Inside the medical bay, the air was thick with the mixed scent of disinfectant and machine oil.
"Tech-Priest Archer! Please, you must save my brother!"
Chapter Master Caleb, who was usually as unyielding as iron, was now tightly gripping Archer's mechanical arm, his voice trembling. "His vital signs have grown extremely faint, and Nurgle's toxins are corroding every inch of his body... I know it is difficult, but if anyone can work a miracle, it is you!"
Archer looked at Slacker, who had been placed on the operating table—barely drawing breath—and then looked at the anxious Caleb. He calmly patted the Chapter Master's pauldron.
"Rest assured, Chapter Master. As long as there is a single breath left in him, I can pull him back." Archer spoke with absolute confidence; after all, on the interface in his vision, the countdown for the "Downed State" was still hanging there just fine. "However, the surgical process requires absolute quiet and a sterile environment. You and the other brothers will have to wait outside first."
"Good, good! I'll leave right away. Everything is in your hands!" Caleb didn't hesitate for a second, backing out of the room while glancing back every few steps until the heavy airtight door slowly slid shut.
Once only the two of them remained in the room, Archer let out a long sigh of relief and turned his head to look at Slacker lying on the operating table.
At this moment, Slacker truly looked miserable—his chestplate was caved in, and his face was an ashen gray. However, the green [Rescue] icon flashing above his head was full of temptation.
"This thing... how am I supposed to operate it?"
Archer scratched the mechanical prosthetic on his head. As a Tech-Priest player moonlighting as a quack doctor, it was his first time seeing a situation like this too.
Could it be like certain shooter games, where you just hold down the F key or pull the person up?
"Could it be meant literally?"
He hesitated for a moment, then tentatively reached out, grabbed Slacker's arm, and gave it a sharp tug upward.
The next second, something bizarre happened.
Slacker, who had been in a deep coma on the verge of death, suddenly "sprang" straight up from the operating table as if some kind of spring mechanism had been triggered, his upper body snapping upright in an instant!
Those tightly shut eyes also flew wide open, his gaze filled with confusion and terror.
The two of them were practically face-to-face, staring wide-eyed at each other.
"What the fuck?!" Archer jumped in fright.
"What the fuck?!" Slacker also blurted out subconsciously.
However, as soon as that curse left his mouth, Slacker went limp like a robot that had lost power. His eyes rolled back, and with a loud clang, he slammed heavily back down onto the operating table, once again falling unconscious.
"Oh, holy shit! Is he a walking corpse?!"
Startled by this sudden turn of events, Archer jumped back a step, nearly knocking over the surgical tray beside him. He hurriedly leaned in and activated his Tech-Priest deep scanner.
After all that commotion, his expression turned peculiar as he looked at the scan results.
Following that half-hearted "pull up" just now, the Nurgle viruses that had been ravaging Slacker's body had miraculously vanished—just as if the system had judged it a "Rescue Successful" and automatically cleared them.
However, his physical condition was still in an extremely critical state.
Although the continuous health-draining debuff was gone, all the organs in his body were on the verge of completely losing vitality due to the severe trauma he had suffered earlier. His hydration and biological energy were also severely depleted, making him practically like a drained battery.
"Looks like this is the weakened state after being pulled up from being 'downed'..." Archer wiped away the non-existent cold sweat from his forehead.
Over the next few hours, Archer brought out all his signature skills. High-concentration nutrient solutions, adrenaline shots, cellular repair agents—everything he could use was poured straight into Slacker's body.
After spending a long time and great effort on emergency treatment, Archer finally breathed a complete sigh of relief as he watched the waveforms on the monitor stabilize.
"Alright, now this is what you call miraculous healing."
He straightened his appearance and opened the airtight door.
Outside, Caleb had been standing guard like a statue. Seeing the door open, he immediately rushed forward. "How is it? Tech-Priest, he—"
"It's fine, he's stabilized." Archer waved his hand, his tone as casual as if he had just fixed a toaster. "The toxins in his body have been completely cleared. All that's left is physical damage. As long as he keeps up with his nutrition, he should recover in about ten days or so."
"T-ten days or so?!"
Caleb's eyes widened, utterly shocked.
Severely wounded by Typhus's manreaper, afflicted with deadly toxins, his heart shattered... With injuries like that, even an Astartes would have to spend the rest of his life inside a Dreadnought if he didn't die. Yet this Tech-Priest was telling him he'd be up and kicking in ten days or so?
The way he looked at Archer changed instantly, filling with reverence and awe.
"Tech-Priest Archer... no, how are you still just a Priest? With your medical skills and mastery of the Omnissiah's knowledge, you should have been a Magos long ago!" Caleb exclaimed sincerely.
Archer gave a somewhat awkward smile.
"Then... may I go in and see him?" Caleb asked cautiously.
"No problem, go ahead. Just don't be too loud."
With permission granted, Caleb led Andrew and a group of Astartes players filing into the room.
On the sickbed, though Slacker's face was still pale, he had already regained consciousness. Seeing everyone enter, he struggled to force a smile.
Caleb walked quickly to the bedside, gripped his brother's hand, tears glistening in his fierce eyes. "Brother, you have suffered. Rest well and recover. The Imperium needs you, and the Chapter needs you."
"Cough... Chapter Master, don't worry, I'm hard to kill," Slacker replied weakly, enjoying the care from the NPC Chapter Master.
After exchanging a few pleasantries, everyone told him to get some good rest. Just as the group was preparing to leave, Slacker seemed to suddenly remember something. He abruptly lifted his head and swept his gaze around the crowd.
"By the way, where did my sword go?"
Dead silence instantly fell over the ward.
Everyone looked at each other, nobody saying a word.
Finally, Andrew cleared his throat lightly and said somewhat sheepishly, "Well... the situation was way too urgent back then. We were too busy running for our lives, where would we find the time to grab your sword... I reckon, probably, maybe... it's already fallen into Typhus's hands."
"MOTHERFUCKER!!"
Slacker, who had looked so weak just a moment ago, instantly widened his eyes. Summoning strength from who-knows-where, he nearly jumped out of bed, his voice as shrill as a cat whose tail had been stepped on.
"That was Durandal! A Legendary-grade divine sword! I actually got my gear robbed by a damn NPC?!"
That grief and indignation of losing a top-tier item felt even worse than nearly dying earlier.
Seeing Slacker looking like he had lost all will to live, Andrew hurriedly stepped forward and patted his shoulder to comfort him. "Oh, come on, it's fine, it's just a Legendary sword. Out with the old, in with the new, no?"
"Easy for you to say! That was Legendary-grade!"
"Really, it's fine," Andrew shrugged, speaking as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. "Think about it. Right now, there are so many of us Helldivers, yet so few who can actually advance to Astartes.
You know how slow it is to earn merit in this game—even though it's low, we make up for it with sheer numbers. Right now, those things in the warehouse might not be as common as cabbages, but we definitely aren't short on them."
Andrew pointed outside. "There's plenty of supply, just nobody to use it. You just lie here for ten days or so, and we could bring a different one over every day for you to pick from without any problem. Power swords, power axes, thunder hammers—whatever you want, we've got it."
Slacker froze, blinking twice as he carefully pondered Andrew's logic.
Wait... was that actually true?
It was just like having a guild warehouse stuffed full of level-100 divine relics, while only a handful of people in the entire guild were max level—wouldn't he just get to pick whatever gear he wanted?
"Seems like that's actually true..."
Slacker's mood instantly shifted from grief and indignation to secret delight. He lay back down on the pillow, let out a comfortable sigh, and a serene smile appeared on his face. "The feeling of being spoiled by the chapter... really isn't bad."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the battlefield, atop the devastated ruins.
Typhus stood with a grim expression, directing his Plague Marines and the shambling hordes of Poxwalkers to rebuild the damaged Warp node. The air was thick with a nauseating stench of rot, and buzzing flies hung over the ruins like a dark cloud.
The Nurgle sorcerer originally in charge of maintaining this node was now a headless corpse lying limp in the mud nearby—the result of Typhus casually swinging his scythe to vent his frustration moments ago.
With the specialist gone, the tedious reconstruction work naturally fell onto Typhus, the supreme commander.
"Move that rune-carved stone into place! You idiots, that is an altar to the Grandfather, not a dining table for you maggots!"
Typhus roared, swinging his Manreaper to smash a sluggish mutant into a paste of flesh and blood.
Looking at the chaotic mess before him, his irritation grew deeper. Halfway through barking orders, Typhus's cloudy eyes suddenly flickered, as if he had just remembered something important.
He spun around abruptly and called out to a few Death Guard warriors who had just returned from clearing debris at the center of the battlefield.
"Hold on."
That low, oppressive voice made the Death Guard halt immediately and bow their heads in respect.
"When you were clearing the site, did you see a sword?" Typhus asked.
In his mind, he recalled that longsword ablaze with crimson flames—a blade capable of burning even him. It was definitely no ordinary weapon; it might even be an ancient Imperial relic or an artifact imbued with immense Warp power.
The subordinates exchanged glances, looking bewildered, and then shook their heads in unison.
One of the Plague Marines asked cautiously, "My Lord, what kind of sword? There are many chainswords and power swords left behind on the battlefield..."
"Forget it."
Before the subordinate could finish, Typhus impatiently cut him off.
If they had actually seen that sword, they wouldn't have such clueless expressions right now. The flames on that blade were so dazzling, its aura so unique, that anyone who laid eyes on it once would never forget it.
"If you had seen it, you wouldn't have forgotten. There's no need for me to describe it."
Typhus let out a cold snort. Though he felt a twinge of regret, he quickly let it go.
"A weapon that powerful likely has its own machine spirit, or some kind of psychic link. Since its master was teleported away, it probably left with him, or slipped into the Warp on its own..."
He stopped dwelling on it, waved his hand to dismiss his subordinates, and turned his attention back to rebuilding the node. After all, compared to a single sword, completing the Grandfather's great work was top priority.
However, what Typhus didn't know was that the sword had neither followed its master nor slipped into the Warp.
A few kilometers away from the battlefield, in the shadows of a hidden valley, an eerie green light flashed silently.
There was no stench of rot here, nor the smell of gunpowder—only a deathly coldness and precision.
A slender, ice-cold finger made of living metal gently traced the blade of the longsword named Durandal.
The owner of this hand did not treat the trophy roughly, instead handling it as carefully as if it were a peerless beauty.
With a faint humming sound, a transparent anti-gravity stasis field was activated.
The longsword was slowly placed inside.
The exact moment the field closed, time came to a complete standstill within that small pocket of space.
The golden flames that had been roaring and dancing ceaselessly along the blade were instantly frozen in place. The flying sparks, the distorted waves of heat in the air, and the motion of the fire licking the sword's edge were all perfectly preserved in that single instant.
It looked like a three-dimensional painting crafted from the most vivid flames, sealed forever inside eternal crystal.
The tall Necron Overlord leaned in slightly, his ocular sensors burning with eerie green fire as he scrutinized the stasis-locked weapon, seemingly analyzing its material, structure, and the peculiar energy contained within.
After a long pause, a slightly metallic voice—devoid of emotional fluctuation, yet carrying a hint of a connoisseur's satisfaction—echoed through the empty valley: "Truly, a fine sword."
On the other end of the battlefield, at the artillery-drenched front lines.
This was Ork territory. The air was thick with the smell of gunpowder, machine oil, and the distinct, pungent sweat of Orks. Explosions rang out one after another, which to the Greenskins was nothing short of the finest symphony.
On a high mound cobbled together from scrap metal and concrete blocks, the Ork Warboss Gurg stood in an extremely bizarre posture.
This massive Ork boss wore an iron helmet on his head that he had scavenged from somewhere—clearly one size too small—and a pair of filthy windproof goggles perched on his face. Most absurdly of all, he was holding a monocular telescope, striking a pose as he conducted "tactical observation" of the distant battlefield.
He had learned this from those black humies known as the Helldivers. Gurg had noticed that some of those black humies loved doing this: standing on high ground and looking around through a tube.
And to Gurg's amazement, he discovered that as long as he struck this pose, his noggin seemed to spin much faster, helping him with some deep, profound "I fink."
Just then, an excited Ork Boy scrambled up from the trenches, waving his massive choppa and shouting gleefully, "Boss! Boss! When are we chargin' next? Dem stinky tin-can humies over dere haven't stopped shootin' yet! Let's rush up and crack dere skulls open! Waaagh!!!"
However, the expected roar did not come.
Gurg slowly lowered the telescope in his hand and adjusted the goggles on the bridge of his nose, the movement carrying an uncanny air of composure. He shook his head and said in a deep voice, "Nah, we ain't chargin'. It's about time we legged it."
"Legged it?"
The Ork Boy froze instantly, the excitement on his face stiffening as if he had just heard something completely unbelievable. He scratched his bald head and protested loudly, "Boss, we's Orks! We ain't scared o' dyin'! Only Grots run away!"
Gurg turned around, looking down at the dense Boy, and asked in a philosophical tone, "Do ya wanna charge up dere and die once right now, or stay alive and have a scrap every single day?"
The Boy paused.
His walnut-sized brain began spinning rapidly. If you die once, it's over. But if you stay alive, you can keep fighting forever, having a blast forever...
"Well... I s'pose stayin' alive to keep fightin' is better," the Boy thought about it, nodding earnestly, before immediately asking, "Den Boss, where are we runnin' to? It's all humies around 'ere."
Gurg didn't answer the question directly. Instead, he raised his telescope again and pointed it toward the chaotic front lines in the distance.
"Keep fightin' like dis, and we can't win."
Gurg's voice carried a trace of depth that only a Boss could possess. "Whether it's dem black humies, or dem stinky green humies oozin' green gas, dey're all gettin' stronger and bigger... I can feel it. Sure, da scrap 'ere is fun, but once dose two sides decide a winner, we's gonna get kicked around like a squig-ball by whoever's left."
He paused, as if organizing his thoughts to impart his wisdom of war to his foolish underlings. "After all dese days o' watchin' through dis tube, I've discovered a massive, earth-shatterin' secret."
"What secret, Boss?" Several nearby Ork Boys were drawn over too, leaning in curiously.
"I noticed dat whether it's dem stinkin' green humies, or dese red humies who came to help da black humies—" Gurg extended a thick finger and slowly pointed toward the smoke-filled sky, "—dey all came from up dere."
"Up dere?"
The Boys followed their Boss's finger, seeing nothing but grey, gloomy clouds. One by one, they scratched their heads in total confusion.
"Right, up dere!" Gurg said firmly, a gleam of wisdom flashing in his eyes. "Since da toughest humies all drop down from da sky, dat means dere's gotta be way more, way stronger, and way bigger scraps to be had up dere!"
He swung his massive hand down fiercely and roared with boundless ambition, "We's gonna find a way to get out there! Up into da sky! Only by goin' dere can we get as strong as dese black humies, green humies, red humies, and blue humies! When dat happens, we's gonna kick off a bigger, meaner, and longer-lastin' Waaagh!!!"
On the surface of Perditia, the tide of rot was spreading unstoppably.
Typhus stood atop the wreckage of a thoroughly corroded Leman Russ tank, using it as his makeshift command platform.
Beneath his feet, the earth was no longer the color of soil, but was covered in dark green pus and grayish-brown fungal mats.
He narrowed his single, cloudy eye, watching the horde of corpses surging forward like a tidal wave before him. There were millions of Poxwalkers, crowding together and letting out hair-raising hisses and roars, resembling a massive, writhing carpet about to swallow the entire world.
Amidst this sea of corpses, massive Beasts of Nurgle rose like mountains of flesh. These bloated, grotesque daemons rolled gleefully through the piles of bodies, crushing countless Poxwalkers with every turn and spraying toxic bile. Above in the sky, swarms of plague flies blotted out the heavens like dark storm clouds, the buzzing of their wings converging into a low-frequency drone strong enough to rupture a normal human's eardrums and shatter their sanity.
Typhus slowly raised his head, his gaze sweeping past this nauseating green ocean toward the distance.
There, the gray clouds were pierced by a colossal structure. The grand, sharp spire of Perditia's Primary Hive City loomed faintly through the spore-filled mist. That giant mountain of metal looked utterly isolated right now, like the last lonely island in a raging sea.
The distance was already so close that he could even make out the tip of the Primary Hive.
"It seems this is the end for the Helldivers," Typhus murmured to himself, staring at the crumbling city.
He raised his Manreaper high, deadly sorcerous flames wreathing its blade.
"For the Grandfather! Let rot bless this city! Advance! Devour them!"
At his command, the entire Nurgle army seemed to boil over. The speed of the corpse tide suddenly accelerated, surging toward the Primary Hive's final defense line like a flood bursting through a dam, carrying an aura of total annihilation.
However, the very next second, blinding lights flared up from the other end of the horizon.
It was the response of the "Helldivers."
"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"
The earth began to tremble violently, as if ten thousand giants were beating war drums simultaneously. Countless heavy artillery shells tore across the sky with piercing whistles, pouring down into the charging corpse tide like a torrential rainstorm.
The fireballs from the explosions merged into a sea of fire. Every second, hundreds upon thousands of Poxwalkers were blown into flying shreds of flesh. Dirt was churned up, mixing with rotting limbs and pus, and blasted high into the air.
But this was only the beginning.
Immediately following came dense walls of las-beams.
Tens of thousands of players lay prone in trenches, crouched behind ruins, or even clung to the armor plates of tanks, firing their lasguns frantically as if ammo were free. Countless red beams converged, forming a spectacular "curtain of light" that mowed down the Nurgle daemons charging at the very front like wheat.
"For the Emperor!"
"For Perditia!"
"For the white-haired mommy!"
Accompanied by all sorts of bizarre battle cries, the roar of armored vehicle engines drowned out the buzzing of the plague flies.
It was an endless torrent of steel.
Leman Russ battle tanks, Chimera transports, Sentinel walkers—some weren't even fully painted yet, and some looked like they had just been cobbled together out of a repair bay, yet their sheer numbers were enough to induce despair.
They pushed forward side by side, their treads grinding over the burning earth as their cannons spat flames of death. Facing those terrifying Beasts of Nurgle and the corpse tide, these "Helldivers" showed not a shred of fear; instead, they charged back wildly in their steel behemoths like a pack of starving wolves that had just spotted an all-you-can-eat buffet.
"This is nothing more than a dying flash, like the final spasms of a man on his deathbed."
Facing the overwhelming counter-fire, Typhus let out a disdainful sneer. He firmly believed that these "Helldivers" had exhausted all their reserves, and this current frenzy was merely their final struggle before extinction.
"Order all units: an all-out assault at any cost! Give them no room to breathe! Fill their trenches with corpses, and drown their will in plague!"
At the Traveler's command, the Nurgle army launched an even more terrifying offensive. The narrow gateway area of Perditia's Primary Hive instantly turned into a massive meat grinder.
Both sides engaged in extremely bloody hand-to-hand combat across a position spanning less than a few square kilometers. The space here was far too cramped, rendering tactics and formations completely meaningless; all that remained was the most primal, brutal attrition.
The corpses piled up faster than they could be cleared. Soon, soldiers on both sides were no longer fighting on solid ground, but shooting and hacking at each other atop layered, mangled mountains of flesh. The blasted chunks of Poxwalkers mixed with the shattered armor fragments of the players, crushed by advancing tank treads into a nauseating, dark-red slurry.
Casualty numbers? Nobody was keeping count anymore. Under the saturation fire that poured tens of thousands of tons of ammunition every second, life had become cheaper than dust.
However, as time passed, the collapse Typhus had anticipated never came.
Those Helldivers were like endless cockroaches; no matter how many were killed or blown up, new silhouettes always appeared to fill the gaps in the front line.
"A bunch of stubborn maggots..."
Typhus finally lost his patience. He stepped down from the wrecked tank, tightly gripping his death-aura-radiating Manreaper, followed closely by his elite Death Guard Terminator retinue.
"Since you are so eager to die, I will personally send you on your way!"
His massive frame, wrapped in a devastating psychic storm, crashed directly into the fiercest part of the battlefield. In that moment, it was as if the Grim Reaper himself had descended upon the mortal realm.
Every swing of the "Reaper" brought a piercing shriek as it tore through the air. Whether it was sturdy Leman Russ tanks or soldiers clad in carapace armor, all were as fragile as paper before him. Green sorcerous fire raged around his body; any living thing that came within ten meters of him rotted into a puddle of pus in an instant.
Yet this did not scare off the Helldivers.
On the contrary, when they saw this massive Boss appear, the eyes of the surrounding players all turned bloodshot.
"Typhus! You son of a bitch!"
"Drop the loot, boys!"
"For the Emperor! Waaaaagh!!!"
They let out all kinds of strange, fanatical howls. Not only did they not flee, they swarmed toward Typhus from all directions like a pack of rabid dogs that had caught the scent of blood.
Some hugged bundles of melta bombs and threw themselves straight at his leg armor; some piloted Sentinel walkers, trying to saw off his arms with chainsaws; some even dared to charge up with entrenching tools to bash against his Terminator armor.
Typhus swung his scythe in a wide arc, instantly bisecting over a dozen people at the waist.
But the very next second, dozens more stepped over the halved corpses of their comrades and rushed up, pressing their weapons right against him and firing furiously.
"Die! Die! Die!"
Typhus roared. This was no longer a battle; it was a pure quagmire, a living hell.
He killed a thousand, ten thousand, and even more. His vision was already plastered over with thick gore and fragments of internal organs, his ears filled with explosions and battle cries.
Gradually, even Typhus—who possessed superhuman intellect and an unshakeable will—began to feel his thoughts grow sluggish in this seemingly endless hell on earth.
All those precise calculations about tactical flanking and psychic nodes were completely thrown to the back of his mind at this moment.
In this space filled with the stench of blood, gunpowder, and rot, his mind slowly lost every thought other than slaughter.
Swing the scythe.
Take a step forward.
Swing the scythe.
Take another step forward.
Just one more step forward, and he could seize that final victory already within his grasp.
Bzzzt—ksssh—"L-Lord! Lord Typhus!"
Just as Typhus was about to cleave the two-thousandth reckless Helldiver in half—carapace armor and all—a panicked, urgent call suddenly came through his vox-channel. The voice, heavy with severe electromagnetic interference, even drowned out the deafening explosions on the battlefield.
Interrupted in the middle of his slaughter rhythm, Typhus's movements abruptly halted. His Manreaper froze in mid-air, hot blood and machine oil still dripping from its blade. He let out a low, deeply displeased growl, feeling like a beast forcibly dragged away from its prey mid-meal, the surging desire for destruction in his chest stuck violently in his throat.
"Speak!"
"A colossal, high-energy radiation sandstorm has been detected approaching at extreme speed! Its scale—its scale is too massive! It's more than enough to cover the entire front-line battlefield! My Lord, we must temporarily retreat!"
Typhus peered toward the horizon through his blood-stained faceplate.
At the edge of the world, the originally gray sky had taken on a sickly hue of scorched yellow intertwined with bruised purple-black. A towering wall of murky yellow connecting heaven and earth was rolling forward with an apocalyptic momentum, accompanied by countless bolts of purplish-red lightning dancing wildly within the dust—the lethal light generated by excessive radiation and static friction.
That was no ordinary wind and sand. It was the malice accumulated over ten thousand years in the wastelands outside Perditia's Primary Hive. Long before the Helldivers were even born, this wasteland was infamous for its harshness.
And in recent and past wars, due to both sides (primarily the Helldivers) unrestrainedly detonating thousands of tactical nuclear warheads, the heat, shockwaves, and kicked-up radioactive dust had completely catalyzed the already violent climate into a world-ending natural disaster.
The gale carried lethal fallout and countless razor-sharp metal shards. Its wind force was so immense it could toss a Leman Russ battle tank weighing dozens of tons high into the air like a toy, only to slam it back down and smash it to pieces. The air was thick with the pungent stench of ionized ozone and acid-corroded metal; even the auspex in his Terminator armor was blaring shrill radiation alarms.
"Can it not be destroyed?"
At this moment, Typhus's mind had room for almost nothing besides slaughter. His tone was brutal and brimming with murderous intent, as if he would crawl straight through the vox-signal and chop his subordinate down if the man dared say "no." To him, anything that stood in the way of his soul-reaping deserved to be annihilated—even nature itself.
"This..." The Death Guard commander on the other end clearly choked, sounding immensely troubled. "My Lord, it's a super-cyclone formed by nature. To destroy it, we'd likely need to mobilize the fleet for a massive orbital bombardment—but that takes time..."
Sensing Typhus's rage spiking, the subordinate quickly added, "But please rest assured, My Lord! According to our calculations, those 'Helldiver' forces, composed mostly of mortals, will be hit far harder by the storm than we will! Their vehicles and flesh can't withstand a radiation storm of this magnitude. This works in our favor!"
Typhus stared dead-eyed at the rapidly approaching wall of the storm, watching boulders and wreckage hurled by the gale fly like artillery shells. Finally, he squeezed a sentence out from between his clenched teeth with extreme reluctance: "Fine. Temporary retreat."
The Nurgle army began to pull back rapidly like a receding tide, seeking sturdy ruins for cover. The clumsy Beasts of Nurgle roared unwillingly, dragging their bloated bodies underground or behind thick concrete wreckage.
Immediately after, the terrifying sandstorm swallowed everything.
If someone were looking down from low orbit at that moment, they would see the once-clear battle lines on one side of Perditia completely erased by a massive, murky vortex. That yellowish-brown storm was like a giant, filthy millstone slowly grinding across the planet's surface, sucking in everything on the battlefield—corpses, wreckage, ruins, fire—and mercilessly pulverizing and churning them, as if trying to strip the very skin off the planet.
Roughly half a Terran hour later, the storm finally passed.
The battlefield fell into a brief, eerie dead silence. The air crackled with static electricity and reeked of a nauseating burnt smell. But immediately after, it began to "rain" from the sky.
It wasn't water. It was the tens of thousands of corpses and pieces of wreckage that had just been swept high into the sky by the storm.
Splat... splat... splat-splat-splat...
At first, it was a sparse pattering, like mud slapping against a wall, before quickly turning into a dense torrential downpour.
A paste of flesh and blood, shredded by the gale and scorched by radiation, mixed with severed arms, legs, shattered skulls, and twisted gun parts, poured down from the heavens like a heavy rainstorm, indiscriminately splattering every corner of the battlefield. This horrific rain carried the searing heat of radiation, sizzling as it hit the ground and sending up plumes of foul, bloody steam.
Typhus stood at the very front of the position without seeking any shelter.
Viscous droplets of flesh and blood pattered noisily against his heavy Terminator armor. Fragments of viscera hung from his Manreaper, and blood trickled down his breathing grille, staining his originally pale-green armor a sickening dark red. Within just a few minutes, this Lord of Death was completely drenched, covered head to toe in a thick layer of radioactive, foul-smelling minced meat, looking like a demon that had just crawled out of a hellish pool of blood.
Yet he showed no reaction to it, not even bothering to wipe his faceplate. To a follower of Nurgle, this could even be considered a unique kind of "blessing."
He simply stood there quietly, letting a length of someone's intestines slide down his pauldron. Once the wind died down a bit, he abruptly raised his meat-draped scythe and issued his command: "Resume the attack."
Meanwhile, on the other side of the battle line.
Almost the very second the sandstorm began to weaken, the "Helldivers" hiding in deep craters and bunkers scrambled out, rushing forward like students bolting from the classroom building to the cafeteria after the final morning bell.
They, too, were completely drenched and battered by this horrific rain of flesh and blood; some were even flattened by a falling section of tank tread the moment they poked their heads out. Yet the rest didn't care in the slightest—some even shouted in excitement.
"Holy shit! Gear is literally falling from the sky!"
"Ow, I got hit! My ass! My ass hurts!"
"Whoa, the environmental effects here are ten out of ten! Just a little gross, blegh—"
Amidst the severed limbs and bloody mist blanketing the sky, before the terrifying rain of meaty pulp had even stopped falling, the battle lines of both sides clashed together once more.
The Warp—that immaterial realm brimming with madness and chaos—was churning like boiling oil.
The strike cruiser of the Space Wolves' "Dragonslayers" Great Company plowed laboriously through the kaleidoscopic tides. Along the ship's exterior, the Gellar field flared with blinding sparks as countless Warp predators clawed at the barrier.
Deep within the vessel, inside the Wolf Lord's private quarters, the air was thick with an alcoholic stench potent enough to knock out a mammoth.
Wolf Lord Krom Dragongaze lay sprawled flat on his massive, fur-covered bed, snoring like thunder. Not long ago, to find some amusement during the long, tedious Warp transit, he had thrown a traditional Fenrisian drinking bout with several of his Pack Leaders and Wolf Guard.
The potent Fenrisian mjod—a fierce brew laced with lethal toxins just to overcome the superhuman metabolism of the Astartes—had been downed like water. Even a Wolf Lord had trouble handling that much of it. Right now, the alcohol was burning through his veins, plunging the notoriously fierce "Dragonslayer" into a rare, deep slumber.
BOOM!!!
Suddenly, the entire strike cruiser shuddered violently, as if slapped hard by an invisible giant hand.
The tremor wasn't just physical; it carried a soul-deep wave of nausea. Immediately after, the previously stable artificial gravity field went haywire. The ship began to list noticeably, and leftover goblets on the table and bolters on the weapon racks clattered noisily to one side.
Krom's single eye snapped open. The drunkenness in his gaze vanished in an instant, replaced by the sharp alertness of a beast. He sprang up from the bed in a kip-up, snatching his power axe from the bedside as he rose.
Almost simultaneously, the heavy bulkhead door was slammed open. Two Wolf Guard clad in Terminator armor stumbled inside, clearly struggling to keep their footing from the sudden tilt.
"Chief!"
"What's the situation?" Krom wiped his face roughly and strode out, the Wolf Guard following close behind. "Enemy attack?"
"We're checking now!" the leading Wolf Guard roared. Just then, the hull let out another teeth-grinding shriek of twisting metal, and the entire corridor lurched thirty degrees to the left. Relying on their superhuman reflexes, they barely managed to steady themselves, the magnetic locks in their war-boots clamping tightly onto the deck plating.
Fighting off the nauseating vertigo, they sprinted toward the bridge.
"What does the Rune Priest brother say?!" Krom bellowed.
"The vox is full of static, but it's most likely a Warp storm!" the Wolf Guard replied.
"A Warp storm?" Krom bared his teeth, flashing gleaming white fangs. "Looks like our luck is rotten. Just finished drinking and already have to sober up."
When Krom kicked open the bridge doors, the scene inside was just as chaotic as he had expected. Servo-skulls were zipping around and crashing into things, while mortal crew members were strapped tightly into their seats, pale-faced as they frantically operated the overloaded cogitator arrays. Ear-piercing alarms blared one after another.
The Battle Leader, who had been waiting on the bridge, immediately stepped forward upon seeing the Wolf Lord arrive, slamming a fist against his chestplate. "Wolf Lord!"
Krom returned the salute and strode over to the hololithic tactical table, staring at the tangled mess of data streams. "You pups holding up alright?"
"It's bad. The Rune Priest has confirmed it—we've been caught in a sudden Warp storm and knocked completely off our plotted course," the Battle Leader said grimly, gesturing toward the shifting, violet void outside the viewports. "The engines are at full burn trying to break free, but our odds of success are... basically zero. The currents are too strong. We're like a dugout canoe caught in a whirlpool."
"Great. Forget reinforcing Perditia, we can barely save our own hides right now," Krom snorted, a dangerous glint flashing in his lone eye. "Can we figure out where this damned storm is dragging us?"
The Battle Leader shook his head helplessly. "Impossible to calculate. All the Navigator's third eye can see right now is blinding, chaotic madness. We're flying completely blind."
"Can we send an astropathic message?"
"No. This Warp storm is abnormally violent—its intensity is unheard of. If we try to force a message through, having it torn apart by the storm would be the best-case scenario. Worse, the Astropath's brain could fry, driving them mad, or even draw the gaze of Warp daemons."
"Tch." Krom frowned in irritation, his fingers subconsciously tapping the grip of his bolt pistol.
By all logic, before a Warp storm of this magnitude hit, any psyker should have sensed it coming, just like wild beasts sensing an earthquake. Yet across the entire Great Company, including the veteran Rune Priests, no one seemed to have foreseen its arrival.
"This stretch of the Sea of Souls was dead calm just a moment ago..." Krom muttered under his breath. This feeling of losing control rubbed him entirely the wrong way. "How's the ship holding up?"
"Holding together. The Gellar field is screaming, but it's holding. The storm hasn't caused any structural damage to the hull—a small mercy in this mess."
"So you're telling me we can't do anything except drift like a rotting log and wait?" Krom spat in disgust. "I'd rather duel a Greater Daemon one-on-one than rattle around in this damned tin can."
Time lost all meaning in the Warp.
Perhaps hours passed, perhaps days. The suffocating turbulence and oppressive pressure dragged on endlessly. Krom stayed on the bridge the entire time, refusing all suggestions to rest, his single eye locked onto the void as if trying to burn a hole through the Warp with his glare.
Just when everyone's nerves were stretched to the absolute limit, the Rune Priest—who had been meditating with his eyes closed—suddenly jolted. His eyes snapped open, flickering with ghostly blue psychic sparks.
"Wolf Lord! The storm's current has shifted!" the Rune Priest's voice was hoarse and urgent. "It's accelerating! It's going to 'spit' us out!"
Krom got the news immediately, but instead of looking relieved, his brow furrowed even deeper.
He instantly grasped the gravity of the situation.
Being forcibly ejected by a Warp storm without precise calculations or navigation didn't just mean being lost—it meant extreme danger.
If they were lucky, they'd emerge in empty deep space. If they were unlucky, the ship could materialize directly inside the bedrock of a planet, or straight into the core of a star, turning to ash in a split second.
But at this point, there was nothing left to do except trust in the Allfather's protection and their own damned luck.
"All hands, brace! Prepare for impact!"
Krom gripped the railing of the command dais, roaring into the ship-wide vox so loudly that his voice drowned out the blaring alarms.
"Prepare for battle! No matter what hellhole is waiting outside, as long as we're still breathing, get ready to let the pack tear everything to shreds!"
The next second, the barrier between reality and the immaterial was violently torn apart. Massive inertia slammed everyone onto the deck as the Dragonslayers' strike cruiser burst out of the Warp like a shell fired from a cannon.
On the outskirts of Perditia's primary hive, atop a wasteland repeatedly ravaged by radiation storms.
Two figures clad in full-body black carapace armor and wearing gas masks were squatting idly in the shade of a reverse slope. This was an outpost observation point for the Helldiver legion, though aside from radioactive dust and the occasional passing mutant beast, there wasn't a single soul in sight.
Freeman leaned on his lasgun like a walking stick, glancing around worriedly before breaking the silence. "Say, RNGesus, is it really okay for us to just squat here doing nothing? This spot is pretty remote, sure, but there's no telling if a bunch of Nurgle's rotting meatbags might sneak over. Shouldn't we set up some booby traps or mines just in case?"
RNGesus was using a random stone he'd picked up to draw circles in the dirt. Hearing this, he didn't even look up, his tone dripping with inexplicable confidence. "Relax, relax, you can rest completely easy."
He stopped what he was doing and pointed mysteriously toward the sky. "I specifically rolled that 'God's Dice' before logging in today. Guess what? I rolled a thirty!"
"Thirty?" Freeman blinked. "That high?"
"Obviously! Would I be this chill if it wasn't? Normally, I'm cursed with single-digit rolls. Although a thirty isn't quite at the level of 'getting whatever you wish for' or 'tripping over a mythic artifact the moment you step outside,' it definitely falls into the 'safe and sound, great fortune' category. Nothing bad is going to happen to us here today. In fact, we might even get a small surprise," RNGesus promised, patting his chest.
"Seriously...?" Freeman looked at him skeptically. "Why do I feel like you just raised a massive red flag..."
Before his words had even faded, a sudden anomaly occurred.
Above the wasteland, where only a faint breeze had been blowing, space abruptly twisted without warning. It was as if a flat sheet of drawing paper had been violently crumpled into a ball. Violet arcs of electricity crackled out of thin air, followed immediately by a terrifying gale that nearly blew the two players away as they scrambled to their feet.
"Holy crap! What's going on?!" Freeman grabbed tightly onto a nearby rock, shouting in terror.
Before RNGesus could answer, the sky seemed to tear open into a massive wound. Accompanied by an ear-shattering metallic roar and the shriek of Warp energy, a suffocatingly massive, dark-gray warship—wreathed in billowing black smoke and lightning—forcibly "squeezed" its way out of the void!
It was a strike cruiser!
It appeared far too suddenly and far too close to the ground, practically bursting out right above the dirt. The colossal hull slammed into the wasteland like a moving mountain, skidding forward under its own inertia and plowing a bottomless trench into the earth, kicking up a wave of soil hundreds of meters high that blotted out the sky.
BOOM-RUMBLE-RUMBLE!!!
The earth shook violently, as if struck by a magnitude-ten earthquake. The giant vessel finally ground to a halt amidst a screech of agonizing metal, stopping only a few hundred meters away from the reverse slope where the two were hiding—practically right in their faces.
A shower of dust and gravel rained down, burying the two dumbfounded players halfway in dirt.
After a long moment, when the tremors finally ceased, Freeman shakily poked his head out of the dirt pile. Spitting out a mouthful of sand, he turned to look at the equally dust-covered RNGesus and couldn't help but unleash a torrent of complaints. "Cough, cough... This is what you meant by 'nothing bad happening'?! This is freaking orbital justice! If it had been off by just a tiny bit, the two of us would've been turned into meat patties!"
RNGesus didn't answer; he had completely frozen. He mechanically adjusted his crooked gas mask, then picked up his lasgun with trembling hands and cautiously peeked out from behind the reverse slope.
Seeing this, Freeman swallowed hard and leaned out to look as well.
The smoke and dust gradually cleared, revealing the grim, majestic silhouette of the massive warship. A giant wolf-head emblem was emblazoned prominently on the prow, and its armor plating was adorned with all manner of beast skulls and totems, exuding a raw, untamed ferocity.
At that moment, the heavy boarding ramp hissed open with the whine of hydraulics. Several towering warriors clad in slate-gray power armor, built like miniature giants, strode out. None of them wore helmets, revealing wild beards and sharp fangs, while the bolters and power axes in their hands gleamed coldly in the dim light.
Both players' eyes went wide, their jaws nearly hitting the ground as they gasped in unison: "Holy crap?! Space Wolves?!"
Meanwhile, Krom Dragongaze, having just endured a heart-stopping crash landing, stalked down the ramp with a dark expression.
"Check for damage immediately! Engine banks, void shield generators, and weapon arrays—verify everything!" Krom barked orders as he led several fully armed Wolf Guard onto the unfamiliar terrain, scanning the surroundings vigilantly. "Also, figure out where the hell we are!"
The moment he stepped outside the ship's atmospheric field, the auspex in Krom's helm began beeping frantically.
Warning: High-concentration radioactive dust detected. Warning: Extreme atmospheric toxicity.
This string of data triggered an intense sense of déjà vu in Krom's mind. This nauseating stench of radiation, this utterly desolate landscape, and this air quality that felt like it could make you cough up a lung...
"No way..."
An absurd—utterly ridiculous—guess surfaced in his mind. Yet for a moment, he didn't dare believe it. After all, just a second ago they had been flailing around in the Warp like headless flies; how could they possibly crash-land directly at their exact destination the very next second?
He narrowed his single eye, his sharp gaze sweeping across the undulating sand dunes ahead.
Suddenly, his eyes locked onto a reverse slope a few hundred meters away. There, two sneaky little heads were peeking out, staring right at them.
Those classic, skull-like gas masks, that pitch-black carapace armor, and the lasguns in their hands.
Those were the Helldivers.
They were the allies for this campaign—the very people they had come to reinforce.
At that moment, even the battle-hardened Wolf Lord of the Space Wolves felt a jolt of awe that made his scalp tingle.
"The Helldivers!" Krom couldn't help but blurt out. He then snapped his head up, staring at the still-chaotic sky, his eyes filled with reverence.
"Allfather above... Was that storm truly Your doing?!"
This was nothing short of a miracle! That seemingly catastrophic Warp storm had actually been an invisible giant hand, plucking them straight from the far side of the galaxy and tossing them accurately onto the battlefield of Perditia!
"Chief! Those are friendlies!" the Wolf Guard behind him shouted excitedly, recognizing the two players' gear. "We made it! We actually made it!"
Krom took a deep breath of the radioactive, dust-laden air; right now, even that stench smelled somehow sweet to him. He grinned, flashing a fierce, ecstatic smile, and raised his power axe high. "Pack! Hear my command! We have no time for repairs! Since the Allfather has delivered us here, we will not squander His favor!"
"Prepare for battle! Let those Nurgle bastards know that the winter of Fenris has arrived!"
The final outer defense line of Perditia's primary hive had now become a literal "hell on earth."
Typhus swung his notched, gore-slicked manreaper, each sweeping strike sending showers of severed limbs flying. In his murky, rotting vision, this defense line forged from the flesh and blood of the Helldivers was already on the verge of collapse.
Even though these mortal lunatics were still screaming as they charged, and their suicide trucks were still detonating in brilliant blooms of fire amidst the Plague Legions, Typhus could feel that their resistance was fracturing.
"Just one more push... just another kilometer forward..." Typhus murmured, thick clouds of lethal spores venting from his breather grille. He firmly believed that once he crushed this final obstacle, Grandfather Nurgle's blessings would completely drown the tottering primary hive. The stench of victory was already lingering at the tip of his nose.
However, at that exact moment, fate played an utterly absurd joke on the Chaos Lord.
"AWOOOOO!!!"
A desolate, wild, and bloodthirsty wolf howl suddenly drowned out the din of the battlefield—even overpowering the sound of ammo-racking armored vehicles.
On the flank of the battlefield, hundreds of slate-gray figures poured down like a raging torrent, carrying the freezing chill of Fenris's ice plains as they launched a reckless, headlong charge!
It was the Astartes! The sharpest fangs of the Imperium!
These suddenly arrived Space Wolves needed no tactical staging whatsoever; they hit the ground fighting. Hundreds of Space Marines formed a spearhead, slicing through the bloated flank of the Plague Legions like a red-hot blade through butter. The roar of chainswords and the crackling lightning of power axes erupted amidst rotting flesh, mowing down the Nurgle warriors—who had thought victory was already in the bag—in droves.
"Reinforcements! It's the Wolves! Brothers, it's time to counterattack!"
The Helldivers players holding the line were stunned for a split second before erupting into roars even more frenzied than the Wolves'. Without a shred of hesitation, they abandoned all semblance of formation, vaulting straight out of their trenches with bayonets fixed, howling as they launched a counter-charge—some of them even outrunning the Space Wolves.
And just like that, catching both sides completely off guard, the counterattack abruptly began.
Informed that his flank had been ambushed by Space Wolves, Typhus snapped out of his killing frenzy.
As a seasoned commander, an unsettling tactical map instantly formed in his mind:
Originally, the Helldivers and the Plague Legions had been locked together on the front lines like two slices of toast, forming a tight, deadlocked sandwich. Then, at the worst possible moment, the Space Wolves had jammed themselves in from the side like a hotdog with utterly unreasonable force.
The situation was spiraling out of control. The Wolves' momentum was tearing his formation apart, and the Helldivers—who had been on the brink of burning out—were suddenly bursting with a dying-breath surge of combat power under the Wolves' lead.
"Damn it... Where did these wild dogs crawl out from?!" Typhus roared in fury, attempting to wheel around and personally contain the collapsing sector.
"Typhus!"
A crisp, commanding shout halted him in his tracks. Typhus turned his head to see Ultramarines Second Captain Cato Sicarius standing atop a nearby pile of rubble, leaning on his power sword and glaring at him with utter contempt and provocation.
Sicarius wasted no words, simply curling a finger slowly toward Typhus.
Meanwhile, on the other side, Krom Dragongaze was personally leading the Wolves on a rampage through the enemy ranks.
Every swing of his power axe claimed the heads of several plague zombies, yet in the brief lulls between strikes, even the Wolf Lord couldn't help but let out a genuine exclamation.
"Allfather above... Just how many people died in this place?"
Krom looked down. Even for someone accustomed to mountains of corpses and seas of blood, the sight before him was staggering. Every inch of the ground here was carpeted in thick layers of mangled limbs—flesh blown apart, hacked to pieces, and damaged beyond the point where Nurgle's warp-taint could reanimate it into walking dead.
The remains were piled layer upon layer, reaching at least dozens of meters high. The battle was now being fought entirely atop small hills made of corpses.
"Boss! This ground's too soft, I can't get a footing!" a Wolf Guard shouted in complaint as his power-armored boot sank into a half-rotted torso, thick gore splashing past his ankle.
Krom felt it too; fighting in this environment was bizarrely treacherous. Beneath their feet wasn't solid earth, but a springy, greasy, constantly shifting slurry of flesh. Even with Astartes balance, sprinting at full speed across a "corpse carpet" made it way too easy to slip.
"Quit whining! Step on their bones!" Krom bellowed, cleaving a Plague Marine's chest open with one axe blow. "If the Helldivers can die enough here to build a dozen-meter foundation, then we'll use that foundation to send these rotting meatbags straight back to the Warp!"
The pack howled, gore flying everywhere. Across this wasteland of corpses, the fires of the counterattack burned hotter and brighter, while Typhus grew increasingly anxious.
Inside Typhus's helm lenses, countless glaring red alerts flashed wildly. Reports from every sector flooded his consciousness like snowflakes: "My Lord! The western line has collapsed! That Living Saint... he charged straight into our core positions, and the Helldivers are blowing themselves up alongside him like lunatics!"
"My Lord! The eastern flank is under attack by the Flesh Tearers! Those red beasts are even crazier than we are—they're tearing apart the plague zombies' remains, and the Helldivers's counterattack has already pushed three kilometers forward!"
"My Lord! The Space Wolves are about to cut off our retreat..."
Typhus's grip on his manreaper trembled slightly. Just minutes ago, he had been planning how to accept the surrender of this primary hive. Now, the Helldivers—whom he had regarded as "lambs to the slaughter"—had erupted with a fury capable of flipping the entire battlefield upside down, led by three Astartes commanders and a Living Saint.
The situation had collapsed—and it was a catastrophic, total collapse.
"Damn it... Impossible! Grandfather would never allow this!" Typhus roared. Desperate to break free from his current duel and rally his routing legion, he launched a reckless, all-out assault, his manreaper whipping up vast clouds of corrosive psychic mist to force back the blue-armored figure before him.
However, in the eyes of a supreme swordsman, such impatience was no different from suicide.
Cato Sicarius keenly caught the slightest hitch in Typhus's movement—a loss of balance born from overeager haste.
CLANG! The power sword carved a flawless arc, cleanly slicing through the thick, pustule-covered ceramite armor across Typhus's abdomen. Foul green ichor sprayed out, and Typhus let out a muffled grunt, staggering half a step back.
"Where are you looking, traitor?" Sicarius twirled his blade gracefully, angling the tip toward the ground, his voice cold as ice. "If you do not give me your undivided attention—if you cannot remain calm, shrewd, and cunning—then defeat will be your only outcome. Leaving an opening before me usually means death."
Sicarius's mockery landed like a resounding slap across the Death Lord's face.
As the abdominal wound slowly knitted itself back together under the writhing maggots and Nurgle's warp energy, the sharp pain and Sicarius's disdainful gaze acted like a bucket of ice water, dousing the frantic impatience in Typhus's heart.
He stopped moving, letting the surrounding artillery roar and the war cries of the Helldivers shake the heavens. His murky compound eyes locked onto Sicarius, and from his breather grille came not an angry roar, but a chilling, muffled chuckle.
"You're right, you arrogant whelp of Guilliman." Typhus slowly straightened his posture. The Destroyer Hive swarming wildly around him seemed to sense its master's will, instantly quieting down and hovering above his head like a pitch-black storm cloud.
"I did let those mortals' struggles distract me. To think I was actually considering how to 'salvage' a local war that's already doomed to fail."
Typhus held his manreaper horizontally across his chest. An unprecedented, terrifying wave of psychic energy erupted from his body, instantly melting the pile of corpses beneath his feet into putrid slime.
"So I've decided: I won't bother with those routing slaves anymore. Since the situation has already rotted away, let's let it rot completely," Typhus said, his voice unnervingly calm, yet carrying a cataclysmic finality.
Typhus had never been more lucid than he was right now.
As Sicarius's blade left indelible gouges across his rotting armor, and as the howls of the Space Wolves intertwined with the self-detonations of the Helldivers into a symphony of death, this favored son of Nurgle finally accepted a nauseating reality: Perditia, this "rotting fruit" on the verge of ripening, was slipping through his fingers.
If he could not bring it into the Grandfather's embrace, if he could not turn this world into a breeding ground for plague—
Then let it burn to ash.
While parrying Sicarius's swift strikes with his Manreaper, he attempted to contact the fleet in orbit. Before evacuating, he intended to order Gurgoth to unleash a saturation orbital bombardment, using devastating virus bombs and lance strikes to wipe this wasteland—along with those arrogant Imperial defenders—off the map.
However, there was only dead silence on the vox-channel.
"Gurgoth? Respond!" Typhus's heart sank. He shifted his focus, channeling his vast Warp-spawned psychic might in an attempt to reach the Terminus Est in orbit directly through a mental link.
What greeted him, however, was an invisible psychic barrier as thick and heavy as a mountain range. That power was cold, pure, and carried a chilling sense of order—it had completely severed the surface of Perditia from orbital space!
When did this start?
An emotion called "fear," for the first time since he had set foot on this planet, coiled around Typhus's heart like a venomous snake. He swung a heavy, sweeping blow to force Sicarius back, his voice low and gravelled. "You... have schemed well. Even cutting off contact with orbit—was that part of your plan too?"
"Oh?" Sicarius blinked slightly, then broke into a confident smile. Although he had no idea what was happening in orbit, he would never show surprise in front of an enemy. "It seems the battle in orbit has already begun. I thought this sudden counterattack was a bit premature, but it appears our timing was exact."
Sicarius leveled his sword one-handed, the tip pointing straight at Typhus's throat. "Come, traitor. Round two begins, and this time, you have no way out."
Typhus let out a furious hiss, whipping his Manreaper into a frenzy. At this point, he could only trust that Gurgoth could handle it. Regardless, the Terminus Est was the flagship of the Death Guard, a mobile fortress! Even if those bizarre "Helldivers" launched another one of their inexplicable mass-teleportation assaults, after the painful lessons of the past, Gurgoth should have prepared airtight defenses.
However, Typhus did not know that what awaited the Death Guard in orbit at this very moment was not just the Helldivers.
One hour earlier, Perditia Orbit.
In the cold void of space, a faint golden ripple distorted the emptiness. There was no massive fleet, no roaring engines—only a pitch-black, unmarked strike cruiser gliding silently out of the Warp.
Inside the warship's command tower, Grand Master Koyal Tampas stood in silent vigil. His silver power armor, engraved with countless sacred scriptures, gleamed with a solemn light under the dim illumination.
His gaze pierced through the thick viewport, fixing upon the bloated, hideous behemoth in the distance that reeked of the Warp—the Terminus Est.
Behind Tampas, a Paladin Ancient gripped the Chapter banner tightly, while ten heavily armored Paladins stood in a semicircular formation like statues of steel. Their breathing was as steady as dormant volcanoes, and the force weapons in their hands emitted a faint, silvery glow.
Though this force was small in number, it was enough to strike terror into any daemon.
Tampas slowly raised his hand. His voice resonated through the quiet chamber like the tolling of an ancient bell. "The stench of daemons has grown thick enough to turn the stomach. We are the Emperor's blade, the silver flash in the dark."
He turned his head toward the stasis pods to the side and gave his final order. "Awaken the Ancients. Prepare for boarding."
With a violent burst of teleportation light, Koyal Tampas and his Paladin squad slammed into the rotting, damp boarding deck of the Terminus Est like a silver warhammer.
A psychic storm instantly purged the Nurgle spores within dozens of meters. Tampas's Nemesis force sword carved a sacred arc, cleaving two charging Plague Marines—along with their thick armor—clean in half.
However, as he steadied his stance, preparing to meet the expected, overwhelming tide of daemons, the sight before him caused even this widely experienced Grand Master to show a rare expression of astonishment.
Inside this cursed, Warp-tainted vessel, the fighting had already reached a fever pitch before their arrival. Yet those clashing with the rotting horde were not other Astartes, but a group of fully armed... mortals?
These warriors wore uniform, high-spec void armor. The lasguns and heavy weapons in their hands spat deadly tongues of fire, supported by brand-new tanks that had come from Emperor-knows-where. Their tactical maneuvers were outrageously textbook: alternating cover, suppressive fire, precision demolitions. Even when facing terrifying Plague Marines, they did not flinch in the slightest, instead utilizing the narrow corridors to construct lethal crossfire kill-zones.
"Sector A suppressed! Demolitions, clear the barricades!"
"Watch the left ventilation shaft, hostiles!"
"Vehicle crew! Did the vehicle crew fall asleep?!"
Watching these mortals not only hold their own, but methodically push the front line forward, Tampas couldn't help but furrow his brow. "What is the meaning of this?"
A Paladin behind him, after cleaving down an enemy, suddenly recalled something and hurriedly reported over the vox-channel. "Grand Master, I remember now. Earlier astropathic reports mentioned a special unit called the 'Helldivers' assisting in the assault."
Hearing this, Tampas did not blame his brother for the oversight. To the Grey Knights, mortal intelligence was usually just background noise. Still, he had certainly not expected this so-called "mortal army" to possess such massive scale and elite discipline.
"I see," Tampas replied curtly, then glanced to his side. "Gario, go take command of these mortals. Have them follow closely behind the Grey Knights and drive straight for the plasma reactor core."
The Paladin named Gario acknowledged the order and stepped forward. The process went unexpectedly smoothly. These Helldivers were clearly prepared; upon seeing the Grey Knights, they showed no surprise at all, acting instead like allies who had been waiting for a long time.
"Sir! Here is the detailed internal schematic of the Terminus Est, including markings for the latest mutated zones!" a player who appeared to be a commander saluted crisply, directly transmitting a terrifyingly detailed data-packet. "We'll handle clearing the chaff and opening the path; we'll leave the tough nuts to you!"
Looking at the blueprints—which even had hidden ventilation ducts clearly marked—even Gario couldn't help but pause for a moment. Isn't this mortal intelligence a bit too detailed? Even professionals wouldn't be this thorough.
Meanwhile, inside the command bridge of the Terminus Est, Gurgoth's face had turned uglier than if his own mother had died.
He stared dead-eyed at the monitoring screens. Those Helldivers, with their "infinite logistics" and endless waves where killing one batch only brought another, had already driven him to his wits' end, making him feel like he was fighting an unending swarm of cockroaches.
And now, that lethal silver lightning—the Grey Knights—had joined the fray as well.
"Damn it... damn it! Why now of all times?!"
Gurgoth's knuckles turned white as he gripped his sword. Dealing with those fearless mortals alone had already been troublesome enough; now he had to face the Grey Knights, who specifically countered Chaos. Could he hold them off?
He had no confidence whatsoever.
Fear was spreading, but it was quickly replaced by a desperate madness. Gurgoth knew Typhus's methods all too well. If he lost the Terminus Est, even if he miraculously survived the battle, what awaited him would be a punishment from the Lord of Death far worse than death itself.
"Since it's to the death either way..." Gurgoth hardened his heart, a vicious light erupting in his turbid eyes. "Then let's go all out! Nobody take a single step back! I'll make them all be buried with this ship!"
If he was destined to die here today, then so be it! At least dying on the battlefield could still count as a warrior's end.
______________________________
Check out new tl: It's called Son of Troy
Also check out this work, it's not mine but the title is 10/10 : LEGENDARY ARCANE MECHANIC SYSTEM: REBUILDING MY MANA MILKING CLAN!