They're Here

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

He arrived at the outermost defensive line of Granary Seven.

This had originally been a simple perimeter wall made of discarded shipping containers and barbed wire.

Now, it looked somewhat different.

The "Steel Beast" Harvester that had performed so brilliantly in Sector E4 and then mutated in the isolation room had been dismantled.

Or more accurately, it had been "skinned."

Rovi stood before a section of the defense line and reached out to knock on the dark red metal panel in front of him.

This was armor plating removed from the front of the Harvester.

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

Its surface was covered with a layer of chitinous material resembling crustacean shells, no longer cold to the touch.

Instead, it had a slightly warm, rough texture.

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

"Bio-active Armor."

Alpha the Priest stood behind Rovi, his tone carrying a morbid fascination.

"After testing, this mutated metal's resistance to corrosive acid is 500% higher than standard Ceramite. Additionally... it seems to possess some self-repairing properties."

"And the cost?" Rovi asked.

"It needs to feed." The Priest pointed to the base of the metal panel, where a pile of black ash had accumulated. "If we don't supply it with organic matter, it will start consuming any metal it touches, or even... flesh and blood."

"For now, we're using charred Mutant Rat corpses as 'fuel,' and the results are stable."

Rovi gazed at the dark red wall.

This was no longer an inanimate object.

This was a living, hungry defense line.

"Install all the mutated armor plates in front of the heavy firepower positions." Rovi made his decision quickly.

"Seal the 'gray mist' you collected—the exhaust from the Harvester—into airtight canisters."

"What do you intend to do, Advisor?"

"Make landmines."

Rovi's eyes were especially cold.

"Bury them two hundred meters outside the defense line. Since the enemy likes to play with poison gas, let's treat them to this special 'herbicide.'"

The sky had completely darkened.

The purple-red sky hung like a bruised wound, pressing down on everyone's heads.

Rovi returned to the Command Tower.

Through the observation port, he could see the entire defense line in full view.

Six heavy firepower positions had been set up.

They were six reapers burning with a dark purple glow.

Buck and his men were crouched behind these scorching guns.

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

But that trembling kept them in a state of taut alertness.

Further out, the Laborers, still immersed in the bliss of "Green Soup," stood grinning foolishly in the trenches with crude weapons.

They were the first line of defense, and also the inevitable expendables.

It was cruel.

But that was the trade-off the 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.

As for the rest, they only needed to die in happiness.

That was the greatest mercy Rovi could give them.

A mercy that spared them from facing despair with a clear mind.

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

His other hand rested on the cold control panel.

His gaze did not focus on the rolling mist in the distance.

but instead landed on the stack of data-slates before him.

"Ammunition stockpile: three thousand standard bolt rounds, twenty thousand solid-shot rounds."

"Incendiary reserves: sufficient."

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

Rovi recited these numbers in his mind.

"Advisor, high-energy biological signatures detected. They're here."

Priest Alpha spoke in fear.

The Servitor Skull behind him was puffing out a faint trail of incense.

Trying to mask the unsettling stench of the Warp in the air.

"Numbers... as vast as you predicted."

Rovi gave a slight nod and tucked away his handkerchief.

He pushed open a crack in the observation window, and the clamor outside flooded in at once.

It wasn't battle cries, nor screams.

It was laughter.

On the outermost perimeter of the Granary, behind makeshift barricades of discarded cargo containers and sandbags, thousands of laborers in tattered work clothes were packed tight.

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

On every face, without exception, was a dazed, blissful smile.

That was the gift of the "Enhanced Green Slop."

In the murky broth, the "excess vitality" released by the Warp Crystal had numbed their fear of death.

Severed the nerves of pain.

Disguising this hell of despair as a land flowing with milk and honey.

"For the Green Slop! For the Advisor!"

Someone shouted.

Then more voices joined in.

There was no trace of solemn tragedy—only a manic excitement, as if heading to a grand feast.

Rovi watched it all, his gaze calm.

He felt little guilt.

Compared to being torn apart by monsters in terror and despair, dying in a blissful hallucination was perhaps the greatest dignity these people could get.

"Prepare for contact," Rovi said coolly. "Keep Buck's men steady. No heavy weapons fire without my order."

The mist churned more violently.

What appeared first were the flies.

Countless Greenbottle Flies, like a black cyclone, swept in from the shadows of the ruins.

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

Then came a crowd of shuffling figures.

Walking Dead corrupted by Nurgle's plague.

They had once been human—perhaps refugees from other Granaries, or unlucky scavengers.

Now, their bloated bodies were covered in pustules and tentacles, their skin a sickly gray-green, their eye sockets filled with murky yellow fluid.

They didn't run. They just trudged forward, step by step, like a slow-moving wall of flesh.

"They're here! That's meat—that's extra rations!"

A Laborer on the outer line shouted in excitement.

The Green Slop's hallucinations made him see the rotting monsters as some kind of delicious prey.

He leaped out of the trench, swinging his iron rod as he charged.

One moved, and the others followed.

The Laborers, who should have been on the defensive, turned the tables—like children rushing toward candy, they scrambled headlong into that deadly mist.

Contact happened in an instant.

There was no fierce battle.

It was a one-sided devouring.

The Laborer in the lead was swallowed by the Walking Dead in a single exchange.

His iron rod slammed into a monster's shoulder with a dull thud, as if hitting a wad of rotten cotton.

The creature didn't strike back. It just opened its mouth, split to its ears, and bit down on the Laborer's neck.

Blood sprayed into the air.

Yet this Laborer did not scream.

Even as his throat was torn open, a grotesque smile lingered on his face.

As if the excruciating pain were nothing more than a fervent embrace.

"Chomp, chomp."

The sickening sound of chewing echoed across the battlefield.

The "Happiness Defense Line," formed by thousands of Laborers, was like slabs of fresh meat fed into a meat grinder.

Though they briefly slowed the blades' rotation, they ultimately became nothing but piles of red-and-green pulp.

This scene was both absurd and horrifying.

The Defense Force soldiers standing behind the second line—

To be precise, Buck and five Defense Force squad leaders—

Were enduring a hellish torment.

After injecting diluted "Clarity Agent," its effects continued to surge through them.

The pain, fear, and anxiety long suppressed by the Green Soup now erupted in their nerves with tenfold intensity.

Buck lay behind a Heavy Logging Gun, his entire body trembling.

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

Those comrades smiling as they marched to their deaths.

Those monsters chewing through flesh and blood.

All of it was terrifyingly clear in his eyes, with no hallucinatory filter to soften the blow.

Fear had seeped into his very marrow.

"Steady."

Rovi's cold voice crackled through the earpiece.

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

Rovi stood atop a high tower, overlooking the hellish scene below.

The first line of defense—a rampart of flesh and blood built from thousands of Laborers immersed in false happiness—collapsed the moment it was breached.

But this was no accident.

It was a calculated inevitability.

When the surviving Laborers, jolted back to primal fear by the agony of being torn apart, began to wail and flee backward—

They had no idea they had already fulfilled their entire role as "bait."

The Walking Dead, after devouring vast amounts of flesh brimming with "excessive vitality," swelled like balloons, their once-sluggish movements becoming unnervingly agile.

Driven mad by the blood of the Laborers, which carried Warp energy, they lost all restraint.

They ignored the gaps forming in their formation.

They only wanted to charge deeper, to indulge in this gluttonous feast.

This was exactly what Rovi wanted.

Behind the horde of Walking Dead, he spotted the figures that had been lurking in the shadows—

The Traitor Guard Elite, surrounded by Nurglings.

And the Plague Carrier, the One-eyed Horned Daemon Overseer.

If conventional tactics were used, exposing heavy firepower too early, these cunning command nodes would surely use the Walking Dead as cover, either scattering or flanking.

But now, the "happy sacrifice" of thousands of Laborers had not only fed the front-line cannon fodder, making them crowd together in greed and stall in feeding—

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

The greedy Walking Dead charged too fast, while the cautious elite hung back.

Between them lay a deadly gap.

And this gap was the optimal firing lane for the Heavy Logging Gun—

If the enemy's elite forces had been tightly mixed in with the cannon fodder Walking Dead and Laborers during the charge, Then when the heavy machine guns opened fire, the piles of corpses falling in the front would instantly become natural cover, blocking subsequent firing lines.

But with this "gap," it meant that once the cannon fodder surged ahead, the plague elite forces behind would be exposed in the open with no cover at all.

The heavy machine guns could directly rake their torsos.

Instead of wasting rounds on the rotting flesh of the front-line Walking Dead.

The moment had come!

"Heavy fire team." Rovi tapped lightly on the edge of the control console. "Disengage the safety valves. Let the steam flow."

"Yes!"

Buck gritted his teeth and yanked the bolt with all his might.

Beside him, the black hose connected to the Fermentation Workshop's steam pipe 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.

This was high-energy matter, "heated" by the Warp Crystal, imbued with the concepts of "excessive vitality" and "forced ripening."

The once pitch-black barrel turned an unsettling dark purple in an instant.

The scriptures engraved on the gun body seemed to ignite, emitting a faint, eerie glow.

The temperature around them spiked sharply.

Buck felt a wave of heat slam into him, singeing his eyebrows.

But he didn't flinch.

Compared to the searing pain on his flesh, the helplessness he felt facing the monster was far more unbearable.