Rod lowered his head.
A line of pale golden text flickered softly like a breathing light.
[Mechanical Affinity (Weak): Firearms you have disassembled and assembled have a 10% lower malfunction rate]
Rod’s fingers lightly tapped the weapon’s body.
So that’s how it is…
That was why he could see that tiny bit of damage.
This skill was not merely adding numbers.
It was correcting his vision and intuition in real time.
Just as he was about to study the skill panel further…
Rumble…
A dull, heavy roar rolled in from the distant horizon.
The ground suddenly trembled.
Screws and scrap metal on the workbench clattered, and violent ripples spread across the muddy puddles.
This was not thunder.
Platoon Leader Karl’s movements froze in an instant.
He abruptly raised his head and stared at the sky.
The color drained from his face at a visible speed.
Whoosh!
The shriek of air being torn apart rapidly grew louder.
“That sound is wrong!”
The platoon leader roared.
He grabbed the strap of Rod’s flak armor with one hand, so hard that Rod could barely breathe.
“The shelling is coming at us!
Take cover!”
The two of them scrambled toward a stretch of trench a few meters away like rabbits struck by lightning.
At the same time, at the other end of the workshop…
Iron Jaw Sergeant Hack was holding the remaining coil of consecrated cable.
The instant he heard the sound, he threw it down and charged toward the nearest air-raid shelter with heavy steps.
The very next second after Karl shoved Rod’s head down into the mud…
Boom!!
For one instant, the world lost all sound.
There was only endless white light and scorching air.
A massive shockwave slammed into the workshop like an invisible giant hand.
The hastily built repair station disintegrated in an instant.
The sheet-metal roof was torn apart like paper and swept into the sky.
Countless burning fragments and shards of stone sprayed outward like a storm.
The violent pressure instantly sucked away the surrounding air.
Rod opened his mouth wide, his chest rising and falling violently, but he could not draw in even a trace of oxygen.
His lungs hurt as if they were about to burst.
Mud and debris rattled against his back and head.
No one knew how long passed.
Maybe a few seconds.
Maybe several hours.
The explosion finally stopped.
Only a sharp ringing remained in his ears, like ten thousand cicadas screaming inside his skull.
Rod shook his dust-covered head and struggled to stand while bracing himself against the trench wall.
The sight before him made his pupils shrink.
The workshop that had stood there moments ago was gone.
In its place was a huge crater belching black smoke.
The soil around the edge of the crater was still burning, giving off a sharp scorched smell.
“Cough, cough…”
Platoon Leader Karl crawled out of the mud pile and spat out a mouthful of bloody saliva.
He did not bother patting the mud from his body.
He stumbled toward the crater’s edge and looked in the direction Iron Jaw Sergeant Hack had run.
There was nothing there.
Only a collapsed section of trench and soil vitrified by high heat.
Forget a corpse.
Not even a fragment of that iconic iron jaw remained.
The technical sergeant who had just been arguing with them until his face turned red over the repair plan, and who had laughed loudly because of Rod’s skill, had been erased as if he had never existed at all.
Platoon Leader Karl stood there, staring blankly at the empty pit.
His eyes went hollow for a moment, but soon filled with a deep numbness.
“His luck was too damned bad.”
There was not much sadness in the platoon leader’s voice.
“The shell went straight into his trench.
But because the shell fell into that pit, the shockwave was weakened by the soil and guided upward…”
He turned his head and looked at Rod behind him, wearing a sarcastic smile.
“That’s why we weren’t shaken to death.
Heh…
how ironic.”
Rod stood in place.
This was Warhammer 40K.
No plot armor.
No rule that important NPCs would not die.
The NPC who had just handed you a quest reward one second ago could become a smear of meat paste in the background the next.
The fact that they had made it back alive earlier…
maybe surviving without anyone dying was the abnormal part.
No wonder those Guardsmen had looked at him like he was a saint.
Surviving the tutorial in this meat grinder really was a miracle.
Before Rod could recover from that shock…
“WAAAAAAAAAGH!!!”
A mountain-shaking roar pierced through the smoke and pressed toward them from the front line.
Immediately after came scattered lasgun fire and the hoarse shouting of Astra Militarum officers.
Platoon Leader Karl’s body shook violently.
“Back to the front!
The Greenskins are coming again!”
He did not spare another glance at the crater that had buried their comrade.
He grabbed the lasgun leaning against the dirt wall and rushed out.
“Keep up!
Don’t fall behind!”
Rod took a deep breath.
His nose was filled with the biting smell of smoke and the faint bloody tang of rust.
He felt his heart slamming wildly in his chest.
But he did not stop.
He tightened his grip on the suppression lasgun and ran after the platoon leader.
So this is the difficulty level of a Warhammer 40K dungeon…
If the enemy were Chaos-blessed Space Marines, or those Aeldari bean sprouts fast enough to leave afterimages, his tiny bit of skill probably would not even be enough to polish their armor before he got sliced apart on sight.
Survive!
As long as he lived, there would be experience.
As long as he lived, there would be a chance!
He sprinted through the mud, every step kicking up heavy sludge.
Two minutes later.
The two rushed into the main position of the second defense line.
This place was practically a painting of hell.
This section of trench had clearly just been “plowed” by Ork battlewagons and heavy guns.
The once orderly sandbags had been blasted to pieces.
Defensive plates were twisted at grotesque angles.
In corners and muddy water, broken pieces of limbs lay everywhere, not yet cleared away by the corpse collectors.
The surviving soldiers were all covered in ash and dirt.
They crouched behind smoking cover, occasionally raising their guns over their heads to blindly fire a few shots outside.
None of them dared show their faces.
Rod gasped for breath and leaned against the slippery trench wall.
Carefully, he poked half his head out.
At the end of his sight…
A green tide was surging.
More than before.
Far more.
Greenskin Orks covered the land like a swarm of rabid dogs gone out of control.
They waved crude choppas and modified guns, spraying foam and curses from their mouths as they charged toward the position.
And within that green ocean, several huge lumps of metal were especially conspicuous.
Killa Kans.
Those things looked like discarded oversized oil barrels mounted on two clumsy mechanical legs.
Various circular saws, hydraulic shears, and flamers had been welded onto the barrels.
Black smoke puffed constantly from the exhaust pipes on their backs.
Every step they took came with a teeth-aching clang of metal.
They looked broken-down and almost comical, like giant toys.
But the thick metal shells and the blood-dripping rotary saws in their hands were enough to make any mortal’s courage freeze.
Rod narrowed his eyes and looked at one of the Killa Kans.
That machine was painted with a chaotic mess of red and yellow graffiti.
It was not rushing forward yet.
Instead, it stopped.
Its mechanical arm suddenly shot out.
The massive hydraulic shears precisely clamped around an Ork Boy running in front of it.
The Ork Boy was still waving its choppa and had not yet figured out what was happening before it was lifted into the air.
“Wot?
Let me go!
Ya grot hidin’ in a tin can!”
The Ork Boy struggled madly in midair and shouted curses.
By common sense, Gretchin were lowly creatures that served as punching bags and emergency rations for Orks.
But inside this Killa Kan was a Gretchin that had volunteered to be made into a machine-servant for the sake of revenge.
Now, it had power!
Crack!
Without the slightest hesitation, the hydraulic shears snapped shut.
With a spine-chilling crack of bone and a muffled burst of flesh, the strong Ork Boy was cut cleanly in half at the waist.
Blood and organs rained down around it.
“WAAAAAAAAAGH!!!!”
When the surrounding Orks saw this scene, they did not become afraid.
Instead, they erupted into even more fanatical cheers.
It was the most primitive worship of strength.
On the trench side…
Gulp.
Rod heard the sound of a comrade swallowing beside him.
Fear.
That fate of being snipped apart by shears felt as if it would descend upon their own heads in the next second.
This pressure was not something those Greenskin infantry from earlier could compare to.
Before everyone’s nerves could recover from the Killa Kan’s brutality…
Hiss…
Boom!
Boom!
Boom!
Within the green tide, streams of red smoke suddenly rose.
Over a hundred figures carrying huge rocket packs shot into the sky, like out-of-control fireworks, diving toward the trench at a speed that made despair sink into the heart.
Stormboyz!
“Fix bayonets!”
Platoon Leader Karl’s roar exploded through the trench.