72: An angel descends? No, that's a birdman Gundam!

Facing that rain of destructive light like a divine punishment, tens of thousands of players didn't retreat; instead, they erupted in even more fanatical shouts and launched a desperate charge against the pillars of light.

"Charge! Whoever touches the BOSS first is a dog!"

"Brothers in the front, hold on! Let me see how much damage this thing does!"

Boom! Boom! Boom!

The holy pillars of light hit the ground, and the shockwaves from the explosions tore up a layer of the earth. The first few hundred players didn't even have time to scream before they were instantly evaporated in the white light.

However, for this group of the fourth calamity, the penalty of death was nothing more than the screen going black, followed by a trip back to the city's respawn point to run the path again.

Fear? It didn't exist.

As soon as the players in the front turned into white light, the players in the back were already stepping over where they had vanished, eyes red as they continued to charge. Someone even shouted excitedly in the guild channel.

"-99999! Instant kill! Brothers, the damage from this new mob is seriously high! The developers didn't lie to us!"

On the Heavens Punishment warship, Inquisitor Gabriel, who was responsible for the first round of fire coverage, saw this scene through the Monitoring Crystal. A look of confusion appeared for the first time on that face made of light and shadow.

These ants... are they not afraid of death?

In the moment he hesitated, the warship's lower hatch slowly opened.

Hundreds of pure white, holy figures filed out from the hatch, spreading wings made of light. Like a true army of angels, they dove toward the Black Iron City below.

They wore streamlined pure white armor, their faces handsome and cold, and they held swords condensed from light. Every flap of the two pairs of light wings behind them left a brilliant trail in the air.

"Holy crap! Look! It's angels! It's really angels!"

"So cool! This modeling, this lighting—even Blizzard would cry if they saw this!"

"Don't just watch! Prepare for battle! They're mage mobs, squishy! Focus fire and melt them!"

The players naturally assumed these elegant and beautiful "angels" were mage units with high attack but low defense.

However, in the next second, reality gave them a resounding slap in the face.

An angel dove down with unimaginable speed, his figure pulling a series of afterimages in the air, appearing almost instantly in front of a heavy armor player.

That player had just raised his shield.

*Squelch—*

The light sword cut through the heavy shield and the armor beneath it with ease, like a hot knife through butter.

The player stared blankly at the massive gash in his chest before turning into white light.

"Holy shit! This Birdman can teleport!"

"No! It's just too fast! My dynamic vision can't keep up!"

"Physical attacks are useless! My bullets just bounced off him!"

The battlefield instantly fell into a state of chaos.

These angels were not only ridiculously fast, but their defense was also terrifyingly high. They were like a flock of raptors circling the sky; every time they dove, they could precisely take the lives of several players before gracefully ascending to avoid all counterattacks.

The human wave tactics the players took pride in were completely ineffective against such an absolute gap in mobility.

"Damn it! I can't hit them from the ground! Have some guts and come down to duel me!" Li Qiang (Also a Ruthless Person) roared at the sky. The Gatling gun in his hands fired wildly, but the bullets couldn't even touch a feather on the angels.

"This can't go on!" Retired Soldier King (Retired Soldier King) calmly commanded. "Everyone, retreat into the building area! Use the terrain to engage them in urban warfare!"

The players retreated like a tide into the dilapidated buildings and complex pipelines of Black Iron City.

However, the angels' combat style far exceeded their imagination.

An angel used his light sword to cut a large hole directly into a building wall, rushing in to slaughter all the players inside.

How were these holy angels?

They were clearly a group of special forces equipped with high-tech weaponry!

"It's no use! We're being completely suppressed! Old Wang, you damn well better think of something!" Li Qiang hid behind a massive load-bearing pillar, shouting furiously into the communication channel.

"Quiet! I'm analyzing!" Wang Wei (Luban No. 7)'s voice was full of fanatical excitement. "Data! I need more data! Can someone get me a corpse?!"

"A corpse? I'm about to become a corpse myself!"

Just then, an angel seemed to lock onto Li Qiang, the target who was shouting the loudest.

He folded his light wings and descended from the sky like white lightning, his light sword stabbing straight for Li Qiang's head!

Too fast! There was no time to dodge!

Li Qiang instinctively swung the hundred-pound Gatling gun, which was already out of ammo, in a wide arc, hurling it at the white light like a hammer throw!

He didn't expect to hit anything; it was purely a subconscious counterattack before death.

However, a miracle happened.

The angel didn't seem to care about this piece of "scrap metal" at all; he simply tilted his body slightly, preparing to dodge.

But he underestimated Li Qiang's monstrous strength and overestimated his own flight stability.

The heavy Gatling gun grazed his shoulder as it flew by, and the massive impact caused him to instantly lose his balance.

*Thud!*

That noble angel crashed headfirst into a nearby metal wall with a dull thud, then slid to the ground like a rag doll, twitching twice before becoming still.

The light wings behind him flickered a few times and then went out completely.

The entire field fell into dead silence.

Li Qiang was stunned.

All the players who saw this scene were stunned.

The next second.

"Nice work!" Wang Wei's scream broke the silence. "Don't let him turn into light! Quick! Drag him over here!"

Without needing Wang Wei's instructions, the closest players had already pounced like hungry wolves, scrambling to drag the "angel's" corpse into cover.

Wang Wei rushed over immediately. Various tools—cutters, wrenches, and probes—popped out of his modified mechanical arm.

"Let me see, let me see your inner beauty..." Wang Wei muttered to himself while roughly prying open the angel's flawless white armor.

Beneath the armor.

There was no flesh, no bone.

There were only dense silver wires, shimmering energy pipes, and a blue core that was slowly dimming.

"So that's it... so that's how it is!" An unprecedented light erupted in Wang Wei's eyes. He suddenly stood up and let out an earth-shattering roar into the communication channel.

"Brothers! We've all been tricked!"

"This damn thing isn't an angel! And it's not some mage!"

"It's a humanoid walking Gundam!"

Wang Wei pointed at the pair of wings that had lost their luster and shouted, "Those wings aren't biological; they're Anti-gravity Engines! Their bodies are high-strength alloy, and the core is a mana crystal! This is a group of Flight Mecha draped in Bionic Skin!"

As soon as he said this, all the players suddenly realized.

No wonder they were so fast! No wonder their defense was so high!

After the brief shock came an even more deafening wave of fanaticism.

If they had felt a sliver of awe and constraint when facing holy angels...

Then facing a pile of cold machinery, only two words remained in their minds—scrap it!

"Since they're machines, that makes things easy!" A mad light of wisdom sparkled in Wang Wei's eyes. "Their advantage is mobility! As long as we disable their wings, they're just piles of scrap metal! Everyone! Listen to my command!"

"Use nets! Use chains! Use anything that can entangle them! Attack their wings!"

The players' thinking was instantly inspired.

"Holy crap! Fishing nets! I still have some left over from the last time I went out to sea in my backpack!"

"Chains! Tear down the chains from the lampposts in the city!"

"I have a better idea! Rip bedsheets into strips and tie them together! They're light and strong!"

"Will glue work? Industrial super glue!"

In an instant, the vibe of what was originally a solemn, holy, and epic war completely collapsed.

Players dug out all sorts of bizarre things from every corner.

Dozens of players worked together to stretch a giant net, made from countless bedsheets and ropes, between two buildings.

An angel whizzed past, preparing to harvest some heads, and dove straight into the net.

His sharp light sword instantly cut through the net, but countless strips of cloth entangled his joints and wings, causing his movements to stall.

That single moment of hesitation was fatal.

"Got him! Brothers! Charge together!"

Over a hundred players swarmed like a zombie siege, some grabbing legs, others pulling wings.

That noble angel was like a dragonfly surrounded by bratty kids, forcibly dragged down from the sky and swallowed by the sea of people.

"Strip him bare! Let me see if these wings can be mounted on my motorcycle!"

"Don't hog it! The core is mine! I saw it first!"

The holy war had completely turned into a cruel and inhumane "City-wide Bird Catching Convention"!