The ground battles on almost all seven Planets had been brutal. In just a few days of fighting, Iax had lost eighty percent of his forces.
The ground swarms began to retreat after suffering nearly a thousand times as many losses. Warfare like this was virtually meaningless to the swarm.
The swarms on three battlefields were annihilated, while the other four battlefields were abandoned of their own accord.
This wall of steel made the losses far outweigh the gains. After swiftly reclaiming all the biomass they could, the Bio-ship fleet, each vessel now a little smaller, began heading elsewhere.
Imperial forces once again took control of these ravaged Planets.
Three Terran days later, after clearing the battlefields, Iax notified the Imperial Transport Ship fleet to take his forces home.
Countless battered machines were sent back to be reforged.
Only then were the final combat losses fully tallied.
Eight Enforcer super-heavy tanks and the Apocalypse Titan had been utterly destroyed in battle, with not even wreckage left behind.
Another 6,844 Elatana-Class Armed Sentinels had also been destroyed.
(Of these, 4,832 were melee models.)
159,238 Automated Sentries.
11,237 Peltast robots.
As well as 726 Castellans and 29 Servitors.
Almost none of these units could be recovered. This was no ordinary damage.
The Tyranids had evolved specifically to counter Iax's Men of Iron forces, and vast numbers of high-quality organisms had dealt devastating blows to them.
Many of the bugs abandoned conventional methods of attack and instead began continually developing corrosive adaptations.
Acid Beasts were hatched in enormous numbers, spewing powerful biological acids that severely corroded metal bodies.
The corroded machines ultimately became unrecoverable.
Yet the final battle report was equally staggering.
``` Total Tyranid creatures eliminated across seven battlefields: 223,014,232
Bio-ships: 12
Titan organisms: 72
Large organisms: 329,483
Medium organisms: 63,291,748
Small