Mission complete!

Main position headquarters.

Commissar Walter held his binoculars up, his expression grave as he watched the defense line teeter on the brink of collapse. Suddenly, he noticed a massive disturbance erupting on the enemy's flank.

He lowered the binoculars in disbelief, rubbed his eyes, then snapped them back up.

Through the lenses, he saw a vast torrent of routed troops crashing into the enemy's main force from the side. Behind that torrent, he could just make out a dozen or so figures in Imperial Army uniforms giving chase. They alternated between firing and throwing grenades, driving the chaos among thousands of men to a fever pitch in an utterly baffling fashion.

"Such courage? Whose soldiers are those?!" Commissar Walter's voice was filled with shock.

The officers around him exchanged glances, clearly just as bewildered by this sudden turn of events.

Only one veteran of the Astra Militarum narrowed his eyes, carefully checked the direction, and said gravely, "Commissar, they must have come from Sector 7 Waste Processing. That's the only place connected to the old Waste Fluid Pipeline 114 site that would let them charge straight through to here."

Sector 7 Waste Processing... Commissar Walter's expression turned uncertain.

Those raw recruits?

In truth, Commissar Walter considered those so-called recruits little more than factory workers who had only just picked up Lasguns, not proud Astra Militarum soldiers who had undergone rigorous training. Giving them that secondary position had been a stopgap measure. He had even prepared himself for them to break and lose the position at any moment.

He had never expected them to hold.

Yet now, they had not only held, but struck a fatal blow against the enemy's flank in a way he could not begin to understand!

"Whatever the case, this is an opportunity we cannot afford to miss!"

Walter's military instincts made him put all distracting thoughts aside at once. He abruptly lowered his binoculars, his eyes gleaming with resolve.

"Relay my orders!" He turned to the vox operator, his voice loud and firm. "Heavy mortars in the rear, fire three volleys into the enemy's rear ranks!"

He drew the Chainsword at his waist and raised it high, its blade roaring to life.

"Countercharge across the entire line! For the Emperor!"

As Commissar Walter's Chainsword roared, a clear horn call sounded the counterattack from the Astra Militarum's main position.

"For the Emperor!"

The Astra Militarum soldiers, who had been holding themselves back for so long, erupted in thunderous battle cries. They vaulted out of their trenches and leveled their bayonet-fixed Lasguns, forming a torrent of steel that bore down head-on upon the Cultist army, already thrown into utter disarray by the disturbance on its flank.

Before them stood the disciplined Hammer of the Emperor; on their flank were mentally broken "allies" fleeing in every direction. That pressure from both sides instantly shattered the Cultists' already fragile cohesion. They lacked enough junior officers to steady their troops. All that held their force together were hollow promises from the Dark Gods and fear of the sorcerers commanding them.

Commissar Walter calmly observed the battle. Once he confirmed that the enemy offensive had been completely broken and their formation scattered into a disorganized rabble, he decisively issued a new order.

"Halt the pursuit! All units, reform your ranks, clear the battlefield, and hold your positions!"

Victory had not gone to his head. A cornered enemy was best left unpursued, especially in this uncanny Hive City, where chasing blindly was extremely dangerous.

His orders were faithfully carried out. The Astra Militarum soldiers soon stopped pursuing and began regrouping.

The dozen or so players who had worked themselves into a killing frenzy, however, were not nearly so obedient. They did not answer to Commissar Walter. Their commander was "merit points." With so much "walking merit" slipping away before their eyes, how could they possibly let it go?

"Don't run! Get back here, damn you!"

"Your heads are worth a Meltabomb!"

Chasing a group of the fastest-fleeing Cultists, they gleefully crossed a decaying metal bridge covered in rust and swaying on the verge of collapse, then charged into a relatively open, abandoned industrial plaza.

The instant they stepped into the center of the plaza, something changed.

A silent, sickly green tide swept out of the plaza's shadows without warning. It was neither flame nor a shock wave, but pure psychic energy, brimming with malice and despair.

Everything withered in its wake.

The dozen or so players who still wanted to charge ahead and earn a little more, along with the hundreds of Cultists they were pursuing, could not even scream within that sickly green radiance. Their bodies instantly crumbled and dissolved like weathered sand sculptures, becoming ashes that danced through the air.

The plaza, so noisy just moments before, fell deathly silent.

In the distant shadows, more Cultists were "steadied" by their leaders through even crueler methods—anyone who tried to retreat was mercilessly cut down by the comrades behind them. After a bout of bloody internal slaughter, the routed force regained its footing, though the fear hanging over them was even thicker than before.

Commissar Walter watched the entire gruesome scene through his binoculars and felt a flicker of regret at the sacrifice of those dozen brave soldiers.

They had created an opening for him in a way he could not understand, but their reckless advance had ultimately cost them their lives. Still, given their position and speed at the time, he could not have saved them even if he had wanted to.

That flicker of regret lasted only a second before his iron will crushed it completely.

In this brutal war, sacrifice was the norm. He had witnessed far too many deaths. If he mourned every fallen soldier, he would never get anything done. The dead were gone; the living still had to fight.

What interested him more now was just what sort of people those raw recruits... those soldiers who had wrought a miracle, truly were.

Walter lowered his binoculars and turned around, his voice steady and strong.

"Have Ruan from Sector 7 Position report to me." No sooner had the words left his mouth than he changed his mind.

"No," he said gravely. "I'll go see his position myself."

When Commissar Walter entered Sector 7 Waste Processing with two bodyguards, his brow furrowed out of habit.

To a career soldier like him, the position before his eyes was riddled with flaws. Cover had been built without any coherent plan, and the firing positions were arranged haphazardly. Several fortifications had clearly just been overturned by explosions and were left lying crookedly in heaps, with no one repairing them. The entire position was steeped in a mixture of smoke, blood, and... some strange sense of excitement.

He said little. After all, they were only recruits, and this very position, as chaotic as it looked, had just launched an utterly baffling surprise attack.

"Ruan?" Walter's voice was not loud, but it carried clearly across the entire position.

Robert, who was directing the players as they cleared the battlefield, jolted and hurried over at a jog. He stood at attention and gave the Imperial Eagle Salute. "Reporting, Commissar! Here, sir!"

Walter nodded and spoke in a businesslike tone. "You performed very well today. The enemy offensive has been repelled for now, and today's fighting is essentially over. Reinforce the defense line, treat the wounded, and prepare for tomorrow's battle."

The instant Walter finished speaking, a blue screen that only Robert could see popped up before his eyes.

[Main quest: Hold the position completed!]

[Quest rating: Outstanding]

[Quest reward: merit points +1500]

A string of crisp system notifications chimed in his mind. Seeing that generous sum of merit points credited to his account, Robert froze for a moment before immense joy flooded his heart. He spun around toward the players behind him, who were still slacking off and scavenging junk, raised his arm, and shouted with all his strength:

"Brothers! We did it! Mission complete!"

As though that had been a signal, every player's personal terminal across the position received the mission completion notification at the same time.

After a brief silence, thunderous cheers erupted across the entire position.

"Wooo!!!"

"Woohoo! Merit points are in!"

"We're rich! We're rich!"

The position, still tense in the aftermath of battle just moments before, instantly turned into a bustling marketplace. Players gathered in twos and threes, eagerly opening their system shop interfaces.

"Let's see what I can buy... holy shit, I'm still just short of a Power Sword!"

"Who's got plenty of merit points? Buy a deck of cards so we can play a round later!"

"Screw you! If you want to play cards, why don't you spend your own merit points?"

"Anyone want to team up and finish off those badly wounded guys? They've been yelling for ages. It's kind of pitiful."

Watching the chaotic, jubilant scene before him, Commissar Walter's newly relaxed brow drew tightly together again. This was nothing short of a complete lack of organization and discipline!

Did they not know the war was still going on? Had they not seen those dozen comrades turn to ash just now? Such a frivolous attitude did not belong to an army that had endured a bloody battle. They looked more like a pack of drunks fresh out of a tavern.

Yet just as he was about to reprimand them, he forced himself to hold back.

He tried to convince himself that perhaps he had not yet seen the whole picture of this unit. Perhaps, for this unusual company, it was precisely this almost blind optimism that allowed them to work such a miracle on a battlefield steeped in despair.

Walter's gaze passed over one jubilant young face after another. He suddenly realized that ever since this planet had been engulfed in war, ever since Chaos corruption, Genestealer uprisings, rampaging greenskin Orks, and Dark Eldar raids had come one after another, it had been a very, very long time since he had seen a smile on any Astra Militarum soldier's face.

There had been only numbness, exhaustion, fear, and forcibly suppressed despair.

Yet these people before him laughed and joked, as though death were merely an inconsequential game.