He dug in and erupted from the other side of the colossal war beetle in a shower of green blood and innards. The air began to stink because of all the exposed innards.
He had been holding his breath within the bug, so he took a breath now. That single inhalation threatened to be the cause of his death as his body revolted and his lungs seized.
But Wrath was immune to his discomfort. She hollered loudly, "Weeeee. Let's do that again."
He could only oblige her and attack a fourth war beetle. Meanwhile, the first war beetle had yet to enter its final throes of death.
It wasn't a fight because he just wasn't big enough to be worthy of a fight with the war beetles. In this situation, he was the puny ant.
But he was also very sharp and deadly. He also didn't mind having bug innards on his body, as Wrath called them. He had Juggernaut's Armament to protect him, so he was always gunning to enter their massive bodies.
This process of entering and exiting the bodies of large insects continued for the rest of the five minutes that Command wanted them to stall for.
He received a message to withdraw back into the barrier as soon as possible. He also sensed a brewing threat in the sky ready to drop on him at any moment. So he had to end Wrath's jolly ride and run for his life.
Every soldier received the message and used all their strength to retreat. This left the colossal insects unimpeded in their attempts to gain access to the barrier.
They took this opportunity seriously and climbed over each other to reach the barrier. This was the position they were in when the hammer of dawn appeared in the sky and fell.
The light of the sun had been blocked by the swarm. But daylight returned powerfully when the hammer of dawn punctured a hole through everything blocking its path.
A bright light appeared in the sky. The earth began to rumble and shake. Then it began to crack and spill lava from within as the hammer of dawn smashed into it.
The large gun moved around the sky. This caused its payload to move and shift across the landscape. It burned part of the insect swarm and the majority of the colossal insects because they had come from the same direction and were clustered in the same position.
Then the hammer of dawn traced back the path of the insect attack as if looking for its source. Its source happened to be the elven army waiting in the distance.
The elven army noticed these actions. As the shining purple of violent energy began to move towards them, they became restless.
The commanders of the army, the royal elves, shouted for order. But the animals under their control couldn't take it anymore. They felt the threat of death, so they broke ranks and ran away.
Even before the hammer of dawn reached them, the eruption of lava from the earth was already too much for them to deal with. There was just no way that forest animals, no matter how brave and ferocious, could remain brave in the face of what will be correctly described as a cataclysm.
But the hammer of dawn didn't reach them. It stopped some distance from their army. It appeared that they had been scared for nothing.
Daylight and peaceful silence returned to the world soon after. The hammer of dawn didn't fire any more, and the insect swarm was ordered to return.
Wrath didn't like this, but both the elven and human sighed in relief.
Unfortunately, the silence was shattered when thunder shook the sky and dark clouds appeared in the sky.
The dark clouds were clouds, but they were not natural. However, they were not for show. Rain actually began to fall after they appeared.
The dark clouds covered the sky and plunged the world into darkness. It notified the troops in both armies that things were far from over.
Kelvin was able to see more, so he exclaimed, "Oh no."
Wrath also saw what he saw, but she said with excitement, "Oh yes."
Within the clouds was a small humanoid figure. Their figure was hazy and indistinct. But he could see the massive darkness radiating out of them to form a black star.
What others could see was that lightning was accumulating in the sky just above the force field. They didn't see that the lightning was gathering around the demigod and didn't know that he was commanding them.
He said, "It seems they want to copy the hammer of dawn."
Wrath said with too much enthusiasm, "About time. We've used it three times now. They should have learned one or two things from us by this time if they are intelligent at all."
He shook his head and did the only thing he could. He chose to wait.
While he was thinking, he kept thinking about the insect attack being a ploy by the elves to render the hammer of dawn incapacitated.
He suspects this because the two previous times the hammer of dawn was used, elven kings died. But this time around, when the hammer of dawn was used, only some large insects were killed.
Command had chosen to prioritize the force field in exchange for using the hammer of dawn early. But this had given the elven kings the opportunity to appear and deal them a deadly blow.
He was scared, though. It is because he knew they still had a true god on their side. Not that he expects Aganju to show up to deal with a pipsqueak, as he likes to call demigods.
He was expecting a human demigod to appear to deal with the brewing disaster in the sky, but what happened next took both him, the human soldiers, the elven soldiers, and the elven kings by surprise.
A large array of glass and mirrors lit up suddenly at the core of the base of the human army. It was laser.