This was not because zombies could ignore bullets, but because the amount of ammunition needed to kill a single zombie with ordinary bullets had already far exceeded what the private soldiers could afford.
In a standard campaign, soldiers usually carried three to four hundred rounds of ammunition.
Yet to kill one zombie with the assault rifles currently used by the private soldiers, they basically needed to fire a hundred rounds.
Obviously, under such circumstances, the private soldiers would soon run out of ammunition.
After all, the private soldiers had initially been told that their combat target was Moros alone.
Even if they had known beforehand that Moros could summon monsters, it would have been impossible for them to carry enough ammunition to fight an army.
And that was only when dealing with zombies.
When facing ghosts and vampires, the private soldiers' attacks were even less effective.
Unlike the ghosts in games, real ghosts possessed a certain degree of physical immunity.
This gave them an enormous advantage when fighting modern armies.
Physical immunity meant firearms were almost completely useless against ghosts. Whether it was machine guns, autocannons, assault rifles, or anti-materiel sniper rifles, none could harm them.
It was worth mentioning that ghosts were not actual specters and would not be harmed by sunlight.
Ultraviolet lamps, flashbangs, and similar measures were useless against them.
Of course, that did not mean modern armies had no way to deal with ghosts.
Special weapons such as flamethrowers and stun guns could effectively injure them.
Armor became meaningless before ghosts, because they could pass directly through it and attack the people inside.
Furthermore, ghosts could fly. Though they were only as fast as civilian helicopters, that speed was terrifying enough when fighting ground units.
Compared with ghosts, vampires were more manageable for the private soldiers.
Although vampires were incredibly fast and could even knock bullets aside with the Steel Longswords in their hands, they did not possess physical immunity.
This meant that, at a certain cost, the private soldiers had a chance of killing an individual vampire.
However, if they faced a complete vampire squad, private soldiers accustomed to small-scale combat would have difficulty stopping their charge.
Once the battle entered close quarters, the private soldiers' fate was already sealed.
As for the strongest undead unit currently under Moros's command—the Corpse Mages—these massive spellcasting undead, over two meters tall, had already surpassed the limits of what the private soldiers could handle.
Corpse Mages were indeed physically fragile, but that was only compared to other units of the same tier in the Ashan World.
In reality, the defensive power of the robes worn by Corpse Mages was extremely formidable, enough to withstand most physical attacks.
Neither pistol rounds nor rifle rounds could penetrate their defenses.
To deal with Corpse Mages, the private soldiers had to use more powerful weapons such as anti-materiel sniper rifles and Rocket-propelled Grenades.
Meanwhile, the spells cast by the Corpse Mages were enough to easily annihilate both the private soldiers and the positions they defended.
Even the infantry fighting vehicle formation specially dispatched by the senator was utterly helpless before the Corpse Mages' Death Cloud, easily reduced to a pile of scrap metal.
At the end of the day, the main resistance force in this small city came from the senator's private soldiers.
Supported by all kinds of high-tech weapons, they could pose some degree of threat to Moros, who was merely a level 13 necromancer.
However, their lack of heavy equipment was the private soldiers' Achilles' heel. With insufficient firepower, they simply could not withstand the tidal assault of the Undead Legion.
Private soldiers were, after all, merely the senator's personal armed force. They could handle those dirty jobs that could not see the light of day.
But in large-scale battles, their performance still clearly lagged behind that of regular troops.
In frontal confrontations and firepower saturation, no matter how elite a private force was, it could not compare to the strength of a regular army.
A Corner of the Street Battle
Third Avenue.
"Rat-a-tat-tat!"
A heavy machine gun concealed in a second-floor window spat deadly rounds, blasting zombie after zombie into shredded flesh.
Unlike the feeble bullets of assault rifles, machine-gun rounds were powerful enough to tear apart zombies' tough bodies.
Under the suppression of the heavy machine gun, several private soldiers swiftly withdrew from another makeshift barricade and rushed into the building.
"We're Squad Seventeen. I'm the squad leader, Brook. Who's in charge here?"
As the routed soldiers caught their breath and nervously watched the zombie horde outside, a broad-faced man with an assault rifle slung over his shoulder walked over.
"Our captain is dead. I hold the highest rank in the squad."
Meeting the broad-faced man's scrutinizing gaze, a tall, thin man among the routed soldiers stepped forward.
"Soldier, what's the situation?"
"Very bad. The barricade we were defending was breached. The brothers risked their lives just to escape..."
Before the tall, thin man could finish, a scream suddenly rang out from the second floor. Then came the sound of the heavy machine gun falling silent, followed by the surge of the zombie horde.
"Damn it!"
Brook cursed and rapidly issued orders to his teammates.
"Locke, Hunter, go to the second floor and reestablish the machine-gun position! Everyone else, come with me and hold back these walking corpses!"
Turning back, Brook looked directly into the tall, thin man's eyes and spoke solemnly.
"You've seen it too. If we want to survive, we have to hold this building. Now, I order you to join us and fight together."
"Understood!"
The tall, thin man agreed without hesitation.
He knew Brook was right. At this life-or-death moment, the living had to stand together and resist the attacks of the dead.
"Good. Then you and our men..."
Before the broad-faced man could finish assigning tasks, a ghost burst from the ceiling and twisted his head one hundred and eighty degrees backward.
Clearly, it had been responsible for silencing the heavy machine gun upstairs.
"Open fire!"
Worthy of being the private troops of a powerhouse at the top of the political world, the other soldiers who witnessed this sudden turn of events swiftly swung their guns toward the ghost and opened fierce fire.
However, their actions were futile.
In this era, before Collapse Energy weapons had been developed, bullets could not harm incorporeal ghosts.
Unscathed, the ghost continued to dart wildly through the private soldiers' ranks.
Every time it passed through them, it easily claimed another private soldier's life.
At the same time, because all the private soldiers' firepower was focused on the ghost, the zombies outside spotted their chance and poured into the building.
"Bastard, don't come over! Don't come over here!! Bastard! Bastard! Ah—"
Amid the private soldiers' screams, they were brutally chopped into pieces by the butcher knives in the zombies' hands.
"Damn it! Fall back!"
Having already escaped once, the tall, thin man's squad had no objection to running again.
However, this time, what greeted them were the claws of a second ghost.
In that brief span of time, the two private soldiers who had tried to rush upstairs and restart the heavy machine-gun fire had been toyed with and killed by this ghost.
The ghost then passed through the floor and joined the battle on the first floor.
Faced with the combined assault of two ghosts and a horde of zombies, the tall, thin man's squad was driven into a desperate situation.
Though they fought bravely, they ultimately could not stop death from coming.
As the battle continued, they fell one after another. In the end, the entire squad followed the broad-faced man's squad into oblivion amid the slaughter.
Outskirts of the city.
"Third Avenue has been taken?"
Rubbing his smooth chin, Moros redirected the Undead Troops that had captured Third Avenue to the battlefield on Fifth Avenue.
Moros's strategy was clear: seize City Hall, capture Mayor Yang, and force him to hand over his parents.
Yes, Moros had never intended to occupy this city from the beginning.
He knew full well that the Undead Legion's current gains were built solely on the advantage of a surprise attack.
Once the government of the Mu Continent reacted and regular troops entered the field, the advantage he had built would vanish in a short time.
Therefore, he had to move quickly and swiftly accomplish his strategic objective.
To achieve his goal, Moros had long ago sent an elite squad composed entirely of ghosts and vampires to carry out a decapitation strike against City Hall.
Although this unit had suffered considerable losses under attacks from various high-tech traps and elite private soldiers, they had successfully discovered Mayor Yang's whereabouts.
It was precisely because of the crucial intelligence relayed by the decapitation squad that Moros had formulated his current strategy.
Fifth Avenue battlefield.
A futuristic infantry fighting vehicle stood imposingly at the street corner, its sci-fi exterior gleaming with a cold light beneath the sun.
Behind the vehicle, a squad of more than ten private soldiers stood tightly clustered together.
Relying on the infantry fighting vehicle's powerful firepower, they firmly held the final checkpoint leading to City Hall.
The infantry fighting vehicle spat out violent tongues of flame, its dense barrage pouring down like torrential rain.
The endless masses of zombies could advance no further in the face of such savage firepower.
The vehicle's merciless gunfire tore apart the zombies' bodies and destroyed them one by one.
"Sizzle—"
The sound of a flamethrower rang out, and raging flames instantly incinerated the ghosts attempting to rush into the infantry fighting vehicle.
Although these ghosts relied on their incorporeal nature to remain immune to bullets and shells, they were still utterly vulnerable before the blazing fire ignited by specialized fuel.
Facing the impregnable infantry fighting vehicle, the Skeleton Archers frantically unleashed dense volleys of arrows. Yet aside from taking the lives of several accompanying infantrymen, they failed to inflict any substantive damage on the vehicle.
However, this awe-inspiring infantry fighting vehicle did not last long.
As the Death Cloud descended, the vehicle that had once destroyed hundreds of zombies and Skeleton Archers instantly became battered and ruined.
Its once-raging streams of fire were extinguished, leaving behind nothing but a pile of scrap metal.
Even the incomparably sturdy infantry fighting vehicle had been reduced to ruin by the Death Cloud, so the fate of the ordinary accompanying infantry was naturally even more tragic.
Within the rolling yellow-green clouds, the private soldiers who had not been killed by the arrow volleys instantly turned into foul-smelling pus and blood.
Their bodies were completely corroded away, and they lost their lives before they could even scream.
With the fall of this checkpoint, the obstacle between the Undead Troops and City Hall was completely removed.
"Attack!"
At Moros's command, the zombies surged toward City Hall like a flood, while the private soldiers originally guarding it no longer had any chance to resist.
Under the Corpse Mages' spell barrage, the City Hall defense line instantly collapsed.
"Capture him!"
Moros issued the order decisively, his gaze tightly fixed on Mayor Yang as he appeared through the linked perspective of the undead on the front line.
Facing vampires whose movement speed was as ghostly as a phantom's, Mayor Yang, an ordinary man, naturally had no way to escape.
The Mayor's Death
As early as when Moros was discovered to possess supernatural powers, Mayor Yang had planned to flee.
However, the senator behind him did not wish to abandon such a "supernatural power trap," and firmly prevented the mayor from leaving.
Faced with the immense power of a figure standing at the summit of Mu Continent's political world, Mayor Yang could only choose, after careful consideration, to remain in the small city and become bait to lure Moros into a trap.
At that time, Mayor Yang had been full of confidence in the senator's plan. He believed that with the senator's private troops supporting them, even if Moros possessed supernatural powers, he would surely be captured.
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