At the top of an abandoned mining pit somewhere else, Paul lowered his binoculars.
Behind him, one thousand players had completed their combat preparations.
Lasguns were fully charged, rocket launchers were loaded, and the engines of the fifty modified trucks were growling low.
A string of messages scrolled across the regional channel:
[Have You Been Loyal Today?]: "Holy shit, that bombardment... makes movie CGI look like garbage!"
[Tax Bro]: "Those PDF guys have it rough. They're just being sent to die."
[God-Tier Mechanic]: "Conventional artillery has limited effectiveness against daemons. Energy weapons like lasers or psychic attacks are required."
Paul opened the Chapter channel. "Brothers, did you all see that? A single blue Horror goes for over three hundred Imperial Coins on salvage."
Paul's voice was calm. "The daemons' attention is entirely on the frontal battlefield right now. We're going to flank them."
He pointed toward the northeast section of the corruption zone. "There's an abandoned warehouse district over there. Dense buildings, perfect for urban combat. Our tactic is simple: don't get greedy, don't overextend. Hit them hard for one wave, then immediately relocate."
"Groups of ten. Cover each other. Heavy weapons handle suppression, assault groups handle close-quarters cleanup, and the Psykers keep their eyes peeled for any big ones."
Paul paused. "Remember, we aren't here to play hero. We are here to farm mobs."
"Understood!" The players' eyes began to glow.
To them, this wasn't a war. This was a massive open-world raid.
Those daemons were just walking Imperial Coins.
"Move out!"
The convoy drove out from behind the mining pit, taking a massive detour to avoid the frontal battlefield and hooking around toward the northeast flank of the corruption zone.
Paul sat in the lead truck, his eyes closed as he focused his senses.
His Storm-tier psychic power, guided silently by his Wisdom trait, allowed him to perceive the ripples across the battlefield: the fear on the faces of the PDF soldiers, the chaos of the daemons, the commands issued by Kans, the commander of the four major factions...and, deep within the industrial zone, the two increasingly powerful auras of sheer evil.
–
On the frontal battlefield, the time was 8:20 AM.
The PDF forces had pushed into the core of the corruption zone, approaching within three kilometers of the industrial sector, but the price they paid was catastrophic.
Out of four hundred and fifty thousand men, over two hundred and fifty thousand had been lost after just over two hours of fighting.
The vast majority died at the hands of daemons; a small minority died at the hands of the commissars and enforcers in the rear. After all, they were only human, conscripts forced into this meat grinder. They, too, felt fear.
Corpses blanketed the scorched earth. Blood pooled into creeks. The air was a sickening mixture of the coppery scent of blood, the acrid smoke of explosives, and the putrid stench of daemons.
But their sacrifice was not without value. The main force of the daemonic horde was firmly pinned down on the frontline, entirely occupied.
"The time has come." Kans ordered over the command channel. "Local Guard Forces, advance across the entire line!"
"For Aurelian!!!"
Three hundred thousand local guard troops began their charge.
Unlike the PDF, these soldiers were superbly equipped and highly trained.
Operating in company-sized units, they launched their assault under the cover of tanks and Sentinel mechs.
Every roar from the main cannons of the Leman Russ tanks blasted clusters of daemons into oblivion.
Hellhound flame tanks spewed streams of promethium fire dozens of meters long, incinerating Horrors and Bloodletters into charred husks.
Sentinel mechs bounded through the ruins, their twin-linked lascannons executing precision kills on high-value targets.
The tide of battle began to turn.
Gaps were torn into the daemonic lines, and the guard forces drove into the industrial zone like iron nails.
And right at that moment.
In the center of the industrial zone, directly above the ruins of Sector Seven, space began to distort violently.
Two colossal figures slowly materialized.
On the left was a massive claw covered in feathers and eyes.
The creature possessed three heads: one calculating frantically, one cackling madly, and one slumbering.
It had nine arms, each holding a different object: a grimoire, a scepter, a dagger, an hourglass, a quill, a mirror, and so on. Its lower half was a writhing mass of tentacles and oozing pus that seemed to contain literal, flowing knowledge.
On the right was an equally massive red, hound-headed daemon.
Its muscles bulged hideously, its entire body wreathed in unquenchable, blazing fury.
Strung upon the great-axe in its hands were hundreds of skulls, every single one emitting an eternal, agonizing scream.
The Lord of Bizarre Mysteries.
The Slaughterer of Fury.
The two daemon lords had finally revealed themselves.
"Mortals..." The voice of the Lord of Bizarre Mysteries sounded like thousands of books flipping their pages simultaneously. "Your knowledge will become the newest addition to my library."
"BLOOD! FLESH! SKULLS!"
The roar of the Slaughterer of Fury cracked the earth itself.
A terrifying Warp pressure blanketed the entire battlefield. Even the battle-hardened veterans of the guard forces felt their legs give way.
But this was exactly the moment Kans had been waiting for.
"Knight Mech Regiments! Assault!"
Seventeen Knight Mechs ignited their thrusters simultaneously. Their massive metallic bodies smashed through the smoke and dust, vaulting over the guard forces. With their ion shields fully deployed, they charged straight toward the two daemon lords.
At the exact same time, the exit of an underground tunnel somewhere else blew open with a deafening blast.
The decapitation strike force had arrived on the battlefield.
Over six thousand elite troops poured out from behind the daemons, instantly severing their route of retreat.
Riley Conmo floated in mid-air, channeling and amplifying the power of over two hundred Psykers through her own body.
She pulled off her veil, revealing a face covered in glowing psychic runes.
"In the name of the Emperor!" Her voice resounded across the battlefield. "Purge the heresy!"
Riley Conmo hovered thirty meters above the battlefield, her long hair thrashing wildly like serpents in a psychic storm.
The power of over two hundred Psykers converged through her body. It was a dangerous, ancient technique.
In the late 30th Millennium, this technique hadn't yet been completely outlawed on the fringe worlds of the Imperium, but very few dared to attempt it.
"In the name of Holy Terra!" Riley's voice, amplified by psychic power, rang in the ears of every living person on the battlefield. "For the glory of the Emperor and Mankind!"
She raised both hands high, palms facing the sky.
Below her, over two hundred Psykers stood in a complex hexagram array.
Their psychic fields linked together, multiplying their energy exponentially.
On the outer perimeter, the auxiliary Psykers formed a secondary array. Their task wasn't to attack, but to stabilize—to anchor this boundary of the material universe that was being torn apart by the Warp.
Pale gold psychic ripples pulsed outward from the center of the array.
When the first ripple washed over the battlefield, everyone felt a strange, comforting warmth, as if their freezing bodies had been plunged into warm water.
The Horrors currently slaughtering the soldiers suddenly let out piercing shrieks. The geometric halos surrounding their bodies began to distort and disintegrate.
"It's working!" Inside the command vehicle, Busir Hysman clenched his fists. "Keep going! Increase output!"
But Riley's face was rapidly draining of color.
Bright red blood began to seep from her eyes, ears, nose, and mouth.
Sustaining such a colossal psychic array placed an unimaginable burden on her physical body.
"Data warning." Scoria Kane's mechanical eye detected Riley's vital signs plummeting sharply. "Psychic output has reached 473% of Riley Conmo's maximum capacity."
"How much longer can she hold out?" Landon Atens asked from inside the cockpit of a Dominus-class Knight.
"Calculated at current depletion rates: a maximum of eleven minutes and twenty seconds."
"That's enough." Landon looked toward the two daemon lords in the center of the battlefield. "Eleven minutes is more than enough for us to tear them to pieces!"
–
In the center of the industrial zone, above the ruins of Sector Seven.
The three heads of the Lord of Bizarre Mysteries simultaneously turned toward the psychic array.
"Knowledge... fresh psychic knowledge..." Tears composed of cascading digits flowed from the eyes on its heads. "I want that woman's brain... her memories will be the most precious collection in my library..."
The Slaughterer of Fury was far more direct.
It roared at the sky and swung its great-axe horizontally, chopping two approaching Sentinel mechs perfectly in half.
The pilots didn't even have time to scream before they were crushed into meat paste inside their cockpits.
"BLOOD! MORE BLOOD!"
With every step the Khornate daemon took, the ground shattered into radial spiderwebs.
The blazing fury surrounding its body even distorted the ambient light, making everything look as if it were swaying in a sea of blood.
But the elites of the four major factions had already completed their encirclement.
In front were the seventeen Knight Mechs that had vaulted over the infantry line. Approaching from the rear were thirty-four Knight Mechs. Their ion shields were operating at maximum capacity, and their assault cannons and thermal cannons were locked onto their targets.
"Knight Regiments, hear my command! Form up by regiment! Seventeen mechs per group!" Landon's voice broadcasted to every cockpit over the comm channel. "Group A, tie down the blue bird-head! Group B and Group C, focus fire on the red hound-head!"
"For the glory of House Atens!"
"For the Emperor!"
Fifty-one Knight Mechs ignited their thrusters simultaneously. The colossal metallic bodies smashed through the ruins, their ion shields shrieking as they scraped against the atmosphere.
Leading the charge was a Questoris-class Paladin, callsign Iron Will.
Its pilot was Alfred Atens, the twenty-three-year-old rising star of the Atens House's younger generation.
"High-concentration Warp corruption detected." The Knight's Machine Spirit issued a warning. "Recommendation: Maintain distance. Utilize ranged weaponry for attrition."
Alfred grinned wildly. "Attrition? No, we're going for the kill!"
He shoved the control stick forward, and the thermal cannon on Iron Will's right arm began to charge.
The air around the muzzle distorted from the extreme heat as the promethium fuel reached critical mass inside the reaction chamber.
"Eat this, you heretical bastard!"
The melta beam fired.
It wasn't a standard melta weapon. It was a purification-pattern thermal cannon specially modified by the Mechanicus. The barrel was etched with exorcism litanies, and silver dust was mixed into the ammunition. After all, Knight Houses could be considered an unorthodox branch of the Mechanicus.
The beam struck the Slaughterer of Fury squarely on its left shoulder.
"ROAR!!!"
The daemon unleashed an ear-splitting bellow.
The section that was hit didn't vaporize like ordinary flesh and blood; instead, it began to deconstruct. Its anchor to the material universe was being forcibly severed, and the energy composing its physical form began to bleed away.
"It's working!" Alfred shouted in excitement. "Keep firing! Don't give it time to regenerate!"
But the daemon's counterattack arrived much faster.
The Slaughterer of Fury didn't even look at Iron Will. It simply whipped its great-axe backward in a casual, backhand sweep.
The hundreds of skulls strung upon the blade screamed simultaneously, a sound that struck directly at the soul.
Its aura of Khornate slaughter began to exert its influence.
Inside the cockpit of Iron Will, Alfred felt as if his brain had been smashed by a sledgehammer. Blood instantly gushed from his nose and ears.
Even more terrifyingly, the Knight's Machine Spirit began throwing fatal errors.
"The Machine Spirit is displeased..."
"Warning... Logic circuits suffering unknown interference... Navigation systems offline... Weapon systems overloaded..."
"No... impossible..."
Alfred frantically tried to reboot the systems, but error codes cascaded down his screen like a waterfall.
And then he saw it.
Through the viewing port of his cockpit, he saw the red, hound-headed daemon turn around. Three blood-red eyes locked onto him.
Those eyes held nothing but an icy, absolute lust for slaughter.
"Skulls..." The daemon whispered, "Your skull will be the two thousand, seven hundred and forty-third in my collection..."
The great-axe swung down.
"Iron Will has lost signal!" A frantic report echoed over the command channel. "Alfred's Knight has been... has been destroyed!"
Landon Atens watched helplessly as the most outstanding young Knight of his House was cleaved perfectly in half, man and machine together.
Iron Will's ion shield was as fragile as paper before the blade of the axe. The thick armor plating was sliced cleanly through, detonating the internal promethium fuel reserves and turning the entire Knight into a colossal fireball.
"All units, be advised!" Landon forced himself to remain calm. "This heretic's attacks carry Warp disruption effects! Do not let its weapons strike you directly!"
But the warning came too late. After all, the Knight Mechs had charged in specifically to confront this daemon.
The Slaughterer of Fury had already plunged into the formation of the remaining Knight Mechs, like a tiger crashing into a flock of sheep.
--
Next Goal = 250 Powerstones.