BOOOM
An unprecedented, earth-shattering roar instantly swallowed all other sounds on the battlefield.
Blinding white light erupted from the epicenter, as if a miniature sun had risen in the center of the position. This was immediately followed by a devastating shockwave. Whether it was the original ruined walls of the hive city or the temporary shelters and fortifications players had built for the battle, everything crumbled like paper before this brutal force, easily torn apart, blown away, and collapsed.
Players within a hundred meters of the explosion were, without exception, thrown askew and knocked off their feet by the terrifying shockwave.
Those further away only felt as if their eardrums had been pierced by a red-hot iron poker, gritting their teeth in agony as their heads buzzed with a deafening roar.
But those closer suffered terribly. They were thrown high into the air, then slammed back down, their mouths spewing blood that stained the ground before them, feeling as if countless bones in their bodies had been broken. Several severely wounded players lying on the ground didn't even have the strength to wail, only weakly crying out, "Quick... give me a shot..."
Fortunately, despite the horrific friendly fire, few people cursed the Assassin for it. After all, in this game, the penalty for character death was far less severe than equipment damage. One player struggled to get up from the ground and immediately checked his lasgun and bulletproof armor, letting out a long sigh of relief when he found only a few scratches: "Good, good, the equipment is fine..."
Indeed, bulletproof armor and laser guns had much higher resistance to pure shrapnel and shockwave damage than flesh and blood.
As for the Mua'dib and Chaos Sorcerer Elias, who were at the very center of the explosion?
Under such a world-destroying suicide attack, naturally, not a single identifiable trace remained.
The purple psychic flames that permeated the battlefield completely dissipated with Elias's annihilation.
The cultists lying on the ground first raised their heads in terror. Then, they realized that the chilling psychic pressure that had weighed on their hearts had vanished. They could no longer see the high and mighty Sorcerer, who had regarded their lives as mere grass.
Both the supreme commander and the ultimate military deterrent were gone.
The deathly silence lasted only a few seconds.
"He's dead! The Sorcerer is dead!"
Someone shouted first, and then, the desire for survival completely erupted. The cultists, without any further hesitation, scrambled to their feet, threw down their weapons, and desperately fled backward, their organization completely collapsing at that moment.
Meanwhile, the Supervisory Team on the high ground behind, watching the overwhelming tide of retreating people, also fell into a brief hesitation.
"Sir, should we... should we still stop them?" a supervision team member asked tremblingly.
The scarred supervisor spat fiercely, unmounting his heavy lumbering gun from its tripod and slinging it over his shoulder: "Stop them, my ass! Master Elias is gone, and with just a hundred or so of us, a few dozen guns, we're going to stop these thousands of routed soldiers? Are you stupid?!"
He looked around, lowering his voice: "Life is so good, I haven't lived enough yet! Haul ass!"
At his command, the supervision team, which had just been slaughtering routed soldiers, unhesitatingly joined the fleeing ranks, and because of their position in the rear, they actually ended up at the very front of the main force.
On the position, the players watched the cultists retreat in chaotic disarray like a receding tide, but there was no joy of victory on their faces. Instead, they were plunged into a strange state of bewilderment.
One player stared blankly at the empty center of the explosion, finally unable to help but shout out everyone's unspoken thought: "Dude, you just died like that?! Where's your second phase?!"
The player group instantly erupted.
"No way? It's over just like that?!"
"Damn it! I just finished warming up! I just bought a dueling sword, ready to go up and chop him up!"
"What about the promised day-long bloody battle? Why did my exp just run away?! Mua'dib, you dog, give me back my boss!"
"I'm so mad! I'm still far from enough exp! Everyone, chase!"
At this call, a dozen or so players who hadn't earned enough battle exp and felt they had been "kill-stolen" immediately jumped out of the trenches in a fit of rage, guns in hand, and chased after them.
Thus, on the battlefield of the Lower Hive ruins, a spectacle worthy of being recorded in Perditia's history was born:
Thousands of chaos cultists scurried away in front, fleeing desperately in disarray; while a dozen or so soldiers in Imperial Astra Militarum uniforms pursued them majestically from behind.
As for the other players remaining on the position, their nominal company commander, Robert, quickly held them back.
"Everyone, stop!" Robert shouted, his face red, at a group of eager players, "The mission requirement is to 'Hold the Position'! If all of you run off and no one guards this place, the system will declare the mission a failure, and that would be a huge mess!"
This cold shower instantly calmed most of the players.
"Damn, I forgot about that."
"Shit, I almost got carried away."
"What about the dozen or so people who chased them out?"
"Who cares about them, let them attract fire, we'll guard our home, and when the system declares victory, we won't lose a single point of merit."
After a highly realistic discussion, the players on the position quickly reached a consensus, re-entered defensive stances, and began to clean up the battlefield, seeing if they could pick up any "relics" from the center of Elias's self-detonation.
On the other side of the battlefield, the fleeing cultists didn't think that much. The instinct for survival drove them to unconsciously run towards where most of their own people were, because in their simple minds, a place with many people meant safety and refuge.
Thus, under the "herding" of a dozen players, these thousands of routed soldiers, like startled cattle with their tails on fire, charged directly towards the main attack direction of the cultists' offensive—which was the flank of the main position guarded by the main force of the Imperial Astra Militarum.
This then staged a blackly humorous scene, a fire-bull charge of the Warhammer 40k era.
Thousands of mentally broken cultists formed the charging "herd of cattle," while a dozen players, shouting and clamoring for exp, were the "herdsmen" driving them from behind. They were like a hot, sharp knife, fiercely stabbing into the flank of the cultist army that was vigorously assaulting the main position!
"Ahhh! Don't come any closer!"
"There are monsters behind us! Run!"
"They killed Master Sorcerer!"
Panic is contagious. The cultists attacking the position had no idea what was happening. They only saw their comrades rushing at them from the rear-flank, crying and shouting, breaking their formation into disarray. Immediately after, dense laser gunshots and the excited curses of players echoed from behind.
Chaos, like a plague, began to spread uncontrollably.