On the dunes, the human and ork battle lines completely vanished, replaced by an enormous, constantly writhing meat grinder.
The boyz, with their superior height and strength, held an absolute advantage in one-on-one combat. Each swing of their seemingly crude choppas could easily cleave a player, along with his carapace armor, in half.
Without the leverage of a charge, a strong ork could often drag three or four players to hell with him even after being impaled by several bayonets.
The exchange ratio was extremely unfavorable to the players from the very beginning.
But the players also possessed the greatest advantage that the orks lacked — Joker, the supreme command node, was safely ensconced in the rear command post. As long as he did not die, the players could infinitely resurrect here and immediately re-enter the battlefield.
Death for them was merely a brief moment of darkness, followed by opening their eyes a few seconds later, grabbing their weapons, and rushing back into the fray.
One player fell, and two immediately stepped over his corpse to fill his void.
In the first hour after the melee began, the last heavy firepower support on the position completely fell silent. The ammunition boxes for the heavy bolters and autocannons were empty; the gunners, after firing their last shell, exchanged glances and then, in unison, pulled out their entrenching tools and self-defense pistols from under their seats.
"Damn it, it's our turn!"
"For the glorious melee! Charge!"
Now, everyone, except for Joker, who served as the resurrection node, was forced to join this glorious melee.
All tactics, strategies, and fire coordination were thrown to the winds by the orks and players on the field. Only one most basic truth remained on the entire battlefield:
Draw your knife, hack each other, and that's it!
This insane bloodbath began in the evening, completely devolved into a pure cold-weapon brawl by midnight, and then continued, and continued, hacking away. Time lost its meaning; only slaughter was eternal.
When Perditia's star struggled to rise again above the horizon, casting its pale light upon these blood-soaked dunes, the battle cries still did not cease for a moment.
Bodies piled up like mountains, green blood and red blood mixed together, staining the yellow sand a dark, dull brown.
In this utterly insane atmosphere, where everyone had killed until their eyes were red, only a handful of individuals still maintained their last vestiges of clarity.
Redeye, the warboss who led these orks, was one of them.
He stood atop a Squigg, surveying the entire battlefield. He saw his boyz constantly cutting down enemies, but those "ummie" seemed endless, pouring out of the trenches wave after wave. This battle was fought without any skill, purely a war of attrition. Redeye didn't care about the lives of his boyz, but he felt such attrition was "not exciting."
"WAAAGH!!"
A sky-shattering roar erupted from Redeye's throat; this was not a bugle call for a charge, but an order to retreat.
Receiving the order, the orks, under the curses and kicks of the Nobz, began grumbling and reluctantly disengaging from the enemies in front of them, retreating backward.
Except for those Madboyz who had already gone insane earlier from pondering profound questions such as "Why is my choppa red?", and continued to wildly swing their weapons regardless, most orks quickly disengaged from the players.
And the players, after frantically dealing with the last few Madboyz, instinctively wanted to continue the pursuit. After hacking all night, their combat will had climbed to its peak.
But soon, Joker's command, tinged with a hint of weariness yet still steady, was relayed through the command channel to everyone's ears.
"All units, cease pursuit! Immediately return to your respective positions, clear the trenches, and reorganize the defense line!"
Most players, upon hearing the order, stopped, panting heavily. But some players, who had completely gone berserk from hacking, ignored the command, roaring as they charged alone into the retreating ork army.
However, what greeted them was no longer ork choppas, but a dense hail of bullets. The orks, having disengaged from melee, immediately grabbed their beloved shooting weapons and frantically sprayed bullets at these reckless pursuers.
Those few players were instantly riddled with holes. A few seconds later, resurrected at the respawn point, the shock of death had calmed them down considerably, and they sullenly gave up their impulsiveness, obediently returning to their positions.
Behind the ork lines, the boyz who had just retreated from the battlefield were still in a state of excited. They waved their blood-stained choppas, showing off their recent kills to each other, occasionally letting out a few unintelligible roars.
Amidst the chaos, a boy, a few sizes beefier than his peers, squeezed next to Redeye and asked in a booming voice, "Sir, why did you make us retreat? I was having a blast hacking! My choppa isn't even dull yet!"
His question immediately drew agreement from the surrounding boyz.
"Yeah, Sir! Those ummie break with one touch, it's really exciting to hack them!"
"Give me another hour, and I can pull out all their guts!"
"WAAAGH! I haven't hacked enough yet!"
Listening to his subordinates' clamoring complaints, Redeye snorted, and the enormous sound wave instantly silenced all the noise. He looked down upon these simple-minded fighting units with disdain and said, "You lot, your brains can't fit anything else besides WAAAGH! and hacking people. You can only see small things like hacking each other with knives."
The boy who first asked scratched his head, revealing a simple, tusk-filled grin: "That's right! You're the Sir, so you must be the one to consider the big matters! We just need to follow you and hack, and that's it!"
"Heh heh," Redeye was quite pleased with the subtle flattery, two streams of hot air spewing from his large nostrils. He raised his thick arm and pointed towards the rear of the players' position in the distance, where, in the faint morning light, an unimaginably huge silhouette appeared, "Didn't you see that super big ship?"
The boyz looked in the direction Redeye pointed, squinting their small red eyes. At first, they thought it was a strange mountain, but when the light of the star outlined its metallic hull, they suddenly understood.
"Oh! Sir! Why is there such a big ship there?"
"My goodness, how much scrap metal must that thing have!"
"It's true, Sir Redeye, how did you find it? I looked for a long time and didn't see it!"
This flattery was quite clumsy compared to before, so Redeye wasn't too happy. He just said in a teaching tone, "I'm telling you, the purpose of my WAAAGH! this time is to seize that big ship! Then, using its scrap metal and parts, build a super, super big, super, super loud, super, super smoky, super, super shooty giant effigy!"
Redeye's description excited all the orks present; their breathing became heavy, and their eyes gleamed with desire and worship for the colossal war machine. They began to howl uncontrollably, banging their weapons on the ground and their chest plates, venting their fervor.
"Effigy! Effigy!"
"It has eight 'super's!"
"WAAAGH!!!"
Redeye nodded in satisfaction, raising his hand to silence the boyz' clamor: "So, I told you to retreat. Otherwise, if we kept hacking like just now, we wouldn't break through these ummie's defenses even in another month, all our boyz would die, and what would we use to build the effigy?"
At this moment, another ork raised a crucial question: "Then why didn't you go to the front, Sir? Those ummie don't seem like they could block your axe, do they?"
Redeye was silent for a moment. He slowly said, "Because I reckoned... maybe it was a revelation from Gork and Mork... if I recklessly charged in, something very terrible would happen!"
Upon hearing the words "Gork and Mork," all the orks, including the strongest Nobz, collectively gasped, their fervor instantly replaced by awe.
"Hiss—it's a revelation from Gork and Mork!"
"The Sir received a divine oracle!"
The boyz' gazes towards Redeye completely changed; it was a reverence akin to looking at a prophet. They all urged, "Then, Sir, you absolutely must not go! If Gork and Mork say no, then it's definitely no!"
"Right, right, right! Just let us go and hack the ummie! You just watch, Sir!"
"For the effigy! For WAAAGH!"