[Oliver’s PoV]

  Oliver was among the first to hit the ground.

  The force of his descent was seismic. A shockwave burst from the crater he carved in the ruined street, splitting the broken pavement with racing cracks.

  Dust billowed in thick clouds, shrouding his surroundings. For a heartbeat, everything was chaos. The world held in suspension, waiting for the dust to settle.

  Oliver stayed low, every muscle tensed, his senses wide open for any sign of danger. He waited, counting the seconds until the haze began to thin. Revealing the devastation he’d wrought just by landing.

  He pushed himself up. He stepped from his landing site, boots grinding against shards and metal.

  Yet the noise, the thunder of a thousand armored warriors, did more than shake the city.

  It had summoned the horde.

  The roars of Orks echoed through the ruins, an answer to the challenge thrown at their doorstep. They came in waves, their numbers swelling with every second. Gray, green, red, and yellow skins gleaming in the firelight, their weapons raised, their eyes burning with rage.

  However, Oliver wasn’t worried.

  He hadn’t come alone.

  He was only the vanguard, one of hundreds.

  Rangers rained down like a meteor storm, each one trailing a comet-tail of incandescent plasma. The city’s ruins glowed beneath the brilliance of a thousand shooting stars.

  With every impact, a new warrior rose from the crater.

  Oliver tapped his comm, his voice steady and clear despite the chaos.

  “All units, we’re down. Start operation.”

  Across the ruined streets, his soldiers answered.

  The first Orks to reach them were met with a wall of steel and plasma. The Rangers moved with inhuman speed, their blades slicing through the enemy lines. Shields flared, bullets and axes bouncing off the glowing barriers.

  The Orks fought with berserk fury, hurling themselves at the Rangers. But they couldn’t break the line. Each charge met a counterattack delivered with precision, discipline, and overwhelming force.

  Unlike the NEA, the Hoplites had no rigid division of roles. There were no distinctions between frontline and support, no color-coded hierarchy that dictated who would charge and who would hold back. Every Hoplite—whether powered by a Blue, Red, or Pink Crystal—was trained to be elite, to adapt and excel at any task the battlefield demanded.

  That was their strength, and in the chaos of an invasion, it was their advantage.

  As soon as they struck earth and the dust began to clear, the Hoplites moved as one. There was no scramble to sort out medics or snipers, no hesitation to send the “weaker” Pinks or Blues to the rear. They were all interchangeable, every one of them a weapon, every one of them a shield.

  Only Oliver and the other legion commanders operated differently. They stayed at the heart of their formations. Not at the front, where they might be isolated and cut down, nor at the rear. They needed to be able to see the battlefield, to issue orders, to keep the Hoplites moving as a single, unstoppable force.

  “Two hundred down, three hundred more on approach,” one of the Hoplites reported, his voice crisp through the comms.

  Oliver nodded, firing two quick shots from his Energy Pistol. The weapon was ready in his grip. Each shot found its mark, an Ork’s skull bursting in a spray of black-green blood before the creature could even raise its weapon.

  Three more Hoplites converged on his position.

  “We have another five hundred on standby for deployment,” another reported, his voice calm despite the chaos around them.

  “Good. Keep them in reserve for now,” Oliver replied, his eyes scanning the shifting tides of the battle. “We’ll split into five divisions. I want a hunter legion—fast, aggressive. Their job is to find the Orks, isolate them, and remove them from the field. Not kill. Every Ork we kill feeds the Sovereign.”

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  The Hoplites around him nodded, their postures alert and weapons raised, eyes sweeping every shadow and shattered window.

  “Second legion, secure the nearest metro station. Set up the teleportation gear and hold that position at all costs.” Oliver’s voice was crisp as he relayed the next set of commands. “Third legion, your priority is survivors. Sweep the sector, guide any civilians you find toward the extraction route. Fourth legion, destroy any and all technology, don’t let the Orks salvage a single piece. If it can’t be carried, it gets burned. Fifth legion, on me. We’re heading for Millennium Park. Last intel puts the prisoners in one of the towers there.”

  “Yes, sir!” the Hoplites replied in unison.

  Oliver switched channels. “Hermes, split comms by legion, keep us linked but autonomous. Prioritize local command structure.”

  “Done,” came the immediate reply from Hermes-1.

  Oliver signaled and led his troops west.

  The deeper they pressed into the city, the more the Orks seemed to multiply. They poured from the ruins like insects disturbed in their hive, bursting out of doorways, dropping from collapsed floors, even crawling up from sewer grates.

  It was chaotic.

  Oliver fired his Energy Pistol with surgical precision, each shot calculated to cripple rather than kill—kneecaps, joints, tendons. Sometimes he caught them in the leg, dropping them mid-charge; sometimes the shot went wide, and the Ork was on him in seconds, claws and axes swinging.

  However, the Hoplites were always there.

  Even when the enemy closed in, when a hulking Red Ork leapt from above, or a shrewd Yellow Ork lunged from the shadows—Oliver never fought alone.

  Every time he was surrounded, every time the Orks pressed too close, the result was the same.

  The Orks hit like a tidal wave and broke like flies on glass.

  A single punch from a Hoplite in Blue Armor sent a Grey Ork flying through a wall. A Pink Ranger’s Energy blade flashed, slicing through an ambush before the enemy could even scream. Oliver himself dropped an Ork with a backhand, the creature’s skull caving in.

  Even the Red Orks, once the stuff of nightmares, monsters whose axes had haunted Oliver's dreams, seemed almost frozen in time as they charged him now. Their weapons, massive, swung with all their power, but to Oliver, they moved as if through water. He sidestepped a wild blow, his gauntlet catching the haft of a war-axe and snapping it in two.

  His Hoplites, though not his equal, were formidable. They moved with the unshakable confidence of warriors who had fought together through hell. Alone, these Orks might have overwhelmed them. Together, the Hoplites were an avalanche.

  It was easy to believe, for a moment, that nothing could stand in their way.

  But Oliver knew better.

  Don’t let your guard down, he reminded himself. We haven’t seen the Titans yet. Or the Ork Rangers.

  Ahead, the Hoplites fanned out, acting as scouts and shock troops. They swept each block methodically. If they encountered resistance, it was crushed before the main body of the legion even arrived.

  Oliver and the rest followed through the cleared paths.

  For nearly thirty minutes, they pressed forward, the thunder of battle rolling with them. And yet, in all that time, they saw no survivors—no civilians huddled in the ruins. Only the relentless tide of Orks.

  “Contact.”

  The voice was tense, clipped—one of the forward Hoplites. “Group ahead, unknown affiliation. Could be Imperial, could be another Great House.”

  Oliver’s eyes narrowed. He raised a fist, signaling his legion to slow their advance.

  “I’m moving up,” he said into the comm.

  He pushed through the line of Rangers. The Hoplites at the front had taken up defensive positions, their weapons trained on the far end of the street.

  As Oliver moved closer, he noticed the group ahead. A handful of battered survivors.

  Two Blue Rangers, their armor scorched but functional, stood flanking a Yellow Ranger with a cracked visor. Three weary soldiers, faces streaked with soot and blood, clustered protectively around two civilians.

  Oliver lowered his weapon but kept his senses sharp.

  “We’ve cleared the path behind us,” he said, nodding to the Rangers and soldiers. “Head that way. There are others guiding survivors to the evacuation corridor. Follow their directions, don’t stop for anything.”

  But before anyone could move, one of the civilians—a wiry man with sharp eyes and a makeshift press badge pinned to his jacket—stepped forward.

  “Sir, with all due respect, we want to join your group.”

  Oliver frowned, caught off guard.

  “Look, that’s a risk for me and my people,” Oliver replied. “We’re not just moving through hot zones, we’re hunting.”

  The man didn’t flinch. “We’re reporters, sir. The rest are resistance, locals. They were born here and lived their whole lives in Chicago. Even if we wanted to run, there’s nowhere left for us to go.”

  Oliver studied them for a moment, weighing the risk. He could see it in their eyes, raw determination. These weren’t just survivors. They were the last heartbeat of a dying city refusing to let go.

  He nodded slowly, extending his hand. “You guys grew up here, huh? All right. If you’re staying, you’re staying with us. But you’ll need to pull your weight. We’ll need intel, eyes, and ears on the ground.”

  The man grasped his hand, his grip surprisingly strong. “Newton. Newton Jr. Reporter.”

  For a brief moment, Oliver wondered which name he should use.

  Yet he felt it, deep within himself. He was ready.

  He gave a faint, exhausted smile. “Oliver. Good to meet you, Newton. Stay close, listen to orders.”

  Newton nodded. “Anything you need.”

  Oliver didn’t hesitate. “Good. Then, where’s the Empress?”

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