One of the most common interactions between the Wartopians and the Earthlings was the stories told by the otherworlders about their time in service: tales of battles they survived, some heroic, others downright horrific.
One story, in particular, was about the horrors of a certain command that was issued when the trenches were overrun, and the range of engagement shrank to zero—this infamous command was "Fix Bayonets!"
The death toll following this command was disastrous; entire squads were wiped out, with barely any survivors, and even fewer emerging with a sane mind.
Humankind was always a race born with very few physical advantages over most other creatures; even cats could outrun humans in a drag race.
For humanity to bridge this disadvantage, they developed tools for every occasion; thus, their greatest power became technology and science.
Then came the apocalypse, and everything humanity had built for thousands of years crumbled overnight. Their greatest weapon suddenly failed them, and nobody knew why.
Now, Adam was staring the reason right in the eye—the culprit that took the world by surprise, disturbed everything, and brought down a civilization that could have easily stopped the onslaught if its technology hadn't failed overnight.
Barbarism came with its ugly face; it wasn't content with killing technology with its disruptive witchcraft; it was hellbent on dragging every human down to the bowels of darkness and degradation.
"Fix Bayonets! Shoulder to shoulder! Ready yourselves and remember your damn training! If we fall, it is over… for everyone… for everything…"
Adam ran among his troops, pushing them out from behind the trenches to face the enemies, whose foot stomps and savage cries were riding the howling cold winds of the night.
He knew that every man he was sending up there was stepping up to meet death itself: regular humans with no superpower whatsoever. Whether Wartopians or Earthlings, all differences and lines blurred in the face of the onslaught.
Survival: that was the only goal.
"Rune Users! Converge on me! We need functioning rune uses. This way!"
He wasn't going to let this fight be a one-sided slaughter, though. He was afraid, shaking from the cold, stumbling and tripping everywhere he stepped.
"Adam! Shit! What the fuck just happened?"
In the middle of his frantic run to reorganize the ranks, he was joined by a voice he was so glad to hear.
"Kave!" Adam called to his friend, who came to his side with his blade over his shoulder. "Join me; we need to organize a retreat."
"What the FUCK was that? What's with Creed? He isn't even moving!" Kave shouted in clear panic.
"It's like some sort of EMP," Adam replied. "Creed… he probably had all his implants shut down."
"His Kernel Sub-brain!" Kave's eyes widened in realization.
"Most likely," Adam said, before showing panic. "How the fuck do some stone age fuckers have something like that?"
The question wasn't just on Adam's mind; it was something everyone was trying to fathom with loud cries and panicking voices.
"I want everyone behind the trenches. I can hear them charging. We'll use the trenches to absorb the charge and fuck them with bayonets as they climb," Adam said, turning to Kave. "Got any better ideas?"
"I'll have Flint lead the defense on that side; you focus here," Kave said, then moved.
"Go!" Adam approved, but just then, another hand reached for him.
He turned and saw Megan and, surprisingly, Elena.
"Meg, gather the rune users into a single unit. We'll be the heart of the formation," he said, his shaking hands meeting hers.
"Right!" Megan nodded and looked at him, clearly frightened. "I… I can't be with you… I'll join the defense line."
"No, we need your…" Adam was about to say that her rune power was needed, but as he looked at the Blazer she had, it seemed impossible for Megan to fight without a ranged weapon.
"If Blazer arms are down, we go back to Firearms," Elena said, turning to Megan. "Take Ragna and her squad to the armory; there are over a hundred firearms there. Not much ammunition, though."
"Hendrick's Mercenaries and the people in the town should still have some," Adam said, turning to Megan. "New orders: go organize them and reinforce us."
"But…" Megan felt hesitant, looking between the two.
"Go! Trooper!" Elena and Adam both shouted simultaneously, causing the terrified Megan to break into a run.
The two then waited a couple of seconds before speaking again, Elena starting:
"We got her away for now. You keep your head in the game, Commander."
"Thanks. I'll never forget that, Sergeant." Adam spoke with genuine appreciation.
"Now, where's Kave?" Elena asked, looking around with the same worry that was on Adam's face.
"He's organizing the left flank with Flint," Adam replied.
"I get your girl away from the fight, and you send mine into the thick of it?" Elena turned to him, appalled, but her tone was far from serious.
"Kave will hold fine." Adam shook his head, turning behind him. "Creed's sub-brain was hit by the EMP; he's what worries me."
"Paladins should be immune to that, though," Elena said, before frowning. "I saw Solana retreating to the base when the EMP hit, though. She seemed out of it."
"The damned nun deserted?" Adam asked, his tone growing bloody.
"Wouldn't blame her if she did," Elena said calmly. "A tech nun without tech, she would be more helpless than a recruit."
"She'll be tried, though," Adam said, his voice turning cold, but his judicial air still dropped right as he looked back south. "If we live the night, that is."
"A plan, sir?" Elena asked, looking at Adam with careful hope.
"I don't know." Adam let out a cold breath. "If more of them are coming, we'll be wiped out in melee. We have to weigh our options and see if we can withstand a fight the same way we did with the Krants."
"And the retreat?" She asked.
"The hill of the main base is fortified, but we'll have to send word for everyone to evacuate there first," Adam said, making a firm face. "As we retreat, I'll use my runes and slow them down."
"You shouldn't do anything reckless!" Elena pleaded. "If you can escape this even by yourself, you can always rebuild."
"What nonsense…" Adam shot Elena a glare, his chest getting tight with the thought of what she just said. "I will not abandon any one of you. I did everything the way I thought was right; I built it all from the ground up, and you were there with me from Day 1. This is not a situation where I retreat to build up somewhere else."
"But…" Elena tried to protest, but Adam cut her words.
"No! If this falls, nothing is worth it anymore. Defeat in our home base is not an option. I have you, all of you—my family—and nothing is stronger than family," he said, pointing towards the enemy whose silhouettes were finally emerging from the darkness, over a hundred meters away. "Now we fight this with everything we've got, and we win. That's your order, Sergeant."
Elena looked at Adam; for the second time, her feelings and rationality were suppressed by this authority and willpower. Without a shred of resistance, she heeded his words with a salute, like a puppet to the puppeteer's whim.
Before she could even have time to process, Adam was already summoning a golem and stepping into its center. As the giant towered over the human army, many raised their heads to watch the mighty thing step between them and the coming doom.
Even though it was giant and mighty, it wouldn't cover everything, and this was the scariest part about what was coming.
As for Elena, she reached out for her left shoulder, where her mechanical arm was dangling uselessly from her side. She started moving multiple mechanical latches, and the shape of the arm changed dramatically, now stiffening into what seemed like a spiked mace. She then released the whole thing from her shoulder and caught it as it dropped, before leaning to her left side, now that most of her weight was on her right.
"Sol, guide the way. Show us how you walked to enlightenment, so we can follow the light to your halls of eternal peace." She prayed under her breath, then stood up shoulder to shoulder, filling an empty spot in the lines.
The clouds in the sky parted, and the light of the moon was shed over the battlefield.
Hundreds of savages rushed across the broken terrain, their faces distorted with anger, their limbs swollen with unnatural strength, and among them were outsiders who led monsters into battle, such as wolves and boars.
Their numbers seemed without end for a second as they poured from the darkness like a tide of locusts. They reached the trench lines and suddenly started falling and filling them with their bodies. Those of them who noticed the dug earth immediately leaped across, some strong enough for the jump, others joining the bodies beneath.
Savage cries met war shouts as lines clashed. The bayonets on Blazers met flesh as the first savage went into a blood frenzy and tried to push through despite the pain and danger. Shouts of the troopers in disciplined lines and wavering morale held firm, and the first savage was dealt with… then came the next, and the next.
Hardly any of the savages held weapons; their bodies were the weapons as they flailed their fists and tried to scratch and bite, some overwhelming troopers with sheer madness.
Suicidal was the tactic; brutal was the execution. But soon after, it all started to make sense. Those who were thrown at the trooper line first were the scum of the surface, the chaff to be beaten before the real fighting force of the Neanders stepped in. A tactic too sinister to be thought by savage minds, yet heartless enough that it bordered on cunning.
The ones who attacked after that were the elite force of the Neanders, and those were the ones who did serious damage. Their power was that of the awakened; they could jump the entire width of the main trench with ease, and if their clubs landed a hit, three or four men would shatter upon impact.
Adam saw that from the safety of his golem, realizing that those were the ones who possessed superhuman strength, enough to hurl weapons and stones at such ranges. He manipulated his large golem, the largest he ever made, and with a mechanical will, the golem stomped on one of the stronger Neanders, causing the sound of shattering bone and popping flesh, as a pool of blood spread under its foot.
The sensation of all that—every horrific detail, every ounce of resistance offered by the Neander brute—was channeled through the earth and dirt, all the way to the nerve ends on Adam's skin that were in contact with the golem.
He didn't feel sick, he didn't hesitate, and he didn't fall to bloodlust either.
The feeling of taking his first human life, stomping it under the feet of his golem like a man squishing a bug, was, in every sense of the word, surreal.
There was no adrenaline rush, anger, or moral agony; there was only numbness and coldness, the type that settles in and waits for trauma to build up. And so Adam made the golem take one more step, again and again.
He was a walking omen of death to the Neanders, one that they, despite their reckless abandon, started to fear and somewhat admire. Many of them stepped up to stop him, but the pilot within simply didn't care and kept up his cold and merciless brand of earth-shaking slaughter.
His mind worked in ways that scared him from the very core, yet he refused to touch upon that deadly part of his psyche that he let loose with what felt like the flip of a switch. All sounds were muffled where he was; his heart beat the loudest, and what little he could see was limited to the holes he drilled into his cockpit to see and control. Along with the other emotions and sounds he muffled were the system notifications that kept buzzing with each and every kill. Adam didn't know what they said; he simply looked past them, and they didn't bother him in the slightest, but if they were to speak, what horrible things they would say to him.
He refused to continue that line of thinking and focused on the present, the fight, the agony he was inflicting upon his soul, but hadn't yet felt its sting. He looked with unblinking eyes at the lines behind him and saw the struggle, the barbaric fight that ensued: the bayonet wall against the berserk rabble, and he felt that his soldiers would soon break.
It was now or never!
Adam raised the gigantic arm of his golem and flung it wildly, detaching it from its base, and sending it at the horde that was coming to join the fray. Tons of earth moved, and when it reached a contact point, it exploded into a burst of spikes; the System messages almost screamed from the kill count that followed.
He then turned and did the same motion on the other flank, and the death toll was even wilder than the first. His mind developed a strange bit of headache from the System's reaction.
Armless, the golem still wreaked havoc with its massive legs, and Adam had the means to regrow more arms at any time. But now that the horde was halted, he opened his cockpit and shouted to his troops:
"Retreat to the hill! Cover your back and retreat! NOW!"
His voice boomed unnaturally; a force he didn't know existed made it thunder across the battlefield. The troopers, like those in a daze, started to frantically move back—some focused, some wavering, some already broken and would never stop for another order to continue fighting.
Adam had regrown one arm for his golem as he turned, and before the second wave could strike him with their weapons. He immediately reached down for the incapacitated Captain Creed and picked him up before retreating.
Behind him, the Neanders chased, but as the scale of the fight shrank, he could ward off the attacks and buy time all by himself, running in zigzags and taking out any Neander that tried to overtake him.
The golem may have been massive, but the nimbleness Adam displayed in controlling it was out of this world, and without fail, he landed right on top of each chaser who posed a threat to his troops. But as the Neanders finally became irked by how relentless this earthen giant was, they started to give way in their unorganized ranks, and something started to step forth from their midst.
It was then that Adam saw something, and all the senses he cultivated and the skills he had leveled started screaming, each in its own field, warning him of the danger he was in.
He tried to turn and face it, but in a split second, his head was gone.
No, it was the shock he felt, but the head of his golem was torn right off, and the impact sent the entire body of the giant thing falling over his troops without warning. Many perished in that one move, and the cause was a wrecked truck thrown right at the golem's head and exploding it instantly.
Usually, Adam would use the head of his golem as his cockpit for piloting the giant thing, but since he was fighting much smaller targets, he needed to get down in order to see what was below him, so he made himself a cavity in the chest area and piloted from there.
Yet whatever hit him sent a ripple of destruction through the entire golem. It immediately crumbled into bits and chunks of earth, the head itself flying away and landing on some unfortunate souls along with the broken truck that hit it. Creed's body was flung to the side, falling on some rubble on his back, whereas Adam was completely buried within the confines of his golem, but amidst all the rubble, he had a view of what transpired on the Neanders' front.
Standing among the throng was what seemed to be a man, large in stature, larger than Creed by a head, maybe two. Adam couldn't tell exactly what kind of creature that was, but its body shifted from a deliberate posture resulting from some sort of throwing exertion of something considerably heavy—a two-ton pickup truck, for example.
The thing stepped ahead with total authority over the other Neanders, its form coming into full view for everyone who simply stopped and watched the giant golem collapse. Even Adam could see the creature from his place of entombment, especially as the thing stepped over the golem and pressed its feet hard, causing Adam's lungs to almost collapse from the immense power it exerted.
It had a tall frame, broad shoulders, large and thick hands, fangs long and sharp protruding from an elongated baboon-like face, and gray hair covering it from head to toe, save for its feral face and the savage muscles on its chest.
Those who saw it and survived the day could only call it one name, the first monster to land a crushing defeat on the Solarium of Earth: Bigfoot.
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