Although the Navy Warriors possessed the strongest individual combat power and legionary coordination, they could only be organized into hundred-man squads to guard each vital choke point leading toward the underground security facilities. They could not, like the Necron Army—who held the initiative in this offensive—freely choose the most strategically advantageous point of breakthrough.
For the Navy Warrior's, their objective was to defend the final line. For the Deathless, their sole purpose of battle was nothing but slaughter!
Thus, after smashing themselves against the Braves' "steel walls" several times, the Necron Army quickly shifted their focus. Their numbers were likewise fifty thousand strong, but when it came to individual prowess, they were at best half as strong as the Navy Warrior. The Supernova Warbands instantly became the preferred targets of every Necron squad.
Now, every thousand-man detachment of the Supernova Warbands was besieged by hundreds of Necron units! The Necron Warriors encircled and strangled them in waves, while the Necron Praetorians relied on their superior physical might to repeatedly smash into the formations, sowing chaos and shattering morale.
This was the Necron Army's traditional close-quarters doctrine: endless tides of cheap fodder and warriors as the shield, pressing tighter and tighter, while Praetorians served as the spear—plunging into enemy ranks to massacre at will.
A few such assaults would usually be enough to collapse an opponent's fighting spirit.
But this time, they were facing the Supernova Warbands—soldiers willing to give not just their strength, but even their very lives, for Roya!
Every single warrior in those ranks was a fervent believer in him.
That was because Lucci and his reorganized CP organization, working together with Drake's SWORD unit, had already completed their transformation into something akin to a religious order. Under the deliberate guidance of the Supernovas, they infiltrated the warbands as "military doctors," preaching ceaselessly in every public venue with doctrines and rhetoric that deified Roya.
The soldiers embraced this completely.
In other words, these red-armored warbands were, in essence, nothing less than a holy crusade of Roya's zealots! Their defining feature—fearless before death!
Minor wounds were ignored entirely. Even broken arms or shattered legs required the medics to drag them bodily from the front line, crudely stitch them back together, and let the Starlings infuse them with life force so they wouldn't be crippled.
The instant the bleeding stopped, those zealots would seize the medic's right hand, press it firmly to their foreheads, and demand a declaration: "Roya protects you!"
Only then, howling like madmen, would they throw themselves back into the endless ranks of the Necron's.
On one side: millions of undead descending from the sky.
On the other: fanatics who fought for faith itself.
One side knew not the meaning of death.
The other believed to die in battle was the highest honor.
When such armies clashed, the carnage was unimaginable.
From the very first moment, the battle was nothing but blood-for-blood.
Even though the Warbands boasted top combatants like Squard, Lucci, and Drake—capable of swiftly cutting down Praetorians—the sheer numbers of the enemy were overwhelming.
Urban warfare stretched the front lines too thin, overlapping and tangled beyond order. The top fighters simply could not reinforce every battlefield in time.
And with the zeal of their faith, ordinary soldiers of the Warbands could not avoid heavy sacrifice.
Flesh and blood clashed directly against bio-metal. Individually, the Warband fighters were at a disadvantage, and in numbers, they were vastly outmatched.
Even achieving a kill ratio of one to five, the Necron still outnumbered them ten to one. The Supernova Warbands desperately needed reinforcements.
Yet Whitebeard, Red-Haired Shanks, and the other pirate crews were already embroiled in their own battles against enemies outnumbering them severalfold—unable to spare aid.
And Sengoku, surveying the entire field, dared not redeploy the Navy Warrior's from their defensive nodes. For if they left and could not return in time, and the Necron's broke through into the underground security facilities, even five million casualties might not be enough to stem the tide.
At this critical juncture, the employees of Buggy Express—until now darting about opportunistically, scavenging kills and exploiting chaos with their high mobility—suddenly gathered together in an organized strike.
The Necron Army besieged each Warband ten to one.
Buggy Express mirrored the tactic—ten to one—coordinating with the Warbands to crush the Deathless in pincer assaults from inside and out!
These lightly armored couriers, by sheer numbers, managed to knit several smaller battle zones into a single vast and chaotic theater.
High above, Roya floated over the Blossoms, overlooking the city below. Through his spiritual perception, the entire state of battle was already clear to him.
"Chaotic as it is, the advantage is ours. The Necron are dwindling rapidly. At most one more hour, and they'll be completely purged."
For a battle of such scale, none of the powers on Pirate Star had any experience. To fight with such valor and unity was already remarkable.
Though casualties were heavy, on a battlefield where the fate of the entire planet was at stake, no sacrifice—no matter how severe—was too great.
Inside the Pyramid Warship, the Seventh Overlord's consciousness pulsed in agitation. The resistance his army faced, and the rate of its attrition, had far surpassed his calculations.
"These ants—how can they wield such ferocity?!"
"The shackles inscribed into their genes—why aren't they working? Why are they still resisting?!"
In the Seventh Overlord's design, the Necron's Army's initial bombardment would annihilate most. The survivors—reduced to mere tools—would kneel in submission. Then the endless tide of Necron would bury Roya and his fellow rebels under sheer weight.
And if some unknown deity truly descended into Roya, then he himself would intervene and crush them.
But now? Reality bore no resemblance to his plan!
"If this keeps up, in one hour at most, all the foundations I've hoarded over millennia will be spent! Even victory would mean catastrophic loss!"
"No! I cannot allow such meaningless attrition to continue!"
The green flame particles in his eye sockets flickered violently. The sigil on his brow blazed brighter than ever.
With a single step forward, he moved from the warship's command chamber into the void of space itself.
His spirit power locked unerringly onto Roya, who floated high above the battlefield below. His body tilted forward, diving down with crushing momentum and overwhelming pressure.
"At last—you've come."
The instant the Seventh Overlord moved, Roya lifted his head. Across tens of thousands of kilometers, his spiritual senses locked just as firmly onto his foe.
That figure—indistinguishable from a Necron Warrior save for the great cloak of green flame particles billowing at his back—moved with such speed it seemed to ignore the very barriers of space itself!
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