“Hold them back! Hold them back! Don't let these things get through!”
Rat-tat-tat...
On the streets, countless Dulu people raised their weapons, firing continuously at the charging locusts and broodlings.
These were all civilians.
They never imagined in their lives that after so many years of peace, they would one day be carrying guns to the battlefield to fight an enemy themselves.
And they were freaking aliens!!
These strange creatures had landed in massive numbers.
The explosions caused by tens of thousands of drop pods and the destroyed buildings had already claimed the lives of an unknown number of Dulu people.
But the battle that followed was the real nightmare.
The only saving grace was that there were many firearms among the Dulu populace. Many could pull weapons straight from their homes, allowing them to form a fierce resistance in just over ten minutes.
However, there were too few people who actually dared to fight. Moreover, the military proficiency of most Dulu people was poor. Faced with the agile and burrowing Zerg, their combat effectiveness was abysmal.
In just twenty minutes, the bugs quickly took control of five districts.
The concentrated Zerg forces continuously wore down the enemy's numbers while slowly expanding their control zone, attempting to bring the entire city under Xia Jin's control.
Minute 28.
The ships transporting a new batch of fodder bugs arrived once more above the planet.
Just like before, countless drop pods began to launch. Dense clusters of fleshy, jellyfish-like organisms plummeted from space.
The second wave of the Swarm began its landing.
On the ground, the fighting Dulu people instinctively looked up, witnessing a scene that looked like the end of the world.
Fireballs streaked across the sky.
In the night hemisphere, the sight was even more spectacular; the entire horizon was dyed a deep crimson by the firelight.
...
In the suburbs, the military forces that had already mobilized were rushing to the battlefield.
In just half an hour, over five million ground troops had been deployed globally, and many more regions were still rapidly mobilizing.
At the same time, countless unmanned combat units soared overhead, entering the cities.
The Swarm dispatched broodlings to intercept them.
“Looking at this, it won't be long before these Dulu people can slow down the Swarm's momentum.”
However, in three hours, Xia Jin would deploy her main force.
The current landing zones were established specifically to clear out the resistance within the cities in the shortest time possible.
In truth, the losses were currently staggering. Some heavy armored units stationed in the cities had already moved out.
Dozens of mecha warriors were slaughtering the scattered Zerg across the capital. With the broodlings' capabilities, they were completely unable to breach their defenses.
“We've already lost 150,000.”
The second wave of spheres slammed into the ground.
Xia Jin calculated that this first phase of the strategy was essentially a success.
Within the first hour, the main Dulu forces pushed into the city outskirts.
The second wave of landed fodder bugs built a defense line there, and both sides engaged in a slaughter. Clearly, the bugs, which lacked long-range capabilities and had extremely weak melee strength, were not doing well. They suffered heavy losses as soon as they encountered the regular army.
Of course, the Zerg's elusive nature also depleted the enemy's numbers to some extent.
Most Dulu infantry wore high-quality protective suits that could withstand the pincers of a locust, but they were utterly defenseless against the highly corrosive venom.
Half an hour later, when the third wave of bugs landed, the fodder bugs had already lost over 1.5 million units.
They were mostly wiped out by the regular army.
A preliminary calculation showed that the main Dulu forces around the capital exceeded 800,000, with more troops arriving continuously.
With such a massive army, they had set up 100,000 electromagnetic cannons within a 100-kilometer radius. Beyond that, there were even more long-range artillery and missile units.
The Dulu's furthest artillery could even reach a range of 3,000 kilometers. The shells would automatically accelerate mid-air, separate their acceleration stages, and finally strike the enemy with only a neutron warhead.
Of course, to avoid harming civilians, they didn't use neutron bombs on the actual battlefield, opting instead for standard armor-piercing shells.
Slowly, the Swarm was actually being pushed back to the edges of the city districts.
By this time, the sixth wave of bugs had completely landed.
The Dulu army commander responsible for the offensive looked at the spheres falling from the sky and breathed a secret sigh of relief.
“These aliens aren't as powerful as we thought.”
They were truly too weak.
Even a modern force that hadn't left its home planet could stand a chance against them.
“We can't be too confident. I don't believe a civilization capable of interstellar travel would have such weak ground combat capabilities,” the general beside him said with a frown.
“Maybe their tech tree is just weirdly specialized?” the army commander calculated. Even if the enemy sent dozens more waves, they wouldn't be much stronger. This reckless deployment suggested these aliens didn't care about losses at all.
“Stop dreaming.”
No matter how skewed a tech tree was, it still followed its own laws.
...
In space.
Another of Xia Jin's projections sat within a Small Leviathan.
The overseers distributed throughout space had already transmitted a real-time strategic map of the battlefield.
The enemy across the entire planet was mobilizing troops everywhere.
Undoubtedly, the situation in the cities where fighting had broken out was not great. Global Zerg losses had reached 20 million.
This rate was still accelerating, mostly caused by the enemy's regular forces.
“My Queen, the first wave of the main force has arrived. As you can see, we have maintained the front lines well in various cities. The enemy's main forces are relatively concentrated in the outer areas of the cities. This is a good opportunity to eliminate a large number of enemies at a low cost,” Brain Bug No. 1 sent a message, sensing the time was ripe.
“Begin.”
The Small Leviathans and Floating Escorts drifting above the planet opened their launch ports.
Fusion missile bugs poked their heads out.
Evidently, in this era of interstellar warfare, the Dulu people knew the Zerg had space-strike capabilities, so their army was spread out very thinly across the entire globe.
No matter how high the pressure on the front lines, the scale of the army directly engaged in combat was only maintained at about five million.
These five million people were also widely distributed.
But... it was enough.
For Xia Jin, they were already far too concentrated.
“Fire!”
The missiles ignited, spewing tails of flame.
A total of 600 nuclear bombs with a 300,000-ton yield, plus 40 with a 1-million-ton yield.
In terms of cost-effectiveness, ten 1-million-ton bombs were far superior to a single 10-million-ton bomb because they could cover a much wider area when dispersed.
As the shining missiles fell at staggering speeds, the high-level Dulu officials monitoring everything from underground fell silent.
“Was this... a trap to lure our army into concentrating outside the cities just to slaughter them?”
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