Under the glare of the strong light, the intricate tactical infiltration designed by the Tyranid swarm had completely failed.
The Hormagaunts serving as the 'eyes' of the operation fell into a frenzy of sensory confusion, and the entire infiltration formation instantly collapsed.
But blindness did not mean madness. The Synapse Creatures responsible for command, sensing the instant failure of the tactic, decisively abandoned such complex maneuvers.
The complicated chain of command was severed, replaced by the most primitive and most effective order:
Charge!
"Hiss—!!!"
As if responding to a silent horn, all the confused Tyranids caught in the strong light and those lurking behind cover unified their movements in an instant.
They no longer dodged, nor did they seek cover, but pointed their segmented limbs toward the hill position, unleashing a deafening shriek. The sound coalesced into a black-and-purple tidal wave, surging forward!
"They're going for a straight charge! All hands, free fire! Shoot until your ammo runs out, you hear me!"
Platoon Sergeant Michelangelo stood at the temporary command point, watching the swarm quickly converge from a loose formation into an unstoppable torrent. He spat out a mouthful of bloody phlegm and roared into the communicator.
The Helldivers on the position reacted immediately. The familiar feeling was back!
"Boom! Boom! Boom!"
The roar of Heavy Bolters sounded first, detonating bouquets of flesh and blood within the swarm. Close behind, Autoguns, Lasguns, Heavy Stubbers... the cacophony of all weapons merged into a symphony of steel and death.
The first rank of charging Hormagaunts was torn to shreds by the dense wall of fire while still a hundred meters from the position, sending green blood and shattered carapace flying everywhere.
However, their deaths did not cause the slightest pause in the advance of those behind them. More bugs trampled over the corpses of their comrades, surging forward one after another.
Michelangelo's autogun was already scorching hot. He quickly swapped out a new magazine and emptied a burst into a Warrior Tyranid attempting to leap into the trench.
The bullets ricocheted off the Warrior's tough carapace, only causing it to stagger for a moment. The very next second, the Warrior swung its massive, scythe-like claws and sliced a player standing next to Michelangelo in half at the waist!
"Swish—"
Almost simultaneously, the player's figure shimmered and reappeared next to their squad leader.
"Damn it! Sergeant, that thing has thick armor!" the resurrected player shouted over the comms channel.
"Use grenades! Concentrate fire on that big bastard!"
Michelangelo bellowed, simultaneously dodging a pounce from another Hormagaunt, before plunging his combat knife deep into its eye socket.
The entire hill position transformed into a massive meat grinder. The Helldivers, relying on the hastily constructed defenses, poured out fire in a frenzy. The bugs, in turn, relied on their endless numerical advantage to hammer the defensive line again and again.
Corpses and shell casings quickly piled up in the trenches, the thick smell of blood and gunpowder mixing together to stimulate the nerves of everyone present.
However, not all sections of the defense were rock solid. Raphael's squad was responsible for the extended flank of the position, where the trench excavation was slightly behind schedule, leaving the trench visibly shallower than the others.
When the swarm surged, this weakness was immediately exposed. While players elsewhere could comfortably rest their weapons on the breastworks and fire, here, the meter-long Hormagaunts could almost leap over the slope and snatch at their helmets!
"Thwack!"
A player, after resurrecting, peered up and was instantly impaled through the chest by the razor claws of a Hormagaunt reaching over the trench edge.
"They're overrunning us! Too many bugs, we're screwed!"
"I respawned—coming in hot! Hold the f** on!"*
Raphael's anxious shouts rang out in the comms channel, his voice practically raw: "Sergeant! Raphael calling! Our trench isn't finished, the bugs are too tall, they can hit us right in the chest!"
Michelangelo was currently using his rifle butt to smash a Hormagaunt corpse down the slope. Hearing the call, he glanced at the precarious flank defense and immediately cursed into the communicator without thinking:
"Raphael, are you a motherf*cking moron?!"
He roared while shooting a bug attempting to climb up, splitting it in two. The hot casings bounced off his face.
"You've got perfectly good cover in the form of your dead teammates' bodies! Use them! Pile them up for me!"
The comms channel went silent for two seconds.
The next moment, Raphael's voice, full of sudden enlightenment, sounded: "Holy shit! You're right! Guys, quick! Drag the recently deceased 'divers over here and pile them up in front! Move, move, move!"
Raphael's squad instantly caught on. The players who had been scrambling due to the shallow trench depth now found a new focal point for their work.
"CaseOH, you just died, your body's still warm, we'll use yours first!"
"AYO GET OFF ME—WHY ME?! USE THAT DUDE OVER THERE! HE'S BEEN FOLDED LIKE THREE TIMES! THAT MAN IS BASICALLY A FROZEN DINNER AT THIS POINT!"
Under a hail of bullets and shrapnel, the players dragged the "previous lives" of their recently respawned teammates, piling them up haphazardly in front of the trench.
Soon, a genuine "Wall of Flesh and Blood," constructed from the bodies of the Helldivers, rose up. It successfully bought them precious firing height and buffer space.
And as the originator of this genius tactic, Michelangelo now stood at the trench intersection, directing the battle with vigor.
"Leonardo! Quit babying your grenades, start chucking 'em and blow those bastards up!"
"Donatello! If you're out of mines, then start hurling frags like your life depends on it!"
"Raphael! Stack that damn body wall higher, we need cover!"
Such high-profile command was undoubtedly a beacon in the chaotic battlefield—guiding friendlies and... attracting enemies.
Just as Michelangelo was shouting and spluttering, three enormous black shadows used the smoke from heavy weapons explosions as cover to stealthily creep close to the position.
Their massive, heavily armored bodies were far larger than ordinary Hormagaunts, and the bone swords on their four arms were terrifyingly vicious.
They were Tyranid Warriors! The neural nodes of the Hive Mind on the battlefield!
"Hiss—!"
Accompanied by a shriek, the three Tyranid Warriors suddenly leaped from the dense fog, clearing the corpse piles and sandbags, and crashed heavily into the trench where Michelangelo was standing!
Mud and shredded meat splattered.
One second, Michelangelo was pontificating; the next, he found three two-meter-tall killing machines staring fixedly at him with their emotionless compound eyes. The stench of gore that washed over him nearly suffocated him.
In a flash of lightning, Michelangelo's survival instinct overwhelmed everything else. He screamed, letting out a yell that pierced the heavens:
"To the defense of the throne—!"
Before the cry was fully out, he had already turned and run without hesitation, his movements so smooth it was as if he had practiced them thousands of times.
As a Platoon Sergeant, he certainly couldn't just throw away his life just because he could resurrect.
While the Company Commander was also at the rear position and he could return quickly after respawning, the tide of battle changed rapidly, and every death of a commanding officer could lead to a fatal gap in the defense. It was better to ensure the continuity of command. A wise man knows when to beat a retreat!
While he ran like the wind, the three Tyranid Warriors that had jumped into the trench caused a bloodbath among the startled Helldivers, who were momentarily unable to deal with them.
Looking at the defensive line instantly thrown into chaos behind him, Michelangelo was not panicked. He knew that soon enough, these imposing bugs would be atomized by his red-eyed brothers using suicide bombing tactics.
However, it was precisely in the face of such a crisis that a thought flashed through his mind like lightning, causing his sprinting footsteps to falter.
"Wait a minute, where the f*ck are our Astartes?"