The main defensive position was a hive of activity, resembling a massive construction site. Players swung their entrenching tools with relentless determination, carving foxholes out of the desert.
"Damn this sand!" Pyro complained as he dug furiously. "I shovel out one load, and half of it slides right back in!"
"Be grateful we're on the leeward side," RNGesus replied, wiping sand from his face. "If we were on the windward side, one shovel would erase everything you just dug."
Pyro leaned against his entrenching tool, panting. "Then why don't we just charge the orks with tanks? We've got quite a few Leman Russ battle tanks now, don't we?"
"Those are for cultists and genestealers," RNGesus answered. "You want to blitz the orks? Or play tank duels with them?" He snorted. "Every Leman Russ we own was bought with merit. They're priceless."
Pyro nodded. "Fair point. Against this many orks, a tank column would turn into a meat grinder. We don't have enough armor to throw away. Honestly, it's already a miracle the emergency factories can produce usable artillery shells."
"Speaking of which," Pyro asked, glancing around, "have those two Space Marines woken up yet? Why aren't they here?"
RNGesus stared at him. "Doing what? Digging foxholes?"
"...Yeah?"
"What do you think Space Marines are? Oversized construction equipment?"
Pyro paused to imagine a two-and-a-half-meter-tall Astartes in power armor wielding a giant entrenching shovel and excavating an entire foxhole in one scoop.
"...Okay, that's kind of terrifying."
"But seriously," he continued, "don't we have actual engineering vehicles? Why aren't they here?"
RNGesus sighed dramatically.
"Could you try using your brain before asking? I feel like the straight man in a comedy manga."
He pointed toward the loose dunes stretching into the distance.
"How exactly are you planning to drive heavy engineering vehicles through that? They're nowhere near as durable as a Leman Russ. One gets buried in the sand, and you'll spend all day digging it out instead."
"...Fair enough."
A few minutes later, RNGesus suddenly stopped digging.
"I think I'm getting heatstroke."
He wiped the sweat from his forehead.
"It's so damn hot my sweat evaporates before it can drip. My back feels like it's coated in salt."
He looked at Pyro.
"Do me a favor."
"Sure."
Pyro raised his lasgun and fired point-blank into RNGesus's face.
Pfft.
RNGesus collapsed instantly.
The nearby players merely glanced over before returning to work without the slightest reaction.
A few seconds later, a freshly revived RNGesus jogged back from the respawn point, stretching his arms.
"Much better. Full HP."
Instead of returning to work immediately, he dragged his still-warm corpse toward a massive crater nearly a hundred meters away, created earlier by demolition charges.
Thousands of bodies already lie piled inside.
Most belonged to players who had deliberately committed suicide after suffering heatstroke, dehydration, or complete physical exhaustion. Respawning restored every physical stat to perfect condition, and with no equipment penalty for dying during construction, it was simply the fastest solution.
Fortunately, everyone present was a player.
Had an ordinary Imperial citizen witnessed this spectacle, it would have been utterly horrifying.
Even in the Imperium, willingly lining up to shoot one another for convenience was not considered normal behavior.
The bizarre tactic proved remarkably effective.
With unlimited stamina resets, the players maintained an astonishing construction speed. As they gained experience, the pace only accelerated.
Once the foxholes were complete, everyone finally felt a measure of security.
But the work had only begun.
Communication trenches still had to be dug, linking every fighting position into a complete defensive network. The work was long, exhausting, and mind-numbingly repetitive, but gradually the isolated foxholes became a connected fortress.
Meanwhile, players assigned as observers concealed themselves among rocks and dunes, scanning the distant horizon through high-powered binoculars.
Their radios remained silent.
Silence meant nothing had been found.
Other players packed excavated sand into sandbags, reinforcing trench walls and constructing machine-gun emplacements.
The excess soil was hauled away on tarps and scattered thinly across the desert, preventing conspicuous spoil piles from giving away the position.
Finally, large camouflage nets were stretched over the trenches and command posts, then carefully covered with dried grass and desert shrubs.
Four Terran hours later, the defensive line was complete.
Viewed from above, it blended almost perfectly into the surrounding desert.
Viewed from the front, it was nothing more than another stretch of rolling dunes.
Though every player was coated in sand from head to toe, morale remained high.
Heavy bolters and heavy stubbers covered overlapping fields of fire, while heavy machine-gun nests were positioned to rake the approaches from the flanks.
Behind them, the artillery battery had already completed its firing tables. Every gun sat loaded, aimed, and ready to respond within moments.
A normal Astra Militarum regiment would have needed days to complete fortifications of this scale.
The players had finished them in four hours.
At that moment, static crackled across the command post's radio.
"Ground command, do you copy? This is Zobayan."
Joker immediately grabbed the handset.
"This is ground command. We read you. Report."
Earlier, they had deliberately avoided aerial reconnaissance, worried that Valkyries might alert the orks prematurely.
Now, with the battle barge hanging openly in orbit, that concern no longer mattered.
"Affirmative," Zobayan replied over the roar of Valkyrie engines. "I've located two ork warbands fighting each other."
He paused.
"...Correction."
"They're enormous."
"So enormous that the green tide stretches beyond the horizon."
"I think I've found the main ork battlefield."
Joker immediately caught the implication.
"What about the warband you spotted three days ago? The one moving toward the battle barge?"
"I'm checking now..."
A brief silence followed.
Then Zobayan spoke again, confusion replacing confidence.
"...Wait."
"...What's that?"
Without warning, alarms blared through the transmission.
"Holy—I've been hit!"
Metal screamed.
Explosions thundered.
The communicator filled with violent static.
Then came Zobayan's final scream.
The transmission went dead.
Only the hiss of empty radio static remained.
Joker slowly lowered the communicator.
His expression never changed.
After a long silence, he quietly ended the transmission.