At this moment, the soldiers of the 23rd Cadian Regiment were under orders to defend this section of the battlefield.
"We need more ammunition—more ammunition!!!"
The commander of the 23rd bellowed into the vox. They had gone three days without resupply; Chaos had cut their supply lines, and the pressure of defense had grown enormously.
"Don't tell me the enemy is everywhere! My men have held out for three days without ammunition resupply—you know the price they've paid? I must see ammunition delivered!"
Outside, artillery fire echoed from time to time, but compared to three days ago, the frequency of Imperial artillery support had dropped drastically. The Cadian soldiers had to conserve every round.
The enemy's numbers were not diminishing—they were growing. Daemons had begun to appear on the battlefield in large numbers.
Though Cadians were rigorously trained—learning to fire a lasgun as their first act after birth and taught to face the enemy without fear—they knew the truth. Without artillery support, once the daemonic hordes charged, their chances of survival were slim.
In the trenches, every face was grim. They weren't ready to die yet.
They hadn't killed enough traitors for the Imperium. They wanted their deaths to mean something greater.
But then, the Cadians noticed something unusual.
A scout peering through magnoculars at the enemy lines clearly saw the intensity of the assault drop. Stranger still, some enemies were running in another direction.
"Commander, the enemy is shifting their attack."
"Which direction? Do we have allies deployed there?"
"Southeast."
"Southeast? That's nothing but open wasteland, with no defenses at all. Why would they attack that way?"
"Wait, Commander!"
The scout's vision picked up something—or rather, someone.
The distance was too great for a clear view, even with magnoculars, but it appeared to be a massive human nearly two meters tall, wearing an unfamiliar pattern of power armor. Parts of his abdomen were exposed, revealing rock-hard muscles pressing against the armor as though it might burst apart.
That man held, in one hand, a weapon that normally required a Khorne Bloodletter's two hands to wield—the massive Hellblade—and was cutting through the enemy ranks like a storm.
Even surrounded by Bloodletters, he had not faltered in the slightest.
The scout clearly saw one Bloodletter charge the man, only to be cleaved cleanly in two with a single stroke. More daemons swarmed him—each one fell. Some were split in half with a single strike, some had their chests crushed by titanic iron fists, others were impaled through the skull by the wrist-blade on his left arm, and still others had their heads blown apart by his ancient shotgun.
The once-scarlet Hellblade was stained so dark it was nearly black. His dark green power armor was so drenched in enemy blood its original color could no longer be seen.
He was like a war god bathed in gore, slaughtering daemons one by one.
The Cadian scout was stunned. His mouth hung open, forgetting even to reply to his commander. That man was showcasing a brutal aesthetic of violence, cutting down Bloodletters one after another, advancing step by steady step.
By the time the scout came back to himself, the commander's furious voice was roaring in his ear.
"Answer me, Sergeant Ander! Are you deaf—or dead?!"
"Apologies, Commander! Southeast of the position, about two kilometers out—there's a man slaughtering Chaos Daemons. I don't know who he is, he wears no regimental insignia—but he's killed over a hundred daemons already."
Even as he spoke, DOOM seized two charging Bloodletters by their heads and smashed them together.
Their skulls burst, brains splattering, and both fell dead instantly.
The violent sight made the scout gulp involuntarily.
"Oh, by the Emperor… he's like a superhuman."
They all knew that when Bloodletters with Hellblades charged into mortal positions, they unleashed carnage and slaughter.
And now, this lone man was butchering Bloodletters in their own midst.
"No wonder the enemy shifted their attack. That's good news. Ammunition resupply will still take time—Cadia's fortress-world is under attack everywhere by Chaos traitors and daemons. We must hold our position. But… who is that man?"
"I don't know, but he'll soon reach our lines."
In the scout's magnoculars, there were still hundreds of Chaos Daemons left. But that hardly mattered.
Because the man was still killing.
DOOM had entered his rhythm. Though the daemons here looked somewhat different from those he had faced before, in DOOM's eyes, they were the same.
Brutal. Bloody. Ruthless. Unfamiliar with fear.
Daemons were just daemons. Daemons deserved nothing but death.
DOOM, filled with boundless rage, tore into the daemons before him. The Bloodletters had never seen a human fight like this. His savagery exceeded their imagination.
The most gruesome death the Bloodletters had witnessed was when DOOM thrust his fingers into one's eye sockets and crushed its skull with sheer brute force. That horrifying violence, existing only to kill daemons, made DOOM ever more terrifying in their eyes.
The Bloodletters roared and charged together, hoping numbers would overwhelm this human.
But then DOOM displayed his unmatched killing skill.
His reactions were so fast he dodged Hellblade strikes with ease. His blows struck with unerring precision, every strike landing on a vital point. His ferocity was such that even the daemons of Khorne—renowned for close combat—could not withstand a single punch, slash, or shot.
Every strike felled a daemon. Every strike radiated his endless fury.
Severed limbs flew. Blood sprayed in torrents.
Around DOOM, the pounding rhythm of heavy metal echoed—thud, thud, thud, thud—driving his slaughter faster still.
Yet no one knew where the music came from.
After what seemed an eternity of carnage, piles of Bloodletter corpses lay around him, so many slain that they hadn't even dissipated back into Warp energy before more bodies joined the heap.
When the battle ended, DOOM stood silently atop a hill of daemonic corpses.
One could not help but wonder if he was mute.
Without realizing it, he had fought his way to within two hundred meters of the Imperial line. The soldiers had been watching him slaughter daemons for some time.
"Eight hundred eighty-eight Chaos Daemons," a Cadian tally-keeper finally reported, blurting out a number that almost seemed profane.
But the battle in this sector was finished. The daemons here were dead. Their corpses began to dissolve into Warp energy. DOOM jumped down from the pile and advanced toward the Cadian trenches.
The soldiers instinctively moved aside, not daring to block his way.
This man stood taller than any of them, his physique impossibly powerful.
DOOM did not speak to the humans. He did not know them, and he needed no help from them. He was merely passing through, sensing more daemons farther ahead. More daemons to kill.
But as he passed the Imperial line, he took measure of these humans.
These humans were not daemons.
That was all DOOM needed to know.
So long as you were not a daemon, DOOM would not attack you. He might even spare a thought for your safety.
But if you attacked DOOM—then that was on you.