"Self-destruct tactics are working!"
"Second suicide squad, move in!"
"Death squad, with ! Charge!!!"
The players erupted with excitent.
After fighting the Black Order for so long, they had finally managed to critically injure several of them and even kill one outright. Up until now, most of their attacks had felt like scratching paint off a battleship. More than a few players had started suspecting the devs never intended this raid to be beatable in the first place.
Unfortunately for the devs, that only made the players more determined.
If the ga did not want them to win, then they would force a win anyway.
So players threw themselves into nonstop grinding, taking construction jobs, farming reputation, hauling resources, and earning enough currency to keep the raid groups supplied with weapons.
That was how the micro-nuke strategy had been born.
Ebony Maw specialized in crowd control. Cull Obsidian was an unkillable tank. Deadly Blade was even worse with his absurd immortality.
So the players decided on a simple solution.
If conventional attacks were useless, then they would just turn themselves into bombs.
And now, it had finally paid off.
"They actually managed to pull it off," the Black Queen said, visibly stunned. "They killed one of the Black Order."
Drex Valen shook his head.
"This only worked because the Black Order has almost no experience dealing with human-wave tactics," he said calmly. "Take Proxima Midnight. In a straight one-on-one fight, Earth probably doesn't have many heroes capable of beating her right now. Her weapon is extrely powerful, but it also has a clear weakness. It can only effectively deal with one target at a ti."
The truth was that most superheroes and supervillains in the Marvel Universe lacked efficient large-scale battlefield control. Few of them were truly equipped to deal with endless swarms.
If Drex had deployed the Kryptonian Empire's real heavy hitters instead, the Black Order would have collapsed even faster.
Gladiator alone had once bulldozed through the Black Order and chased Thanos into retreat.
If Earth's current superhuman forces had been the ones fighting here instead, the war would likely have dragged on for days. A brutal campaign of attrition. Heroes battered and bleeding before finally managing to bring the Black Order down.
Deadly Blade might not even have died in the end.
His blade was nearly indestructible, and wounds inflicted by it could not heal naturally. Worse, the weapon continuously drained vitality from its victims. Combined with his immortal body, he was extraordinarily difficult to defeat unless he faced a psychic opponent like Ebony Maw or Supergiant.
The battle escalated again.
The players launched another wave of suicidal attacks, but this ti Ebony Maw and Supergiant stopped holding back. Their psychic abilities prevented players from getting close, and even the self-detonating micro-nukes were intercepted before they could reach effective range.
Cull Obsidian roared and charged directly into the battlefield, swinging his hyper-alloy battle axe like a living siege engine. Every strike tore through clusters of players.
Dozens died at a ti.
It made no difference.
The players kept coming.
Wave after wave crashed forward without hesitation.
Still, Drex and the Black Queen could both see the truth.
The players had reached their limit.
Once the Black Order beca serious, this stopped being a raid the players could realistically clear.
Even the weakest mber, Cull Obsidian, was far beyond what ordinary players could handle. He lacked massive area-of-effect attacks, but raw strength and durability alone were enough to crush entire groups.
After all, no matter how many ants gathered together, they still could not bite the Hulk to death.
Which ant the battle had reached the point where the story itself needed to intervene.
Drex was just about to make his move when a thought stopped him.
Wait.
The Black Order could beco sothing more valuable alive than dead.
A long-term hostile faction.
Sothing like the Burning Legion from Warcraft. An ever-present enemy the players could continuously struggle against.
That would save him the trouble of constantly designing new opponents for them.
And if the players failed to completely kill the Black Order and Thanos here, they would absolutely feel frustrated. Furious, even.
So would probably curse the devs all over the forums.
But frustration was motivation.
The players would grind harder.
Build more.
Mine more.
Develop faster.
All for the sake of eventually killing Thanos.
At that mont, Thanos suddenly noticed the barrier surrounding Nidavellir had disappeared.
The Black Order was already close to collapse.
"Shit! The elite mobs and the world boss are escaping!"
"This ga seriously needs health bars!"
"The devs are trying to pull sothing. Stop them! Don't let them disengage!"
The players imdiately rushed forward to block the retreat.
Thanos responded by ordering his warships to saturate the battlefield with bombardnt fire.
Explosions consud the battlefield.
Players died in droves.
The few survivors still charging forward fired uselessly at the warships overhead while screaming insults into the sky.
"Coward!"
"Get down here and fight!"
"Co back, you bastard!"
"Yeah, run away, bitch!"
By the ti they escaped, both Thanos and the Black Order had fully understood just how terrifying the Kryptonian Empire could be.
A notification suddenly appeared before every participating player.
[Mission Complete: Chapter One - Kryptonian Empire vs. The Black Order]
[Rewards Distributed...]
Even players who had not directly participated in combat received rewards due to their contributions through labor, logistics, mining, construction, and resource gathering.
Because the primary targets had escaped, however, there was no equipnt reward.
Instead, the players received large amounts of money, reputation, and rit points.
Predictably, the forums exploded.
Even though the event had technically been profitable, what the players really wanted was loot.
[JesterJinx: The devs actually let a cosmic overlord escape. That's pure evil.]
[Mulan's Chest Wrap: Honestly, Thanos feels like a long-term enemy faction now. Like Sargeras and the Burning Legion in Warcraft.]
[DeepFriedDragon: So Thanos is basically another "Dark Lord" raid boss now? Honestly tracks.]
[IWantEverything: I said from the start it wouldn't be that easy. There's no way we were killing a cosmic overlord this early. We probably won't even see Thanos again until hundreds of main-story missions later.]
[SnowWhiteLikesTheQueen: But we still killed one of the Black Order. Why didn't we get any gear drops?]
[PinocchioUtilityNose: Maybe the Black Order mber we killed can resurrect sohow?]
The forums refreshed so quickly that hundreds of thousands of new posts appeared within monts.
Drex read through them with great interest.
As for why Proxima Midnight had not dropped any equipnt, the answer was simple.
Her weapon tier was far beyond what the players could currently use. Right now, they were still better off staying machine-gun infantry.
And resurrection?
That was impossible.
Unless Thanos obtained either the Ti Stone or the Soul Stone, Proxima Midnight was permanently dead.
Afterward, Drex uploaded footage of the entire war to the galactic civilization network.
Civilizations across the cosmos watched in shock as Thanos and the infamous Black Order, beings feared throughout the universe, suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of the Kryptonian Empire.
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