Chapter 385 - 383: The Pressure of the Dark Tide

Chapter 385: Chapter 383: The Pressure of the Dark Tide

The source of this roar was definitely not the same kind of monster they had encountered before.

Including the Colonel, all the Officers on top of the surrounding buildings were searching for potential targets with their binoculars.

Drones were useless now. Even if they were only used for taking pictures without a live feed, they couldn’t be controlled effectively.

The ideal situation at this point was for Division HQ to send helicopters as soon as possible.

...

Deep within the West City District, twenty Soldiers were advancing floor by floor inside a tall office building.

Someone here had just used the reflection from a piece of glass to send a distress signal to the distant troops.

Comrades had their guns trained on several sides of the building from the outside, so there was no need to worry about monsters suddenly bursting through the curtain wall glass. This saved the Soldiers a great deal of energy, allowing them to focus solely on what was inside.

The first six or seven floors were devoid of people or monsters, containing only bloodstains and a faint stench mixed with the smell of blood that permeated the building.

In just half an hour of fighting, they had already resupplied ammunition a full six times.

Unlike in a civil war against their own kind, single shots were useless against these monsters. They mostly had to resort to full-auto spray.

This wasn’t just because the creatures were agile, but also because their Life Force was just too tenacious.

Even with extreme caution, some Soldiers had been wounded or killed by monsters on the roadside that had seemed "dead through and through."

The search of the eighth floor was complete. Still no survivors.

The Soldiers’ expressions were grim. Their clothes were half-soaked with sweat, and the undried perspiration made their faces look as if they were coated in a layer of oil.

After all, it was late winter and early spring, and the weather was cold. The insulating properties of their wet clothes were diminished, leaving many with ice-cold hands and feet.

"DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA..."

Fierce gunfire erupted from the stairwell, and the Soldiers on the eighth floor immediately rushed over.

A horde of blood-soaked monsters was coming down from the ninth floor.

"Help... help..." "Ah... don’t... ah, ugh, no..."

Hearing these strange noises mimicking human cries for help filled the Soldiers with rage. If they didn’t need to use the stairs themselves, they would have loved to just toss a grenade.

"BANG BANG BANG..." "DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA..."

Backup firepower arrived. The fire from just three or four guns seemed exceptionally dense in the narrow stairwell, and dark blood splattered continuously.

SWOOSH~

A disgusting tail shot out. A Soldier barely dodged it. They had personally witnessed an unlucky bastard fall to such a sneak attack, thinking they had the enemy suppressed.

"BOOM~" "CHK-CHK" "BOOM~" "CHK-CHK" "BOOM~"...

Two Soldiers with shotguns moved forward, blasting away with high-powered slugs in a crossfire pattern.

The Soldiers advanced, maintaining suppressive fire. A clean and efficient exchange lasting just over ten seconds left nine monsters dead.

Back in the age of cold weapons, hastily trying to eliminate these few creatures would have likely come at a considerable cost. But now, the loss ratio was 0 to 9.

The Soldiers of this regiment had gone from slight panic at the beginning to gradually steadying themselves. Although the casualty rate continued to rise as they pushed deeper into hostile territory, their will to fight was being tremendously forged.

They pushed all the way to the 22nd floor, the top floor.

"BANG BANG BANG BANG..."

The twentieth and final monster collapsed in a pool of blood.

"BANG BANG."

The Platoon Leader fired two more shots into the central nervous system just below its neck, making sure it was completely dead.

The frontline Soldiers had already discovered the weak point of this type of monster. Of course, concentrated fire would kill them regardless; their defenses weren’t strong enough to ignore high-powered firearms.

"AHHH... WOO WOO... We’re saved, we’re saved!!!" "It’s the army!!!"

Four young men and women rushed out of a bathroom, their faces a mask of both tears and laughter, their bodies trembling uncontrollably with emotion.

The Soldiers wanted to crack a smile, but they just couldn’t manage it.

Even with their extreme caution during the advance, they had still lost two more comrades, their chests pierced by tails that stabbed straight through the doors they were opening.

As the four survivors were escorted out of the building, a sniper squad that had just descended from another building immediately ascended to the roof of this newly cleared high-rise to provide support for units operating deeper in the city.

"ROAR~~" "BOOM~"

A tremendous roar echoed from deeper within the West City District, making the scalps of the snipers who had just set up their rifles tingle.

This feeling of dread was an instinctual reaction, not a reflection of the Soldiers’ mettle.

...

"Colonel, the troops can’t advance any further. The casualty rate is too high. Our forward units have pushed in deep, but the areas we’ve already cleared in the rear aren’t necessarily safe either. This is a contact point with the Otherworld, after all. They can pop up at any moment."

"And we’re going through ammunition way too fast!"

The Chief of Staff’s words rang in his ears, but how could the Colonel not already know all this?

He raised his hand to check his watch. An hour and a half had passed since the engagement began, and it had been nearly two hours since the earthquake.

"We’ll push..."

"BOOM..."

The Colonel was cut off mid-sentence by a tremor from somewhere below.

Down on the street, the concrete ground suddenly exploded as if struck by an artillery shell, blasting open a deep crater.

"ROAR~~" "ROAR~~"

The sound immediately drew everyone’s attention. Looking through their binoculars, they saw a dark red color appear like a mist, and within it, the vague image of a swamp.

After this fleeting vision, a dense swarm of things resembling sand worms suddenly emerged.

"DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA DAKKA..." "BOOM~" "BOOM~"

The sound of gunfire and explosions erupted. It wasn’t just in this one spot; the Colonel turned to look around and heard the sounds of battle in every direction—front, back, left, and right.

"WHIIINE~~"

A black Shadow flashed past, followed by several more streaking across the sky. One of the Shadows was clutching a Soldier who had already been run through.

It was a serpentine monster with two pairs of fleshy wings, but no matter how you looked at it, it still resembled a scaleless worm.

"Damn it, shoot them down!"

The machine gun positions on the roof immediately opened fire, spraying bullets into the sky.

In an instant, the sound of gunfire throughout the entire West City District intensified once more.

The Colonel emptied a magazine from his rifle, watching a monster fall screaming from the sky before scanning the visible area.

His men were locked in a desperate struggle. The strength of a single regiment was far too little.

’Why hasn’t Division HQ made a move? What the hell are they doing?!’

The thought flashed through his mind, but he had no choice but to issue a difficult order.

"Order! Full regimental retreat! The convergence with the Otherworld here is too deep. All personnel fall back to Point C and re-establish the defensive line."

...

"BEEEP, DOOT DOOT DOOT... DOOT..."

The call of the bugle carried far. Forward buglers who heard it began to sound their own horns, while units that could still get a faint radio signal also received the order from regimental command.

"Is that... the retreat call?"

A Platoon Leader emptied his magazine and crunched down on the hard candy he had been holding in his mouth.

He gazed toward the distant, unsearched areas. There were very likely civilians there who hadn’t been rescued yet.

"Platoon Leader, what are our orders?"

He looked at the sixteen remaining Soldiers in his platoon. Fourteen iron-willed men had fallen here forever, their bodies unlikely to even be found whole.

The Platoon Leader gritted his teeth and turned back.

"We’re pulling out! Obey the order! Get the people we’ve rescued back to safety!"

Troop transports carried the surviving civilians while the Soldiers conducted a fighting retreat alongside them. Any civilians on the trucks who could still move were helping to reload empty magazines.

As they retreated closer and closer to regimental headquarters, the sounds of gunfire and explosions paradoxically grew even more dense and intense.

Only then did some of the Soldiers falling back from the front lines understand that the situation had become even more grave.

Three hours after the 2nd Regiment entered the fray, a signalman from Division HQ finally struggled to the front line and made contact with the Colonel.

This was the sixth signals team sent to find the 2nd Regiment; the others were likely dead.

High command had already decided to abandon all of Yang City.

The number of invading monsters from the Otherworld appearing throughout the city was growing, and the convergence points were constantly expanding. The infuriating part was that they could cross over to this side, but human firepower couldn’t reach into their world.

Several regiments from the division were fighting on the front lines to buy time for the evacuation of the rear, and the 2nd Regiment had advanced the deepest.

Heavy fire support units were preparing to establish a containment line on the outskirts of Yang City. More than a dozen Armed Defense Stations had already been assembled.

The division had few helicopters, far outnumbered by the flying monsters. To preserve their emergency air assets, they chose to exercise restraint.

...

In the first phase of contact with the Otherworld, countless families were shattered and destroyed, and a great number of Soldiers stained the battlefields with their blood.

This tapestry painted in blood and fire was merely the opening clash. Nearly every strategist with a clear head and experience understood that the creatures that had appeared were merely the vanguard.

The points of contact were expanding, the incursions growing more severe. There wasn’t even a guarantee that new contact points wouldn’t appear, or when they might do so.

The two words, "Dark Tide," had never felt so real, the pressure they represented so palpable.

PS: Second Chapter for Tuesday.