The light and heat of the orbital bombardment faded, but its aftershock lingered like an invisible hand squeezing the throat of the entire mid-hive.
The blast's epicenter no longer existed.
In its place lay only a massive crater with molten glass-like edges, plunging dozens of meters deep. At its bottom, slowly cooling metal and rock formed a dark crimson and black mixture, like a vicious scar burned into the earth itself.
The once-labyrinthine network of pipes, collapsed building ruins, and shadowy lairs where Genestealers had lurked... everything had been erased by that pure violence from beyond the stars, reduced to basic atomic dust that scattered on the wind, adding a pungent, strange odor to the already foul air, a mixture of ozone, molten slag, and completely carbonized organic matter.
The shockwave's ripples spread far outward. Passages near the edge twisted into pretzel shapes, walls covered with spiderweb cracks.
Loosened metal components and concrete chunks crashed down intermittently, kicking up even more dust.
The surviving Genestealers seemed stunned by this sudden calamity.
That omnipresent, skin-crawling hissing fell briefly silent.
I Will Carry You's Tech-Priest squad had been not far from the blast's edge at the time.
The violent tremors made her character stumble and crash to the ground, her screen shaking wildly, her headphones flooded with sharp ringing and the thunderous sound of collapsing structures.
When she scrambled back up, covered in dust and debris, and saw that instantly cleared area on the tactical map along with the system notification scrolling through the channel reading "Orbital bombardment successful," her first reaction wasn't fear, but an almost liberating euphoria.
"Hell yeah! That's what I'm talking about!" she shouted into her stream, her voice cracking with excitement.
"Should've done this ages ago! Playing hide-and-seek with those freaks in the pipes was about to give me a heart attack!"
She'd lost two servitors, crushed by falling debris. But she didn't care at all right now.
She immediately ordered her remaining servitors and her loyal Skitarii soldier to start repairing nearby support structures shaken loose by the blast, while advancing toward that newly created, open "safe zone."
"You guys see that? That's what I call strategic vision!" I Will Carry You boasted to her chat while clumsily directing a servitor to use its welding torch to reinforce a tilted support column.
"Sure, I didn't call in the bombardment myself, but this is what situational awareness looks like! Now the path is clear, we can... uh, we can follow the pros and push forward!"
The chat naturally didn't let her off easy:
"Liora: Getting carried is still winning!"
"The art of making riding coattails sound so refreshingly noble."
"Everyone else's orbital strike opens the way, Liora's busy fixing crooked pillars... truly a Tech-Priest, staying on brand."
"But seriously, those effects, that physics destruction, Medici really knows how to do large-scale scenes."
Indeed, the visual and physical effects of the orbital bombardment were nothing short of spectacular.
Not just the total destruction of the center, but the gradual, energy-decay-compliant damage representation at the edges, and the sustained falling debris, smoke, and heat wave effects afterward, all made every witnessing player feel what "dimensional superiority" truly meant.
Even those still critical of Medici's dark setting had to admit his obsessive attention to battlefield atmosphere.
However, breaking through didn't equal victory.
After the initial chaos, the Genestealers, driven by the Genestealer Patriarch's instinct, surged forth in an even more frenzied and scattered manner, pouring from every crack and every incompletely sealed pipe around the bombardment zone's perimeter, trying to block the Adeptus Mechanicus's final push toward the hive's depths.
The battle shifted from positional defense back to brutal, chaotic floor-by-floor clearance, only this time the attackers had a solid staging area and a clear breakthrough point.
The real breakthrough spearhead remained User 114514.
Before the orbital bombardment's smoke had fully settled, he'd already switched back to Assault Tech-Priest, spent his remaining points to replenish some servitors, and led a revitalized strike team like a red-hot knife through cooling butter, rapidly pushing downward along the relatively safe corridor the bombardment had carved out.
His tactics were clear and ruthless: don't bother sweeping every corner, just pierce straight toward the suspected STC signal source core at maximum speed.
When encountering small enemy forces, eliminate them quickly with superior firepower.
When facing heavier resistance or complex terrain, call in squad-level artillery support or smoke cover without hesitation, never getting bogged down.
He pushed the Assault Tech-Priest's mobility and firepower advantages to their limit.
The squad operating like clockwork under his precise commands became the deadliest thorn driven into the Genestealers' defensive system.
Other player teams, including Scorchwind's elite squad, took on the tasks of securing corridors, clearing flanking threats, and relieving pressure on the periphery.
I Will Carry You worked among them, fully leveraging the Tech-Priest's "core competency" by quickly setting up temporary defensive works and auto-turrets at key nodes User 114514's strike team passed through, providing somewhat minimal but appreciated rear support for the front lines.
She actually earned quite a few "rear security" points, which had her grinning ear to ear.
Time ticked away.
The two-hour deadline drew closer, and the low, rumbling hum emanating from the hive's depths, as if acting directly on the soul itself, grew increasingly distinct—the terrifying prelude to the approaching Hive Fleet.
The bloody meat grinder reached fever pitch in the final layers leading to the bottom.
The Genestealers' resistance showed final desperation, with even larger, heavier-armored mutants appearing. The Adeptus Mechanicus's advance paid for every step with servitor wreckage and Skitarii blood.
Finally, at one hour and thirty-nine minutes into the campaign, User 114514's strike team, at the cost of their last two Skitarii soldiers and nearly all their servitors, broke through the final passage defended personally by the Genestealer Patriarch, a cavern corridor covered in viscous biological creep, and reached a massive spherical chamber filled with ancient mechanical equipment.
At the chamber's center, a faintly blue-glowing metal cube of extraordinarily intricate construction floated quietly within a force field—the STC fragment.
"Recovery team!"
User 114514ordered tersely over the channel.
A specialized recovery squad of Support and Tech-Priests, already on standby, rushed in swiftly and began cracking the force field, executing the recovery protocol.
The last Genestealers launched a desperate counterattack but were blocked firmly by the player main force following close behind.
One hour and forty minutes exactly.
[STC Fragment Recovery Complete!]
[Primary Objective Achieved!]
[Campaign Concluded!]
[Victor: Adeptus Mechanicus Skitarii!]
A solemn, cold victory hymn with obvious mechanical synthesis styling rang out, replacing the hive's disturbing hum and screeches.
The surviving players stared at the victory notification on their screens, and though the casualties had been terrible, they'd ultimately achieved their strategic objective.
Complex emotions welled up—relief at victory, silent acknowledgment of heavy losses, lingering dread of the dark setting, but also thorough satisfaction from this intensely hardcore experience.
User 114514 stood in the now-empty hall where the STC fragment had been recovered, accompanied only by his lone Assault Tech-Priest and wreckage from both sides covering the floor.
He quietly gazed at where the fragment had floated, then looked up, as if he could see through the thick rock layers and hive structure to the shadow of the Hive Fleet approaching above, but possibly turning away now that the mission was complete.
I Will Carry You looked at the impressive support points and "tactical contribution" rating under her "Tech-Priest" class, grinning broadly, having completely forgotten how she'd been screaming in terror earlier.
And every viewer watching the streams knew clearly: this victory, rather than belonging to the Adeptus Mechanicus, was carved out by that player with the ID "User 114514," who with cold judgment, precise command, and the decisive call for orbital bombardment at the critical moment, had hacked open a bloody path forward for the entire attacking force.
۞۞۞۞
~ Support & Read 15+ Advanced Chapters on Patreon
https://p-atreon.com/lost_magus
(Just remove the hyphen to access Patreon normally.)