"The great master, all the wargear and the boys have assembled!" Gromm Hellroar exclaimed, a bit excited.
He had been waiting for his great WAAAGH! for so long.
He had longed for a grand war, and now, finally, he would lead all his boys to launch a glorious campaign.
The orbital lines were packed with Ork junk ships. Mefilas had purposely transported residential waste from several nearby hive worlds, and industrial scrap from forge worlds.
There was domestic trash used by the inhabitants, and rusty industrial scrap from the forge worlds.
For humans, this trash was worthless, requiring labor and resources to dispose of—but in Ork hands, it was all usable material.
Human trash could be turned into guns, trinkets, or even just fed directly to their squigs.
These ramshackle Ork junk ships were all hand-built by Ork Mekboys out of industrial scrap and minerals mined from the planet. As for fuel—
What even is fuel? Orks don't need fuel for space travel. As long as they believe the ship works, that's good enough!
"Good! In this Octarius campaign, you must make a name for yourself. Except for using the super-beast transformation, I permit you to use the weapons and equipment I've granted you. You may use your own name.
Gromm Hellroar, that is the name I bestow upon you. It stands for courage, for unyielding will in battle. Do not bring shame to this name." Rhodes spoke.
"Don't worry, Master! I'll make this name resound across the galaxy, and even the whole universe in the future!" Gromm Hellroar raised his new battle axe and thumped his chest.
Rhodes nodded, then, along with Tartarus, boarded the Ork flagship—Hardhead.
Tartarus spread his arms and opened a massive portal hundreds of meters across. Once the portal stabilized—
The Orks howled with excitement and drove their junk ships through in a swarm.
…
In the Octarius sector, Ork warriors were locked in brutal combat with the Tyranids. This war had already raged for two full years.
Inquisitor Kryptman of the Imperium, via Deathwatch, deployed Genestealers into the Ork Octarius sector.
These Genestealers immediately sent psychic signals to their hive fleet. With so much food sensed, the Tyranid swarm didn't hesitate—a tendril of the Leviathan fleet reached out at once.
Thus, the war erupted out of nowhere. The Orks of Octarius greeted their unexpected guests with enthusiastic hospitality.
They raised axes, ramshackle guns, and bizarre weapons to greet their eager visitors from beyond the stars.
War broke out in an instant! The Tyranids' terrifying reproductive ability meant that as long as there was biomass, they could endlessly produce warriors aboard their hive ships.
But the Orks were no slouches either. As the war dragged on, surviving Orks grew bigger and stronger, and when Orks died, their blood and flesh would splatter on the ground—
—promptly sprouting into fields of mushrooms, from which endless new greenskins would emerge. For every Ork that fell, ten more would rise, and one of them would become even bigger, even more WAAAGH!
Tyranids had never lost at the numbers game, but against these greenskins, for the first time, they were repulsed by sheer numbers—the green tide overwhelmed the Tyranid swarm.
Both sides fought fiercely. The Orks evolved madly, and the Tyranid swarm, with a steady influx of biomass, grew ever larger.
The Imperium monitored the war closely. After Guilliman took over Imperial affairs, he immediately ordered the construction of the Unbreakable Line in the surrounding area. At this time, the Line was still being built.
Inquisitor Sahansun oversaw the construction. There were no agri-worlds or hive worlds here—only fortress worlds, with forge worlds supplying them with weapons.
The Imperium hoped that after the war, this line could hold back the Tyranids or the evolved Ork armies, but this was pure wishful thinking.
Rhodes, however, knew the final outcome. The ultimate victor of this war would be the Tyranids—the hive fleet would easily tear through the so-called unbreakable line and devour every human world in its path.
In the face of the Tyranid swarm, the Imperium's unbreakable line was as flimsy as paper.
The Imperium paid a terrible price, but still couldn't stop the thickest tendril of Leviathan.
At this point, the Ork prophet and chosen of Gork and Mork, Bonebreaker Saraka, had not yet arrived on the battlefield. The Orks were currently at a disadvantage.
The Tyranids were no pushovers. After their initial defeat, they immediately began targeting Ork leaders for precise strikes. Killed Hive Tyrants would be resurrected aboard hive ships.
The Tyranids began decapitation strikes—drawing out Ork bosses and warlords, then elite teams of Tyranid Warriors, Hive Tyrants, and Lictors would strike them down.
When bosses died, their boys immediately began vying for power, caring little that the Tyranids were attacking. Fighting is fighting, no matter who the enemy is. Until a new boss or warlord emerged, the boys would not stop fighting.
This gave the Tyranids the opening they needed. As the Orks fell into chaos, the Tyranid armies would appear en masse and drown the Orks.
With these tactics, the Tyranids repeatedly bested the Orks, pushing deep into the core worlds and making the Ork Overboss struggle.
The Warboss was the supreme ruler of Octarius, commanding all Ork warlords. In theory, he should be as strong as a Primarch, but the Orks of this era were a bit faded, far from their War of the Beast heyday!
But that was in the original timeline. The current Octarius war was playing out differently.
Countless greenskin worlds were being cleansed by the Tyranids, and the sudden arrival of Gromm Hellroar's fleet was hardly noticeable in the Ork empire, where every planet had over a billion Orks.
Countless giant Tyranid hive ships were devouring the biomass of worlds. But strangely—
Unlike before, no hive ship had lowered giant tendrils to extract a planet's biomass directly.
"Master, are these disgusting bugs my opponents? They don't look so tough." Gromm Hellroar stood atop his ship, gazing at the distant Tyranid hive devouring a planet.
The greenskins on the planet had already been nearly wiped out, with only a few clinging to life. It was just a matter of time before the Tyranids finished the job.
Most planets in the Octarius region were like this. Because of Rhodes' interference, the Tyranids had grown stronger, and after acquiring Red King's genes—
The Tyranids had somehow also acquired the genes of those monster warriors from the Dark Eldar. After consuming those genes, the Tyranids applied them immediately to their Lictors and Warriors.
Now, some Tyranid Lictors even had massive red wings, flying through the sky to strike the Orks—a clear sign of Melba's monster gene warriors.
The Tyranid Warriors wielded blades radiating icy cold, and could even spit freezing breath to turn Ork boys into ice statues—a power from the freeze monster Guigass.
Seeing this, Rhodes frowned. His psychic power was now terrifying, able to cover most of the Octarius sector.
Under his gaze, the Ork empire was collapsing. The Orks' regenerative power was strong, but facing the newly-upgraded Tyranids, they were outmatched.
This war was different from the original timeline. If he didn't intervene, the Orks might fall before the Unyielding Crusade even began.
"Master, these Tyranids are real gene-masters! They can't crack the high-level monster genes, but they found another way to strengthen their basic troops," Tartarus said.
"These Tyranids are indeed formidable, and it seems they're farming," said Mefilas.
Just as Rhodes had once farmed Orks, this time the Tyranids weren't extracting all the biomass from whole planets.
Instead, they let the Orks breed first, then sent in the hive armies to harvest them before they grew strong.
No way—did the Great Devourer see him farming Orks and decide to copy the method?
The Tyranids were deliberately cultivating an army, extracting every last drop of value from the sector.