To the north of the River Valley Province lay Great Rift Valley’s Origin City.

Inside a vast conference hall, an old man with silvered temples and a solemn, commanding face sat alone at the head of a long, empty table.

He was the chairman of the Great Rift Valley, and the last surviving member of the Post-War Reconstruction Committee.

No one knew how old he was. Not even he himself remembered. All memories of the old era had long been left behind in a distant past.

Gazing silently toward the south, the old man’s expression gradually shifted to one of astonishment.

Moments later, he lowered his eyes and muttered in disbelief. “... It actually worked?”

...

He wasn’t the only one shocked.

Yang Kai, the Academy’s Researcher stationed with the New Alliance, wore the same stunned expression.

The spore clouds over Clearspring City were collapsing.

They had observed the Hive for two full centuries, and in all that time, such a phenomenon had never occurred.

And more than that, by analyzing the signals within the spores, he could hear the Main Mother Body’s wails of pain.

“... How did they do it?”

Was it some kind of engineered virus? Or a bio-weapon designed specifically to restrain Slime Mold?

Impossible. The creature’s gene bank contained more genetic information than all known Earth organisms combined. It was practically a god, the kind worshiped in ancient religions.

Even now, they hadn’t fully deciphered its genome. How could anyone have developed a counter-organism against it?

Yang Kai thought to himself, eyes filled with disbelief and confusion.

He couldn’t understand what the hell just happened.

How had a fledgling survivor faction, barely two years old, accomplished what even the Post-War Reconstruction Committee could not?

...

The spores boiling within Clearspring City churned like a cauldron of boiling water.

And it wasn’t only the Hive at the city center that screamed in fury, the young Thea howled as well. It could feel its mother’s pain.

A terrible force had invaded its body and was slowly devouring it from within.

Amid its rage came a flicker of fear.

What was this strange creature that even the Main Mother Body could not defeat?!

The spores drifting around it pulsed violently, sending out waves of fury.

Gray-green fog surged down the streets, blanketing the swarms of Mutant Slime Mold below.

Silent commands echoed through every mind.

“Kill them!”

“Tear them to pieces!”

Resonating with her rage, the Crunchers and Creepers let out guttural howls, the echo of that psychic scream.

“ROAAAR!”

Barely a kilometer from the Great Wall, soldiers of the Punishment Battalion stared in dread as the tide of monsters grew fiercer.

In less than an hour of fighting, their 5,000-strong force had lost a fifth of its men.

Two entire 100-man units had been completely wiped out and other units also lost a lot of men.

They watched their comrades on the same line overwhelmed by Crunchers, torn to shreds within seconds with not even a bone left.

The Mutant Slime Mold were like demons unleashed. Now, they had gone mad and charged again without fear of death.

Members of the Punishment Battalion started to take hesitant step backward as fear gripped them. After all, these men had received only three months of basic training. Unlike the players, they couldn’t die and respawn.

Sensing the wavering morale, a harsh shout rang from the enforcement squad. “Hold your ground! No retreat!”

At the same time, two machine guns roared from the rear, their tracers raining forward like streaks of lightning.

Bit clenched his jaw, grabbed his rifle, and charged. He gunned down several Crunchers clawing toward the forward gun emplacement, dragged a mangled corpse aside, and jumped into the gunner’s nest himself.

He knew perfectly well. If he took one step back, the bullet rain before them would turn back followed by their own artillery fire landing right on their heads.

Retreat meant certain death.

But if they held, maybe, just maybe, they could live.

“AAAAH!”

Gripping the machine gun tight, Bit raked the incoming Crunchers with bursts of gunfire, roaring to drown out his own terror.

Then, from across the street came the heavy blasts of cannons.

He recognized that sound instantly. They were the New Alliance’s 37mm autocannons!

His suspicion was confirmed when armored vehicles burst onto the flanks, ramming into the Mutant Slime Mold hordes with reinforced prows and steel mesh plating.

The 37mm guns mounted atop the vehicles unleashed torrents of fire, their thick tracer rounds weaving a deadly web through the shattered streets.

The central section of the Tide exploded into black mist, the charging Mutant Slime Mold dropped like cut wheat. Many of them were blasted clean in half.

The once-crumbling defense line suddenly found breathing room, and the Punishment Battalion’s morale surged from despair back to life.

Seeing those armored vehicles and the black skull insignia, the soldiers cheered, some even whistling through their exhaustion.

“It’s the Skeleton Corps!”

“Reinforcements! Our reinforcements have arrived!”

“They didn’t abandon us!”

And not just the Skeleton Corps, the Boulder City militia had arrived too!

Wearing exoskeletons and following captains clad in exoframes, the militia advanced behind the armored convoy, launching a counteroffensive against the surging Tide.

Artillery fire from the Great Wall and gunfire from the enforcement squad had already slaughtered countless creatures. Some Crunchers, stuffed full from the feast, tried to carry the nutrients back to nurseries, but the New Alliance wouldn’t allow that.

They wouldn’t give Thea even a second to recover.

Seizing the moment while the tide weakened, the Skeleton Corps and Boulder Town Militia struck in unison, launching a coordinated assault.

Watching the renewed barrage thunder through the streets, Bit’s pupils widened with disbelief and wild joy.

The soldiers behind him felt the same.

Months ago, they’d cursed those same New Alliance tanks and armored vehicles, the ones that had blockaded the slums under the Great Wall and wiped them out without mercy.

After being drafted into the Punishment Battalion, they had resigned themselves to dying as cannon fodder, certain the New Alliance would send them all to death.

But to their astonishment, the New Alliance had kept its promise.

Once they fulfilled their duty and held the line, the New Alliance and Boulder Town Militia had moved in to take over the offensive.

Only after losing everything could they truly appreciate life.

Now, the survivors were so grateful they could have knelt and wept. Even the fiercest convicts raised their voices in heartfelt praise.

“Praise the New Alliance! Praise the great administrator!”

Escorting the infantry to the nurseries and clearing dozens of evolved threats, the Skeleton Corps left a hundred awakeners to assist while the rest joined the armored column, advancing along the main road further.

As for the Death Corps, they had run headlong into remnants of the 111th Orbital Airborne Division, corrupted by Slime Mold.

Among them were dozens of Rotten Knights, and a Titan six stories tall.

From his hatch, Escaping Mole raised a loudspeaker and shouted,

“Full speed ahead!”

“Our brothers on the front hit a Titan, we’re not letting them have all the fun!”

His booming command echoed across the comms channel.

“WOOHOO!”

With the counteroffensive in full swing, the balance near Boulder Town had completely shifted.

The nurseries scattered along the swarm’s route were like the Slime Mold’s barracks, once destroyed, the battlefield carcasses became nothing more than nutrient paste.

The western front was nearly secured. Only the northern lines remained locked in brutal combat.

Especially Defense Sector 06.

All 10 Defense Sectors were engulfed by the furious Tide.

The Burning Corps’ airborne drop into the city center had stirred the hornet’s nest. Thea fought like it had been possessed, hurling everything it had against the New Alliance defenses.

But the New Alliance was far from yielding. Goblin Corps aircraft circled the shattered skyscrapers, strafing runs raining death on the monsters below.