While user 114514's side narrowly passed through danger with the orbital bombardment as the turning point, Scorchwind's parallel battlefield fell into a completely different quagmire.
Scorchwind's personal ability remained impeccable, even more dazzling. He also chose the Assault Priest, and with extraordinary marksmanship and tactical awareness, the squad he led cut through the Genestealer clusters they encountered like a surgical knife.
He never hesitated to spend points, frequently calling in battlefield support—Chimera armored vehicles joining the cover, squads of Kastelan robots forming mobile fire fortresses, airdropped heavy bolters and plasma weapons giving him wings.
His points soared all the way up, with a score of 15,873 hanging high at the top of the leaderboard, almost more than twice the total score of the second place on the opposing side.
But the problem lay in the overall situation.
The teammates he was matched with were clearly of a much lower average level than those on user 114514's side.
The advance rhythm was chaotic, when capturing key points, they either hesitated and missed opportunities, or rashly advanced and got surrounded by ambushing Genestealers.
Scorchwind had to repeatedly split his forces to put out fires, even abandoning optimal routes to fill gaps in the defensive line.
He felt he wasn't commanding a coordinated offensive, but playing a high-difficulty game of "whack-a-mole," rushing to wherever smoke appeared.
"Point B! Point B is lost again! What are you doing?!" Scorchwind rarely raised his voice in squad chat, his usually calm tone carrying a hint of suppressed irritation.
"I marked movement in the flank passage for you, why didn't you pre-aim? Do you have to wait until they're up your ass to realize it hurts?"
"And you, Engineer! I told you to set up auto-turrets at the A point intersection, where the hell did you put them? How much area can that dead angle cover? Huh?!"
"Assault group, don't just charge with your heads down! Look at the map! Look at your teammates' positions! You've lost coordination with my assault squad, you know that?!"
The channel fell silent, with only heavy breathing and sporadic gunfire in the background.
Being matched with a top expert like Scorchwind, ordinary players would either be excited or nervous, and misplaying was common, but collective "sleepwalking" like today's was indeed rare.
The chat was filled with "hahahaha" and schadenfreude:
"Scorchwind can't carry, just can't carry!"
"Teammates: We're bad, but there's a lot of us!"
"LOL, unrivaled on the scoreboard, but victory teetering on the edge."
"Scorchwind's blood pressure spiking live."
Scorchwind took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down. Complaining was useless.
He re-examined the battle situation, abandoned the fantasy of perfect coordination, and adopted a more aggressive strategy: he himself led the most elite assault squad as the absolute spearhead, sparing no cost to tear through the defensive line and head straight for the lower level STC signal source.
As for the flanks and rear, he could only hope his teammates would "try their best" to hold them off, and that the various support units he called in would play some role.
This was a gamble.
A bet that his spear was sharp enough to pierce the enemy's heart before his own battle line completely collapsed.
The battle became exceptionally brutal and chaotic.
Scorchwind's assault squad was like a raging drill bit, advancing with difficulty through layer upon layer of Genestealer resistance, leaving behind a bloody path paved with servitor wreckage and xenos corpses.
Meanwhile, other battle lines kept reporting emergencies, with Genestealers using the complex terrain to bloom everywhere, dividing and devouring the scattered Adeptus Mechanicus squads one by one.
Time passed mercilessly.
When Scorchwind's assault squad finally fought their way, battered and bruised, to the edge of the hive city's lower levels, the campaign time had just crossed the two-hour threshold.
At that very instant—
All Adeptus Mechanicus players on the hive city battlefield, regardless of which level or corner they were in, had their helmet communication channels, and even their skeletal audio implants, forcibly interrupted by a grand, cold electronic synthesized voice filled with data stream noise:
"Warning! Large-scale warp fluctuation detected! Realspace anchor anomaly!"
"Orbital observation confirmed—main Hive Fleet has reached near-earth orbit! Number... cannot be accurately counted! They are breaking through fleet interception!"
"By the Omnissiah... these blasphemous organics defile the sacred realm of the machine!
All ground units, attention, the Hive Fleet is airdropping biomass pods to the surface!
Estimated landing coordinates marked!
Highest priority: accelerate STC fragment recovery before the swarm establishes scale on the ground! Purge all organic filth! For the Machine God!"
The Archmagos's voice rarely carried a fluctuation that could be interpreted as urgency.
Almost simultaneously, all players assigned to the Genestealer faction suddenly felt a buzz in their minds, violently connected by a vast, chaotic, hungry collective will that made their souls tremble!
It wasn't a sound, but a tremor acting directly on the consciousness level—countless hungry mandibles shrieking, the thunderous friction of carapaces, the viscous echo of biomass writhing and proliferating!
A vague yet incomparably majestic concept branded itself on the depths of their consciousness:
"Hive Mind... descending..."
"Tyranids... answering the call..."
"Counterattack... devour... evolve..."
"The Hive... is with us..."
The psychic impact was so intense that several players acting as Genestealer squad leaders lost control of their characters for a few seconds.
Immediately after, the ground began to shake violently! Not from explosions, but from the dull thunderous sound of some heavy objects hitting the surface at high speed and embedding themselves deeply!
Through the hive city's damaged dome and observation ports, players watched in horror as countless meteors trailing viscous green or purple tails streaked across the sky, ignoring the Adeptus Mechanicus fleet's intercepting fire, hammering down like raindrops all over the hive city, especially in areas controlled by the Adeptus Mechanicus and along paths leading to the STC!
"Biomass drop pods!" shouted a well-informed player in the channel.
Scorchwind looked up and saw a massive meteorite seemingly composed of chitin and writhing flesh thunder through the factory roof not far ahead, embedding itself deep into the lower structures. From its shattered shell, densely packed terrifying figures could be vaguely seen, rapidly activating and expanding.
He knew that the final, and most chaotic and desperate stage had begun.
The Hive Fleet had arrived. The shadow of the Tyranids enveloped the battlefield.
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