In a matter of seconds, the Plague Marines were carpeted in Zerglings. Their rot-fused power armor was punctured again and again by serrated claws, sending sprays of pressurized green pus into the air.
"Dammit! Are they completely immune to the Grandfather's gifts?"
A Plague Marine is a walking bio-weapon; usually, the mere stench of their presence is enough to liquefy the lungs of nearby mortals. But these xenos didn't care. Their claws shredded through the Death Guard's bloated forms. One Zergling even clamped its mandibles onto a Marine's helmet, tearing away a massive chunk of reinforced ceramite and the mutated head beneath it.
Under the "blessing" of Nurgle, such a wound isn't immediately fatal. These warriors can function with half a brain or their internal organs hanging out. But the math of the Swarm is absolute. Within seconds, the two Marines were systematically dismembered. The Overmind personally saw to it that their heads were crushed into a fine paste by Zergling talons.
"Phew. That felt good."
While commanding a million units is grand, there is a unique satisfaction in micro-managing a single Zergling to take down a champion of Chaos.
But now, it was time for the main event.
The roaming patrols were a nuisance, but the town's Nurgle Altars were the true threat. Seeing the Zerg invasion, the Chaos cultists had finished their rituals. Ripples of warp energy pulsed from the altars as the first wave of Nurgle's daemonic legions stepped into reality.
A massive horde of Plaguebearers emerged. These are the rank-and-file daemons of the Garden—dull, counting, and virtually endless. It is said they outnumber every mortal soul in the galaxy. While they couldn't all fit on this planet, the number currently pouring into the streets was still staggering.
They wielded Plague Swords—rusted, germ-slicked blades. They weren't sharp in a traditional sense, but a single scratch could be as lethal as a blow from a Bloodletter.
The Zerglings' light chitin was no match for these warp-tainted blades. Even when a strike didn't kill a Zergling outright, the infection usually made surviving the blow a fate worse than death. Or so the Plaguebearers thought.
Their low, wet chuckles died in their throats when they saw the Zerglings' reaction. Instead of collapsing from sepsis, the wounded Zerglings became more violent, their adrenal glands overlocking in response to the pain.
Abathur had engineered an immune system so aggressive it was borderline suicidal—it would literally kill its own cells to stop an infection from spreading. Unless a plague was heavily infused with warp-energy, it couldn't stop a Zergling before the Zergling stopped the daemon.
"Did you think this was my first time fighting the Death Guard? If the Tyranids can adapt to your rot, so can my Swarm."
Since the plague was failing, the battle devolved into a brutal slog of attrition. The Plaguebearers were not fast. The "blessing" of Nurgle grants immense durability and pain tolerance, but at the cost of mobility. They were a wall of rotting flesh. The Zerglings had to tear them apart piece by piece, resulting in a scene so foul it would have made a seasoned Inquisitor retch.
Decaying organs flew through the air; intestines filled with wriggling parasites were trampled underfoot, bursting like overripe fruit.
"Ugh, even for me, this is repulsive. I need to cauterize this mess with fire, or the long-term contamination will start affecting the hives."
The Ravagers (the evolved form of the Roach) made their entrance. Newly dropped Roaches began the rapid mutation process, their back-morphing into corrosive artillery.
As the Plaguebearers tried to push the Zergling line, bursts of corrosive bile and plasma-fire rained down from the sky.
"It's called combined arms, kids!"
Each corrosive strike melted through the daemons' unnatural resilience. Pure infantry could no longer stand against the Swarm. However, Nurgle's legions weren't just foot soldiers. Enormous, slug-like Beasts of Nurgle began to writhe through the daemon ranks. These creatures had skin so thick that a Zergling's claws could sink in completely without causing a meaningful wound.
In the sky, the altars summoned swarms of Plague Drones—massive, decaying flies. The Plaguebearers riding them began lobbing globes of concentrated filth downward. On one side, Zerg plasma; on the other, daemonic rot. Both sides had brought out the big guns.
The Beasts of Nurgle were particularly troublesome, their gelatinous bodies absorbing the Zergling's front line and even swallowing some whole.
"Oh? You want to play the consumption game?"
The Overmind remained calm. He knew exactly how the "meta" worked. StarCraft II is a game of resource exchange and counter-units. If the enemy builds Marines, you build Banelings. If they build Tanks, you build Ravagers or Vipers.
The enemy had air superiority with their Plague Drones. The counter was obvious.
"If you're thinking [Mutalisks], congratulations—you're a qualified Overmind."
A cloud of Mutalisks shrieked across the sky, their wings beating with a wet, thrumming sound. They ignored the Plague Drones' slow-moving bombs and began their strafing runs.
The Mutalisks launched Glave Wurms—living projectiles that bounced from target to target, slicing the rotting flies in half. A single Mutalisk could accelerate, bite a fly's head off with its tail-maw, and be back in the clouds before the daemon even realized it was dead.
On the ground, the Roaches that hadn't evolved into Ravagers met the Beasts of Nurgle head-on. It was a collision of armored chitin against blubbery, daemonic flesh.
But the key was the altars. As long as those rifts to the Garden of Nurgle remained open, the filth would be infinite. The Swarm had numbers, but fighting a warp-rift was a losing battle of attrition.
"Time to take out the source before a Great Unclean One decides to step through."