"As Always"

Howl—!

Though small, they wriggled in bizarre ways, climbing the walls and ceiling like spiders. Their thin hands and feet had already deformed, their knuckles turning into sharp bone spikes.

They let out chilling "cries," then lunged at the Imperial Martial Soldiers' necks and the gaps in their joints the next instant.

Even these battle-hardened warriors felt their minds tremble.

But that brief pause was not born of fear, but instinctive shock and reluctance.

After all, beneath their armor, they were still "human." Seeing infants transformed into such grotesque forms inevitably stirred their hearts.

And that pause lasted no more than half a second.

Bang—bang—!

The boltguns roared again. The infant Necromorphs' heads exploded instantly, spraying blood and bone fragments across the walls.

The Imperial Martial Soldiers immediately resumed their cold, resolute bearing, burying their lingering emotions deep inside.

To them, this was the iron law demanded by the Emperor and the Primarch—

Mercy was reserved for human brethren, not monsters that had fallen into mutation.

From beginning to end, the battle had been completely one-sided. The Necromorphs seemed endless, yet the Imperial Martial Soldiers continued to slaughter them with ruthless efficiency, flames and blood dyeing the colony's streets crimson.

But all of this was merely a "prelude."

Accompanied by a heavy rumble, the ground suddenly began to shake.

Between the cracked streets and collapsed buildings, a suffocating presence gradually spread.

It was a colossal entity stitched together from vast quantities of flesh and wreckage, like a writhing mountain of meat.

Arms, spines, heads, and organs were fused together in unimaginable ways. Thousands, tens of thousands of corpses had merged into one whole, squirming as it let out a mind-shaking growl—

The Hive Mind.

It was the terror at the colony's core, the grotesque source that gathered the will and