One of the World Resistance Front's stronghold bases.
"They're here!"
A hoarse voice, seemingly damaged by an injured throat, rang out. Every defender stationed at the base's entrance tightened their grip on their weapons.
Not everyone holding a gun was a soldier with military training. More than three-quarters of them were civilians.
Deep inside the base, hidden within a secret shelter, were the seeds of humanity's future: approximately five hundred children.
Those civilians had joined the battle to buy the children a chance to survive and to avenge everything they had lost.
If they were going to die, they intended to take as many enemies with them as possible.
Boom!
With a deafening crash, the base's massive metal gate buckled and burst inward with a metallic shriek.
After the eardrum-shattering noise subsided, countless red points of light appeared within the rising dust.
The first soldiers to spot them pulled their triggers without hesitation, unleashing a storm of metal into the entrance.
The barrage tore through the cloud of dust and blew it away, revealing the invaders.
Clad in armor, they sprinted across the walls and even the ceiling, avoiding the incoming hail of bullets.
A few failed to evade the initial barrage, but the metal projectiles did not tear them apart. The invaders carried lightweight folding shields capable of stopping rounds powerful enough to damage their powered armor.
Ordinary small arms already had difficulty penetrating that armor, although heavy machine guns could still do it.
The shields could also be destroyed.
Unfortunately, the defenders were usually slaughtered before they could break through one.
The casualty ratio between humanity and the invaders was approximately one thousand to one.
No, that had only been true during the opening phase of the war, when most of humanity's frontline combatants had been trained soldiers.
Later, civilians made up more than half of the fighting force. By then, the casualty ratio had become impossible to calculate.
The enemy had also used underhanded tactics from the very beginning. They infiltrated human society and secretly imprisoned certain people capable of recognizing that they were not fellow humans, but something alien.
The infiltrators claimed that they were humanity's distant relatives, descendants of colonists who had settled another star system long ago.
They said they had returned to this world to lend their fellow humans their strength.
Their first tempting gift was advanced medical technology capable of curing most human diseases.
Humanity took the bait.
Little by little, the visitors were permitted to install their so-called medical devices across Earth.
In reality, those machines were weapons designed to exterminate humanity.
Once activated, they killed the brains of every human within a certain radius.
The invaders then harvested the victims' bodies.
They hollowed out the corpses, leaving only the skeletons and skin. After making certain modifications, they wore those human shells and imitated their former owners.
Their true forms were masses of hideous, nearly liquid alien tissue.
Technically, that was merely their initial form, equivalent to an infant stage.
Once injected into a human shell, they began solidifying and replicating the original body's organs. Eventually, they became almost indistinguishable from actual humans unless subjected to DNA testing.
Despite possessing enough power to crush humanity with ease, the aliens had avoided doing so because they needed human bodies.
Without those human shells, they appeared unable to survive independently.
By the time humanity discovered their true nature, most of the world had already been infiltrated. Any organized counterattack quickly collapsed.
After that, the invaders abandoned most of their caution and began hunting the surviving humans for entertainment.
Less than three minutes after the attack on the base began, its defenses had already fallen.
"Oh, this one's in excellent condition. Keep him alive for the remaining younglings."
The barely conscious man could only glare at the invader in helpless fury.
His hand moved toward the glory grenade in his pocket, only to discover that the enemy had already taken it.
Just as the invader prepared to drive a syringe into his neck, a piercing alarm suddenly erupted from its arm.
The same alarm sounded from every invader in the area.
"What happened?"
"The mothership is under attack?"
"Don't be ridiculous! Nothing on this planet is capable of that!"
Their mothership had been attacked?
A moment later, the prisoner was dragged outside the base. He exhausted what little strength remained in his body to raise his head.
Then he laughed.
Even through the atmosphere, brilliant flashes of fire were clearly visible in space.
"What the hell is happening?"
"What's attacking us?"
"I-I don't know. We can't see anything!"
"The attack isn't coming from outside. The explosions are originating inside our ships!"
"Something must have infiltrated our forces!"
The instant those terrified words left the invader's mouth, another flash appeared in the sky.
A second warship had exploded.
The invaders became even more frantic.
Five minutes later, their panic had turned into fear.
Every ship had suffered varying degrees of damage. Most critically, all their engines had been destroyed.
They could no longer leave the system. Their only option was to wait for a fleet from their homeworld to arrive.
At the same time, countless lights appeared throughout the atmosphere.
Some came from wreckage caught in the planet's gravity and burning as it fell.
Most, however, were escape pods launched from the damaged warships. The invaders were abandoning their vessels and descending to the planet because the unknown enemy was still destroying their fleet.
"You called us humans insects. Don't you look like a swarm of insects scurrying for their lives now?"
The prisoner's taunt made the creature holding him turn livid.
Bang!
The invader punched him, nearly knocking him unconscious again.
He could not allow himself to pass out.
He had to stay alive long enough to watch these monsters fall into despair.
Ten minutes later, their despair had only deepened.
They still possessed no information whatsoever about their enemy.
"Execute every surviving human in this base."
The prisoner's face instantly drained of all color.
He had wanted to witness the invaders' despair, but now the hidden children were going to die.
"What? Did you think we didn't know there were more humans hiding deeper inside?"
The invader sneered at him.
"Your recorded history only extends back a few centuries. Apparently, some disaster nearly destroyed human civilization several hundred years ago and erased every record of what came before. Do you understand what truly happened now?"
"We return at regular intervals to harvest you. Then we leave a small number of humans alive to reproduce until the next harvest."
The cruel revelation made the prisoner's eyes bulge with rage.
Yet he was powerless to do anything.
All he could do was stare at the invader's face as it suddenly...
Fell off?
More precisely, its neck had been severed by something impossibly sharp. Its head slid free as blood sprayed from the wound.
The same instant, a burst of gunfire sounded so rapid that it merged into a single muffled report.
The other four invaders exploded into mangled pieces as though they had been struck by artillery shells.
By the time the prisoner recovered from his shock, a figure was already standing before him.
The newcomer was also completely encased in armor.
However, the armor bore an emblem that made the prisoner freeze.
It depicted a double-headed eagle.
He had seen that symbol before.
The same emblem was preserved in a sealed chamber located in the deepest part of the base.
According to the surviving records, it had once represented the Imperium of Man, the ancient human empire that had ruled this galaxy.
(End of Chapter)
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