Eli's Chainsword cut down its fifth Ork, then jammed solid in a tough shoulder bone, ruined. A soldier beside him immediately handed him a bloodstained Entrenching Tool. Back to back, they fought like madmen amid the flying flesh, desperately struggling to survive.
When a left arm was slashed open to the bone, they swung with the right; when a Lasgun ran out of power, they smashed xenos skulls with its stock. Over a thousand mortals stood like reefs, unyielding against the crashing waves of a hundred thousand xenos.
There were simply too many Orks. Like an endless swarm of insects, they engulfed the armored vehicles and overran the traps. Finally, they completely surrounded Eli and his soldiers, trapping them in an ever-shrinking pocket with no way out.
An Ork Boss fully three meters tall charged with a roar, its enormous battle-axe raised high. With a deadly whistle, it swung down at Eli's head.
"Watch out, sir!" His adjutant roared and lunged forward, stopping that lethal axe with his own body.
Drenched in his comrade's blood, his eyes crimson, Eli recklessly drove the Entrenching Tool deep into the Ork Boss's throat.
He panted heavily, surrounded by mountains of xenos corpses and brothers who fought to the death without retreating. Eli tightly clasped his adjutant's cooling hand and surveyed the devastated, scorched earth.
Another heavily armored Ork, driven utterly berserk by the smell of blood, roared as it stepped over the boss's corpse. Its enormous battle-axe rose high, then came crashing toward Eli's head with a deadly whistle!
"Emperor... I did my best."
He calmly faced death.
At the very instant the axe came within ten centimeters of his forehead.
Time seemed to freeze.
"Shhk."
An extremely faint sound, a blade slicing through flesh.
The hulking Ork holding its axe aloft suddenly