High in the sky, the roar of engines and the thunder of autocannons entwined into a roaring symphony. On the ground, inside the heavy artillery position of the Helldiver Corps, the atmosphere was equally taut.
The artillery regiment commander stood on a slight rise in the terrain, holding a pair of high-power military binoculars modded by Adeptus Mechanicus players. He stared unblinkingly at the distant valley, completely swallowed by yellow-green toxic fog.
The regimental commissar standing beside him squinted, trying to see even a fraction of a detail through the thick, almost living plague mist. But aside from that nauseating green, he could see nothing.
"Can you actually see what's in there?" the commissar player asked, somewhat skeptical. "That fog is as thick as pea soup. Even an auspex would go half-blind in there."
"Without these binoculars, you really can't," the commander shook his head, though he didn't lower them. Instead, the corners of his mouth curled into a slight grin. "But once you look through these—man, this feels amazing. I can't see the terrain clearly, but I can see the white wallhack outlines of those Death Guard and zombies—it's like running a memory cheat to wallbang right through the smoke."
He paused, a hint of disbelief in his tone: "Is this '+50% Reconnaissance Efficiency' buff really that insane? It was definitely impossible before, but now it's literally a wallhack."
Evidently, after entering combat status, the ground forces had also realized that the planetary-level buff named [Defend Perditia] was far more than just empty words. This 50% reconnaissance bonus directly upgraded standard mortal optical observation gear into dark age hyper-tech.
"If you see them, then get a move on!" the commissar urged immediately upon hearing this. "Stop marvelling. The boys in the air force are fighting for their lives against that swarm of flies up there.
Emperor knows how long they can hold out against the carrier aircraft of an entire Plague Fleet—and that's the Terminus Est, famous for its endless hangars and massive complements of strike craft! We need to hurry up and rain every single shell right onto the heads of those stinking tin cans!"
"Understood!"
The commander's smile vanished, his expression turning sharp and focused. Staring intently at the white outlines slowly shifting through the mist in his vision, he barked out a string of coordinates: "Target vector 0-3-5, distance 1240, elevation adjustment plus 2! First Company, pay attention—one trial shot, fire!"
The Helldiver gunners, who had already drawn up fire tables based on the terrain map, nimbly adjusted their firing parameters. A massive Basilisk self-propelled artillery piece raised its barrel. With a deafening roar, a large-caliber high-explosive shell hurtled forth, tearing through the sulfur-scented air and plunging straight into the distant toxic fog.
BOOM!
A muffled explosion echoed back. The commander kept his eyes glued to the feedback in his binoculars.
A second later, he suddenly yelled out, "Ah, wait, wait, wait! Fire canceled! Fire canceled! I called out the wrong coordinates!"
The commissar, who was just about to order effective fire (a full regiment volley), nearly choked on his breath. He glared with wide eyes at the commander: "You can literally see their wallhack outlines, and you still managed to give the wrong coordinates? Are you observing with your ass?"
The commander lowered his binoculars and scratched his helmet in awkward embarrassed, pointing toward the distant valley to explain: "Well, the toxic fog covered the terrain, so I couldn't see the landscape, right? That shell just now didn't land right—it hit a rock, and only then did I realize... there seems to be a small hill over there."
Seeing the commissar's glare, which looked ready to murder him, the commander hurriedly defended himself: "Those Death Guard were hiding behind the hill! But the white outlines from the BUFF were so bright that they shone straight through the hill in front! I thought they were standing on flat ground, so when I fired the shot, the whole thing got blocked by the mountain!"
He threw his hands out, feeling somewhat wronged: "You really can't blame me for this! Who knew this official cheat was so ridiculous that it lets me see people behind a mountain! This wallhack is way too thorough!"
The commissar took a deep breath, suppressing the urge to smack the humble-bragging commander over the head. Gritting his teeth, he said, "Then what are you standing around for? Now that you know it's a wallhack, calculate the high-angle trajectory properly!"
On the other side of the hill, the dense yellow-green toxic fog had almost condensed into a solid mass.
The Death Guard squad leader stood in the center of a ritual circle that had just been drawn with corpses and foul blood. Accompanied by low, profane incantations, the surrounding soil bubbled like boiling water. Poxwalkers—long rotted away yet now endowed with unholy vitality—struggled to crawl out from underground.
According to the original plan, they were to silently assemble a massive undead horde here, snowballing larger and larger until it turned into an unstoppable wave of rotten flesh to completely submerge the mortal defensive line.
BOOM!
A muffled blast resonated on the other side of the hill, causing the ground to quiver slightly. A few Nurglings that had only half-crawled out were shaken so hard they tumbled back into the dirt pit.
The squad leader's movement paused. The eyes hidden behind his murky visor turned alertly toward the sky above. Though separated by heavy rock and thick mist, his sharp senses told him the impact point was extremely close to them—if that small hill hadn't blocked it, that shell might have landed in the open ground right next to them.
"That was a trial shot. The Helldivers might have spotted us," the Death Guard leader said in a deep voice, sounding like rusty gears grinding against each other.
"That's impossible," a Plague Marine nearby countered. "The Grandfather's toxic fog conceals everything, and we are on a reverse slope. Their auspex couldn't possibly—"
Before he could finish his sentence, a piercing screech tore through the silence of the fog.
This time, it was no longer a single probing shot, but Death's full ensemble.
"Take cover!"
Before the squad leader's words could fully land, a dense rain of heavy artillery shells—as if guided by eyes—precisely cleared the ridge. Descending at steep high angles, they plunged almost vertically into the narrow valley.
BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!
The glare of explosions tore the toxic fog to shreds in an instant. The horde of zombies that had just crawled out of the earth was immediately blasted into the air by shockwaves, sending rotted limbs and black pus flying across the sky.
A shell even slammed directly beside a Death Guard; despite the extreme durability of his Terminator armor, the kinetic impact rattled the Astartes giant so hard he stumbled several paces back.
This round of artillery fire was outrageously accurate. Every single shot landed squarely in the areas with the highest density of troops, almost as if the enemy were standing directly above them, looking down to fire.
"How did the Helldivers find us?" Covered in dust and soot, the Death Guard were utterly baffled. They questioned raspy-voiced over the comms channel: "We are in a line-of-sight blind spot! And the toxic fog is so thick, how can they conduct precise beyond-visual-range strikes at this distance? This defies all logic!"
The squad leader waved his hand to disperse the smoke in front of him, glancing up at the sky where the fighter squadrons were still locked in a fierce dogfight. Clearly, their own air support was pinned down tightly by those insane mortal pilots, unable to spare a moment to clear out those damned artillery batteries.
"It seems we can't rely on the air force to clear the artillery positions for us," the squad leader made a prompt decision.
Now that their position was exposed, continuing to cower here to "snowball" would only make them sitting ducks. Although the current size of the corpse wave had not reached the expected horizon-spanning scale, it was still enough to cause trouble for the enemy.
He raised the power scythe in his hand, pointing toward the faint outline of the defensive positions ahead:
"No more waiting! Have the poxwalkers advance under the artillery fire! We push up too—let these mortals see that even without the advantage of a surprise attack, the Death Guard remain unstoppable!"