"FUCK!"
[Poor Men Buy Cars, Rich Men Buy Watches, Billionaires Play Boonie Bears Run] rolled behind cover, gasping for breath.
"THESE ASTARTES ARE FUCKING MONSTERS!"
"ONE SHOT, ONE KILL!"
[Your Salt, My Vinegar] stared at the battlefield.
His mind raced.
This isn't working.
The Luna Wolves were simply too accurate.
Their lightweight power armor couldn't withstand direct hits from bolters.
And every time one of their players went down, it took at least thirty seconds to run back from the distant respawn point.
Thirty seconds.
That was more than enough time for the Luna Wolves to kill another thirty of them.
He gritted his teeth and roared into the channel.
"EVERYONE! SWITCH TO MELTA CANNONS AND PLASMA CANNONS!"
"LET'S SEE HOW THEY HANDLE REAL FIREPOWER!"
The moment he finished speaking, brilliant white light erupted from different positions throughout the ruins.
Melta cannons were warming up.
Electrical arcs crackled around charging plasma weapons.
Lone Wolf's pupils contracted.
"OH, FUCK!"
He immediately shouted a warning.
"THEY'RE SWITCHING TO HEAVY WEAPONS! WATCH OUT!"
The next instant, more than a dozen blazing white beams shot into the wreckage.
Wherever they passed, concrete pillars melted almost instantly.
One elite Luna Wolf had barely exposed half his body from behind cover when three melta cannons simultaneously targeted him.
He instinctively rolled backward.
But the incoming shots were too fast.
The first beam grazed his shoulder plate, melting an enormous hole through the wall behind him.
The second struck the path he was rolling toward, forcing him to change direction.
And the third...
BOOOOM!
A blinding white explosion erupted through the ruins.
The warrior's white breastplate melted almost instantly, exposing the mangled flesh beneath.
His body was hurled backward, slamming into a broken pillar before slowly sliding to the ground.
Blood poured from the hole in his chest, spreading across his white power armor in a horrifying crimson stain.
Sejanus felt his heart seize.
He recognized that face.
It was a warrior he'd personally promoted from the recruit barracks.
A veteran who had accompanied him through seventeen campaigns.
A brother who had once shielded him from an Ork rocket.
And now...
He lay motionless among the ruins.
Smoke still rose from the hole in his chest.
His eyes remained open.
But there was no longer any life behind them.
A low growl escaped Sejanus's throat.
It sounded less like a human voice and more like the snarl of an enraged wolf.
He swung his bolter toward the Chaos player holding the melta cannon.
Three shots rang out.
The player didn't even have time to react before his head exploded.
But more melta beams were already incoming.
The Chaos players had descended into complete madness.
They stopped dodging.
Stopped hesitating.
And began unleashing every heavy weapon they had.
Brilliant white energy beams crisscrossed the ruins, weaving a deadly net of destruction.
A second Luna Wolf fell.
A plasma cannon shot struck him squarely in the chest, blasting him backward through a wall.
He never got back up.
Then the third.
The fourth.
The fifth.
Every flash of blinding white energy seemed to bring another white-armored figure crashing to the ground.
Sejanus's eyes turned red with fury.
But his bolter never stopped roaring.
Every round claimed another Chaos player's life.
"DIE!"
"DIE!"
"DIE!"
His furious shouts echoed through the battlefield, mingling with the thunder of bolters and the shriek of melta weapons.
Behind cover, Lone Wolf was fighting just as desperately.
Every time his plasma cannon finished charging, he aimed toward the densest concentration of Chaos players and fired.
Blue-white plasma blasts erupted among them, instantly vaporizing three or four players at a time.
But there were simply too many Chaos players.
Their numbers were falling too, but players returning from the distant respawn points kept replenishing their ranks.
Meanwhile, on the Luna Wolves' side...
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
Lone Wolf felt as though his heart were bleeding.
These weren't NPCs.
They were real, living people.
They were Sejanus's brothers.
Warriors who had trusted one another with their lives.
And now they were falling one after another.
FUCK!
Lone Wolf clenched his teeth and fired his plasma cannon again.
Another melta blast flashed across the battlefield.
Another Chaos player fell.
But the next instant, a brilliant white beam came screaming toward him from the side.
Lone Wolf instinctively rolled backward.
The melta beam grazed his shoulder, blasting an enormous molten hole through the wall behind him.
Holy shit. That was close.
Another inch and I'd have been dead.
The fighting throughout the ruins had reached its most desperate stage.
The Chaos players' numbers had fallen from one hundred to sixty.
The elite Luna Wolves had been reduced from ten warriors to five.
Corpses from both sides littered the ruins.
Blood mingled with molten metal, evaporating in the intense heat and filling the air with an acrid stench of burned flesh.
[Your Salt, My Vinegar] leaned against his cover, gasping for breath.
His eyes swept across the battlefield.
The Luna Wolves were still fighting.
Only five remained.
Yet their bolters continued to roar with terrifying intensity.
Their coordination was still flawless.
Their aim remained deadly accurate.
And their determination hadn't weakened in the slightest.
This was the XVI Legion.
These were the Luna Wolves.
A wolfpack that could maintain its fighting strength even in the most hopeless situations.
His gaze settled on a distant white-armored figure.
Sejanus.
He was still shooting.
Still roaring.
Still fighting.
Even as his brothers fell one after another around him, he hadn't retreated a single step.
[Your Salt, My Vinegar] took a deep breath.
Then he glanced toward the palace's main entrance.
The sounds of fighting from that direction were growing closer.
Abaddon and Loken were advancing rapidly.
In another ten or fifteen minutes at most, they would reach this location.
And once that happened...
Everything would be over.
[Your Salt, My Vinegar] glanced at the thirty Chaos players gathered closest to him.
Their faces carried the same desperate determination.
They understood.
This was their final chance.
[Your Salt, My Vinegar] slowly opened his mouth.
His voice rang across the channel, filled with the resolve of someone prepared to sacrifice everything.
"Brothers."
Thirty pairs of eyes immediately turned toward him.
[Your Salt, My Vinegar] reached into his inventory and pulled out an enormous launcher.
The Whirlwind Portable Single-Tube Rocket Launcher.
More specifically, the Whirlwind-X Single-Tube Rocket Launcher.
Game store price: 300,000 Imperial Coins.
A single missile could devastate an area one hundred meters in diameter.
Its destructive power was sufficient to completely obliterate a hall like the one they'd already destroyed.
Thirty Chaos players reached into their inventories and withdrew identical launchers.
Thirty Whirlwind-X rocket launchers.
Thirty missiles.
More than enough to flatten the entire ruined area and everything inside it.
[Your Salt, My Vinegar] looked across the thirty faces before him.
Fear.
Madness.
Determination.
All three emotions were clearly visible.
"We've only got one shot at this."
His voice remained steady across the channel.
"Once we launch, we're not getting out either."
"These things have a minimum safe distance of five hundred meters."
"We're less than a hundred meters from those ruins."
"Once we fire, the explosions will kill us too."
The channel fell silent for a moment.
Then someone spoke.
"Who gives a fuck?"
It was [Poor Men Buy Cars, Rich Men Buy Watches, Billionaires Play Boonie Bears Run].
His normally good-natured face now carried an almost frightening madness.
"I've got plenty of Imperial Coins for respawning."
"If dying once means taking Sejanus down with me..."
"Then it's fucking worth it."
Another voice joined in.
"Exactly."
"We can come back after we die."
"But once Sejanus dies, he's dead for good."
"LET'S DO IT!"
Thirty voices answered simultaneously.
"LET'S FUCKING DO IT!"
A smile slowly spread across [Your Salt, My Vinegar]'s face.
There was madness in that smile.
But also something almost tragic.
"Then let's do it."
--
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