"The map layout, the enemy's Data Center, and the trap zone. These were the clues I had been given so far." Adam turned to the Doomsday Clock and tightened his fists, seeing that 40 minutes had passed. "More than half the time was still left. It's doable."
Since he was playing with the Solarium general faction, Adam's advantages were many, but the more powerful ones were always more costly than the normal Men-at-Arms, even in terms of population cost.
A Legio Bellarium Company comprised an average of 750 units, and as a Captain, that was his limit in this trial. However, if he were to summon a Paladin or non-Bellarium units, he would pay a penalty in population cost, especially since the three Warrior Monks he summoned were counted as 6 units in base population.
Even the two H-Bugs cost 4 population points each, bringing the number of his troops to a grand total of 94, and he wasn't even halfway ready to launch a full assault against the Deathbots. Still, there was no time like the present, and as he was summoning more troops, he decided to go on the assault anyway.
For this particular situation, he chose the trap zone at the center of the map for a heavy assault, and like a true Solarium commander, he pushed six Men-at-Arms squads forward to activate the trap and reveal the hidden enemy, disregarding the death toll.
Once the fighting started, he had his two H-Bug rocket launchers hit the Deathbots from range before ordering a total retreat after giving the enemy some losses. He then reinforced his Men-at-Arms with more expendable auxiliaries and repeated the assault.
Meanwhile, his base had finished producing more Men-at-Arms and his first real threat to the enemy, a Battlemaster tank, which took its sweet time being produced. It had a population cost of seven, and it rolled on the battlefield, meaning business.
A second war factory was in order, but as Adam was about to set his next plan of action in motion, he got two attack alerts: one against the assault force and the other against a Logistical Point in the middle of his territory.
The enemy was finally picking up the pace and had seemingly broken through the bottleneck Adam had created for them.
In response, Adam mobilized the Battlemaster and a squad of men, transforming most of their auxiliaries into radio operators, mechanics, and grunts. This would give the squad the ability to fix the tank, call for bombardment, and hold its ground in a fight. On the other front, Adam's assault force was suffering heavy losses, and three of the six squads had their morale broken.
Just like a squad's HP, there was another bar for them called morale. Take immense damage or damage from a certain type, and the unit will get the "Broken" debuff, dropping its combat effectiveness by a whopping 90%.
Such units would be the textbook definition of easy pickings to the enemy, and the Deathbots fighting the assault force were equipped with flamethrowers, weapons specialized for breaking morale.
Adam watched as both health and morale bars were being depleted. He was researching different upgrades to make his troops more resilient, but the sad reality was that morale buffs were limited to certain factors, such as upgrading Scanner Beacons with Propaganda Radios, or attaching special and heroic units to Men-at-Arms squads. He already had the three Warrior Monks attached to three assault squads, which were the ones still holding on, each Script Monk adding 100 morale points to the morale pool of the squad, buffing it up to 200.
This mechanic of attaching units to squads was balancing the odds for those three squads at least while giving them damage buffs against mechanical enemies, but for Adam to rescue the other half of his assault force, he needed more special units, and who was better at buffing morale than a Justiciar?
Immediately, he lined up the recruitment of three Justiciars from the Command Center before reinforcing his assault force with the Battlemaster tank. The tank alone was enough to hold off a few Deathbots by itself, but Adam knew how unwise it would be to push forward with that mighty tank without infantry support.
The tank may be tanky and all, but there was a great vulnerability it had when fighting against the Rogue Machina faction, and surprisingly, regular infantry were key to dealing with that threat.
And just as Adam feared, they were here.
"Squidbots! Fuck! That's seven of them!"
A few minutes before Adam's Justiciars could reach the front, seven agile and fast Deathbots charged at a terrifying speed towards the Battlemaster tank. They had large squid heads, multiple mechanical tentacle-arms that carried all sorts of clawed tools, and on top of it, they were operating with hovering technology. [A/n: Basically the Sentinels from The Matrix playing for Team Terminators]
Without thinking or planning, the six assault squads started blasting to intercept the Squidbots, managing to drop two of them at the first volley. The remaining five conducted a line maneuver, a strategy for Rogue Machina players to manipulate the aiming of the enemies to focus on a single target each volley, increasing the chances of their Squidbots reaching their target.
Sure enough, Adam recognized the strategy, but rather than having a mouse and a keyboard to give orders with his peak-human level of operating a computer, he was shouting orders through a radio handset, nowhere near as fast as his hands could conduct a counter maneuver by focusing one squad for each Squidbot. Still, he was shouting like a mad auctioneer, trying to micro-manage his troops fast enough, but alas, three of the Squidbots hit the Battlemaster tank, digging their clawed tentacles into the hull of the tank with the blood of the crew spewing from the points of impact.
Quickly, they positioned themselves at the front, the turret, and the side of the tank, their tentacles completely sinking into the hull, with their heads remaining outside, and a couple of seconds later, their tank started groaning to life.
The tank that was on the Solarium's side just now had switched allegiance and was in the process of aiming its turrets at its former allies as they frantically tried to pull themselves together. The Squidbots had taken over its systems, operating it mechanically from within, which was the Rogue Machina's answer to any machine that didn't fully rely on corruptible programming.
But right at this moment when all hope was lost for the six squads, and their morale was plummeting, three silhouettes emerged from the base's direction, attacking the tank with nothing but blazer pistols.
"DON'T RETREAT, YOU DOGS!"
"COWARDICE IS PUNISHABLE BY DEATH!"
"FIGHT OR DIE!"
The three Justiciars emerged with battle drip and over-inflated ego, pouring devotion and fear into the hesitating troops. Adam had the Justiciars get attached to the three squads with the lowest morale, boosting them to terrifying numbers. The presence of a Justiciar alone added 500 morale points to a squad, and it immediately showed.
Right then, the tank started blasting at the squads, killing seven men from different squads with a single shell. However, there was no retreat as Adam ordered each of the three Justiciars to execute one trooper each, and the effect was immediate. While the numbers were low, the squads that had executed members were immediately driven by a mad will to survive, giving them one of the strongest buffs possible: a doubled fire rate.
In a mad frenzy, three squads started firing back at the tank with all sorts of weaponry, aggroing the tank long enough for the other three squads to advance into melee. After that, the three advancing squads, each with a Script Monk, surrounded the tank and started performing exorcism rites quickly, causing the head of one of the Squidbots on the side of the tank to explode.
With the imminent risk of more enemies coming to reinforce the Squidbots, Adam spared the lives of his men to pin down the tank at any cost, losing an entire squad when a shell landed directly in their center. However, the remaining two Squidbots were soon exorcised, and the Battlemaster tank was freed from the scourge.
With its status turned to "Unmanned" and its health dropping badly, the mechanic Men-at-Arms started to provide fixes immediately, healing the tank's HP, while another squad started capturing the tank, fully turning into a tank crew and leaving the battlefield.
Still, the enemy returned with three assault Deathbots this time around, causing Adam to bring out the H-Bugs he had in the back lines to blast the incoming enemies with rockets.
Since the Deathbots were slow, it gave the squads a few precious seconds to replenish their numbers and two more squads to reinforce the assault force. Adam then pushed them all to meet the Deathbots, which was an easier fight than anticipated thanks to many units in the squad gaining one to three stripes, a Solarium-only advantage system that sets apart seasoned, veteran, and elite troopers from greenhorns.
However, playing as the Legio Bellarium means one must double down on the greatest power of the army of Sol, and that was Artillery.
At the center of his base, Adam started the wicked strategy of spamming Firebase Bombards. Usually, Wartopia RTS games would limit each building type, but the simulation was different, requiring spare squads to operate the bombards. This was already good news for him, since he had been spamming squads nonstop, having eight of them dedicated to construction and occasional defense.
He even had three troop carriers ready to reinforce the front, but his assault force was already overloading his brain with the amount of micro-management he had to do. Still, he squeezed some resources for a second Battlemaster tank before lining up three Bombstars, missile battery vehicles with a good range.
Once the second tank joined the assault force, he drove them into the central trap area of the map, the tanks holding their ground before the Deathbots, whereas the enemy used this to send out a swarm of Squidbots.
Unlike before, Adam was watching this unfold with a full Marine squad lurking at the side of the battle, without engaging the enemy. Adam then smiled and gave command to his Radio Operators spread among the squads.
"Call in the symphony!"
After giving such an order, Adam stepped out to the balcony once again and waited right as the…
BRRAAAAM-KA-BOOOOM-BLAM-THRAAAAK!!!
With a series of concussive, bone-jittering cannon bursts, almost every cannon went off, causing the air in his lungs to blow in and out in the weirdest, most terrifying sensation ever. However, Adam, all smiles as his ears rang, causing him to walk in front of Solana like a drunkard.
"Di… Did you feel that?" He asked with a dumb smile.
"My cybernetic receptors automatically attenuate acoustic overload to preserve the integrity of my Sub-Brain. Therefore, no, I did not." Solana replied with obvious indifference.
"Didn't hear that; tell me later." He said with the attention span of a puppy before hopping to the holo table, watching the explosions devastate the horde of Deathbots in real time.
"Assault Team! Reach that plaza and give me visual." He cried in the radio handset, watching the fog of war getting lifted and giving him visual.
What he saw felt like static in the visual feedback, and it seemed vital for the mission.
He advanced one of his squads into the static area, but he soon noticed them getting slower and slower as if walking into a frost storm, with their radio signal getting static and weaker.
"There!" Adam pointed with wide eyes, "The Freeze! Its manifestation in Cyberspace."
He turned to Solana, who responded with a sassy shrug, telling him that he was stating the obvious. Adam reined in his excitement and then ordered the unit to retreat, before giving command to all units to start blasting the Manifestation of the Freeze. However, it was all pointless.
"What's the meaning of this?" He looked at the image with obvious stress, before racking his brain for an answer.
The only thing that defeated the Freeze in Realspace was the holy flame, and for that, he needed something: a Holy Furnace, a building from a Tier-3 Command Center, a Solar Citadel.
In the competitive scene, most Wartopia RTS players wouldn't go past the Tier-2 Command Center, the Base Bastion, since it already offers most of the game's vital units and tech upgrades were available for the Base Bastion. However, game missions like these would actually make the players go through the arduous task of upgrading their Command Center to a Solar Citadel, a thankless task with little benefit in the fast-paced competitive sessions.
Looking at what he had, he saw that only 40 minutes remained on the Doomsday Clock, and he had half the resources needed to upgrade the Command Center.
"Doable! Hopefully!"
Immediately, he pressed forward with his assault force towards where the Deathbots were coming from. Along the way, he constructed a Starcraft Hangar and began ordering Falcon and Spectre starcrafts. While the Falcon was the best assault starcraft, being the darling of the Armamenta Bellarium, the Spectre was the unassuming sister, which most people would assume untalented until they knew it could double down as a stealth helicopter rather than a dogfight starcraft.
As the assault force reached the enemy's base, Adam began blasting with his tanks and Men-at-Arms, systematically breaking the defenses of the Machina, laying ruin to their Data Center, and sending his Falcon starcraft to hunt any straggler, with the Spectre looking for any other Freeze Manifestation all across the map.
Time passed, and Adam made sure to hunt the enemy thoroughly, now ensuring that the battlefield was clear, except for the Freeze Manifestation, which was the problem he surely had to solve.
Right before the clock hit 20 minutes remaining, Adam was finally done with the Solar Citadel and the Holy Furnace. Seeing how high and mighty the Solar Citadel building turned out to be, Adam was now very excited about having it in the real world.
During construction, he had trained a number of Script Monks and used his Requisition Menu to summon a squad of Paladins from orbit, a system he avoided using unless it was very necessary.
The Paladins would usually operate independently, hitting the most critical targets on the map in succession without taking orders from him, acting as allied units of sorts. Thankfully, they moved to the center right away.
As for the Script Monks, he had them go over to the Script Monastery and perform their rites around it to expand its aura throughout the map.
As the Paladins reached the Freeze Manifestation, they ignited their own holy auras and walked in, encroaching upon its center, meeting some resistance. Meanwhile, Adam was already cleaning up most of the enemy's base and sent some units back to the center for support if needed.
Ten minutes was all that remained on the Doomsday Clock, but as the Freeze Manifestation was extinguished by the Paladins, what was left behind wasn't the extraction objective of the mission; rather, it was a strange gain Adam hadn't experienced in a time mission before.
> SECONDARY OBJECTIVE ACCOMPLISHED
> +15 MINUTES TO DOOMSDAY CLOCK
He watched those messages with a dumb face, pointing at them on his hologram terminal, then looking at Solana for an explanation. She shook her head, stating that she wouldn't interfere.
As for the other gain, what he found was a large sinkhole in the ground, opening up to a deep underground space beneath it.
He had no visual inside and only 25 minutes to figure this one out. For that, he sent down his Scout Squad, and lo and behold, an option appeared on his holo table to view the map's underground level-1.
He stood stunned there for a while, detecting a lot of movement where his scouts landed, only for them to be discovered by Deathbots right after.
Fire came from all corners, effectively annihilating the squad. However, the Paladins jumped down right after, engaging the enemy in a gruesome melee.
"Shit shit shit shit!"
Adam then realized the sheer scale of the underground level, knowing well enough that the Rogue Machina's main operations always happened underground, but usually no Wartopia RTS game had ever featured an underground level.
Logically, he couldn't use starcrafts or large tanks underground. He couldn't even use artillery support, which was his faction's ace in the hole.
Underground fighting was very frequent in the lore, but to the average Man-at-Arms, it was akin to stepping into the meat grinder of war.
As for his situation, the Paladins slowly made their way, and Adam had most of his Men-at-Arms swarm the underground. However, they didn't make much progress, and it was already 5 minutes left on the clock.
There, he found another Freeze Manifestation, multiple of them, actually, and it became clear that these secondary objectives would save him from the encroaching timer.
Unfortunately, he was met with heavy Machina resistance, and before he knew it, it was… 3, 2, 1…
Then all screens turned red!
A terrible sound came from outside, and Adam watched multiple beams come from the sky, cutting through the earth with intense heat as if a Blazer cutter were splitting a stone in half.
The ground shook, and the entire continent groaned from the damage it just sustained; earthquakes, volcanoes, and tsunamis would follow soon after.
"Goodness!" Adam's body, mind, and soul all trembled; even his body in Realspace broke into a cold sweat. "What have I done?"
"Mission failed, Commander." Solana approached him, disappointment clear on her face.
As a Commander, Adam had faced many setbacks before. This time, however, it was all his fault; he had to quickly learn from his mistake.
But what the hell was his mistake?
✧ ✧ ✧ ✧ ✧
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