The fortress housing the Regimental Command Post had a ground section that was a magnificent stronghold, worthy of inclusion in the 'Imperial Standard Fortifications Manual'. Its walls, cast from a mix of plasteel and concrete, were dozens of meters thick, with countless heavy artillery barrels protruding from firing ports, forming a steel thicket.
At this moment, this impregnable fortress was roaring.
Almost all of its firepower was unleashed upon the slowly approaching behemoth—the Norn Emissary—yet, it had not the slightest effect.
The flashes of explosions bloomed futilely on the creature's smooth carapace, energy beams merely stirred up invisible ripples of energy before being deflected, and solid projectiles bounced off the carapace the instant they made contact. The Norn Emissary didn't even slow its pace, as if merely experiencing an insignificant summer shower.
Suddenly, the Norn Emissary stopped. The massive, grotesque neural tissue growth on its back began to glow with an ominous, pale blue light.
A psychic lightning bolt, as thick as a barrel and imbued with destructive energy, shot out from that neural tissue!
"Boom—!!!"
The psychic lightning accurately struck the front of the fortress. There was no violent explosion, only a grating sound of dissolution. The impregnable composite wall melted and vaporized like butter cut by a hot knife in the face of that pure psychic energy. In just one strike, a third of the entire fortress was forcibly collapsed, revealing twisted rebar and burning structures within.
The Norn Emissary immediately charged towards the massive breach.
"Move! Block that gap!" Accompanied by roaring commands, several leman russ tanks drove out from a hidden door on the fortress's flank, attempting to fill the breach in the defenses with their steel bodies. They fired almost point-blank at the Norn Emissary's body, the roar of their main cannons deafening, and the smoke and fire of the close-range explosions instantly engulfed the entire area.
However, when the smoke cleared, some of the leman russ tanks had been flattened into iron pancakes by a giant foot, while others were torn into burning components by sharp limbs. And the Norn Emissary emerged from the center of the explosion, completely unscathed.
"Can a human even fight this thing?" A leman russ crew member, lucky to be alive, crawled out of the twisted turret wreckage, covered in blood. Before he could react further to the sight before him, he was overwhelmed by the Tyranid swarm that followed the Norn Emissary, uttering this last complaint before being trampled into a bloody pulp.
The Norn Emissary continued its advance, its objective clear and firm. Along the way, the Helldivers tried every method to hinder it. Coordinated volleys of lasguns, autocannons, and heavy bolters were like an itch, while powerful melta and plasma weapons couldn't even get within effective range due to the obstruction of the swarm. The lesser Tyranids accompanying the Norn Emissary formed an insurmountable barrier with their flesh and blood.
"I feel like we're the army in some monster disaster movie," a Helldivers player, hiding behind cover, complained as he watched the Norn Emissary advance unstoppably. "The kind of cannon fodder specifically used as a stepping stone for the monster, to highlight how powerful the Ultraman or giant robot that finally defeats the monster is with our incompetence."
Another Helldivers beside him heard this, gave a wry smile, and pulled the bolt of his grenade launcher.
"But unfortunately, there's no Ultraman here, and the Titan Legions have gone to defend Macragge," his voice was unusually clear amidst the continuous explosions. "Here, there is only us: the Helldivers."
As an extension of the hive mind on the battlefield, the Norn Emissary itself had no independent thought; it was merely a perfect bio-weapon, faithfully executing commands from a higher existence. However, at this moment, the hive mind, perceiving through this body, felt a hint of... confusion.
That psychic strike was precisely calculated, targeting the area with the densest life signals beneath this fortress. One strike was enough to liquefy most of the organic matter inside. And the accompanying swarm had completely engulfed the torn defensive breach, clearing out all resistance in the upper structures.
Logically, there should only be a few hundred scattered survivors left in the fortress, at most a thousand. But for some reason, it could still clearly perceive thousands of life signals, just as it had before it launched that destructive psychic attack, undiminished.
What happened?
Yes, the swarm had indeed rushed into the internal passages of the fortress. However, human resistance had not been weakened as expected. On the contrary, in the narrow underground passages, their defiance became more intense than ever before.
The Helldivers, with nowhere left to retreat, turned every corridor and every corner into a battlefield, their firepower, compressed to the extreme, became even denser and more lethal.
The roar of heavy bolters was amplified to a deafening level in the confined spaces, and the high-temperature melta energy was enough to instantly vaporize all enemies in an entire corridor. The Tyranid swarm's proud numerical advantage became a hindrance here, making it difficult for them to advance even an inch.
The hive mind realized that as long as the organization remained, these humans would not give up resistance. It decided to stop wasting time on clearing these insignificant "cells" and instead immediately destroy this "brain" that was still stubbornly resisting.
A new command surged through the Norn Emissary's nervous system like an electric current. The giant beast instantly ignored everything around it—whether it was the autocannons futilely firing at it or the Helldivers battling the swarm in the passages. Its massive body transformed into a siege ram, directly smashing through several inner walls.
"Rumble!"
Accompanied by an earth-shattering roar, the Norn Emissary arrived directly above the Regimental Command Post. It let out a piercing shriek, and its massive, scythe-like forelimbs violently plunged into the thick reinforced concrete ceiling. With a grating tearing sound, it forcibly ripped open the entire command post's ceiling!
Dust and rubble rained down, revealing the command hall below, flickering with red alert lights.
Then, the Norn Emissary's massive, compound eye, made of countless tiny crystalline facets, saw the target it was searching for.
The Regimental Commander stood before the holographic sand table. He did not hide, nor did he pick up a weapon. Amidst the piercing alarm and the thunderous collapse, he merely calmly looked up, meeting the non-human compound eyes with a tranquil gaze.
The next moment, the hidden trump card buried beneath the command post's foundation, prepared for this very instant—a tactical nuclear bomb—was immediately detonated.
And the Norn Emissary was at the very epicenter of this man-made sun's rise!