The roar of battle came quickly and left just as fast. When the last genestealers hybrid was split in half by a chainsword, a strange silence fell once more in the narrow passage, leaving only the heavy breathing of the players and the low hum of chainsword engines idling.
Some players casually switched off their chainsword engines, or wiped their combat knives, stained with xeno blood, on corpses before returning them to their sheaths. Other players checked their status, and finding themselves missing limbs, with severely reduced attributes, they decisively pulled out their pistols, aimed at their temples, and pulled the trigger. A flash of white light appeared, and a few seconds later, a perfectly intact Astra Militarum soldier resurrected next to Cain.
After catching their breath, everyone's gaze, whether intentional or not, focused on the massive figure standing in the center of the pile of corpses.
Cain, and the bloody carpet at his feet, almost entirely created by him alone.
After a brief silence, the battlefield erupted in a mix of exclamations and wails.
"Holy crap, these stats. They're absolutely insane!" one player exclaimed in genuine admiration, looking at an Aberrants smashed into a meat patty, then at Cain.
"Pure wheelchair, I tell you. We ordinary mortals can only hope to reach the lower limits of Lord Ogryn even after a lifetime of effort," another player leaned against the wall, his voice filled with the weariness of one who has seen through the illusions of life.
"Damn it, where's the delete account button for this game?! I'm starting a new account, and I won't log in until I roll an ogryn!" Even a player who had just reset his character declared himself broken on the spot.
The players' complaints were not without reason. In terms of combat intelligence, each of them was not far behind Cain; they were all grunts who had fought and died together through mountains of corpses and seas of blood, so there was no reason for a significant disparity.
They could all assess enemy threats, find weaknesses in attacks, and discover opportunities for survival amidst a hail of gunfire.
But alas, the ogryn's racial stats were simply too high.
This disparity was despair-inducing. They might hack and slash two or three times with a combat knife and still not completely sever the arm bone of an Aberrants, while Cain, with a simple, unadorned iron club, could smash the same monster thirty centimeters shorter. The chasm in basic attributes like strength, stamina, and organ vitality simply could not be bridged by so-called combat skills.
"Seriously," someone said, "these stats are comparable to an astartes, aren't they?"
"Not that weak."
"Not that weak."
"Oh, it's an astartes, I thought it was an ogryn with steroids."
"Honestly, an ogryn definitely can't beat a regular astartes one-on-one, but if all one hundred and twenty of us were ogryns, even a Chaos space marines kill team would be stunned…"
Hearing the other players, Cain, as the squad leader, chuckled a couple of times, proudly stating, "It was luck, good luck."
He patted his thick chest with his large, fan-like hand, making a dull "thump-thump" sound: "Before, I couldn't kill that pureblood genestealer purely because I wasn't skilled enough. Now that I'm skilled, I can handle ten more. One genestealer, one club, and I'll embed them all in the wall so deep they can't be pried off!"
His half-joking, half-serious bragging immediately drew a new round of reactions from the players.
"Since you put it that way, what else can I say? Just type RIP in the chat, I guess."
"RIP genestealers, this person is awesome."
The players' voices were full of envy, jealousy, and hatred, but they were helpless. In the original warhammer lore, the ogryn abhuman race at least had the critical limitation of Extremely Low Intelligence to balance their terrifying physical prowess.
After all, a species that can't even count from one to nine clearly cannot be expected to shoulder significant battlefield responsibilities.
Now, in the game, players naturally couldn't truly become imbeciles. Their organs of thought and souls—in fact, whether Earthlings even have souls in the warhammer worldview, or rather, souls in the warp, Terrabyte was still trying to verify—still safely resided in their gaming pods on Earth, merely transmitting operational signals to this fleshy body in another universe through Terrabyte's authority.
This led to ogryn players becoming a complete BUG: possessing the combat intelligence and reaction capabilities of human veterans, while also having the terrifying strength and physique of an ogryn, which is even stronger than an astartes. With this sole weakness patched up, all that remained was pure power.
In fact, if he wished, Cain could, by virtue of the extraordinary energy and cognitive abilities brought by his player soul, become an excellent battlefield commander… but an ogryn as a battlefield commander would be incredibly strange from any perspective, and Cain himself had no desire for promotion.
According to Cain: "I'm doing great as a grunt. What do you mean by transferring me to commander? If it weren't for the company commander's designation, I wouldn't even want to be a squad leader. I haven't had enough of chopping people yet!"
Cain's words also reflected the general sentiment of many ordinary players: they simply didn't want to be promoted. They saw Robert's daily contemplation, the marching routes, battlefield planning, exp application, tactical methods... all of which required meticulous thought from a commander.
Ultimately, most players were there to play the game. After getting accustomed to the harsh environment of the hive city, the extreme realism of pulling a trigger and wielding a long blade offered a primal and direct pleasure.
Perhaps a minority of players enjoyed being commanders, savoring the feeling of strategizing and winning battles from afar, but that was ultimately a minority. If you forced most players into a promotion, they wouldn't even be happy about it.
It should be known that there is no strict hierarchy among players, nor has there ever been any deeply ingrained recognition of authority.
We obey your command because we trust your ability; we grant you the power to command us, and you must bear the corresponding responsibility; if your poor command leads to a collapse of the battle, then be prepared to be flamed into oblivion.
Not to mention, this game also has friendly fire, and once conflicts escalate, the situation could very well go beyond mere verbal disputes.
In a sense, this is also a manifestation of responsibility: players clearly know the limits of their abilities, what they want to do, and where they should be. Therefore, they never seek power they shouldn't have or don't want.
And whether in the past, present, or future, in this dark and cruel universe, there have been far too many people who couldn't see their own place.
Whether it was Magnus, who considered himself exceptionally intelligent, or the mad Cardinal Vandire, corrupted by power, or those High Lords who still tried to seize power and resist Guilliman after the Regent's return... all they brought to the Imperium of Man was suffering, and more suffering.