Perditia Governor's Palace, Strategic Command Room.
On the holographic sand table, the red ribbon representing the defense line of death continued to flash violently. Every flicker signified the loss of hundreds of lives.
Joker stood before the desk, reporting the situation within the Legion of the Helldivers to Governor Robert with a grave expression.
"Governor, although our current losses remain within a controllable range and the Commissar players intervened promptly—preventing a massive wave of player departures—we must address a subtle underlying mood that is spreading." Joker pointed to a curve on his datapad.
"This high-pressure meat-grinder scenario, where players die immediately upon spawning, is a form of severe psychological torture for anyone. Even the most hardcore gamers will reach a breaking point after dying to inexplicable gas or artillery fire dozens of times in a row right after respawning."
Robert put down his documents and frowned slightly. As a veteran gamer himself, he understood the feeling all too well. Miserable gameplay was one thing, but the deep sense of powerlessness was what truly broke people.
"We need to take this seriously. Ideally, we give players no reason to quit," Robert said, tapping his fingers on the desktop as his mind raced. Within seconds, drawing on his deep experience as both a manager and a player, he formulated a series of initiatives.
"Here's the plan, Joker." A sharp light gleamed in Robert's eyes. "I'll contact Archer immediately and tell him to set aside his current work to forge a hundred set of cool Void Armor! Make them look as flashy as possible.
Announce that after the thirty-day defense campaign ends, we will tally merit points, award these limited-edition suits to the top one hundred players, and hold a server-wide public ceremony for the occasion!"
The more he spoke, the more viable the plan seemed, and his speech quickened: "Also, I noticed plenty of high-heat videos on the forums showing Sicarius fighting Typhus. Have the propaganda team chop up a polished highlight reel to post on the forums with the most hyped BGM you can find. Design a custom medal too—let me think—call it the 'Perditia Watcher', to be issued to all players who stay through the entire battle. Let me think about what else—"
Robert listed off various incentives. These were proven strategies from his past experience, methods that had worked time and again on players.
However, contrary to his expectations, Joker did not show much enthusiasm.
The leader of the Helldivers remained silent for a moment before gently shaking his head.
"Those are great ideas, and I'm sure they will have some effect. But I don't think they are enough."
"Not enough?" Robert paused, looking at him with confusion.
"Yes, not enough." Joker walked over to the window, staring at the sky illuminated by the fires of war outside. "Those are conventional approaches—giving players honor and placing the Helldivers high up on a pedestal.
That might have worked before when people would grind themselves to the bone for a meaningless title like 'top player'. But things are different now. We are facing a desperate battleground with extreme pressure, where players can die immediately after respawning. Raising them up too high will only make the fall worse if they slip, leaving them with a hollow feeling of 'what am I even grinding so hard for?'"
Joker turned around, his eyes fixed intently on Robert: "We also need to make the Helldivers take root in the soil."
Robert repeated the phrase thoughtfully: "How do you plan to do that?"
"You know that in our Solar System today [1]—the real one, not Holy Terra—we've entered an era of infinite energy," Joker said softly. "Survival ceased to be a concern for young people in our world a long time ago. The new generation raised in that environment cares far more about realizing their self-worth than about what they eat, what they wear, or what vanity titles they earn."
Joker paused before continuing: "They want to do something genuinely meaningful with their lives. They crave being needed. They want their sacrifices to be more than a ticking metric—they want to know that they actually changed something."
"You mean—" Robert seemed to grasp his point.
"We need to show them what they are protecting," Joker walked back to the desk. "To current players, the civilians of Perditia might just look like NPCs or background decor. We have to break that barrier."
Joker continued: "We need to set up a feedback loop. Not just system kill notifications, but real feedback from 'people'. For instance, organize the hive civilians to build a Wall of Heroes for the fallen Helldivers, even if it only lists their callsigns; have rescued children write thank-you letters in crude handwriting to send randomly to players fighting on the frontlines; let every player know that because they held out in a trench for five extra minutes, a train filled with women and children managed to evacuate the danger zone safely."
Robert's eyes lit up.
"We need to break down this grand narrative into small, moving moments," Joker said, clenching his fist. "When a player realizes their death wasn't meaningless—that their sacrifice bought the survival of a real person, earned a genuine 'thank you', or placed a small bouquet of wildflowers at their headstone—that sense of fulfillment carries far more weight than a hundred sets of Void Armor, and it's far harder to walk away from."
"That is what it means to 'take root in the soil'," Joker concluded. "Let their blood genuinely flow into this land and merge with its people. When that happens, they won't just be visitors playing a game anymore; they will be the guardian deities of Perditia."
Robert took a deep breath and nodded heavily: "Well said! Joker, you have full authority over this project. Ask for whatever resources you need. We will make every member of the Helldivers understand exactly what they are fighting for, and why they die!"
---
Perditia Primary Hive, Transport Hub Four.
Piercing alarms echoed beneath the steel dome. A group of freshly respawned and re-equipped players from the Helldivers walked toward a Chimera armored troop carrier, laughing and joking along the way. Most were still discussing their previous deaths or reading strategies on the forums. To them, this was just another routine corpse run.
Until they saw the scene before them.
At some point, dense crowds had gathered on both sides of the transport corridor. They were hive civilians clad in rough recycled fabric workwear, but right now, a light burned in their eyes that felt entirely unfamiliar to the players.
"Is this a cinematic? Did someone hit the skip button?" A Helldiver froze, his visor twitching as if searching his heads-up display for an interactive prompt.
This was no scripted cutscene. The crowd was surging forward, a living tide of flesh and bone.
Confronted by this sudden, unscripted outbreak of humanity, players who were usually bloodthirsty, unyielding, and reckless enough to charge Nurgle daemons with entrenching shovels found themselves completely out of formation. They stood rooted to the spot as hive-civilians pressed synthetic rations—the only food they possessed—and crude, handcrafted charms into their heavy gauntlets.
A little girl wearing a tattered floral dress broke through the line, running up to a heavy-armored Helldiver. Tiptoeing, she raised a wreath above her helmet, painstakingly woven from scrap-metal strips and a few extremely rare, real flowers.
"Mister! For Democracy and the Emperor!" The girl's voice was crisp and tender, though weighed down by a thick hive-slum accent. "This flower is blessed! You have to chop those damned traitors into eighteen pieces! Pull out all their guts!"
"Ah... right. Copy that. Eighteen pieces, not a single piece less." The player accepted the wreath in a daze, awkwardly looping it over his carapace armor. An absurd, unfamiliar warmth welled up beneath his chest plate.
On the other side of the convoy, another Helldiver had his hand seized by a deeply wrinkled old man.
"Sir... look, our transport is departing..." The player felt a flash of awkwardness and tried to pull back, but the old man held on with astonishing strength. These were the hands of a man who had labored in the dark sumps his entire life, rough as tree bark.
"Go, son! Give them hell!" The old man's eyes were bloodshot, his voice trembling with years of suppressed emotion. "My grandfather used to tell me about the old days. Back then, when the heretics came, we were slaughtered like cattle. Countless familiar faces were butchered, eaten, or hung on the walls as grotesque trophies... Back then, he thought that was just how life was meant to be."
The old man stared intently into the dark lenses of the player's gas mask. "Sometimes he even wondered—he had faithfully worshipped the Emperor since birth, never harboring a single illegal thought, so why did he meet such a fate? Had light abandoned his people?"
"Truth be told, even if those heretics and xenos hadn't come, would our lives have been any better? We'd just spend ten years choking in pitch-black factories before dying in a gang war, or coughing to death on the roadside from sump-lung. Just like maggots. Nobody cares whether a maggot lives or dies!"
The surrounding roar of the crowd seemed to quiet down, several nearby squad members pausing in their tracks.
"But then you came! The Helldivers dropped in, and everything changed!" Tears welled up in the old man's eyes, brimming with unadulterated gratitude. "We were relocated to mid-hive sectors with actual sunlight! We got to drink clean water free of radiation! My grandson was even allowed into the public park, and we can sleep at night without worrying if our heads will be off our shoulders by morning!"
"My grandfather kept saying on his deathbed that the Helldivers are our ultimate saviors! But there's no need to keep repeating it—it's a truth every citizen on Perditia knows better than anything!"
The old man pointed to a tarnished brass badge pinned to his chest and straightened his stooped spine. "My son joined the Planetary Defense Force. He died fighting cultists. But I don't regret it, and I am proud of him! He died protecting Perditia so that none of this would be stolen from us again... so we wouldn't return to the dark ages!"
"My grandson is in the PDF now, too. Last time, I couldn't wait for my son to return. But this time, I will definitely wait for my grandson—and for all of you!"
The player felt a lump form in his throat. Stopping his attempt to pull away, he gripped the old man's calloused hand tightly in return and gave a heavy, deliberate nod.
"Don't worry, old man. We liberated this world once. Nobody is taking it away from us."
"All personnel, mount up! Tactical movement, immediate!"
An urgent order crackled over the vox-array. Time was up; the march was beginning.
The Helldivers boarded the armored troop carriers with a heavy, complex weight in their chests. This was no longer just running a routine op or competing over kill counts. Those desperate, hopeful eyes acted like invisible chains, binding them tightly to this soil and to these people.
Engines roared as heavy treads kicked up clouds of dust. The civilians remained in place, waving frantically as their guardians receded into the haze.
Just then, several players serving as Squad Commissars exchanged glances over the local channel and began to sing.
It was a soaring, steady melody that rang out exceptionally clear against the grind of diesel engines.
"When danger threatens our motherland, the bugle calls the soldiers to assemble..."
At first, only those few sang, their voices thin against the wind.
"My army, you stand guard at every moment..."
"You are my destiny, you are my love!"
Gradually, more and more players caught the emotional current. They remembered the little girl's scrap-metal wreath, the old man's tears, and the vast, living city breathing around them. A fierce, collective military honor surged through the transport bays.
"A soldier's fate is ordinary, yet steadfast..."
"This love is harsh, yet faithful!"
The song spread from vehicle to vehicle, linking through open vox-channels into an unstoppable chorus across the entire armored column.
"We prepare ourselves for arduous battles..."
"We all, we all have endured countless combat marches!"
"From soldier to marshal, we are one family! One family!"
In this moment, they were no longer just players running a simulation. They were the Helldivers of Perditia, the Emperor's sword, and the people's shield.
Their voices grew louder, pouring out every drop of resolve rooted in the dirt, piercing through the thick metallic plates of the hive city straight into the skies above.
"We all, we all have endured countless combat marches!"
"From soldier to marshal, we are one family! One family!"
The Helldiver who had received the wreath looked down through his targeting eyepieces at the crude garland hanging across his chest. It was made from scrap metal strips with carefully smoothed edges, wrapped around a few wild flowers that were more precious than gold on this toxic world. The petals still carried a hint of warmth from the little girl's hand, radiating a delicate fragrance named hope inside a compartment that reeked of engine grease and sweat.
He reached out, cupping his heavy gauntlet around the delicate stem, terrified that his movements in the upcoming drop might crush it.
From this moment on, "Defend Perditia" was no longer just a mission objective.
[1] 2099 A.D