Accompanied by the teeth-grinding sound of twisting metal, the heavy blast door finally reached its breaking point.
Corroded by Nurgle's acid, the once-indestructible alloy structure had turned as brittle as a crisp cracker. With a dull roar, the door collapsed along with a massive section of the surrounding wall, kicking up a turbid cloud of rust and spores.
In the corridor outside, countless eyes flickered to life with an eerie green light. These were hundreds of Nurgle Poxwalkers—once crew members of this ship, or even players who had fallen just moments ago.
Now, dragging their broken bodies, low growls of flesh-hungry craving issued from their throats. Like a reeking tidal wave, they prepared to flood this final sanctuary and completely submerge the remaining survivors.
Standing behind the horde of Poxwalkers, the Death Guard lowered their bolters, quietly awaiting the start of the slaughter. In their eyes, the mortals inside were rats in a trap; barring desperate screams and futile struggles, no other script remained.
Yet, it was not screams that greeted them.
"For the Emperor!"
A deafening roar erupted from the dust cloud, entirely devoid of fear and brimming with wild excitement instead.
The next second, the tide of corpses that should have flooded the room was violently slammed back by a massive counter-force!
Dozens of Helldivers—injected with excessive combat drugs—surged out from the ruins of the collapsed doorway like a pack of unleashed rabid dogs!
Their eyes were blood-red, their facial muscles distorted into terrifying contortions from the drugs, and even the bulging veins beneath their skin were clearly visible.
The melee players leading the charge cared nothing for armor or defense; wielding chainswords, combat knives, and even entrenching shovels, they slammed into the horde of Poxwalkers with absolute disregard for their own lives.
"Get out of the way! Don't block my path!"
A player roared, plunging his combat knife precisely and ruthlessly into the eye socket of a Poxwalker before kicking it away. The corpse was still wearing the same carapace armor as his own, yet he didn't hesitate for a fraction of a second.
To players, anything with a white health bar was a mob. Who cared if it was a "former teammate" or "myself in a past life"? Just hack it down—flesh flew and severed limbs scattered everywhere.
This drugged-up squad displayed terrifying combat efficiency; in their eyes, the sluggish movements of the Poxwalkers were like slow-motion replays. They carved a bloody path through the horde like harvesters, while behind this suicide squad, the remaining players inside the engine room mounted their few heavy stubbers and lasguns.
A dense curtain of fire skimmed right above the heads of the charging vanguard, precisely suppressing the distant Poxwalkers and any Plague Marines trying to poke their heads out.
This sudden counter-charge caught the Death Guard completely off guard.
The battle-hardened Plague Marines even froze for a brief instant. They had seen countless mortals react to Nurgle's terrifying majesty—collapsing, begging for mercy, going mad, or committing desperate suicide. But they had never seen anything like this—a suicidal charge more unhinged than Khorne Berserkers and more chaotic than Ork Boyz.
Within those few seconds of hesitation, the drug-crazed vanguard—moving at blinding speed—had already burst through the Poxwalker blockade and charged right up to the Death Guard!
The distance between both sides closed to face-to-face proximity in an instant.
One player in the lead had half his torso blown open by a bolt shell, his intestines spilling across the floor. Yet, riding his momentum, he lunged violently toward the nearest Plague Marine, gripping a bundle of high-explosive grenades with their pins already pulled.
"Come give me a hug, big guy!"
"Who wants to hug you?!"
A trace of panicked rage leaked from beneath the Plague Marine's helmet. Instinctively, he swung his broadsword, bisecting the player. Yet the fiery blast still scorched his heavy power armor pitch-black, the shockwave forcing him to stagger backward.
He wasn't the only one. Other players swarmed up like leeches on bone; some even tried to slap melta bombs directly onto the Marines, using a shameless playstyle of "whether it works or not, I'm going to disgust you to death."
Facing these irrational "human bombs" who sought nothing but mutual destruction, even the resilient Death Guard were forced to temporarily retreat and yield their edge.
After all, they were noble Astartes, the chosen warriors of their god. To suffer needless damage—or worse, be traded off—due to the final madness of trapped cornered beasts would be a humiliation far too costly to bear.
"Fall back! Create distance!"
The Death Guard squad commander issued the order to pull back.
The Plague Marines—who had arrived with menacing momentum to catch rats in a bucket—were actually forced back by this wave of desperate counter-charging, obliged to retreat behind distant cover and corners to reorganize their defense line.
A vast area of the corridor instantly cleared out, leaving behind nothing but a floor strewn with dismembered corpses.
This seemingly reckless military gamble had—through the players' crazy mechanic of disregarding death—miraculously succeeded, forcefully snatching a brief moment of breathing room from the jaws of death.
However, a brief tactical victory could not cover up the hopeless, complete collapse on a strategic level. The Death Guard had merely pulled back a few dozen meters to a safe distance; their heavy armor didn't even bear a single scratch. That seemingly fierce suicidal charge had cleared out a batch of irrelevant meat shields, but it hadn't touched the core strength of this plague legion at all.
"The mortals' little trick is over."
The Death Guard commander uttered a low, heavy murmur, sounding like the reading of a verdict.
This time, they would give these madmen no further opportunity to close the distance. Accompanied by a sickening hissing sound, dense yellow clouds of toxic gas spewed from the exhaust vents of the Plague Marines' armor, spreading rapidly along the ventilation shafts and corridors. Immediately after, the iconic roar of bolters echoed across the deck once more.
Bang! Bang! Bang!
With precise bursts, no cover could withstand the penetration of the bolt shells, nor could any flesh resist the corrosive toxic mist.
The surviving strike team members tried to raise their guns to fire back, but the moment they touched the poison mist, their skin began to fester, and their lungs burned like fire. After firing just a few shots, their entire bodies melted into bubbling pools of bloody water.
Endless Nurgle Poxwalkers stepped over the corpses of allies and enemies alike, filling the corridor once more like a slow yet unstoppable mudslide, surging toward the final stronghold of the engine room.
Inside the engine room.
The commander, who had been staring at the monitoring displays, watched the life-sign indicators go out one by one alongside that unstoppable green tide. He took a deep breath of the air, thick with the smell of engine oil.
The strike team was wiped out. The defense line had collapsed.
Everything was over.
"Brothers," he turned to look at the dozens of players remaining at their posts behind him. His face showed no fear, only a sense of relief and liberation. "Looks like it's time for our final performance.
Since we can't block them, there's no need to try.
Since we can't kill those tin cans, let's leave them a big parting gift.
"Do it."
"Got it! I've been waiting for this moment!" The player at the main console grinned broadly, slamming the red emergency brake lever all the way down while entering the pre-configured overload command string.
Core containment released—Magnetic field restraint failing—Chain reaction initiated—
The massive plasma engine let out a wail like a dying leviathan. Its original deep-blue glow instantly turned into a blinding, searing white, as terrifying temperatures swept through the entire chamber in a single instant.
"GG, brothers! See you next game!"
The moment the Nurgle Poxwalkers breached the final temporary barricade, the heart of this Imperial cruiser ceased to beat, replaced instead by an all-consuming, destructive detonation.
A silent, intense glare instantly swallowed everything. Against the pitch-black backdrop of space, the warship shattered like fireworks, transforming into a brilliant sphere of light—marking the final curtain call for this group of Helldivers in this battle.