But staring at that number right now, White Rose felt nothing close to satisfaction. Just a hollow chill and a creeping sense of dread.
Because the battlefield was falling apart fast enough to watch in real time.
On the northern plains, the Ork Warboss known as Steeltusk had turned into a nightmare for every Necron player and AI unit on the field. His presence wasn't just a physical threat. He was a living totem, continuously pumping out and amplifying the collective Waaagh!!! energy radiating from every Ork around him.
White Rose had seen it himself: Steeltusk swinging that absurdly oversized power axe and shearing a massive, heavily armored Triarch Stalker clean in half from the side. The shriek of tearing metal, the crack of rupturing energy conduits, the thunderous "Waaagh!!!" that erupted from the surrounding Orks all hit at once, and the effect was visceral and overwhelming.
What made it even worse was that after destroying the heavy unit, Steeltusk seemed to physically grow. His frame swelled, his skin deepened to a richer, more vivid green, as if he'd absorbed the raw energy of the kill itself.
That ability to get stronger through combat, to feed on victory, combined with the Orks' already brutal replenishment rate and their total indifference to dying, was grinding the Necrons' carefully built defensive lines down one by one.
The surgical precision of Gauss weaponry meant almost nothing against an endless green tide and the near-impenetrable Waaagh!!! field wrapped around Steeltusk. Necron heavy units, as powerful as they were, kept getting swarmed and bogged down by waves of Ork fodder and suicide charges before they could ever concentrate enough fire to put Steeltusk down.
White Rose had tried long-range elimination with his Harbinger of Destruction, but the beams from his Gauss Annihilator lost cohesion the moment they entered the warped Waaagh!!! field around Steeltusk, bleeding off energy and drifting off-target well before they could do any real damage.
He'd also linked up with other players for coordinated decapitation strikes, but Steeltusk's inner ring of elite Nob bodyguards and the sheer wall of fanatical Orks surrounding them pushed every attempt back with brutal efficiency.
"This can't keep going. A straight-up frontal push is completely off the table." White Rose ran a cold mental calculation, already cycling through options. Standard tactics and conventional unit compositions weren't going to cut it against a Warboss at this tier.
His gaze moved across the support panel. Near the bottom of the reinforcement list, one entry stood apart from the rest, marked in dark gold with a point cost that made him hesitate for just a moment.
[Battlefield Strategic Support: Doomsday Ark Annihilator Barrage]
[Required Points: 5,000]
[Description: Authorizes the full destructive output of a Tomb Core energy array. Upload target coordinates to the Tomb Network; after a brief charging period, a devastating energy torrent capable of reshaping terrain and vaporizing all matter will be unleashed from the deep Tomb or an orbital platform, delivering an indiscriminate saturation strike on the designated area. Warning: The strike radius is substantial and destructive power is extreme. No distinction is made between friendly and hostile units. Ensure all allied forces have withdrawn from the target zone before firing.]
[Charge/Fire Time: 60 seconds (from coordinate confirmation)]
Five thousand points. Nearly his entire reserve. White Rose barely paused.
Conventional approaches had failed completely. Warboss Steeltusk had become the load-bearing pillar of the entire engagement.
Without taking him out, the Ork offensive would only keep building, the Waaagh!!! value would keep climbing, and his side's collapse was just a matter of time. Spending five thousand points was a gamble, no question about it. But it was also the only realistic shot at turning this around.
"Confirm exchange: [Doomsday Ark Annihilator Barrage] support!" White Rose spent the points without blinking. His total dropped to 1,237.
A complex star-map targeting interface opened in front of him. He quickly centered the strike zone on the blazing green signal burning like a beacon across the battlefield: Warboss Steeltusk's position. He expanded the targeting radius to cover the elite Nob retinue clustered around him and pulled in as large a portion of the fanatical Ork vanguard as the maximum permitted range would allow.
[Doomsday Ark Annihilator Barrage support confirmed. Coordinates uploaded to Tomb Network. Energy array initiating charge sequence... Estimated firing time: 60 seconds. Clear the target area immediately.]
The cold system chime rang out, and a massive countdown circle, ticking down by the second, began pulsing on the tactical maps of every Necron faction player, marking the region about to be bathed in total annihilation.
Sixty seconds. Steeltusk and his core Ork forces had to stay inside that zone for every one of those seconds. He couldn't let them sense the danger and pull back before the strike hit.
White Rose closed the panel, raised his Gauss Annihilator, and let tactical data flicker across his vision. He wasn't looking for a safe sniping position anymore. He turned and drove forward at full speed toward the worst of the fighting, straight at Steeltusk. The movement debuff barely registered.
"All nearby units, points don't matter right now! Pin Warboss Steeltusk and his bodyguard cluster! Buy time for the Doomsday strike!" He pushed the order out over the area channel, not particularly concerned with how many AIs or players would actually hear it.
He threw himself into the melee. Not precision elimination anymore, more like suicidal suppression fire. He cycled rapidly between cover positions, pouring Gauss beams into Steeltusk's bodyguards or cutting off Ork Boyz trying to flank, pulling their aggression and keeping their attention locked in place.
Other Necron players who caught on to what was happening started pulling their lines back and even throwing in small counter-charges, keeping the Orks' focus pinned inside the designated strike area.
The Ork assault didn't let up for a second. The [Global Waaagh!!! Value] ticked past 20% during the grinding chaos, triggering the first-stage bonus: accelerated Fungal Squig growth and a higher chance of elite unit spawns. Holding them in place got harder.
Steeltusk showed no sign that he knew what was coming, or maybe he just didn't care. He brought his power axe down and split another Necron Construct that had wandered too close clean in two, then cut loose a bellowing roar that shook the ground. The Orks around him screamed back, and the Waaagh!!! field seemed to thicken and press outward around him like something alive.
The countdown ran: thirty seconds... twenty... ten...
White Rose ejected his last spent energy clip, watching the green titan from not far away with something that almost felt like quiet awe. He started counting under his breath.
Five... four... three... two... one...
HMMMMM.
A terrifying subsonic resonance, so deep it felt like the planet itself was groaning from the inside, rolled outward simultaneously from beneath the earth, from orbital altitude, and from every direction at once. Every unit on the field, Ork and Necron alike, lurched involuntarily to a stop.
Then, centered on the coordinates where Steeltusk stood, the sky across several hundred meters in every direction was swallowed by a torrent of pure annihilating energy in a color that had no name.
It wasn't light. It was more like space itself had been wrenched open, twisted, and then collapsed inward all at once. No sound arrived ahead of it, because all sound had already been erased by the oncoming wave.
CRACK.
A blinding detonation of absolute radiance. The energy torrent, like a divine lance of judgment slamming down from somewhere beyond reckoning, drove straight into the designated area.
Steeltusk, his heavy power armor, his great power axe, the elite Nobs of his inner retinue, and the thousands upon thousands of fanatical Ork Boyz and Gretchin charging alongside them...
Under that annihilating torrent, the idea of resistance never had a chance to form. Everything was instantaneously vaporized, disintegrated, and wiped from existence without leaving a trace.
In their place stood a vast, perfectly smooth-edged crater of unfathomable depth, still venting smoke and arcing with residual energy, its floor reduced to glassy, heat-fused stone.
The light faded. Aftershocks still trembled through the air.
The battlefield went completely silent.
A few seconds later, one Ork Boy stared at the smoldering void where his unstoppable boss had been standing moments before, and let out the first sound, somewhere between disbelief and raw terror:
"The... the Boss is dead?!"
That one voice was a stone dropped into still water, and the ripple it sent through the Ork ranks became a tidal wave.
"Steeltusk got... vaporized?!"
"If even the Boss couldn't handle these walking skeletons, then what are we even out here for?!"
"Not fighting, I'm done! Once I'm the Boss, I'll build a bigger gun and come sort them out properly!"
"I think my choppa needs sharpening anyway. I'll settle this next time!"
"They're all running, so I'm running too!"
"Can't feel the Waaagh!!! anymore. It's just gone."
Panic, confusion, full retreat: it spread through the surviving Orks like a wildfire. The fanatical fighting spirit that had driven them forward, stripped in an instant of its center and its purpose the moment their Warboss was erased from the map, collapsed completely and all at once.
Their reasons for leaving were wonderfully varied. Some wanted to "go level up." Some just "didn't feel like fighting anymore." The majority were simply following whoever turned and ran first, out of pure instinct.
Within moments, the northern battlefield, that green flood of tens of millions that had rolled forward like an unstoppable wall of iron and flesh, broke apart and began pouring in reverse, scattering in every direction in a full chaotic rout.
They threw down weapons, shoved past each other, shouting out every excuse they could think of, all of them desperate to put as much distance as possible between themselves and this killing ground that had just swallowed their greatest champion whole.
The pressure on the Necron defensive lines dropped sharply. AI units began methodically clearing up scattered pockets of resistance while the players looked around with a mildly dazed air at the turnaround playing out in front of them.
And overhead, visible to every player on the field, the [Global Waaagh!!! Value] representing the Ork faction's collective momentum and drive lurched the instant Steeltusk died, then began dropping fast.
20%... 18%... 15%... It eventually settled at 10%. The Warboss's death hadn't just broken one offensive. It had delivered a crippling blow to the morale and collective will of the entire Ork faction. The Waaagh!!! fervor had been cut in half, cleanly and completely.
White Rose stood at the edge of the battlefield, looking at the great crater, then at the routing Orks, then at the collapsing Waaagh!!! value. Whatever expression was behind his metal faceplate was hard to read.
The gamble had paid off. The cost was nearly every point he had and the death of a legend.
"So the trick to breaking the Orks isn't how many Boyz you kill. It's cutting off their head."
The course of this massive, chaotic free-for-all had shifted again, flipped upside down by a single precise and ruthless strike at the top.
The Orks' chaos and raw power seemed to carry an equally obvious weak point: their cohesion was completely fragile, built entirely around the dominance of one strong individual. The moment the head was gone, no matter how enormous the body, it could fall apart into a disorganized mob almost instantly.
But was this the end? Almost certainly not. The Orks' parting declarations about going back to become the next Boss hinted that a new wave of chaos and Waaagh!!!, born somewhere in the ruins and fungal pits, was already quietly taking shape.