On the metal walkway of C-3, the last surviving player of the Seventh Squad looked at the scattered pieces of his teammates on the ground, then at Rex, who was unharmed and elegant in the distance, and suddenly smiled in relief.
He cursed directly: "Damn you, game dev! The first boss was taken down by our self-destructs, and now the second Sir is agile, huh? Targeting us, just outright targeting us!"
Although it didn't quite understand what this mortal was saying, Rex could read from the other's posture that he had given up resistance. It moved with silent steps, appearing like a phantom before the player, and asked in cold, pure High Gothic: "How did you find me?"
The player took a deep breath, then spat fiercely at Rex's inhuman face.
"Haa~ptooey!"
Rex tilted its head slightly, easily dodging the futile insult. The next instant, its claw-blades cut through with a dark purple afterglow, cleanly slicing the player in half at the waist.
Alas, the information still wasn't extracted... With a hint of regret, Rex no longer lingered and began to move rapidly along the pipes. Since the expulsion of those cultists was a foregone conclusion, it intended to leave this Chemical Refinery immediately and not stay here any longer. However, not long after it started moving, footsteps dozens of times denser than before came from ahead.
Rex felt a trace of irritation. How could these mortals come in wave after wave, endlessly!
This time, it no longer bothered to conceal its tracks, but instead transformed into a deadly shadow, charging into the oncoming group of humans. A pure massacre began. Limbs flew everywhere, and laser beams and bullets futilely chased its afterimages. Although the players could clearly see Rex through their friend-or-foe identification system, they couldn't lock onto it, let alone hit it.
"Damn it! This thing's speed, strength, and reaction—all its attributes are at least three times ours!" A player roared in despair before being cut in half.
Many players also tried to injure Rex by self-destructing, but all undoubtedly failed—Rex had already swept past them and cut them into several pieces halfway through their charge. Soon, all the players realized a cruel truth: without restricting the opponent's movements, they simply couldn't harm this pureblood genestealer.
On the other side, Rex also felt something was amiss.
It had originally intended to kill all these mortals before calmly withdrawing, but it had been continuously slashing for several minutes, tearing apart at least several hundred people with its claws, yet the enemies before it seemed endless, impossible to kill them all?
The reason was actually very simple—under Robert's command, the remaining players gathered before entering the pipe together. Rex always faced a force of over seventy players. At its efficiency, it would take seven to eight seconds to kill all these people. This time, however, exceeded the players' respawn time. This meant that before it killed the last player, the first player it had killed had already returned from death, completely unharmed.
Under Terrabyte's cognitive filter, Rex could not comprehend the phenomenon of "resurrection" which defied common sense. But its battle-hardened instincts also made it realize that these mortals before it were "unkillable."
So it decided not to entangle itself with these guys any longer. It retreated a few steps, preparing to leap onto the pipes above and leave from a higher vantage point. After all, these mortals couldn't fly.
Just as it bent its knees, gathering strength to leap, a heavy thud on the metal suddenly sounded behind it.
It was a sound it was very familiar with, having heard it just minutes ago. It was the sound of that ogryn walking here, but at the current frequency, it should be running.
If it were just the ogryn's footsteps, Rex wouldn't be too concerned. Such mentally deficient, slow-moving abhumans posed no threat to it. But what made Rex incredibly disbelieving, even causing a momentary pause in its thoughts, was—that sound came from behind it.
Behind? How could it be behind?!
Rex was very sure that all living things on the path behind it had already been cut into several pieces, and even the tenacious Nurgle Poxwalkers would be unable to rise again, leaving absolutely no sign of life.
And this C-3 area definitely only had one entrance and exit in front of it... If being discovered before was somewhat normal, as Rex's concealment wasn't some advanced psychic ability, then this sound from behind completely defied logic.
Rex's thoughts were disrupted by this utterly illogical event. Being far more intelligent than any of its kin, it fell into incomprehensible confusion for the first time, and its poised leaping motion hesitated for an instant.
And it was this instant of hesitation that cost the seemingly invincible genestealer its life.
"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA—!"
The newly resurrected Cain let out an earth-shattering roar from behind, spread his arms, and used all his strength to tightly embrace Rex!
Rex, reacting, immediately swung its four arms, tearing the ogryn's body to pieces again in less than a tenth of a second. But the players in front had already swarmed forward! Bayonets, dueling swords, entrenching tools... a dozen melee weapons struck Rex's body squarely at that moment!
Although these mortals' weapons only embedded a few inches into its hard carapace and could move no further, Rex genuinely bled purplish-black blood. This was its first injury! Rex let out an angry shriek, sweeping its claws, instantly severing a dozen human arms holding weapons.
All of this only confined Rex in place for a few tenths of a second, but it was enough.
Mua'dib, who had been lurking at the edge of the battlefield, having bundled several melta-bombs together, seized this fleeting opportunity. His eyes gleamed with fanaticism as he unhesitatingly lunged forward.
"Long live the God Emperor! Praise be!"
Infinite light and heat erupted, melting everything. The terrifying high-temperature environment and flowing liquefied metal left behind after the explosion even caused the players at the epicenter to die and revive more than a dozen times between the respawn point and the battlefield.
And Rex, without the protection of a minor deity, naturally transformed completely into boiling solution at the very beginning of the explosion, under the super-high temperatures capable of melting tanks.
The fate of the Chaos Sorcerer and the Pureblood Genestealer proclaimed a chilling truth:
When facing players, never show even the slightest flaw.
The Helldivers, unafraid of death and advancing in waves, will seize even the smallest opportunity to drag those who seemed to hold all the advantages into a shared abyss of destruction.