After the players, using their heavy weapon specialists, paid the heavy price of dozens of deaths in total, successfully taking out over a dozen of the enemy's accurate marksmen, the enemies deep within the ruins seemed to lose their patience first.
"Shhh—!"
Another whistle pierced through the lingering smoke, and the enemy's tactics changed in response. They completely abandoned meaningless feints. Each time they emerged from behind cover, it was accompanied by a cold and precise attack. A shot would ring out, a person would fall, and then they would vanish like ghosts into new shadows, giving the Helldivers no chance to lock on and retaliate.
It must be admitted that in this short but intense exchange of fire, it was clear that the enemy's individual combat skills far surpassed those of the Helldivers.
They moved swiftly, like phantoms weaving through broken walls and rubble, never exposing any unnecessary part of their bodies. Their shooting was precise; every energy beam slicing through the air seemed to have a life of its own, always finding the gaps in armor with cunning accuracy. Every attack inevitably claimed a fresh life.
They followed orders without question; the roars, coming from an unknown source, seemed to be commands etched deep within their souls, allowing the entire unit to switch tactics in an instant.
Under these extremely unfavorable circumstances, the Helldivers often had to expend thousands of bullets, hundreds of laser beams, sacrifice dozens of lives, and unleash a carpet bombing of several grenades to, if lucky, take out a single enemy. In fact, even now, after such intense fighting, the players had no idea who they were even fighting against.
But, what of it?
We, the Helldivers, can afford the losses! To fill an exponentially worse casualty ratio with an endless supply of lives, to crush the enemy with sheer, unreasonable numbers — this in itself is the right way of warfare! If you don't like it, don't play!
Two terra hour slipped away in a brutal war of attrition. Gradually, the attacks coming from the city ruins became sparse, eventually ceasing entirely. Realizing this, the players also gradually reduced their firing density, until the last heavy stubber stopped roaring.
The noisy battlefield abruptly returned to a deathly silence, with only the wailing of the wind through the steel skeletons and the faint rumble of artillery from the distant main battlefield.
"What's going on?" a Platoon Leader asked, somewhat puzzled, in the comms channel, crouching behind a half-broken wall. "Are they not fighting anymore? My platoon only confirmed dozens of kills in total, and the entire company's combined achievement is just over three hundred, right?"
He, of course, didn't know that, at this moment, on the other side of the ruins, the enemy commander had been completely frustrated by the players' unconventional fighting style.
He was absolutely certain that in just two terra hour of engagement, this strange human force had been precisely sniped by his kin thousands of times, and the vast majority of them were critical, highly threatening positions like heavy weapon specialists.
But for some unknown reason, no matter how hard his kin attacked, even if those humans started dragging their comrades' warm corpses to pile into breastworks for cover, there would always be someone manning the heavy stubbers on their positions, always roaring tirelessly.
Conversely, every fatal attack from his side would, by exposing their position, draw a relentless, overwhelming concentrated fire from the enemy, leading to casualties among his kin.
This alien commander clearly didn't know that, when dealing with an abnormal legion like the Helldivers, choosing a positional war of attrition was absolutely the worst possible choice.
For any normal Astra Militarum legion, if there was an alley that required four people to stand side by side to defend, then as the battle progressed, soldiers would become fatigued, injured, and demoralized.
In such a situation, a normal legion would have only two choices: either retreat to a narrower passage that only required two people to defend, or dispatch four more people to rotate with those on the front line to conserve their strength.
But for the abnormal Helldivers, they only needed four people to hold that alley until the seas dried up and the rocks crumbled. As long as they didn't want to lose it, that position would never be lost.
The only solution was to rely on powerful, instantaneous burst firepower to eliminate all four Helldivers in a single moment. But in that case... you would have to carefully consider what type of high explosives those four Helldivers had strapped to them.
"Shhh—!"
Just as the players were wondering if the enemy had silently withdrawn, an even louder whistle came from the front. This time, the enemy finally emerged from the layers of city ruins.
The Helldivers finally saw the appearance of the creatures they were fighting against—they were tall, slender humanoid creatures with a layer of mucus covering their skin, reflecting an oily sheen in the dim light. Half of their faces were occupied by hard, keratinized bird beaks, and their bodies were covered with a small amount of sparse, dull feathers, looking as if they had evolved from some kind of avian creature.
But heaven knows why an avian creature would evolve into a terrestrial one and grow limbs identical to humans... "Kroot!" a knowledgeable player immediately shouted the Name of this T'au Empire auxiliary force in the comms channel.
Before he finished speaking, hundreds of Kroot burst forth with astonishing speed among the ruins. They used all four limbs, twisting and turning, moving at high speed through the rubble in an anti-jointed posture.
Even when the players opened their fire network to its maximum, they only left a dozen corpses in the Kroot's path of charge. Most of the Kroot could be said to have easily broken through the firing line, plunging directly into a squad's position.
Close-quarters combat!
The Helldivers unhesitatingly dropped their laser guns, drawing chainswords and combat knives to fight to the death. But the cruel result was... they were completely outmatched. Even with the maximum dose of combat stimulants injected directly, maximizing their physical potential, in a brutal one-on-one melee, a player could barely last ten seconds before being cut into minced meat by a Kroot.
Even more chilling, some Kroot had already begun to feast on the players' still-twitching corpses. They tore at the flesh with their beaks, making a bone-chilling sound, seemingly wanting to understand the secrets of these fearless humans by devouring their genes, just as they had treated other enemies in the past.
The squad leader, having been cowering at the very back of the position, was the last to survive. He also successfully witnessed this barbaric and bloody scene, showing no fear on his face, only calmly quipping in the comms channel: "Damn, they're just straight-up devouring living people now, huh?"
He calmly watched the last Kroot, its beak still stained with the shredded flesh of his comrade, pounce towards him. Once he felt the distance was close enough, he gently pressed the detonator with his thumb.