222: Chapter 222 Ghost Swarm, Four Steel Coffins

At the intersection, only the crackling of burning flames remained, along with the faint sound of whimpering from afar—though whether it was the wind or wailing, no one could tell.

Tel Aviv time, 4:30 PM.

It had been over two hours since the armored patrol from the Givati Brigade lost contact. The initial assessment from the Defense Forces' frontline command was "encountering sporadic resistance, likely engaged in a firefight, communication temporarily interrupted." In an area like Gaza, with its complex electromagnetic environment and dense ruins, this wasn't particularly rare.

Until an urgently dispatched Heron TP drone transmitted high-definition footage back.

The sight at the intersection caused the faces of all duty officers in the command center to instantly turn as pale as corpses.

Four namell heavy armored vehicles lay paralyzed among the ruins in various twisted positions. Three were still burning, sending black smoke dozens of meters into the air, looking particularly jarring under the drone's overhead lens. Scattered around the vehicles were charred, unrecognizable objects. There was no sign of any living soldiers.

"This is impossible..." a major on the staff muttered to himself, his voice dry. "The namell's armor... what did they use?"

"Zoom in! Look at the damage to the hulls!" the commander, a brigadier general, barked.

The image zoomed in. One could clearly see the severed tracks and damaged chassis of B-01, the hideous holes in the sides and roofs of B-02 and B-04, and the severe destruction of B-03's engine compartment. Even more terrifying was that the metal at the edges of some breaches appeared to be in an abnormal molten state.

"This isn't a standard RPG..." the weapons expert said with a grim face. "Look at the breach on top of B-02; the edges are curled inward with signs of high-temperature scorching. It might be a thermobaric warhead... and the explosion under the chassis was a pre-set smart mine with a tandem charge, specifically targeting our armor's weak points."

"An ambush! A meticulously planned, textbook ambush targeting our armored patrol!" The brigadier general slammed a fist onto the control console. "Casualties?! Send ground troops and rescue helicopters immediately! Blockade the area! Search for survivors! And find those rats! Crush them!"

However, it was all too late.

When the rescue units cautiously reached the intersection that had become a living hell, they found nothing but four steel coffins emitting lingering smoke and the scorched, almost carbonized corpses inside. There were no enemies, no shell casings (except for a few old ones used for camouflage), and no obvious signs of retreat. The enemy was like a ghost—appearing, killing, and then vanishing into the shadows of the ruins.

The preliminary casualty count made everyone's skin crawl: a reinforced platoon's worth of troops, thirty-four soldiers, confirmed dead with no survivors. Four namell heavy armored vehicles, worth millions of dollars and marketed as "infantry fortresses," were total losses.

Almost at the same moment the rescue units reached the scene and the command center attempted to align their narrative to control information leaks—

The online world had already exploded.

5:07 PM.

A newly created TikTok account with no history posted its first video. The account name was a meaningless string of letters and numbers.

The video had no title, only a few hashtags: Gaza, Resistance, GazaStillResists.

The video started a bit shaky; the camera seemed to be filming from a high, concealed position in the ruins, overlooking the intersection below. The image quality wasn't top-tier, but it was clear enough.

In the frame, four namell armored vehicles painted with the Star of David drove slowly into view in a loose formation. The sunlight was good, even allowing the unit numbers on the hulls to be seen clearly.

Then, gunfire erupted. The camera quickly panned to the third floor of a ruin on the right, where muzzle flashes flickered. Then to the left. The scene of crossfire suppressing the armored vehicles was recorded in full; sparks flying as bullets hit the armor were clearly visible.

Next came three massive explosions that occurred almost simultaneously, making the camera shake slightly! The road buckled, pillars of fire shot into the sky, the tracks of one namell were blown off as the hull tilted; another was sent spinning in place; and thick smoke and flames erupted from the side of the last one. The footage even captured the metal jets erupting from beneath the armored vehicles' chassis at the moment of explosion.

Then came the most shocking part: dozens of small black drones, like a death Swarm emerging from every corner of the ruins, buzzed toward the paralyzed armored convoy. They nimbly dodged sporadic return fire, accurately crashing into the armored vehicles' firing ports, observation windows, and top hatches...

Each impact was accompanied by a dull thud and an expanding ball of orange-red fire. The camera zoomed in, showing the top hatch of one namell being blown open; inside, the faint silhouette of a person could be seen twitching violently in the flames before going still.

In the final thirty seconds of the video, the lens slowly panned across the burning intersection. The four wrecks burned quietly in the firelight, thick black smoke billowing. At the edge of the frame, several agile figures quickly approached the wreckage, checking and collecting items before swiftly disappearing into the ruins. The entire process was chillingly quiet, rapid, and professional.

The video was 4 minutes and 22 seconds long. There was no background music, only the real sounds of gunfire, explosions, the dying groans of engines, and the crackling of fire. At the end, the screen went black, displaying only a simple line in Arabic and English:

"We are still here."

"We are still here."

Within ten minutes of the video's release, views surpassed one hundred thousand.

Twenty minutes, one million.

One hour, ten million.

It was like a nuclear bomb dropped into a calm lake, instantly detonating the entire social media world. TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Telegram, Instagram... almost every mainstream platform was flooded with this video and related discussions.

"My god... is this real? Four namells? Wiped out?"

"Those drones... like bees! Where on earth did they get them?"

"Thermobaric bombs... used inside an enclosed armored vehicle... God..."

"Didn't the Squid Nation's Defense Minister say it would be pacified in a week? This is his damn 'pacification'?!"

"I feel bad for those soldiers... but that's the price of occupation."

"Gaza is still resisting! This is the real news! The mainstream media are all lying!"

"The video is fake, right? CG effects?"

"Fake? Try finding a team that can fake details like this. Look at the physics of the hull explosion, look at the soldiers' reactions... this is fucking real!"