The bulge in the earth at Sigma-5 wasn't a creature being born. It was an organ. A Gloom Spawning Pool, a grotesque, fleshy extrusion that pulsed like a heart, oozing thick, dark fluid and tendrils that anchored it to the corrupted leyline energy. Even as the Purification Beacon's white light spread, pushing back the ambient corruption, the Spawning Pool fought to establish a beachhead, a tumor on the edge of the cleansed zone.
From its pulsating surface, shapes began to coalesce and drop to the ground with wet plops. Not Stalkers or Shredderlings. These were smaller, faster, their forms shifting and indistinct—Gloomlings. They were barely Tier-0, weak individually, but they boiled forth in a chittering, formless tide, dozens every minute. They didn't charge the Legionnaires' armor; they flowed around them, like acid seeking cracks, heading for the softer targets—the Pioneer unit, the Grenadiers, the exposed infantry.
The Sergeant's voice was flat over the command channel. "Enemy is employing attritional swarm tactics. Objective is to overwhelm point defenses and sabotage the Beacon."
Isaac, watching from the Bastion's command nexus, saw the calculus instantly. The Legionnaires' main guns were useless against this. Their coaxial repeaters were chewing through Gloomlings by the hundreds, but the tide seemed endless. Ammunition counters began to tick down at an alarming rate.
"New orders," Isaac barked, his mind racing. "V-002, V-003, switch to coaxial only. Conserve main gun rounds. Form a moving wall. Advance toward the Spawning Pool. Crush it under your treads."
The two Ironclads, metal behemoths, began a slow, grinding advance. Their massive treads became meat grinders, churning the flowing Gloomlings into black paste. But the Pool reacted. It shuddered, and from its sides, thicker, rope-like tendrils shot out, not to attack, but to latch onto the canyon walls, pulling the entire fleshy mass backward, away from the advancing tanks, deeper into the still-corrupted shadows of the canyon.
It was retreating. Regrouping. Adapting.
"E-001," Isaac called to the Pioneer. "Can you deploy fortifications? Anything to channel them."
The Pioneer unit responded by stomping its heavy feet, deploying four Quick-Set Barricades from its back—folded plates of alloy that snapped open into low walls, creating a choke point in the canyon mouth. The Grenadiers fell behind them, their Lascutters carving swathes of orange light through the charging tide. It was a dam against a river of tar.
But the dam wouldn't hold forever. The Spawning Pool, now at a safer distance, redoubled its efforts. The Gloomlings began to show variation—some sprouted crystalline spikes they fired in weak volleys, peppering the barricades. Others moved in coordinated leaps, trying to scale the Legionnaires' hulls, seeking vision ports or sensor bundles.
This wasn't a battle; it was a systemic stress test. And Isaac's system was starting to fray.
He had to secure the Nexus to complete the Trifecta, but he couldn't do it while under infinite swarm assault. He needed to cut off the flow. The Pool was drawing energy from the same leyline fracture as the Nexus. It was a parasite.
"Sergeant, analysis. If we overload the Purification Beacon, force it into a cleansing surge, could it burn out the Spawning Pool's connection?"
"Probability: 55%. Risk: The Beacon would be destroyed in the process, and the Nexus would be left unstable for a prolonged period. The Trifecta would be incomplete, and Sigma-5 would revert to a contested state."
Another gamble. Destroy his own tool to deny the enemy theirs. But if it worked, he could purge the immediate threat, fortify the position, and rebuild the Beacon later.
"Do it. E-001, overload the Beacon on my mark."
The Pioneer unit clanked to the humming Beacon. It extended a tool and began inputting the emergency override sequence.
The Spawning Pool seemed to sense the threat. It convulsed, retracting its Gloomlings, pulling its biomass tighter. It was preparing a defense, or a final, desperate spawn.
"Mark."
E-001 slammed the final command home.
The Purification Beacon didn't just glow brighter; it detonated in a silent, expanding sphere of pure white energy. The wave washed over the canyon. Where it touched the Gloomlings, they simply ceased to be, vaporized. It washed over the barricades, the Grenadiers, the Legionnaires—harming them not, but making their systems flicker with feedback.
It reached the Spawning Pool.
The fleshy mass screamed, a psychic shriek that made Isaac's vision blur even at a distance. The white energy scoured its surface, burning away the outer layers, causing it to deflate and wither like a burning lung. The tendrils anchoring it to the leyline snapped, black smoke rising from the severed ends.
When the light faded, the Beacon was a melted lump of crystal. The Nexus, Sigma-5, still glowed, but fitfully, like an ember. The Spawning Pool was a shriveled, smoking husk, inert. The last few Gloomlings twitched and dissolved.
Silence, heavy and ringing, filled the canyon.
Spawning Pool Neutralized.
Purification Beacon Sigma-5: Destroyed.
Nexus Sigma-5 Status: Unstable/Purified. Leyline Synergy: Inactive.
He had won the field. He had not won the Nexus.
"E-001, begin fortifying this position. Use all remaining materials. Build a bunker over the Nexus site. V-002, V-003, establish a patrol perimeter. We are digging in here. This is now Forward Operating Base Sigma."
The cost was heavy. He had lost the Beacon, a significant investment. His units were battered, ammunition depleted. The Trifecta was incomplete, the power surge needed for the Vehicle Bay Level 2 still out of reach.
But he held the ground. The enemy's attempt at infinite attrition had been burned out. He had gained a strategic foothold, another step toward Omicron-22.
As the Pioneer unit began welding prefabricated walls into a small, grim fortress around the unstable Nexus, Isaac reviewed the broader map. He now held two Nexuses, one stable, one wounded. He had two Legionnaires. He had a foothold in hostile territory.
The Trifecta's toll was high, but it was paid. The war was no longer at his gate. It was on his newly claimed, blood-soaked ground. The campaign had truly begun.