The night was illuminated by countless explosions.

  The kobold army was advancing steadily, fanned out in a concave formation that enveloped the enemy territory in order to create a kill zone at their centre that would allow them to annihilate any foe that entered it.

  Around eight thousand kobold soldiers made up the bulk of the army, with most of them wearing full armor and carrying weapons that looked like a mix between a spear and a musket. They advanced in well organized battle lines, holding fire and instead focusing exclusively on marching, waiting for their enemy to get closer to maximize the damage of their shots.

  Scattered amongst the foot soldiers there were also a few dozen Tinkerers, some equipped with communication Devices to relay orders while others carried weird contraptions, some recognizable as gatling guns, sniper rifles and rocket launchers, while others were unlike any sort of conventional weapon. Those with the greatest range were already shooting, and volleys of bullets, rockets and even energy beams were flying across the air.

  The greatest concentration of firepower, however, was definitely coming from the Tinkerers' vehicles, which proceeded slowly and steadily in order to not completely outpace the infantry that accompanied them. There were about fifty of these machines, and each of them looked different from the others. Some had wheels or tank tracks, others were walking on metal legs like oversized insects and a couple even hovered off the ground. Most of them were actually repurposed civilian transportation Devices, retrofitted with whatever weapons and armor the Tinkerers could get their hands on, but the end result was so effective that it was basically impossible to tell the difference between them and the actual war machines. Each of them was carrying a huge amount of heavy weaponry, which were used to devastate the enemy.

  The biggest of these machines was the Hexambulator, located at the center of the kobold army. It looked like a humongous spider with six long metal legs, each about twenty five meters tall. Its body was the size of a small ship, filled to the brim with the best weapons the Tinkerers had at their disposal. At its bow, an oversized energy gun was shooting white-yellow energy beams so bright that it hurt to look at them, which disintegrated every target they hit with a powerful explosion. There were also other guns on each side, mostly smaller but still deadly ray guns, while eight coiled pylons on top of it crackled with electricity, occasionally shooting lightning bolts towards the enemy lines.

  “Keep advancing and firing our artillery.” Gar-Gar ordered from his command center inside of the Hexambulator. “But tell the infantry to hold fire until the bugs have entered the killzone. And look out for attacks from both above and below. The bugs might have burrowing or flying units.”

  The other Tinkerers relayed his orders, which were obeyed to the letter by the various units.

  Meanwhile, on the opposite side, the Vexlands looked like an uprooted anthill, with countless drones swarming out from every hole in the mold-wax to meet their opponents. Unlike the kobolds, the Vex had no proper battle formations but despite this they moved with an eerily perfect coordination, less like an army and more like a tidal wave that threatened to swallow everything in its path. The kobold artillery was reaping a heavy toll, blowing up chitin-covered bodies as if they were made of paper, but this barely slowed them since they kept charging with absolutely no regard for their own lives.

  The drones moved quickly, closing the distance between themselves and the enemies in a matter of minutes, and in doing so they also entered the killzone the kobolds had prepared for them. As soon as they did, a flare was fired from the Hexambulator, perfectly visible from the rest of the army, and in response to that signal thousands of rifles fired at the same moment, filling the air with a cloud of white smoke as a crackling sound, like that of a wet log thrown into a raging fire, echoed in the night.

  Gar-Gar, who was watching the battlefield from a bolthole on the Hexambulator, fully expected to see the bugs on the front lines collapse under the salvo of bullets that had just hit them.

  Deploying large formations of spear-rifle units had been the core of kobold warfare for centuries. The Tinkerers' offensive Devices were undoubtedly more powerful, sure, but they were painfully rare. Meanwhile the spear-muskets could be reliably mass produced and their sheer numbers made up for their individual weakness. There were creatures against whom regular bullets were ineffective —such as ogres, dragons and some types of undead— but they tended to be quite rare, akin to elite units, and the Tinkerers could deal with them while leaving the more numerous but weaker regular enemies to the normal soldiers. This “combined arms” tactic had served the kobolds well for most of their history, allowing them to survive and even thrive in the dangerous Caligare forest. It had even worked on every enemy they had met before, bugs included, and though the kobolds had ultimately chosen to run away they had never actually been defeated in a direct, open field engagement like this one.

  Because of this, it was a complete shock for Gar-Gar when the Vex shrugged off the bullets as if they were raindrops and kept charging without even slowing down.

  Another volley was fired, then another, but each time the bugs only took negligible casualties. Sure, here and there a lucky hit managed to kill or injure a drone when they got through a vulnerable spot, but for the most part the bullets harmlessly bounced off the Vexs' chitinous armor, which was apparently much thicker and more resilient that those of the bugs they had met before.

  Gar-Gar felt a shiver running down his spine as he processed what he was seeing and realized that he had made a grave miscalculation. However, now it was too late to have second thoughts, so he gritted his teeth and forced himself to ignore the feeling of panic that threatened to cloud his judgement.

  “To all heavy weapons teams, concentrate fire on the enemy frontlines! Try to disrupt their charge and slow them down!” He cried, deciding to try and buy some time to come up with a plan to get out of this desperate situation.

  His order was quickly transmitted to the other Tinkerers, and only a few seconds later all the offensive Devices focused their fire on the Vex frontlines, blowing up mold-wax and drones equally in a display of explosions more spectacular than any pyrotechnic show. For a single moment, the advance of the Vex was halted, but then, after the Tinkerers had to stop firing to reload their weapons, the bugs kept advancing once again as if nothing had happened. The Tinkerers kept firing again and again, but each time the Vex simply moved on undeterred by the casualties they took, getting closer and closer to the kobold army. There weren’t simply enough offensive Devices to stop the bugs completely, and all the kobolds could do was to thin out their enemy as much as they could from a distance, hoping that once they got in melee range they would be weakened enough for them to scrape out a win.

  However, their plan was immediately compromised when the Vex started returning fire.

  Huge, lizard-like drones emerged from the mass of smaller Vex and spat balls of glowing acid, which arched in the sky like meteors before falling into the kobold army with a huge splash, causing anyone caught in the radius to scream in agony as they melted into puddles. Meanwhile up in the sky thousands of flying Vex flew over the kobold army, but instead of swooping down they rained acid droplets on the enemy. Unlike the balls of acid made by the bigger lizard-like drones, these ones were too small to inflict significant damage on their own, especially against the well-armored kobolds, but their sheer numbers made up for that, and more than a few soldiers fell on the ground crying in pain.

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  Despite being caught by surprise by the Vex’s fire, the kobolds managed to fire back. Several Tinkerers started to aim at the Artillery Drones while the infantry in the rear of the army, which had been mostly spared by the acid rain, reacted by aiming their musket-spears into the sky and firing multiple salvos against the flying bugs. The musket fire proved much more effective against the lightly armored Flyers, and hundreds of drones fell from the sky, their wings and bodies shredded by bullets, while most of the Artillery drones were sniped out by the Tinkerer’s weird but powerful weapons. Thanks to this, the return fire from the Vex stopped almost completely, which allowed the kobold frontlines to recover and reorganize themselves into proper battle formations, fire one last volley from their gun-spears and brace themselves against the incoming charge. And not a moment too soon, because only a few seconds later the Vex ground forces finally reached them.

  For a single moment, the frontline of the kobolds managed to hold. The last bullet volley had slowed down the Vex’s momentum somewhat and the kobolds were experts at weathering charges from bigger opponents using their spears, so for a few fleeting seconds the drones were actually stopped.

  That stalemate didn’t last long.

  Following the Warriors and Workers who had taken the brunt of the losses from the Tinkerers weapons, heavier drones charged at the kobolds, breaking through their lines as if they weren't even there. Hundreds of Heavies, six Dreadnoughts and even a couple Destroyers cut through the enemy formations like a red hot knife through butter.

  However, even with their formations compromised, the kobolds didn’t stop fighting. While the foot soldiers were unable to stop the bigger Vex they didn’t stop trying, and their sacrifice managed to buy enough time for the Tinkerers to turn their attention to these elite enemies.

  Concentrated firepower started hitting the elite Vex, a combination of bullets, while the Tinkerers revealed a few more of the tricks they had hidden up their sleeves. A few repurposed mining Devices which looked like mechanical power armor or even mechs, equipped with drills, saws and even short range energy weapons, met the huge drones in melee combat, managing to halt them in their tracks.

  Unfortunately for the kobolds, their resistance still wasn’t enough.

  The number of Tinkerer weapons was insufficient to stop all of the elite Vex, and moreover, following their bigger kin in their charge, thousands of Vex Warriors had taken advantage of the disruption of the kobold formations and wedged themselves deeply into their army. Though smaller than the Destroyers and Dreadnaughts, the Warriors were still basically unstoppable for the kobold foot soldiers now that their coordination had been compromised, and so the drones rampaged through the enemy army at their leisure, killing hundreds every second. Even the Tinkerers' vehicles were being overwhelmed by the sheer number of enemies, their armor plating pried open by chitinous claws and their crew slaughtered.

  If things continued like this, it was only a matter of minutes at best before the whole kobold army was completely annihilated.

  Realizing just how desperate the situation was, Gar-Gar quickly decided to use desperate measures.

  “We need to use the Pyronator! Now!” The Elder cried, not even bothering to hide his panic right now.

  “But sir... that's our last relic of Mek-Mek.” One of his aides protested. “If we use it now, we're going to lose it forever.”

  “If we don't use it now we're all going to die!” Gar-Gar replied angrily. “Give me the command device! Hurry!”

  The aide, feeling the desperation behind the Elder’s words, obeyed without any further complaint. He opened a metal cabinet and took out a peculiar object from it, handing it to Gar-Gar.

  The Device was a square metal box with some buttons and a lever ticking out of it, plus a small dark green glass screen at its center. To anyone familiar with the culture of modern Earth, it would have looked like a portable videogame console.

  Gar-Gar immediately turned the device on, and with a chiming sound the device's screen lit up, displaying a green grid pattern. Without further hesitation, the Elder then pushed the launch button.

  A hidden pad opened on top of the Hexambulator and a weird contraption, which looked like a copper sphere with red glowing lines running on its surface, was shot out. It flew towards the sky for a couple dozen metres before stopping, hovering mid-air despite not having any clear propulsion system to keep it airborne.

  On the screen of the Device Gar-Gar was holding, a red dot suddenly appeared right above the center of the grid, and the Elder grabbed the joystick and pushed it forward. In response to this command, the sphere immediately darted towards the bug swarm at impressive speed. Perhaps sensing the incoming danger, several Flyers and even a Wyvern tried to intercept this object, but as soon as they approached it they were immediately burned down to a crisp by some kind of unknown energy, which zapped them out of the sky like mosquitoes.

  Gar-Gar kept piloting the Device until it was a few hundred meters away from the kobolds, right in the middle of the Vex swarm, and then pressed a single red button.

  The Pyronator exploded into a ball of pure fire, incinerating every single drone caught in the blast, but unlike a regular explosion the flames lingered, forming a flaming sphere of about fifty meters radius, similar in appearance to a small sun.

  The Elder Tinkerer then started moving around the joystick and the fireball moved in response, passing through the Vex swarm like a lawnmower. Anything caught by the flames was immediately incinerated, be it drones or mold-wax, and in its wake the conflagration left only charred, blackened naked ground.

  Gar-Gar piloted that ball of fire up and down the Vex swarm, trying to kill as many bugs as possible. The flames lasted only for about a minute before suddenly disappearing, leaving only a small, red-hot ball of metal behind which kept hovering for a second or two before falling to the ground, but by then the damage it had inflicted was immeasurable. At least twenty thousand drones had been reduced to ashes, along with a significant portion of the mold-wax covering their land, and the seemingly unstoppable wave of chitinous bodies had simply vanished.

  However, despite having unleashed their most powerful weapon, the kobolds were still in a dire situation. Several thousand Vex had already penetrated deep into the kobold formations and Gar-Gar had been unable to use the Pyronator on them since his kin would have been caught in the fires otherwise. These bugs paid absolutely no attention to the destruction of their swarm behind them and kept on fighting as if nothing had happened, inflicting serious casualties on the kobolds and preventing them from reorganizing. And to make things worse, a few kilometers away, beyond the scorched area left by the flaming sphere, countless Vex were still emerging from inside a mold-wax covered hill, preparing for another assault.

  Gar-Gar stared at the enemy on the horizon with tired, lifeless eyes, as he realized that they couldn’t defeat the bugs. They were simply too many and too tough for the kobolds to overcome them. It was dubious if they would even be able to defeat the drones they were already engaged with, and once the new swarm reached them they wouldn’t have a chance. Even using Mek-Mek’s Pyronator —a relic that his people had kept hidden for centuries— had achieved nothing more than buying them some time.

  And yet, he couldn’t surrender yet, because their defeat would mean the death of every single kobold under his command. Nor could they run away, because there was nowhere to run to.

  The only option left to them was to try and win, no matter the cost.

  “How many soldiers and vehicles are left?” He asked.

  “By the reports, we have lost around three thousand soldiers.” One of the communication Tinkerers promptly replied. “Eight armored vehicles have also been destroyed or damaged to the point they cannot move.”

  The Elder Tinkerer nodded, looking out of the bolthole and towards the approaching enemy swarm.

  Defeating them through conventional tactics was impossible. That was indisputable. But there was still a way to turn this battle around, though it was a desperate gamble.

  They had to take advantage of the bugs’ weakness.

  “Send a message to all of our units.” Gar-Gar said, his voice tired but somehow filled with ironclad determination. “We're going to break through the enemy lines, destroy their hive and kill their queen. Tell everyone to prepare to charge ahead, and to not stop moving for any reason.”