117: Chapter 117 I think they can't see it

It was an Ork war machine—a Gorkanaut!

Ah Fu had seen such a monster once before from a distance while fighting the greenskins in the Northwest Grand Canyon.

The thing's hull seemed to be equipped with a perverse Waaagh! Field shield; conventional artillery and lasers hitting it did absolutely nothing!

Standing in the trench, Bailey was also seeing this terrifying war machine, over ten meters tall, for the first time.

Though she feigned composure on the surface, her body trembled uncontrollably.

In her extreme fear, her hand subconsciously gripped the hem of Ah Fu's clothes.

Ah Fu noticed something was wrong and turned his head to look over.

Bailey quickly let go as if struck by an electric shock, her cheeks burning hot with embarrassment.

Fortunately, her face was covered in grime and mud, so no blush could be seen.

Ah Fu looked at her awkward expression, withdrew his gaze, and refocused on the battlefield.

But he couldn't help muttering in a very low voice:

"Damn. Is the emotional logic of this crappy game's NPCs really this realistic?"

"Oh no... I'm not actually catching real feelings for a 2D NPC, am I?"

As soon as the thought popped into his head, Ah Fu raised his hand and gave himself a hard slap on his mud-covered face.

"Shit! I'm really not human! We're about to risk our lives in battle, and I'm actually thinking about a 2D girl!"

But a few seconds later, Ah Fu couldn't help but glance out of the corner of his eye at the shivering Bailey.

He recalled how over the past dozen days, this woman—a mortal who was less than cannon fodder—had grit her teeth and endured on this brutal meat-grinder of a battlefield.

Even when she didn't have enough to eat, she had lived frugally to save up a little bit of her hard-earned money, wanting to send it back to Shahe Town as rebellion funds for her cousin.

Thinking of this, Ah Fu took a deep breath.

He reached out and grabbed Bailey's arm, pulling her behind the sandbag cover where he was.

"If you're scared, hide behind me."

Ah Fu didn't look at her, staring fixedly at the steel beast in the distance, his voice unusually calm,

"As long as I don't die and respawn at the city, this position won't fall."

Bailey still didn't look at him.

She simply lowered her head silently and cranked the charging handle of her old-fashioned Lasgun.

The rapid clacking sound masked her somewhat ragged breathing.

The distance between the two sides grew closer and closer.

Once they were within range, the players began pulling their triggers.

Dazzling red laser beams poured onto the Orks like a dense downpour.

Though these mass-produced 'flashlights' of the Defense Force weren't very powerful against the thick armor of the greenskins, they excelled in high precision and lacked recoil.

The players aimed at the unprotected, vulnerable eyes of the greenskins, specifically zapping the Orc Boyz charging at the front.

Ah Fu's gaze, however, remained locked onto that towering Gorkanaut.

"Boom!"

The heavy artillery battery of the Defense Force in the rear finally opened fire.

A large-caliber high-explosive armor-piercing shell whistled through the air and slammed accurately into the Gorkanaut's massive torso!

The violent explosion sent fire billowing into the sky!

Ah Fu let out a long sigh of relief.

As the fire dissipated, a large chunk of the Gorkanaut's armor had been blown away, revealing the complex gears and pipes within.

"Good, this Gorkanaut doesn't have that disgusting force field shield!"

Ah Fu gripped the Chainsword in his hand,

"Though this hulk of iron has high HP and defense, making it difficult to deal with, as long as we can break its armor, we can chip away at its health until it dies!"

Meanwhile.

The northern defense line of Coastal City, at the core central position.

This was the sector guarded by the main forces of the Defense Force.

There were no players who could respawn infinitely, nor were there any fancy tactical maneuvers.

There was only the most primitive and brutal meat-grinder of a bloodbath.

The air was thick with the pungent smell of ozone, gunpowder, and the scent of roasting meat from bodies scorched by lasers.

Freddie was a company commander in an infantry regiment of the Defense Force.

Crouched behind a barricade made of sandbags and corpses, he held binoculars to his eyes, staring fixedly at the sea of Orks surging forward like a green tide in the distance.

"Fire! Don't stop! Keep firing even if the barrels turn red!"

Freddie roared at the top of his lungs.

Heavy Bolters and Multi-lasers on the position roared frantically.

The dense fire net tore gaps of flesh and blood into the path of the greenskin charge, but those gaps were instantly filled by Orks trampling over the corpses of their comrades.

Against these terrifying xenos, over two meters tall with muscles as hard as granite,

Ordinary Defense Force soldiers simply didn't have the ability to charge out of the trenches to duel an Orc Boss like those Outlanders did.

They could only fight the most brutal war of attrition.

It often required the concentrated fire of a dozen Lasguns just to barely bring down a single sprinting Ork Boy.

"We can't hold!" a nearby signalman shouted in despair, his face covered in blood.

Freddie grabbed the handset of the man-portable vox-caster and roared into it:

"Artillery! I need artillery support here! Immediately perform saturation fire on Sector A4! Blast those beasts back!"

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

The heavy artillery battery in the rear responded.

Large-caliber shells whistled overhead and slammed into the greenskin charge formation.

Severed limbs mixed with black soil flew into the air.

However.

Just as the front line was locked in chaotic combat and everyone's attention was drawn to the main battlefield,

Many in the Defense Force failed to notice that a dozen unusually large Orks with knotted muscles had somehow slipped silently through the front lines and were ghosting toward the headquarters in the rear.

This was a special elite unit of the greenskin camp—Kommando Boyz.

However, the infiltration method of these deadly xenos killers was bizarre to the extreme.

Their skin and armor were crudely smeared with bright purple-red paint.

On the grayish-brown wasteland battlefield, this color was more conspicuous than a searchlight!

But in the minds of these dozen or so Kommando Boyz, they followed a set of impeccable idealist logic:

"You ever seen a purple Ork? Didn't fink so! Dat's why purple means invisible!"

Not only that, but their means of camouflage were so ridiculous it would make one spit blood.

Some Orks wore a clump of dead bushes on their heads, some held up scrap iron plates full of holes, and one particularly large Ork had even pulled a tattered wooden ammo crate over his head, with two holes cursorily carved into it for observation.

These dozen 'invisible' purple Orks lined up and advanced cautiously through the mud behind the trenches with exaggerated, tiptoeing steps.

Instead of maintaining the silence required for infiltration, they were whispering loudly in gruff voices.

"See! I told ya, as long as we're painted purple, dem blind humies definitely won't see us!"

The Ork with the bushes on his head said loudly and triumphantly.

"You're real smart!"

Another Ork holding an iron plate looked around and asked in confusion,

"But where's da humie boss hidin'?"

The Kommando Boss with the crate over his head stopped and reached out a thick green finger to scratch his bald noggin through the wooden box.

"Hmm... I fink it's over dere."

With that, the crate-headed Ork extended his right hand, which held a massive Choppa, and pointed straight ahead toward the entrance of the Defense Force underground command post a hundred meters away, which was bristling with antennas and heavily guarded.

Inside the command post at that moment.

The fat General who had just been commissioning Ah Fu on the front line to win people over,

Was standing with his large belly protruding in front of a massive tactical sand table.

"Commit all reserves! Hold the line at all costs! We must not let the greenskins break through!"

The fat General shouted orders, pointing his baton at the markers on the map.

Personnel in the command post rushed back and forth, and signalmen constantly recorded the status of the front line.

Miraculously, the elite Defense Force guards standing watch outside actually turned a blind eye to the dozen purple bushes and moving wooden crates strutting toward them!

Under the distortion of the Orks' Waaagh! Field, these ridiculous Kommandos had actually achieved optical invisibility in a physical sense!

It wasn't until the Kommandos reached the door of the command post.

The crate-headed Ork ripped the tattered wooden box off his head, revealing hideous tusks.

The invisibility field broke instantly!

"WAAAAAGH!!!"

The dozen massive Kommandos suddenly attacked!

Like tigers released from a cage, they kicked open the blast-proof door of the command post and charged straight in!

"Enemy attack!"

The guard at the door only had time to let out a scream before he was split in half by a massive axe.

The small command post instantly turned into a bloody slaughterhouse.

Hearing the commotion, the fat General turned around in terror.

His pampered hands had just touched the gold-inlaid Bolter pistol at his waist, but he didn't even have time to draw it.

The Kommando Boss had already reached him in one large stride.

"Humie boss! Die!"

The Power Choppa, with its ear-piercing roar, swung down!

Splat!

Blood sprayed like a fountain onto the massive tactical sand table.

The fat General's obese body was split cleanly in two, killing him on the spot.

Organs and intestines spilled all over the floor.

The Defense Force staff officers and signalmen in the command post were slaughtered to the last man in less than half a minute by these dozen Kommandos.

...

The frontline positions.

Captain Freddie was observing the enemy's movements with his binoculars.

Suddenly, he noticed that the constant stream of dispatch orders from the rear in his waist-mounted communicator had instantly turned into the harsh sound of static and dead air.

"Hello? HQ! Answer if you hear me!" An ominous premonition rose in Freddie's heart.

After a brief burst of static,

The sound coming from the communicator was not a human voice, but a deafening burst of Ork laughter and a phrase shouted in broken Low Gothic:

"The humie boss has been chopped up by us!"

Freddie's face turned pale instantly.

The fall of a general, the command center paralyzed!

This news spread like a plague along the entire defense line through the communicators on various open channels.

The morale of the Defense Force soldiers, who were already struggling, plummeted to rock bottom.

Meanwhile, the greenskins across from them seemed to have received some kind of frenzied stimulus, and their offensive became even more fierce.

What made Freddie even more despairing was that,

As the battle reached a white-hot intensity, mutated variants from the greenskin camp began to appear in large numbers on the battlefield.

On the distant high ground, several Weirdboyz appeared, holding ragged wooden staves and surrounded by green electrical arcs.

They jumped around frenziedly, gathering the violent energy emitted by the thousands of Orks around them.

Then, they suddenly opened their mouths wide and vomited out bolts of dazzling green psychic lightning toward the Defense Force positions!

"Boom!"

The green lightning struck a bunker made of reinforced concrete.

The bunker was instantly blown to pieces, and the heavy machine gunners inside were incinerated into ash by the psychic flames before they could even scream.

And on the ground,

A group of Tankbustas, with explosives strapped all over them and crude rocket launchers in their hands, were bellowing as they charged toward the Defense Force armored positions.

Ignoring life and death, they threw Squig bombs toward the Defense Force's Leman Russ Main Battle Tanks.

Violent chain explosions lit up continuously along the defense line.

The pressure on the defense line instantly reached its critical point.

Some Conscripts, their will broken, even began to throw down their weapons and flee toward the rear.

"No retreating! Hold the line!"

Freddie drew the Chainsword at his waist and hacked down a greenskin that had jumped into the trench, trying to stabilize the line.

But he knew in his heart that without artillery coordination from HQ, the collapse of the line was only a matter of time.

Just as Freddie prepared to meet his death and pull the pin on his honor grenade,

A wailing and majestic siren suddenly rang out from the ruins in the rear!

Squads of elite warriors in jet-black heavy carapace armor and full-face visors marched into the battlefield with synchronized, heavy steps.

They were the Armed Arbiters of the Adeptus Arbites!

They were armed with large-caliber combat shotguns and Shock Mauls flickering with electric arcs.

Ignoring tactical cover, they formed a dense line formation and delivered brutal volleys of fire at the greenskins in the trenches!

"Bang! Bang! Bang!"

The close-range power of the shotguns was staggering, instantly shredding the front row of Orks into mincemeat.

Beside these black reapers followed a large number of bald Ecclesiarchy Preachers in red robes.

They held fire-spitting Heavy Flamers and brandished massive Eviscerators.

While frantically spraying lethal Promethium flames to burn groups of greenskins alive,

They chanted war hymns in praise of the God-Emperor at the top of their lungs!

"For the God-Emperor on the Throne! Death to the Xenos!"

With the timely arrival of these fresh reinforcements, the tottering defense line finally stabilized once more.

Captain Freddie panted heavily, looking at the corpses of his comrades littering the ground and the sea of greenskins that still surged forward relentlessly.

Suddenly, he felt a sense of powerlessness.