As humanity's torrent of steel appeared on the horizon, the glassified wasteland erupted with an endless, biological tidal wave.
Tens of thousands of Tyranid organisms emerged from the radiation dust and mist, letting out shrill screams as they surged forward like a tide.
"Open fire!"
The Leman Russ tanks swung their turrets, and their main guns unleashed deafening roars. High-explosive shells detonated within the swarm, each blast tearing dozens of smaller Xenos and the ground beneath them into the air.
The heavy bolters and lascannons mounted on the vehicles began a frantic sweep, carving bloody, minced-meat trenches through the tidal wave of bugs.
However, the sheer number of Tyranids was overwhelming. They charged fearlessly through the barrage, colliding with the armored formation in an instant.
The Helldivers clinging to the outside of the tanks immediately demonstrated their worth as "expendable resources."
They shrieked, tossing hand grenades into the swarm as if they were free, then raised their lasguns and autoguns, firing wildly at the creatures trying to clamber onto the vehicle hulls.
"Die, you bastards!"
One player was tackled by three scything bugs; before the sickle-like forelimbs could tear him apart, he detonated all the explosives on his person. With a massive boom, he and the bugs were vaporized into scattered chunks of debris.
The Astartes were the most efficient slaughterers. The Space Marines formed impenetrable combat teams, their boltguns roaring without pause.
Every powerful bolter round shredded a smaller Tyranid; chainswords whined, slicing easily through Xenos carapace and flesh, spraying noxious bodily fluids.
The battle instantly turned white-hot.
Just then, the glassified ground beneath a firing Chimera transport violently burst open, and a massive, snake-like head, lined with terrifying sharp teeth, shot out of the earth!
It was a Mawloc!
It opened its gaping maw to its limit, striking upwards with lightning speed, and managed to swallow the entire ten-ton Chimera along with the seven or eight players clinging to its roof!
"Holy crap!"
"Ghostface and the others got eaten!"
The surrounding Helldivers cried out in alarm. Yet, before they could lament their comrades' "sacrifice," the Mawloc that had just made the kill suddenly froze. Its colossal body began to swell and twitch unnaturally, and an ominous red light glowed in its throat, as if it had swallowed a red-hot iron brand.
"BOOM—!!!!"
A deeply muffled explosion sounded from within the Mawloc.
The terrifying concussive force instantly reduced its thick neck to a mess of shredded flesh, which, mixed with blood, viscera, and glowing metal shrapnel, sprayed outwards in a horrific shower of gore. The massive head drooped lifelessly, slamming heavily onto the ground, its life force utterly extinguished.
The communication channel was silent for a moment, then erupted in even wilder shouts: "Awesome! Internal detonation!"
"How many times have we told them? Don't eat us Helldivers, it brings bad luck!"
"Hahaha, these bugs obviously haven't seen our game forums! Eating us? If you have a weak stomach, don't eat random junk!"
Swallowing any single Helldiver was not a smart move, as almost every one of them was wired to explode! Swallowing a whole transport full of them was tantamount to swallowing a five-hundred-kilogram aerial bomb.
This small interlude was merely a microcosm of countless bloody moments across this vast battlefield. The torrent of steel did not slow down, rolling over the Mawloc's corpse and the endless Tyranid tide, pushing relentlessly deeper into the wasteland, toward the core of the Hive Mind.
The humans' desperate charge did not frighten the Tyranids; instead, it awakened a deeper savagery. More massive organisms emerged from underground or from the distant spore clouds, and the battle became increasingly fierce.
Just as the armored spearhead struggled to crush wave after wave of the swarm and maintain its momentum, a heart-stopping psychic presence suddenly descended, like an invisible giant hand clutching the soul of every combatant on the field.
"Warning! High-level psychic unit!" a Librarian's warning rang out on the Astartes channel.
Almost simultaneously, a colossal shadow plummeted from the sky with an air-rending shriek, slamming heavily onto the frontal armor of a Leman Russ tank. The thick steel plate groaned in protest under the impact, and the entire vehicle body sharply lurched downward!
It was a terrifying creature, a perfect avatar of slaughter—a Hive Tyrant.
It was far taller than an ordinary Executioner, its heavily muscled body covered in thick chitinous armor. Two of its four arms terminated in enormous, glacially shining scything talons, while the other two grasped a massive bone sword forged of bone and sinew, and a whip that could easily crack ceramite. A pair of compound eyes, glittering with malevolent intelligence, coolly surveyed the enemies around it.
Its appearance seemed to inject a central nervous system into the chaotic swarm. The attacks of the surrounding Tyranids became more coordinated and infinitely more lethal.
"Take down that behemoth!" a Company Captain roared over the company channel, simultaneously training the heavy bolter mounted on his Chimera onto the Tyrant.
But the Hive Tyrant's reaction speed was beyond imagining. Before the heavy bolter's muzzle flash erupted, it gave a mighty leap, flapping its enormous wings to easily avoid the spray of fire, landing lightly on the roof of another Chimera.
"Klang!"
The bone sword swung down, slicing through the Chimera transport's relatively thin top armor as if it were paper.
Several Helldivers screamed and leaped out of the breach, their meltaguns aimed at the Tyrant's close-range body. However, the Tyrant's other arm flashed out with the whip, trailing a blur in the air, precisely shattering them along with their meltaguns.
An Ultramarine roared, "Courage and Honor!" igniting his jump pack and turning into a red meteor, his chainsword aimed directly at the Tyrant's head.
But clearly, not everyone was a Cato Sicarius.
Facing this thunderous strike, the Hive Tyrant remained exceptionally calm.
It did not retreat but advanced, raising its enormous bone sword at an impossible angle to precisely parry the high-speed chainsword blade, sparking a shower of dazzling fire.
Simultaneously, its scything talon struck like lightning, instantly piercing the ceramite armor and the sternum beneath, shattering the Marine's heart.
The attack was nullified!
Whether it was the heavy firepower of mere mortals or the fatal assault of a transhuman, the cautious and powerful monster easily countered it.
It stalked the chaotic battlefield like a seasoned swordmaster, every move precise and efficient. It leaped from one Imperial vehicle to the next, its bone sword and talons relentlessly tearing open the steel hides, turning the Imperium's war machines into piles of burning scrap.
Under its agitation, the previously unstoppable armored spearhead finally showed signs of stalling.
Just as the Hive Tyrant stabbed its talon into the turret of another Leman Russ, preparing to dismantle it entirely, an extreme, primal fear seized its mind.
The light across the entire battlefield seemed to dim for an instant.
The very air felt as if it were screaming.
An indescribable, scorching white pillar of light, like matter directly extracted from the core of the sun, shot out from the distant spore mist, instantly traversing several kilometers.
Time seemed to stretch at this moment. Reinhard's optics registered the beam precisely engulfing the proud Hive Tyrant and the Leman Russ tank it was tearing apart beneath its feet.
When the light column subsided, all that remained was a massive, perfectly smooth, still-smoking crater of glass. Neither the mighty Hive Tyrant nor the tens-of-tons steel behemoth was left—not even a trace of ash.
A strange silence, lasting several seconds, descended upon the battlefield. Immediately following it, the ground began to shake violently and rhythmically, as if some unspeakable colossus was approaching.
~Wooooo—!!!
A magnificent horn blast, sounding as if it came from the dawn of time, forged of metal and steam, penetrated the dense fog, shaking the soul of every person present.
A silhouette of unimaginable scale slowly emerged from the spore mist.
It was a walking god, a mobile fortress of war. Its legs were like the columns of a city, each step leaving an enormous footprint on the earth.
Its torso was adorned with countless Gothic reliefs and the symbols of the Imperial Aquila, its shoulders mounting a massive weapon platform capable of annihilating a Legion.
Its head, a solemn command bridge resembling a cathedral, looked down upon the mortal battleground through glowing red optics—
A Warlord-class Titan.
"What the actual hell," Pyro's eyes widened. Standing on the roof of his Chimera, he stared up at the slowly advancing steel idol, feeling his worldview shattered.
"This is a probe?! What kind of Imperial force deploys a Titan just to probe?"
Yes, this was a probe.
When a Gloriana-class Battleship hangs high in the planet's orbit, when millions of mortal troops and over a hundred thousand Space Marines are locked in combat with an endless enemy on the ground…
On a battlefield so immense that, regardless of the outcome, it would be inscribed into the Imperium's epic history, was deploying a Warlord-class Titan merely to "test the mettle" of the enemy not a perfectly reasonable and entirely normal course of action?