[Crimson Dawn Regional Chat]
[Must Pay the Emperor's Taxes Until the World Ends]: "All members of Crimson Fist, log in immediately."
[Schrödinger's Loyalist]: "All members of Crimson Spirit, assemble in thirty seconds."
[Blood Angels' Second Emperor]: "All members of Crimson Heart, right here, right now, immediately."
--
The instant the messages flooded the channel, the players resting in the military encampments simultaneously received system notifications.
Countless Crimson Dawn players, both veterans and newcomers, rapidly deployed from their camps and converged on Bancal City.
Over two thousand Astartes players, two hundred Grey Knights, three hundred Brothers of Silence, three hundred Tech-Priests, one hundred Contemptor Dreadnoughts...
Along with the sixteen thousand Crimson Dawn players possessing various other augmentations.
They rapidly materialized in every corner of the city.
[Don't Ask Me My Orky Senses Tell Me It'll Work] cracked his neck and flashed a wide grin.
"Bros, Paul is coming back. We gotta make this look pretty."
[The Last Mechanical Scourge] hoisted a meltagun onto his shoulder.
"Damn straight."
[I'm Not the Regent I'm Just Passing By Guilliman] raised his bolter.
"Kill!"
[Execute Old Man the War Criminal] revved his chainsword.
"KILL!!!"
Thousands of voices converged into a torrential flood within the regional channel...
"For Crimson Dawn!!!"
"Slaughter these bastards!!!"
And with that, the intensity of the fighting inside Bancal City instantly multiplied tenfold.
The sporadic crackle of bolter fire morphed into a continuous, deafening thunder.
The blinding white beams of meltaguns erupted from every direction within the city, melting the remaining Black Rock fortresses that still offered stubborn resistance into pools of molten slag, one after another.
The blue-white orbs of plasma cannons trailed blinding light as they accurately smashed into the final Dal defensive lines.
The heavy, thudding footsteps of the Contemptor Dreadnoughts shook the very earth, the roar of their twin-linked heavy bolters acting like timpani drums, setting the rhythm for this final slaughter.
The Grey Knights wielded their Nemesis force halberds, carving bloody paths straight through the Dal lines.
The Brothers of Silence formed up in tight formations. Even though their anti-psychic fields were useless against these purely material creatures...
Their power armor and bolters still provided them with formidable combat strength.
The Tech-Priests operated a terrifying array of mechanical constructs, using the sheer power of technology to crush these aliens that relied purely on biological instincts.
And the two thousand-plus Astartes players darted through the city like silver-grey lightning bolts.
Every time a bolt of lightning flashed, dozens of Dal fell.
Every time a bolt of lightning stopped, a new city block was completely purged.
The newer players cashed in for various heavy weapons and laid down absolute suppressive fire on the aliens.
The soldiers of the Dawn Defense Force were initially stunned by this sudden, explosive display of firepower.
But they quickly snapped back to their senses, following closely behind those silhouettes and using their lasguns to sweep up any stragglers that slipped through the net.
General Roger Theodore stood on an elevated position, watching the scene unfold, muttering to himself:
"Have these guys... just been slacking off this whole time?"
General Rull Ackerman stood beside him, equally shocked.
"Is this the true strength of Crimson Dawn?"
Luca Knox didn't have time to marvel.
He led the 2,500 elites of the Dawn Guard Battalion, clad in Crimson Rainbow Mk. I light power armor.
They followed right behind the Astartes players, using light bolters and short power swords to meticulously purge every Dal position that had been routed.
His power armor was splattered with green blood, but his eyes burned with an unprecedented fanaticism.
--
Deep within a hidden facility in the Black Rock Citadel of Bancal City.
Bancal Darwin stood before a massive holographic screen, watching the rapidly fluctuating numbers.
Remaining Dal Forces: 70,000,000.
Remaining Dal Forces: 50,000,000.
Remaining Dal Forces: 30,000,000.
Remaining Dal Forces: 10,000,000.
Remaining Dal Forces: 8,000,000.
...
Every ten minutes or so, hundreds of thousands of Dal aliens were dying on the surface of that city.
The people he had watched grow up over the last three hundred years were being turned into cold corpses.
Bancal's body trembled uncontrollably.
His crimson eyes held nothing but pure despair.
"It's over..."
His voice was hoarse, sounding like grinding gravel squeezed from the depths of his throat.
"It's all over..."
He turned around, looking deeper into the facility at the Dal infants and females huddling and trembling in fear.
That was his final hope. The absolute last spark to ensure the continuation of the Dal species.
He took a deep breath and quickly walked toward the emergency escape tunnel hidden deep within the Black Rock Citadel.
Docked there was the very last ship capable of escaping this planet.
He had to take these infants and leave.
He had to ensure the Dal survived.
Even if they had to flee to the very edge of the galaxy, even if they had to wander eternally in the dark...
At the very least, the Dal species had to survive.
His hand pressed against the handle of the escape pod door.
The escape pod had just barely ejected 120 meters out from the right side of the Black Rock Citadel when a blinding white beam punched straight down from the sky.
It was a precision macro-strike from the main cannons of the Dawn's Resolve.
The entire level of the Black Rock Citadel housing the escape pod was instantly vaporized.
The very last thing Bancal Darwin saw was the silhouettes of those infants vanishing within the blinding light.
And then, the darkness swallowed everything.
--
On the surface of Bancal City.
When the dying shriek of the very last Dal alien was drowned out by the roar of a bolter, the entire city plunged into a bizarre, eerie silence.
The sun had completely set, replaced by a sky full of brilliant, glittering stars.
Those stars twinkled in Dal's clear night sky, looking like countless eyes staring down at this land newly soaked in blood.
Helovia stood at the highest point of the Black Rock Citadel. The wind at the summit blew through her silver hair as she looked down at the city and the planet that had just been utterly conquered.
The corpses of Dal littered the city. Green blood pooled into countless streams, winding their way through the rubble.
The soldiers of Crimson Dawn were cleaning up the battlefield, sorting and recovering any valuable materials and equipment.
The rescued humans poured out from their various hiding places, guided by medics to gather at the temporary relocation camps.
Their faces still carried a deep, lingering confusion.
Tax Bro walked up beside Helovia, taking in the exact same view.
"One and a half days."
His voice carried a trace of awe.
"Exactly one and a half days."
Tax Bro was just speaking when he caught a glimpse of a dark red light flaring at the edge of the horizon out of the corner of his eye.
The light was faint at first.
But in the blink of an eye, it swelled into a burning star, trailing a blinding white exhaust plume as it tore through Dal's atmosphere, ascending toward planetary orbit with unstoppable momentum.
Everyone looked up.
The star abruptly decelerated the instant it entered orbit, the hull of a ship materializing from within the blinding light...
It was a five-kilometer-long Olympia-class strike cruiser, its dark red hull gleaming with a metallic luster under the starlight.
The Crimson Dawn emblem on the prow—a red sunrise breaking over a dark horizon—was pointed straight down at the Dal homeworld.
The Light of Dawn.
Tax Bro's grin stretched from ear to ear. "Paul's back."
Helovia didn't say a word.
But her grip on her staff tightened ever so slightly.