The players still weren't entirely sure whether this ga even had an aggro system.
After all, the monsters they had fought on their ho planets had mostly been wild enemies. This was the first ti they had ever run into a large-scale battlefield like this, so none of them really knew what to expect.
After a round of frantic discussion, they settled on a plan.
They would fight like this.
Very quickly, they split into several hundred small teams, each with a different role. A portion of the players stepped forward on their own. Their job was simple: draw the attention of the Ebony Five.
In plain terms, they were the ones volunteering to die.
Of course, that depended on whether the Ebony Five actually had an aggro system. If they didn't, then all those players could do was throw everything they had into holding them back.
The Black Order had already gone on alert.
No one understood why a Bifrost portal had suddenly delivered a bunch of idiots straight to their death, but the Bifrost was a serious piece of technology. That alone was enough to make them cautious.
If Thanos had not known that Asgard's Bifrost had already been destroyed, and that the Krypton Empire had sohow developed its own version, he would have left long ago.
Supergiant, who was in charge of the defense, felt the response was a little excessive.
The Krypton Empire was terrifying, sure. It had powerful people everywhere. But that didn't an it could cover every situation at once.
Supergiant was used to space warfare, where thousands of ships lined up and blasted each other apart from orbit. Ground combat was almost foreign to her at this point. Still, that wasn't a major problem. Thanos had taken in plenty of inferior races over the years. They had more than enough bodies to overwhelm the enemy through sheer numbers.
The battle in the original story had been almost insulting to common sense. It was probably where all the budget had gone, straight into making Thanos look cool, because the climactic war itself was rushed to hell.
First, there was Thanos's army. In Avengers 1, the Chitauri had tech that was actually advanced. By Avengers 3, they had sohow been downgraded from an aerial force into ground infantry, and the basic soldiers weren't even carrying laser rifles anymore. Their damage ca entirely from claws and teeth they were born with.
What kind of joke was that? They weren't Xenomorphs.
And even Xenomorphs had corrosive blood for self-destruct attacks.
If you compared them honestly, one Xenomorph could probably kill five Outriders.
Then there were Bucky, Captain Arica, War Machine, and Falcon, all of whom were supposed to be elite soldiers hardened by modern warfare. What were they doing?
Bucky was using a semi-automatic rifle, swapping magazines one after another, averaging about 2.5 Outriders per mag.
Captain Arica was charging through the enemy line, smashing one target every 3.8 seconds with his shield, then getting overwheld by the swarm because he ran out of stamina.
Falcon was using his personal combat gear, killing nine Outriders before having to retreat for ammunition.
Only War Machine managed to drop a few incendiary rounds from the sky and actually cause decent damage. After that, even he ran out of ammo and got forced into miserable hand-to-hand combat.
What a ss.
If guns worked, then use artillery. If artillery worked, then call in missile strikes. Simple.
That was the real truth of war. Superheroes didn't have much room to show off there unless they were technology-based fighters like Iron Man or War Machine, and even then they had to function as a unit. Send them in one by one, and they died one by one.
Even soone like the Hulk, a walking weapon of mass destruction, couldn't change much once the tide of war started rolling.
That was why superhero teams like the Avengers were really closer to special forces. Their job was decapitation strikes, not holding the front line.
Strip away the flashy effects and they were basically rail guerrillas. On an actual battlefield, the difference between them and ordinary soldiers wasn't as big as people liked to think.
Then the players descended again, carried in the beautiful rainbow glow of the Bifrost.
This ti, they brought their troops with them.
"Waaagh!"
Shouting their battle cry, the players charged straight into the Outriders and Chitauri.
Boom. Boom. Boom. Boom.
Machine gunners opened fire like mad.
Those with chs unleashed cannon shells and energy beams.
The battlefield filled with screams, gunfire, and the sound of bodies being torn apart. Fire roared across the field. Thick black smoke climbed into the sky. The noise never stopped.
Under that kind of advanced ranged fire, the Outriders beca little more than targets.
The death count was climbing by the thousands every second.
Mostly because the enemy formation was too dense.
Supergiant had barely even bothered with tactics. Or rather, her tactic was simple and stupid.
Charge.
Overwhelm them with numbers.
At this stage of the war, any competent commander would have stopped feeding bodies into the grinder. Supergiant didn't care. She could pull cannon fodder from ten different planets. Killing a few hundred thousand was nothing to her.
That was the difference resources made.
Thanos had bullied half the universe into submission, and his army was so large that even his own finances were strained. He probably would have been thrilled if a few billion more troops died.
The Titan had a big house to maintain, and it was not easy.
So many mouths depended on him.
His life had always been tight, all things considered. Single for years, adopting daughters, scraping by. Fortunately, the raid on the Shi'ar Empire had paid off for a while. Then the Shi'ar set a gravity-collapse trap and stripped away most of what he had gained. Only recently had he managed to breathe again.
The players were having a great ti killing everything.
But gradually, they started noticing sothing was wrong.
The Outriders, Chitauri, and all the other naless alien monsters kept falling in waves like harvested wheat. Anyone with eyes could tell the enemy didn't care about those losses at all.
"Holy crap, this large-scale battle is insane!"
"Damn it, my face is covered in guts and blood. I don't even dare wipe it off!"
"Aaaaaaaah!"
"Waaagh!"
"How many monsters are there even supposed to be? Is this going to take days? I've still got a paper due!"
Then, just as quickly, the players ran dry.
Their ammunition was gone.
Their energy weapons were out of charge.
"I'm broke!"
"Aaaaaah, I burned through all my ammo! That was my entire fortune!"
Once the firepower stopped, the Black Order's grunts imdiately began howling and charging forward. From a distance, it looked like a black tide rolling across the ground.
The earth shook again, sounding like a death knell.
The players did not flinch.
They drew the high-tech lee weapons mounted to their exoskeletons and chs.
"Brothers, kill them!"
"For the Emperor!"
"For the gear!"
"For our fortune!"
"Wipe them out!"
The players' willingness to throw themselves into death shocked even Supergiant.
Normally, by this point, enemies facing a tidal wave of Outriders and grunts would already be surrendering.
It was not unusual to find brave ones.
It was unusual for every single one of them to be brave.
Supergiant actually saw one player get impaled through the body by an Outrider, only to laugh as he grabbed two more Outriders and shouted for his allies to attack.
That kind of disregard for pain was not limited to one person.
Everyone on the other side seed capable of it.
"What terrifying iron-blooded soldiers," Supergiant murmured. "So this is the Krypton Empire?"
It was a pity, really. They were all about to be wiped out here.
But then sothing unexpected happened.
The rainbow light of the Bifrost flared again.
And new players, this ti without exoskeleton armor or chs, charged into battle once more.
...
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