The first bloody clash had barely ended. Smoke and the stench of charred flesh still lingered when the soul-crushing psychic hum in the distance intensified again, rolling low over the ruins like thunder before a storm.
The soldiers of the Skulls Regiment tightened their grips on their weapons, settling fingers caked with blood and dust back onto cold triggers.
Colonel Warren Heinrich still stood atop the Turrets of his Emperor's Blade, Siegfried. Through the lenses of his high-powered binoculars, he calmly scanned the roiling smoke at the far edge of the ruined horizon, stained a sickly purple-green by psychic energy.
This time, there was no ghostlike infiltration, no deft surprise attack.
It was a tide.
A desperate, silent tide of death, formed from hundreds of thousands of Mortals whose wills had been forcibly stripped away, leaving only empty shells.
Survivors from the fallen outer districts of Pascal Hive City, captured auxiliary soldiers, even farmers and workers abducted from more distant planets...
Now their eyes were unfocused, their faces twisted into the same numb expression. With stiff, uncoordinated steps, they poured like puppets from every gap in the ruins and every street mouth, merging into an endless gray-brown sea of ragged bodies that writhed without a sound.
They brandished crude tools and rusted weapons, or advanced bare-handed. All shared one thing: an utterly controlled, destructive compulsion to advance toward the Skulls Regiment's positions.
Amid this human tide, two taller figures stood like reefs, radiating ominous psychic fluctuations. They were Rangdan Overlords.
Their thick carapaces reflected a dim gleam in the murky light. Crystals pulsed atop the staffs in their hands, evidently sustaining their control over this vast ocean of "cannon fodder" and driving it onward.
Around them, dozens of well-equipped, agile Rangdan Warriors moved swiftly under cover of the crowds, searching