The Imperium's opening salvo was a cold declaration, utterly shredding the players' last illusions about the game.
Before the aftershocks of the bombardment had even fully subsided, shrill whistles and hoarse shouts from officers rang out:
"Get to your positions! The Imperial dogs are coming! Move! Move!"
I Will Carry You scrambled out of the muddy puddle, her ears still ringing, her vision still blurred.
Operating almost purely on instinct, she followed the gray-uniformed figures around her, stumbling toward a low wall made of sandbags and scrap metal.
She crouched behind cover and cautiously peeked out. In the distance, a tan-colored tide began to surge forward.
Imperial Guard soldiers, mechanical in their precision and cold in their advance. Red markers floated clearly above their heads, standing out starkly against the drifting smoke.
"Shoot! Start shooting!" User114514 yelled at her while clumsily raising his own rifle.
I Will Carry You fumbled with her standard-issue Medic light laser pistol. Aim? She had no idea how!
All she knew was that pulling the trigger would probably make it fire.
She closed her eyes, or rather, relied almost entirely on feel, and wildly squeezed the trigger in the general direction of those red markers.
"Pew! Pew pew!" A few weak red beams shot out crookedly, flying off to who-knows-where, not even grazing an Imperial soldier.
"Are you shooting at birds, Liora?!" The chat immediately launched into merciless roasting.
"Certified Master of Outlining Hitboxes!"
(/n: haahaha)
"Imperial soldier: Thanks for the suppressive fire, friendlies!"
"With that aim, my grandma could do better!"
I Will Carry You's face flushed red.
Just as she was about to argue back, a dense volley of "pew pew" sounds whizzed overhead! Searing laser beams struck the sandbags, burning through them and leaving scorched holes.
Flying debris stung her painfully. She screamed and jerked her head back down, curling up behind the cover, her heart pounding wildly. She didn't dare peek out again.
This was the mercy Medici had designed into the game: clear enemy and ally markers to avoid the most basic confusion.
However, for complete newbies like I Will Carry You, this small mercy was nowhere near enough.
The time that followed was, for her, nothing short of torture.
The Imperial charge wasn't a mindless human wave.
It had clear tactical layers. Rookie-level AI carried laser rifles at the front, serving as cannon fodder to draw fire, while regular soldiers and veterans used cover to advance steadily, their precise bursts constantly suppressing the defenders' positions.
I Will Carry You tried to imitate the NPC soldiers around her, but she couldn't find the rhythm at all.
Either she'd crouch behind cover too long and miss her shooting window, or she'd just pop her head up only to catch a stray shot from nowhere right in the face.
Her screen would flash red, and she'd drop to the ground, entering "waiting for rescue" mode.
The first time she died, she didn't even see who killed her.
The second time, she tried to run to another piece of cover and got a precise laser through the chest halfway there.
The third time, she finally spotted a downed teammate and worked up the courage to rush over with a medical syringe.
Just as she was mid-revival, a stray shot took her out, and both she and the downed teammate died together.
The fourth death made her blood pressure spike even higher.
During a fierce Imperial push, the defensive line fell back. She was too scared and retreated too slowly.
An NPC wearing a military police armband, a commissar from the blocking detachment, executed her on the spot with a laser pistol! The reason? "Desertion under fire!"
"ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!" I Will Carry You actually cursed out loud in her gaming pod, her face flushed red with rage.
"I just couldn't keep up! I wasn't deserting! What kind of garbage game is this?! Is there no justice left in the world?!"
The chat was instantly flooded with "HAHAHA":
"LOL she got taken out by her own side!"
"Commissar: Bet you didn't see that coming.jpg"
"Liora perfectly demonstrates the cannon fodder's guide to survival."
"'A Comprehensive Guide to Experiencing Creative Deaths in Ten Minutes'"
Nearly ten minutes into the match, in this southern city district, actual combat losses on both sides weren't huge.
The combined death count was probably under two hundred. Yet I Will Carry You alone had contributed five glorious sacrifices.
Her kill count remained a glaring "0," and as a Medic, she'd only revived two downed teammates. Her accumulated points didn't even hit 500, not enough to call in the cheapest smoke barrage.
She felt like a dwarf stumbling into a battlefield of giants.
Every move she made seemed sluggish, clumsy, and utterly meaningless.
The sounds of artillery, shouting, and death notifications were no longer thrilling background music but death knells.
That omnipresent sense of oppression and helplessness left her barely able to breathe.
"This game... is way too hard..." Respawning yet again and looking at the still-raging front line, I Will Carry You's voice carried a hint of tears and despair.
She was beginning to seriously doubt whether choosing to try this game was the biggest mistake of her life.