It Was Coming

After sending off the officers who had rediscovered "pain," Rovi did not rest.

He went to the outermost defense line of Granary Seven.

It had originally been a simple circular wall made from abandoned cargo containers and barbed wire.

Now, it looked somewhat different.

The "Steel Beast" Harvester, which had distinguished itself in Sector E4 before mutating in the quarantine chamber, had already been dismantled.

Or, to be more precise, it had been "skinned."

Rovi stood before one section of the defense line and knocked on the dark red metal plate in front of him.

It was an armored panel removed from the front of the Harvester.

After absorbing the Nurgle Beast's bodily fluids and being catalyzed by Warp steam, the metal was no longer mere steel.

Its surface was covered in a layer of horny material resembling the shells of crustaceans, and it no longer felt cold to the touch.

Instead, it had a slightly warm, rough texture.

If you pressed your ear against it, you could even hear faint squirming from within.

"Bio-active Armor."

Priest Alpha stood behind Rovi, his voice tinged with a sick fascination.

"Tests show this Mutant Metal is 500% more resistant to corrosive acids than standard Ceramite. In addition... it seems to possess a degree of self-repair."

"What's the price?" Rovi asked.

"It needs to feed." The Priest pointed to the bottom of the metal plate, where a pile of black ash had accumulated. "If it isn't given organic matter, it will start consuming any metal it touches, or even... flesh."

"We're currently using the charred corpses of Mutant Rats as 'fuel.' The results have been stable."

Rovi gazed at the dark red wall.

This was no longer inanimate.

It was a living, hungry defense line.

"Install every Mutant Armor Plate in front of the heavy weapons emplacements." Rovi made his decision at once.

"Put that 'gray mist' you collected—the Harvester's exhaust—into sealed canisters."

"What do you intend to do with it, Advisor?"

"Turn it into land mines."

Rovi's eyes were especially cold.

"Bury them two hundred meters outside the defense line. Since the enemy likes using poison gas, we'll let them try this 'specially formulated' herbicide."

The sky had grown completely dark.

The purplish-red heavens hung over everyone like a blood-clotted wound.

Rovi returned to the Command Tower.

Through the observation slit, he could see the entire defense line.

The six heavy weapons emplacements were all in position.

They were six grim reapers wreathed in dark purple light.

Buck and his men were crouched behind the scorching guns.

Their bodies trembled faintly from the side effects of the drugs.

But the trembling only kept them on edge, alert and tense.

Farther out,

the workers, still basking in the bliss of "Green Soup," stood grinning in the trenches with crude weapons in their hands.

They were the first line of defense, and expendable from the start.

It was cruel.

But this was the choice a Scribe had to make:

calculate costs, control losses, and ensure the survival of core assets.

In battle, clarity was an expensive luxury.

Only the most valuable "fixed assets" deserved it.

The rest only needed to die in bliss.

That was already the greatest mercy Rovi could offer them.

A mercy that spared them from facing despair with clear minds.

Rovi gently covered his mouth and nose with a clean white handkerchief.

His other hand rested on the cold control panel.

His gaze wasn't fixed on the fog rolling in the distance.

Instead, it fell on a stack of Dataslates before him.

"Standard ammunition reserves: three thousand rounds of standard bolter shells, twenty thousand rounds of solid ammunition."

"Incendiary reserves: sufficient."

"Personnel... estimated losses: thirty percent."

Rovi silently recited the figures to himself.

"Advisor, we've detected high-energy biological reactions. They're coming."

Priest Alpha spoke in fear.

The Servitor Skull behind him was releasing a faint incense smoke.

It was trying to mask the unsettling Warp stench in the air.

"Their numbers... are as massive as you predicted."

Rovi gave a slight nod and put away the handkerchief.

He pushed the observation window open a crack, and the clamor outside immediately poured in.

It wasn't a battle cry or a scream.

It was laughter.

Behind the makeshift fortifications of abandoned cargo containers and sandbags on the outermost defense line of the granary, several thousand workers in tattered overalls were packed together.

They held sharpened steel pipes, rusty wrenches, and even half-bricks.

Every one of them wore a dazed, blissful smile.

That was the gift "Enhanced Green Slop" had given them.

The "excess vitality" released by the Warp Crystals in the murky soup had shielded them from the fear of death.

It had severed the nerves that carried pain.

It had disguised this hell of despair as a paradise flowing with milk and honey.

"For Green Soup! For the Advisor!" someone shouted.

More voices quickly joined in.

There was not a trace of heroism, only an excitement that made it seem as though they were off to attend a grand feast.

Rovi watched it all with a calm expression.

He didn't feel much guilt.

Compared to being torn apart by monsters in despair and terror, dying amid an illusion of bliss might have been the greatest dignity these people could receive.

"Prepare for contact," Rovi said calmly. "Tell Buck's men to hold steady. No firing from the heavy weapons emplacements without my order."

The fog churned more violently.

The first to appear were flies.

Countless Greenbottle Flies swept out of the shadows of the ruins like a black whirlwind.

Their dense buzzing was enough to make anyone with a sound mind's scalp crawl.

Next came a group of shambling figures.

Walking Dead corrupted by Nurgle's plague.

They had once been human, perhaps refugees from other granaries, or maybe unfortunate scavengers.

Now, pustules and tentacles covered their swollen bodies. Their skin was a sickly gray-green, and only murky yellow fluid filled their eye sockets.

They didn't run. They just shuffled forward one step at a time, like a slow-moving wall of flesh.

"They're here! It's meat! It's extra rations!" a worker on the outer defense line cried excitedly.

The hallucinations brought on by Green Soup made him see the rotting monsters as some kind of delicious prey.

He leapt from the trench and charged, waving the iron bar in his hand.

When one person moved, the others followed.

The workers, who should have been defending the line, actually took the offensive. Like children who had spotted candy, they scrambled toward the deadly fog.

They made contact in an instant.

There was no fierce struggle.

It was a one-sided devouring.

The workers at the very front were swallowed by the Walking Dead in moments.

The iron bar in one man's hand struck a monster's shoulder with a dull thud, but it was like hitting a pile of rotting straw.

The creature didn't fight back. It simply opened a mouth split to its ears and bit down on the worker's neck.

Blood gushed out.

Yet the worker didn't scream.

Even as his windpipe was torn out, his face still wore a strange smile.

As if the agony of being torn apart were merely a passionate embrace.

"Squish, squish."

The horrifying sounds of chewing echoed across the battlefield.

The "Happiness Defense Line," formed by thousands of workers, was like fresh meat thrown into a grinder.

Though they slowed the blades slightly, in the end, they could only become heaps of red-and-green mush.

The scene was absurd, and terrifying.

The Defense Force soldiers behind the Second Line of Defense—

to be precise, Buck and the five Defense Force squad leaders—

were enduring a living hell.

They had injected themselves with diluted Clarity Agent, and its effects were still at work.

The pain, fear, and anxiety suppressed by the Green Soup for so long now erupted through their nerves with ten times the intensity.

Buck lay behind a Heavy Logging Gun, trembling all over.

His head throbbed, his stomach churned, and every breath felt like swallowing shards of glass.

The comrades smiling as they went to their deaths.

The monsters chewing on human flesh.

Everything was terrifyingly clear to him. No hallucinatory filter could obscure it.

Fear seeped into his bones.

"Hold steady."

Rovi's cold voice came through the headset.

"Pain is proof that you're still alive. Use it!"

Rovi stood atop the tower, looking down over the scene below, which resembled a slaughterhouse.

The first line of defense, a fleshy embankment built from thousands of workers immersed in false bliss, had collapsed the moment the two sides made contact.

But that was no accident.

It was the inevitable result of precise calculations.

As the surviving workers found their instinctive fear again amid the agony of being torn apart, they began screaming and fleeing backward.

They had no idea that they had already completed their entire mission as "bait."

After devouring large quantities of flesh saturated with "excess vitality," the Walking Dead swelled like balloons. Their sluggish movements became incredibly nimble.

The blood in the workers' bodies, charged with Warp energy, had driven them into a frenzy.

They paid no heed to their broken formation.

They only wanted to charge deeper and feast on more of this banquet.

This was exactly what Rovi wanted.

Behind the Walking Dead, he spotted the figures that had remained hidden in the shadows—

the Traitor Guard Elite surrounded by Nurglings,

along with the Plague Carrier, the One-eyed Horned Daemon Overseer.

If he had used conventional tactics and revealed the heavy weapons too early, those cunning command units would have used the Walking Dead as cover and either flanked them or spread out.

But now, the "happy sacrifice" of thousands of workers had not only fed the cannon fodder at the front, making them crowd together in their greed and stop to eat.

More importantly, it had created a perfect "gap."

The greedy Walking Dead had charged too far ahead, while the cautious elite troops were still watching.

A fatal open space had appeared between them.

And that space was the ideal firing lane for the Heavy Logging Guns—

If the enemy's elite troops had followed close behind the cannon-fodder Walking Dead and the workers, charging together in a mixed horde,

then when the heavy machine guns opened fire, the bodies of those who fell at the front would pile up into a natural barrier, blocking the line of fire behind them.

But with this "gap," once the cannon fodder had passed, the Plague Carrier's elite troops in the rear would be exposed in the open, with nothing to shield them.

The heavy machine guns could rake their torsos directly.

Instead of hitting the rotting flesh of the Walking Dead in front.

The moment had come!

"Heavy weapons teams." Rovi gently tapped the edge of the control panel. "Release the safety valves. Let the steam flow."

"Yes!"

Buck gritted his teeth and yanked the bolt back hard.

Beside him, the black hose connected to the Fermentation Workshop's steam pipes began to shudder violently.

"Hiss."

A stream of white steam was forcibly injected into the Heavy Logging Gun's cooling jacket.

It wasn't ordinary water vapor.

It was high-energy matter, "heated" by Warp Crystals and imbued with the concepts of "excessive vitality" and "forced maturation."

The gun barrel, black and dull moments ago, turned an unsettling dark purple in an instant.

The scripture inscribed on the gun's body seemed to ignite, giving off a faint glow.

The temperature around them rose sharply.

Buck felt a wave of heat wash over him, scorching his eyebrows.

But he didn't back down.

Compared to this physical burn, the helplessness he felt when facing monsters was far more unbearable.