The stench of the battlefield was as pungent as ever.
The acrid smell of gunsmoke, blended with scorched earth baked by high explosives, the stench of corpses licked by open flame, and the roaring battle cries that echoed like giant beasts—all of it flooded aggressively into his senses, pulling Commissar Sebastian Yarrick back from a brief moment of trance.
Standing amidst the trench lines of Hive Hades, he snapped his eyes open.
Armageddon.
The winds of this planet forever carried a scalding, metallic breeze steeped in rust and sulfur.
Gales howled across the positions, whipping up vast plumes of ash and flying sparks that beat against his face, bringing an indescribable discomfort.
Yet Yarrick had long grown accustomed to it all.
His very soul had fused into one with the planet of Armageddon.
Hive Hades.
It was merely a small hive city, barely making a blip on an industrial forge-world like Armageddon.
Yarrick had not come here out of any grand strategic mandate.
This hive city had become a battleground for one reason alone—a single individual, or more precisely, a single Ork.
That monster was here, and it had thrown down a challenge to him.
Nothing more, nothing less.
Yarrick raised his power claw. Its mechanical joints emitted a deep, rhythmic whir, almost as if articulating a longing that had been suppressed for far too long.
Indeed, he was fighting.
Upon this planet he knew like the back of his hand, he was ushering in a war that truly belonged to him.
Looking back on the time Yarrick had spent following Lord Adam—how should he describe it?
It had been wonderful beyond measure, of course.
To witness that lord single-handedly deliver glorious victory after victory to mankind, crushing those arrogant, insufferable foes in his palm with power bordering on divine miracles—that was indeed a sight that set the blood ablaze.
Yet, somehow...
Yarrick always felt as though something was slightly missing.
The glory of walking alongside a deity, slaying uncounted numbers of xenos, fighting in person within the realms of the Dark Gods, earning renown that echoed across the entire Imperium...
Such a life, in the eyes of any Imperial warrior, should have been considered complete and fulfilled.
However, this lingering sensation of being "eighty percent full"—this feeling had left Yarrick with a quiet regret.
He often caught himself thinking that perhaps he preferred standing once more before vast armies, commanding a true corps-level campaign, listening to the symphony woven from artillery fire and war cries.
And fortunately...
Lord Adam was as generous as ever—granting him yet another opportunity.
Furthermore, the adversary he now faced happened to be Yarrick's ultimate nemesis—the species that had entwined itself with his fate since his youth, those damned, unreasonable xenos.
The Green-skinned Orks.
"Sons of Armageddon, charge!"
Yarrick's furious roar pierced through the thunder of artillery.
At that command, the soldiers along the trenches calmly and steadfastly slapped fresh power cells into their las-chambers.
Their movements were crisp and precise, without a shred of hesitation.
The Imperium of today was no longer the stagnant realm bound by ignorance and terror.
The resurgence of technology had arrived like a breaking tide, washing away ten thousand years of built-up rust and superstition.
Relics from the Dark Age of Technology that had once been locked away in the deepest vaults of Mars were now being mass-issued to the ranks of the Astra Militarum.
Assembled here at this moment was virtually the absolute pinnacle of traditional Imperial military might in the galaxy.
The Cadian Shock Troops, the Death Korps of Krieg, the Armageddon Steel Legion, the Mordian Iron Guard, the Catachan Jungle Fighters... and their wargear was lavish beyond belief; even Vortex Grenades were hardly considered a rarity here.
Individual void shields, displacement beacons, plasma annihilators, exterminator rifles—items that would have been deemed unfathomable holy relics in the Astra Militarum just a few years ago.
Now, they were held in the hands of ordinary guardsmen, arming them to the teeth.
To the blast of assault horns, war erupted once more.
This was the eighteenth day since the Battle of Armageddon had begun.
For Commissar Yarrick, this was the most exhilarating period of his life.
Yet at the same time, a persistent, undeniable intuition tugged at the back of his mind—this would very likely be his final battle.
He did not foresee himself dying here.
No, not a single Ork in existence could take his life.
A "final battle" in a different sense.
Once he concluded this decisive showdown against the Orks, he would likely never have another chance to participate in a grand campaign of such magnitude again.
The future of the Imperium of Man was growing brighter by the day; Lord Adam was bringing peace and tranquility to more and more Imperial worlds.
The galaxy was being remade, and the darkness was being swept away.
For an old veteran like him, who had dragged himself out of a sea of blood from a bygone era, the fate awaiting him was hardly something to look forward to—likely a quiet retirement on some peaceful garden world, watching flowers bloom and fade day by day, until one nameless morning, he would placidly return to the Golden Throne.
The mere thought induced a visceral revulsion in Yarrick.
He could not conceive of such an existence; it was more unbearable than any torture imaginable.
Even so, Yarrick buried those emotions deep inside.
He had to channel every ounce of his focus into this war.
The Orks were surging forward once again.
They were endlessly abundant, impossible to sever completely, impossible to wipe out entirely.
Tides of green spilled out from behind the ruins like a boiling broth, carrying ear-splitting roars and massive war engines crudely welded together from scrap metal as they crashed toward the Imperial positions.
That sheer volume, that overwhelming density, was enough to drive any inexperienced Imperial commander to absolute despair.
Naturally, Yarrick was no novice.
He knew this dance inside and out.
As a specialist dedicated to dealing with Orks, he understood the true nature of this species better than anyone—perhaps even better than many of the Orks themselves.
They were a phenomenon, a living natural disaster fueled by war itself.
The harder you bombarded them, the larger the armies you mobilized to meet them head-on, the more excited and powerful they became. Their technology would surge forward at an impossible pace under such extreme conflict until they completely submerged you.
Because of this, the strategy Yarrick employed ran counter to all conventional military doctrine.
He deliberately suppressed the intensity of this war, keeping it strictly within a threshold where the Orks were "never truly having fun."
By intentionally throttling the deployment frequency of armored vehicles, he avoided stimulating Ork ingenuity into explosive tech leaps;
By forming small, specialized kill-teams dedicated to hunting down Spannerz and Big Mekz, he surgically removed the enemy's potential for technological ascension;
By maintaining high-frequency yet small-scale fire suppression, he cut off the Orks' access to raw metal, preventing them from accumulating enough scrap to construct larger and deadlier war engines;
He even went so far as to systematically destroy captured Ork wargear... and so on and so forth.
A multi-layered, progressive approach.
Like a veteran hunter slowly wearing down the endurance of a massive wild beast.
Right now, Yarrick could faintly sense that the twin deities of the Orks—Gork and Mork—had turned their gazes toward this very battlefield.
As a human who likewise possessed a Waaagh! field on the level of reality warping, he had earned the right to perceive such attention from a higher dimension.
Even with such divine favor, the opposing Orks' technological progression had failed to achieve a breakthrough.
This was because Gork and Mork seemed remarkably pleased with the "cunning" Yarrick displayed.
Orks revered brutal war and courage, but they revered cunning just as much.
In the eyes of Gork and Mork, Yarrick playing a massive Ork horde like puppets was, in itself, a thoroughly commendable "Gorky and Morky move."
The two gods generously granted Yarrick the circumstances he desired—much to the intense dissatisfaction of his opponent across the field.
Yarrick could even faintly hear a roar—heavy, furious, laced with bitter reluctance—surging from the depths of the Ork warband.
He dismissed it without a second thought.
He had a thousand ways to kill that Ork prophet sitting on the other side.
Yet... how should he put it?
At this moment, he recalled a famous saying passed down among the Orks: "Good enemies are hard to find."
If that monster died, what would happen next?
By Ork logic, either an even stronger Warboss would instantly rise to take its place, or in an extreme scenario, Gork and Mork themselves might directly descend to fight as proxies.
That would be disastrous.
So Yarrick stayed his hand, choosing instead to order a continued assault.
In the next moment, the Astra Militarum soldiers vaulted over the trench parapets.
Their movements were disciplined to the point of cold perfection.
Shrouded under the protective glow of individual void shields, the soldiers were wrapped in a faint blue aura.
Empowered by stasis hourglasses, their movement speed was astonishing, effortlessly crossing a dead zone that in the past would have required thousands of casualties to traverse.
Hellguns discharged scorching beams of energy.
Upgraded with Dark Age technology, these weapons possessed devastating armor-piercing capabilities. The reddish-orange beams sliced through the Orks like hot knives through butter, punching cleanly through crude shoulder plates and thick skulls.
The green-skinned savages didn't even have time to scream before collapsing into scorched husks amid bursting flashes of light.
Inevitably, the Orks could not withstand such an offensive.
It was not that they lacked ferocity, but rather that this battle was fundamentally not the kind of fight they wanted to play.
This methodology left the Orks—who worshiped the philosophy of "bigger is better, more is beauty"—completely bewildered.
Vast numbers of Orks lost their fighting spirit and began ebbing away from the battlefield like a receding tide.
Even those Warbosses who usually loved leading the charge found themselves lost and bewildered by this thoroughly unfulfilling rhythm of combat.
In the distance, the Ork artillery finally responded. Accompanied by a series of gruff roars, a deluge of shells whistled through the air, pounding down upon the position of the Imperial assault squad.
Yet they hit nothing but empty ground.
Flashes of Warp light flickered, and the counter-assault team Yarrick had just organized was teleported back behind the trench line in its entirety.
Zero casualties.
A clean, safe withdrawal.
Scenes like this had played out countless times over the past three weeks.
During this time, the Orks had tried innumerable counter-strategies.
They tried air-to-ground coordination, with Dakka Jets dropping munitions onto Imperial lines like rain; they deployed vast numbers of Looted Wagons and Ork tanks to suppress human movements; Orks of the Snakebite clan tried using bred Squigs to dig tunnels and set traps...
Yet all of it proved futile.
An Imperial soldier's personal void shield could withstand a direct hit from a tank's main cannon.
Even on the rare occasion that a shield overloaded and collapsed, the wounded soldier's Warp beacon would trigger instantly, teleporting them to the rear in the blink of an eye.
This tactical framework was disgustingly effective, leaving the Orks unable to gain any leverage whatsoever.
Yet Yarrick felt no joy regarding the system he had created.
He never considered himself a genius commander.
In his eyes, this was merely something any flexible mind could master—know yourself and your enemy, play to your strengths, and exploit their weaknesses.
He simply understood Orks better than most, allowing him to execute this strategy with greater finesse.
Nothing more.
---
"Old Bale-Eye."
A voice suddenly called out from the distance.
Yarrick came to a sudden halt.
That voice did not belong to any orderly under his command, nor did it belong to any human soldier.
That gruff, guttural tone belonged to only one species.
It was Orkish.
"Old Bale-Eye! Old Bale-Eye! Old Bale-Eye!"
The voice expanded, growing from a single point into a wide area, before finally rolling across the entire battlefield like thunder.
Every Ork was roaring that title, setting the ground beneath them trembling.
A commotion broke out among the Imperial ranks.
Many veteran guardsmen who had served for years understood Orkish; they tightened their grip on their weapons, looking uneasily toward the source of the sound.
The Orks were calling out to their commander?
What did this mean?
How should they respond?
Yarrick did not hesitate for even a fraction of a second.
He understood Orks, he understood what his rival on the other side wanted, and he understood what Gork and Mork wished to see.
All the conditions were laid bare—the answer was crystal clear, requiring no deduction.
This battle ceased because of that call.
The sporadic gunfire across the battlefield faded into silence.
Even the Ork Kommandos and human sharpshooters lurking among the ruins came to a stop in unison, bringing an abrupt halt to their duel of snipers and counter-snipers.
The entire battlefield fell into a surreal silence, leaving only the tireless wind howling past, whipping up dust and smoke across the pockmarked no-man's-land separating the two armies.
Yarrick stepped out from the trench.
He calmly set foot onto that scorched, crater-riddled earth.
Beside him, his massive mechanical power claw hung low, each blade gleaming with a cold luster beneath the dim, overcast sky.
Opposite him, a figure equally immense and suffocating emerged from the Ork lines.
That Ork was larger than any Ork Yarrick had ever encountered in his life.
It stood there like a mobile fortress forged of iron, its crude black armor covered in combat scars, while a massive power claw emitted a low, rumbling hum.
Indistinguishable in posture from Yarrick himself.
It stood squarely in the center of the battlefield, without the slightest concern that Yarrick might call in an artillery barrage to obliterate it—for it knew the 'humie' before it would do no such thing.
Behind it, a massive mob of Orks held high the banners of the Goff clan, jumping in excitement as they screamed the name of their Warboss with screeching voices.
"Thraka!"
"Thraka!"
"Thraka!"
Yarrick's pupils contracted slightly.
Ghazghkull Mag Uruk Thraka.
Indeed, this was his opponent—Warboss of the Goff Clan, prophet of the Orks, chosen champion of Gork and Mork.
...And "Old Bale-Eye" Yarrick's greatest enemy.
...And "Old Bale-Eye" Yarrick's final prey.
Ghazghkull visibly froze for a moment.
It lowered its head, gazing at the 'humie' before it, who was shorter than itself by an immeasurable margin.
Old and gaunt, yet mounted on his arm was a claw larger, cooler, and more imposing than any Ork power claw—unmistakably the handiwork of some Big Mek adept at "thinkin' real hard."
"Yarrick," Ghazghkull rumbled out the name in a deep growl.
Yarrick realized this was a battle of destiny from which there was no escape.
He raised his eyes, meeting those crimson orbs without a shred of fear.
"Thraka," Yarrick replied.
Without a moment's pause, as if bound by a shared instinct—
In the next second, two roars erupted simultaneously.
They charged toward one another.
The explosive speed that burst forth in that instant defied all imagination!
Like two artillery shells launched directly at each other, they collided with brutal force right in the center of no-man's-land!
A violent shockwave billowed outward, sweeping dust and rubble into the air in every direction.
The thunderous crash of their impact drowned out even the distant, scattered artillery, sounding as though two meteors had violently collided in the void!