech hadn't even opened yet. The Valkyries were still turning in the sky, and the four Wolf Spiders had spent ages chasing Blood Claw.
The battle... was over.
Blood Claw finally escaped the Wolf Spiders' barrage and poked his head out from behind a rock.
Then he froze.
Where were they?
Where were his teammates?
Only seven piles of charred remains lay on the ground, still smoking.
More than three hundred soldiers stood in neat ranks where they'd been, their Lasguns still trained in his direction. The red light at their muzzles was slowly fading.
A chill shot from the soles of Blood Claw's feet straight to his skull.
He turned and ran.
He shifted into his werewolf form, dropped to all fours, and sprinted with all his might.
Rocks, shrubs, ravines—everything blurred past behind him.
His Agility had tripled. His speed was enough to leave any prey far behind.
I can get away.
I have to get away.
A rushing wind sounded behind him.
Blood Claw instinctively looked back. The Valkyrie gunships had turned around!
Then he saw the aircraft cannons under their fuselages slowly swinging toward him.
"No!"
The cannons opened fire.
A dense barrage of rounds hit at once, blasting Blood Claw's body apart in midair. His remains scattered across the charred rocks, leaving not a single recognizable piece.
Inside the bridge.
Fu Haoran stared at the projection screen, stunned for two seconds.
All thirteen red dots on the screen had vanished.
The Leman Russ Tank hadn't even fired. The Valkyries had only completed one dive. The four Wolf Spiders had spent a while chasing one man, and more than three hundred soldiers had fired one volley.
And then there was nothing.
That was it?
Fu Haoran had prepared himself for a brutal, drawn-out battle, but the fight before him had been... far too clean.
"I brought the teleportation array up to full power and brought every heavy weapon we had, and the enemy couldn't even take one volley?"
"So I spent all that time preparing just to swat a few mosquitoes?"
At that moment, Lucifer added the finishing blow in a breezy tone: "Looks like your grand artillery welcome for your fellow countrymen was more than they could handle."
Fu Haoran ignored her and checked the System Panel.
[You killed 13 enemy-faction Reincarnators. Gained 15,600 points, Universal Points +4,234] [Current Ranking: Not on the leaderboard] [Worldline Divergence Rate: +0.37%] [Enemy equipment wreckage detected:...]
Fu Haoran fell silent.
"I killed thirteen people and still didn't make the leaderboard... No, these definitely weren't their main force. They were far too weak... abnormally weak. They must've been cannon fodder sent to test my trump cards!"
"I let my guard down! They've almost figured out all my trump cards, while I know nothing about them!"
"Of course they're a bunch of scheming bastards. They even set up their own people!"
Fu Haoran gained a deeper understanding of how treacherous the Reincarnation Worlds could be. Otherwise, how could a bunch of veteran "players" have shown up just to die?
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