"Everyone, pay attention! The enemy is attacking! Get ready for battle!"

The alarm sounding in the communication channel instantly made every soldier's nerves tense.

The defense line of the 18th Armored Division of the Planetary Defense Force stretches across the central square of the city. This once huge industrial hub and city has now turned into a war fortress built of steel and blood.

Around the square, the towering Gothic buildings were crumbling in the artillery fire, and broken glass curtain walls fell like raindrops.

In the center of the square, the fifty-meter-tall statue of the emperor still stood tall, but his solemn face had been blackened by gunpowder smoke, and his right arm holding the sword had been broken in the previous bombing, with half of the broken sword sticking diagonally in the ruins of the fountain pool.

Colonel Keller stood on the turret of the command tank, the blue light of the tactical eyepiece reflecting his tense jawline.

He took a deep breath, and the smell of battlefield mixed with the smell of burning metal and ionized air filled his lungs.

A steel wall consisting of 125 "Thor's Hammer" siege tanks spread out in front of him. The mm shock-penetrating guns of these steel behemoths raised their barrels in unison, and the plasma ammunition filled in the barrels was emitting a dangerous buzzing sound.

"Everyone, please! Fire!"

His order was transmitted to the entire army through the encrypted channel. The next second, the roar of 300 heavy artillery pieces at the same time made the ground of the entire square tremble.

The blazing white flames erupting from the muzzles tore the darkness before dawn into pieces. Three hundred plasma bombs, trailing blue tails, cut through the sky and detonated simultaneously 200 meters above the Zerg landing site.

The scene was like divine punishment.

The sky was dyed an eerie blue-purple color, and the plasma fire cloud produced by the explosion poured down like a waterfall, forming a sky of death that covered the entire battlefield.

The chitinous carapace of the new knife worm twisted and melted like wax at a high temperature of 3000 degrees, and the yellow-green blood was vaporized before it hit the ground.

The air was filled with the stench of burning protein. Countless Zergs twisted wildly in the rain of fire, eventually turning into charred remains.

Chaodu Plaza

Second Line of Defense

The foot of Sergeant Marcus's power armor sank deeply into the broken marble floor.

He stared through his mask at the still-burning remains of the Zerg in the distance. The numbers jumping on the tactical HUD showed that the first round of bombardment destroyed at least ten thousand biological signals.

But no one cheered? Every veteran knows that this is just the calm before the storm.

"Load depleted uranium bombs! Check the cooling system!"

His voice echoed through the armored speakers. Three thousand Marines followed his orders in silence, and the humming sound of the CMC power armor hydraulic system merged into one.

Rookie Thompson's hands were shaking slightly as he adjusted the feed of his Gauss rifle until Marcus pressed his large armored hands against his shoulder armor.

"Look into my eyes, kid." A hoarse voice came from behind the mask. "When you fire later, remember three things: breathe steadily, pull the trigger lightly, and aim accurately."

The explosions in the distance suddenly became more frequent. Marcus turned his head and saw that the red tide representing the Zerg on the tactical map was filling up the blank areas at an alarming speed.

What's even more terrifying is that some huge monster is moving in the thick smoke. Every time its six giant limbs fall, it will cause a small earthquake. That is the unique movement frequency of the large units in the swarm.

"They've broken through the flame belt!" The observer's scream exploded on the communication channel.

As if to confirm this statement, the first wave of knife bugs suddenly rushed out from the plasma cloud that had not yet dissipated.

Smoke was still coming out of their broken shells, but they were still rushing towards the human defense line at a speed of 80 kilometers per hour.

Marcus looked at the rapidly approaching red light on the HUD and slowly raised his right arm.

"Wait until they get to 500 meters...Hold steady..."

The base of the Emperor's statue suddenly exploded, dozens of Lurkers emerged from the ground, and the statue's massive body began to tilt.

Marcus watched as the symbol of human civilization slowly fell, the Emperor's stone cloak shattered in the fall, and that majestic face was finally submerged in the surging insect tide.

"Fire!"

The sound of three thousand C-14 Gauss rifles spewing flames at the same time was comparable to a thunderstorm.

The metal storm formed by the 8mm depleted uranium armor-piercing bullets tore the front row of springtails into pieces, and a rain of blood and flesh suddenly fell on the square.

Marcus accurately shot at the knee joint of a warrior worm. As he watched the monster fall to its knees, he noticed that more shadows were continuing to charge forward, stepping on the corpses of their companions. Behind them, the mountain-like figures of the three Stonebreakers were clearly visible.

Thompson suddenly let out a war cry that was not like a human voice. The new recruit who was still trembling five minutes ago was now frantically pouring out ammunition.

Marcus was about to say something, but was interrupted by a ground-shaking vibration. The Stonebreaker in the front had entered the siege tank's range. One of its front limbs was broken by a volley of plasma cannons, but the other three limbs still supported this behemoth to move forward.

"Boom boom boom!!!"

Amid the deafening explosion, Sergeant Marcus suddenly felt a strange vibration under his feet. It was not the aftermath of the artillery bombardment, but some kind of regular, creepy friction sound, like countless metal files were frantically scraping the foundation of the hive city.

"What the hell is that—" He hadn't finished his roar when the entire ground suddenly bulged. The metal floor that had been laid for hundreds of years was twisted and deformed like fragile tin foil, and spider-web-like cracks spread out in an instant.

“Shoot down! Shoot down!”

Marcus' voice almost broke.

The surrounding Marines hurriedly turned their Gauss rifles downward and fired depleted uranium armor-piercing bullets into the cracked ground like a rain of depleted uranium bullets.

The dull sound of bullets shattering concrete and steel was mixed with a kind of teeth-grinding sound of shells rubbing against each other. The sound was getting closer and louder, as if the whisper of death came from the depths of hell.

“I can’t penetrate it! I can’t penetrate it at all!”

New recruit Thompson was screaming hysterically, his mask covered with sweat and white mist from his breath.

At his feet, a crack suddenly spurted out smelly yellow mucus, and the CMC armor's alarm immediately shrieked, which was the reaction of the corrosive substance detection.

The next second, the whole world spun.

Four giant sickle-shaped forelimbs broke out of the ground. Each limb, as thick as a powered armor thigh, was covered with dark biological armor, and the serrations on the edges glowed coldly under the searchlight.

The blown-off metal floor smashed into the rear position like a cannonball, and three soldiers who had no time to dodge were cut in half on the spot, with blood and hydraulic oil splattering on the ruins.

"Digging python! It's digging--"

The warning sound stopped abruptly.

The ground collapsed with a loud bang, and a huge pit with a diameter of ten meters appeared in the center of the defense line.