Is this an apocalyptic war? No, "apocalyptic" doesn't even begin to describe it; this is virtually indistinguishable from the Siege of Terra.
In fact, its scale has already surpassed the Siege of Terra.
The forces of chaos have poured out en masse, with chaos daemon and chaos Princes appearing everywhere.
What can the Astra Militarum do in such a terrifying battlefield?
The Astra Militarum are like ants; what can they possibly do?
The Cadian Shock Troops are indeed one of the most elite Astra Militarum units in the entire Imperium, but even with their elite status, what can they accomplish on a battlefield of this magnitude?
On the current battlefield, the Astra Militarum can no longer afford to fight as individual regiments.
Instead, various Astra Militarum units have been mixed together, with Cadian Shock Troops and Krieg Death Korps fighting side-by-side.
Unit after unit suffered heavy losses, but there was no time for them to withdraw from the battlefield and reorganize with their own kind of units.
All they could do was integrate with newly arrived reinforcements. Unit movements had descended into chaos; they had no choice.
A psychic lightning bolt flies by, and congratulations, you've arrived in the Warhammer world, becoming a member of the Cadian Shock Troops.
Just kidding. Now, let everyone experience what an ordinary Astra Militarum soldier faces on the battlefield.
You groggily open your eyes and find yourself on a battlefield.
To your left are the Krieg Death Korps, and to your right are your comrades from the Cadian Shock Troops. In your hand, you hold an Imperial standard-issue lasgun, complete with a bayonet.
Before you can even figure out where you are, you witness the invasion of chaos!
However, it's not just a simple chaos invasion; there are also large numbers of orks around these chaos soldiers, yelling loudly.
"Waaagh! Charge! Kill those little squigs!"
A tidal wave of green-skinned orks surges towards you. The combat instincts of a Cadian Shock Trooper, embedded within your body, make you instinctively raise your lasgun and begin firing.
Your comrades do the same, and a barrage of laser beams erupts from your hands.
But those orks show no fear; red glows flicker on their bodies, clearly a blessing from Khorne.
Some orks yell loudly and continue to charge in your direction. Just as you think you're about to die, a barrage of artillery fire suddenly rains down from the sky.
Under the artillery strike, the charging ork and chaos forces are momentarily halted.
However, these enemies do not abandon their charge; instead, they continue to push forward.
And for some unknown reason, the artillery that was providing you with fire support suddenly goes silent.
Oh, it turns out the chaos counterattack has begun.
Your artillery positions are once again destroyed.
Unsure of what else to do, you can only continue to shoot, endlessly shooting, constantly emptying your lasgun's power pack.
But the orks and chaos soldiers charging towards you show no signs of stopping. They storm into your trenches.
Your throat feels dry, and your fingers are numb from constantly pulling the trigger.
A pungent smell of burning plastic wafts from your lasgun's heat vents, and the power indicator flashes a red warning. Krieg soldiers silently fix their bayonets, their mechanical breathing audible beneath their gas masks.
"For the Emperor!" a Cadian officer's roar explodes over the comms channel.
You see three Leman Russ tanks rumble over the ruins from the flank, their main cannons spewing flames that blast the charging orks into pulp.
But the next second, the armor of two of the tanks suddenly twists and deforms, as if crushed like tin foil by an invisible giant hand—it's a chaos Sorcerer! The surviving tank turns its turret, but before it can fire, a Khorne Berserker leaps onto the turret and cleaves open the hatch with a chainaxe.
Heart-wrenching screams erupt from the right flank of the trench.
You turn to see four Krieg soldiers fighting Bloodletters with entrenching tools; one of them, with his intestines dragging in the mud, continues to swing his shovel.
Thirty meters to the front-left, three Cadians detonate a cluster of grenades, but it's all useless. A massive ork Warboss emerges from the explosion, almost completely unharmed.
"Reload! Reload quickly!" a comrade beside you suddenly shoves you.
You tremble as you reach for the power pack at your waist, only to find that all your power packs have already been depleted during your frantic earlier shooting.
Just then, the dirt at the edge of the trench explodes, and a large, rust-armored ork hand clamps around your throat. You smell the mixture of blood and waste oil on him, and the spittle between his tusks drips onto your face, burning your skin like acid.
The large hand tears you directly in half; you did not manage to survive on the battlefield for even half an hour.
You died on the battlefield within minutes, and a significant portion of that time was bought for you by artillery fire.
Death has arrived. This is all an ordinary Astra Militarum soldier can do on the battlefield.
You are fortunate, because you emptied all your power packs, which proves you are worthy of the Emperor.
After your death, your comrades continue to fight fiercely, and the knight Titans behind them are constantly providing as much fire support as possible.
But the ork attack is relentless.
orks, like a sea of mountains, are charging towards the last human Imperial defenses, intending to spread the corruption of the Warp throughout Cadia.
The Blackstone Fortresses seem to be useless; the fall of Cadia appears imminent.
Unless...
No, there is no "unless." Haven't the Emperor's angels already been fighting?
In your final moments, you see the head of an Ultramarine, also cleaved off by a chaos daemon.
And the chaos Warriors begin to desecrate these Ultramarines, these angels of the God-Emperor, who are also no match for them.
The Imperium's defeat seems to be a foregone conclusion; the Imperium can no longer achieve victory.
The scale of chaos is simply too immense, even with three colossal, never-before-seen Titan war machines behind you.
Even if these Titan war machines are indeed incomparably powerful, the sheer numbers of the chaos armies are too great.
Despair envelops the entire Astra Militarum force, yet no one lays down their weapons and embraces chaos.
They continue to resist steadfastly.
Cadians are born to resist chaos.
Even if everyone dies here, we will never surrender to chaos!
Just as you are thinking this, for some reason, even though you are clearly dead, you see a golden, shimmering big guy appear beside you, looking like a golden corn cob.
From your perspective, a fleet appears in the galaxy.
Reinforcements? Can we still be saved?
Has the God-Emperor sent his angels?
These are your final thoughts.
You are lucky.
Because after dying, you can still have so many thoughts, and you even manage to see Custodes arrive.