The Kingdom of Avila is one of the oldest civilizations on this planet.

Their kingdom is built within the vast and boundless "Moonlight Forest." Here, every tree possesses a thousand-year lifespan, and every river flows with the magic of nature. The elves' cities are not built on the land, but rather coexist with those towering trees. Silver suspension bridges connect treehouse palaces constructed from living plants, and a soft magical glow perpetually lingers in the forest, like an eternal dream.

The spirits here love peace, cherish art, and live in harmony with nature.

Their army was less for invasion and more for defense. The "Green Leaf Scouts," composed of the most agile rangers, the aerial force of the "Wind Knights," who could communicate with the giant eagles, and the mage legion of the "Forest Whisperers," who could manipulate the power of plants and the earth, together constituted Avila's defense system.

They knew that on the other side of the ocean, a cataclysmic change had taken place. Those human dynasties with their queues had vanished overnight. In their place stood a new regime, calling itself the "Holy Star Empire," a regime imbued with the spirit of steel and fire.

The Elf Queen, Lyandra Starsong, a wise woman with the ability to foresee the future, sensed an unprecedented and suffocating darkness rapidly approaching from the pulse of the World's Magic Network.

She summoned all the elders and held an emergency meeting beneath the "Tree of Life" at the heart of the kingdom.

“I saw… a torrent of steel, black flames, and… a forest stained with blood.” Queen Leander’s voice carried a hint of weariness and sorrow. “An unprecedentedly powerful enemy has cast its greedy gaze upon our homeland. In their hearts, there is no reverence for life, only the desire to conquer and enslave.”

"Your Majesty, we cannot sit idly by and wait to die!" The kingdom's Grand General, a valiant warrior named Elron Swiftspear, stepped forward. "We, the warriors of Avila, have never feared any enemy! Dragons and orcs alike have fallen to our arrows. These humans, even with their strange steel creations, can never defeat the wrath of the forest!"

“Yes, the general is right!” another elder echoed. “The forest is our strongest ally. Any enemy who dares to step into the Moon Whisper Forest will lose their way in the endless mist and vines, and eventually become fertilizer to nourish the earth.”

Their confidence was not unfounded. For thousands of years, the natural barrier of the Moonlit Forest had helped them defend against countless invasions by external enemies.

However, the worry in Queen Leander's eyes did not diminish in the slightest.

“No, you don’t understand.” She shook her head. “This time, the enemy is different. They… come from the heavens.”

As soon as she finished speaking, a violent tremor originating from deep within the earth interrupted the meeting.

All the elves looked up in astonishment.

On the distant horizon, thick, dark red beams of light, like spears of divine punishment, crashed down from the heavens and struck precisely at the outer edge of the Moon Whisper Forest.

That was the first exploratory orbital bombardment launched by the imperial flagship "First Emperor" in geosynchronous orbit.

boom!

The deafening explosion was clearly audible even hundreds of kilometers away.

Each beam of light that struck created a massive, completely vitrified crater on the earth, exceeding five kilometers in diameter. Everything within the crater, from ancient trees to solid rocks, was instantly vaporized. The terrifying shockwave, like an invisible giant hand, leveled the forests within a radius of tens of kilometers.

The natural barrier that the elves were so proud of appeared so ridiculous and fragile in the face of the concept of a "star destroyer".

With just one volley, a large chunk of the outer perimeter of the Moon Whisper Forest was ripped away, leaving a huge, ugly gap belching black smoke.

The faces of all the elves drained of color. General Elrond's usually confident face was now filled with disbelief.

This is no longer war, this is... divine punishment.

However, this is just the beginning.

The breach created by the orbital bombardment became the landing site for the Dragon Fang Legion.

The sky darkened.

What blotted out the sky was not dark clouds, but tens of thousands of Vulture-class landing ships, their appearance both menacing and beautiful. They swarmed like locusts, densely packed, blotting out the sun.

The landing ship's belly hatch opened, and countless black metal coffins—"Iron Coffin" assault pods—were launched down like a black, deadly meteor shower.

"For His Majesty!!!"

As the first assault pod slammed into the ground of the Moonlit Forest, the hatch burst open, and a Dragonfang Legion soldier wearing the "Punisher" exoskeleton armor let out his first roar upon arriving in this new world.

He is Wang Ergou.

When he set foot on this exotic land, smelling the fresh fragrance of flowers and grass in the air, and looking at the strange plants around him that were as beautiful as a painting, he felt no appreciation or admiration.

On his retina, the assistive system had marked in bright red the distant, panicked "hostile targets" with pointed ears.

In his mind, only the impassioned roar of Political Commissar Wang Xiucai during the pre-battle mobilization was still there:

"Soldiers! Look! What fertile land! What beautiful forests! But they are occupied by a bunch of lowly, ungrateful pointy-eared creatures! This is a desecration of His Majesty's majesty! Our mission is to purify this place! To turn everything here into His Majesty's pastures, His Majesty's gardens! To turn all the pointy-eared creatures into our slaves!"

Purify! Slaves!

Wang Ergou's eyes were instantly filled with a frenzied, bloodthirsty light. He raised his C-14 electromagnetic rifle and fired at an elven ranger in the distance who was drawing his bow and nocking an arrow.

The supersonic tungsten-core projectile, accompanied by a piercing whistle, instantly traversed a distance of hundreds of meters.

That elven ranger was one of Avila's finest archers. His eyes could see the patterns on a butterfly's wings a hundred meters away. The arrows fired from his "Starwood Bow" could catch up with a flying swift.

The moment the bullet left the barrel, he sensed a deadly danger with animalistic instinct. He instinctively tried to dodge.

But it was too late.

He didn't even see what hit him. It felt as if an invisible giant hammer had struck his chest, tearing his tough leather armor apart like paper. His entire upper body, along with the Starwood Bow in his hand, exploded into a cloud of blood mist.

Wang Ergou stared at the burst of blood in the distance, grinned, and let out an excited yet cruel laugh.

"Haha! That's it? That's it? Easier than target practice!"

This unprecedentedly powerful force, capable of easily depriving a vibrant life and utterly destroying it with the mere flick of a finger, filled him with an intoxicating sense of awe.

He is no longer the Wang Ergou who toiled in the fields.

He is divine punishment, a divine messenger, and the wrath of His Majesty the Emperor descending to earth!

"Charge! For His Majesty! Conquer these pointy ears!"

With his roar, thousands of Dragon Fang Legion soldiers, just like him, poured out of their respective assault pods, converging into an unstoppable torrent of steel, and charged into the depths of the Moon Whisper Forest.

The war began in the most barbaric and unequal way.

The elves of Avila quickly recovered from their initial shock and fear. Thousands of years of fighting instinct enabled them to rapidly organize an effective resistance.

"Wind Knights! Take off! Use explosive rockets to stop them from advancing!"

"Forest Whisperer! Awaken the ancient tree guardians! Tear those steel monsters apart with vines and thorns!"

"Rangers! Go into stealth! Use your poisoned arrows to shoot the gaps in their joints and eyes!"

General Elrond's orders were quickly relayed to all units.

In the sky, hundreds of magnificent eagles, carrying their riders, soared into the heavens with resounding cries. They are the kings of the sky; with a single flap of their wings, they could stir up a fierce wind.

However, what awaited them was a swarm of Reaper drones from the Imperial Aerospace Forces.

Tens of thousands of drones, each the size of a hound, were released from the landing ship, forming a metallic cloud that instantly surrounded the Wind Knights.

The drone's front end features a high-speed rotating alloy drill bit, while its sides house small pulse energy cannons.

A brutal aerial massacre has begun.

The giant eagles nimbly dodged the energy cannon fire, tearing drone after drone apart with their sharp claws. The wind knights, in turn, used their spears and bows to relentlessly shoot down the enemy.

However, there are far too many drones. Too many to count.

A giant eagle, after tearing apart more than a dozen drones, was swarmed by hundreds of drones. The high-speed spinning drill instantly shredded it and its rider into a bloody mess, which fell from the sky.

"No!!!"

General Elrond watched helplessly as his elite air force was devoured by the terrifying "iron worms" in less than ten minutes, and his heart bled.

On the ground, the fighting was equally fierce.

"Avenge nature!"

An elderly forest whisperer plunged his staff of nature deep into the earth. With his ancient incantation, a thousand-year-old tree before him groaned and slowly came to life.

Its thick trunk became its body, its gnarled roots its legs, and its lush branches its arms. A thirty-meter-tall "ancient tree guardian," filled with boundless rage, awoke from its slumber.

It strode heavily toward the Dragon Fang Legion's lines. Its massive arms swung like battering rams, smashing three Dragon Fang Legion soldiers, along with their exoskeletons, into twisted discs with a single blow.

"Monster! This is a monster!"

The soldiers of the Dragon Fang Legion were seeing this creature, which only existed in mythology, for the first time, and a small disturbance broke out on the front line.

"What's the panic! It's just a walking log!" The squad commander, a former Imperial veteran, roared through the comms, "Flame Wave Squad! Charge! Burn it to a crisp!"

Three soldiers, also wearing exoskeleton armor but carrying huge fuel tanks on their backs, rushed to the front of the line.

The plasma jets in their hands spewed out three blue flames, each a hundred meters long and powerful enough to melt steel.

"Waaaaah—!!!"

The ancient tree guardian let out a painful roar. Its tough bark, strong enough to withstand swords, melted and charred rapidly like butter before the plasma flames. The flames spread along its body, igniting the leaves that served as its fur.

In just half a minute, this powerful, thousand-year-old guardian of nature transformed into a giant, writhing torch in agony, before finally crashing to the ground and turning into a pile of charred remains.

The elven rangers' guerrilla warfare, however, encountered an even more brutal opponent.

An elven ranger, like a phantom, moved through the shadows of the forest. He spotted a lone Dragonfang Legion soldier clumsily scaling a fallen tree trunk.

Now!

He held his breath and aimed the poisoned arrow at the soldier's nape, at the weakest point of the armor.

Whoosh!

The arrow, carrying a deadly green light, flew precisely towards its target.

However, just before the arrow was about to hit, the soldier's body suddenly shifted half a meter to the side in an illogical way.

The arrow grazed his armor and missed.

"How is this possible?!" The wandering swordsman was shocked.

He didn't know that he was facing Chen Qiaoniang, the woman who once struggled to walk but now possessed the agility of a cheetah.

Chen Qiaoniang's exoskeleton armor is a specially modified "Lynx" type, sacrificing some defense for ultimate mobility. Her tactical computer has a 360-degree infrared sensor field of view, and it issued an alarm the moment the Ranger aimed at her.

"Found you, little mouse."

Chen Qiaoniang suddenly turned around. The weapon in her hand was not an electromagnetic rifle, but a pair of high-frequency vibrating daggers called "Tearers".

The power system beneath her feet erupted, and her entire body shot out like a cannonball, instantly covering a distance of tens of meters and rushing towards the elven ranger.

The swordsman only felt a blur before his eyes, and a terrifying killing intent rushed towards him. Without thinking, he drew his twin swords from his waist and crossed them to parry.

clang!

A crisp sound.

His prized steel scimitar, crafted by a dwarf master, was sliced ​​into four pieces like rotten wood the instant it came into contact with the pair of gleaming daggers.

The next second, Chen Qiaoniang's figure had already passed him by.

The wandering swordsman stood there blankly, looking down at the broken blade in his hand, then at his unharmed chest, his eyes filled with confusion.

Then he saw a thin line of blood running from his forehead down to his groin.

His body, along with the leather armor he wore, was neatly divided into two halves.

Chen Qiaoniang flicked non-existent blood off her dagger, her eyes icy. She gazed into the depths of the forest, a cruel smile playing on her lips.

"This is what it feels like to run freely...it feels so good."

This war, from the very beginning, was not a contest on a single dimension.

The elves' pride in magic, martial arts, and harmony with nature was shattered in the face of the empire's absolute and overwhelming technological violence.

After the initial shock, the soldiers of the Dragon Fang Legion quickly adapted to the "hunt".

They discovered that these pointed-eared creatures, more beautiful than any painting, were incredibly fragile. Their flesh and blood were no different from tofu in the face of electromagnetic rifles. Their magic was like a child's trick in the face of plasma flames.

Fear was quickly replaced by a bloodthirsty pleasure.

They began to enjoy the massacre.

They would use "Hive" miniature missiles to blast the giant treehouses on which the elves depended for survival, along with the women and children inside who couldn't escape in time, into a sky full of wood chips.

They would use flamethrowers to set vast swathes of forest ablaze. They loved to hear the beautiful, spirited trees crackling and groaning in the flames, and to watch the adorable little animals that lived in the forest struggle and turn to charcoal in the inferno.

Wang Xiucai, now the political commissar of the 3rd Regiment of the 1st Division of the Dragon Fang Legion, has invented an extremely cruel form of "psychological warfare".

He ordered his troops to skin the captured elven rangers alive and then hang their bloody corpses on the most conspicuous treetops in the forest.

"Let these stubborn barbarians feel the majesty of the Empire from the depths of their souls!" he roared in his inflammatory voice over the loudspeaker at the front lines. "Let them know how foolish and miserable it is to oppose His Majesty's Heavenly Army!"

The forest is weeping.

The earth is groaning.

The once idyllic Moon Whisper Forest was quickly transformed into a blood-soaked hell under the iron hooves of the Dragon Fang Legion.