Light flooded in from overhead, and with it came the heavy scent of gunpowder smoke, mixed with a hint of stench.
David squinted instinctively and looked up at the sky.
A vortex too massive for words occupied the entire sky, its interior churning with purple light as it rotated slowly, as if it wanted to suck anyone who gazed upon it into its depths.
That was the Eye of Terror, Cadia's famous landmark.
David didn't linger on the Eye of Terror for long. He patted the dirt off his sleeves, braced his hands, and jumped out of the hole.
Looking around, the surroundings were a field of ruins, showing signs of artillery strikes with a few sparks still burning.
At the center of these ruins, a massive object lay quietly.
Relying on his memories of sci-fi movies, David was certain it was a small starship.
Its current state could only be described as fragmented; the hull was riddled with scorched holes, half-embedded into the ground.
The loud crash he had felt underground earlier was caused by this ship falling.
David's gaze locked onto the deformed hatch of the cabin. He saw a viscous green liquid seeping out from under the door seam.
No wonder he had been smelling a faint, lingering stench.
David switched the block in his hand into a stone sword, staying alert to his surroundings.
[First time stepping onto the surface. Mod: JourneyMap, loaded.]
A line of text popped up in the chat box in the bottom left corner, breaking the heavy atmosphere.
A small circular map appeared in the bottom right corner of David's vision.
David scanned the minimap. It showed the terrain and biological entities within 20 meters, centered on him.
To the north, at the location of the starship, two red dots were surrounding a green dot.
David looked in that direction and saw a figure leaning against the hull of the ship.
His head hung low, hands dangling limply, and a strangely shaped rifle lay on the ground beside him.
By the looks of it, he was a Cadian Ensign.
If that was the green dot, where were the red dots? David lowered his body and approached the soldier.
"Cough... cough..."
Hearing footsteps, the Ensign raised his head.
The moment he saw the other's face, David's scalp tingled. He instinctively retreated several steps, holding the stone sword across his chest.
Half of the Ensign's face was torn open, appearing as if it had been corroded by strong acid—festering and swollen, a truly disgusting sight.
Even worse, the signs of rot were spreading to other parts of his face.
"Cough, cough... watch your step..."
The Ensign looked at David, his lips quivering as he murmured.
Almost at the same moment, the two stationary red dots on the Minimap closed in on him with startling speed.
~Boom
The ruins beneath David's feet exploded as four rotting arms burst from the ground, grabbing for his ankles.
Extraordinary neural reaction speed allowed David to respond the instant he heard the unusual sound beneath him.
He immediately kicked off the ground and jumped upward, brushing past the rotting arms and evading the attack.
In mid-air, David turned his head toward the ground. Two creatures, one fat and one thin, were struggling to climb out from underground.
They looked remarkably like zombies from Minecraft, with the same rotting skin and puffy eyes.
Judging by the clothing clinging to their flesh, they were likely human in life, but had now been infected and transformed into the walking dead by something.
Mustn't let them touch me. As the thought flashed by, David gripped the stone sword and twisted his body in the air.
Using the momentum of his fall, the stone sword sliced through the air from top to bottom, hacking down fiercely.
A screeching sound rang out as a line of blood bloomed on the thin zombie's head.
Critical Hit!
Unique particle effects emerged from the zombie's body.
David's stone sword embedded into the thin zombie's scalp without resistance, only coming to a halt when it hit hard bone.
Clearly, the jump-crit mechanic from Minecraft worked in the warhammer world as well.
-7.5. HP
David silently calculated the thin zombie's health. He exerted force with his wrist to pull the stone sword from the wound, bringing with it a spray of yellow-green, viscous pus.
His feet touched the ground, and David pressed the advantage.
While the thin zombie was knocked back, he gripped the hilt with both hands, used his core to rotate his entire body, and delivered another sweep.
The attack cooldown bar at the bottom of his vision had just finished refilling.
The stone sword struck the thin zombie's head again. The already damaged skull could no longer take it and shattered with a crack.
So weak. HP is estimated to be below 20, not even as good as a zombie in Minecraft, David judged mentally.
He then raised his foot and kicked the zombie's chest, sending the still-twitching corpse flying and ending it completely.
The entire combat process was seamless. The zombie's corpse rolled a few times on the ground and vanished into thin air.
Multi-colored experience orbs and two pieces of rotten flesh popped out, floating toward David.
Rotten flesh? Even the drops from these zombie-like creatures are the same as Minecraft zombies.
[First monster kill. Mod: Jade HUD, loaded.]
Jade HUD—an extremely useful auxiliary mod with many functions, including but not limited to displaying an entity's health and basic info, the name of a pointed block, and its mining level...
David flicked the blood off his sword and turned to look at the fat zombie nearby.
Perhaps due to its obesity, the fat zombie's movements were sluggish, causing it to be a beat slower when crawling out from underground.
This had given David the chance to finish off the thin zombie quickly.
A health bar of 25 HP hovered over the fat zombie's head, and its name was displayed as [Soldier Infected with Zombie Plague].
Zombie plague.
David knew this was a virus. That meant he was dealing with Grease-Know-Who.
Typhus' Plague Fleet once served as the vanguard of the Black Crusade, capturing Lylisar and spreading viruses throughout the Segmentum Obscurus, including the zombie plague.
The fat zombie let out an angry roar, its massive, greasy abdomen making a gurgling, squeezing sound.
A thick stench of fermented corpses and filth rushed toward David first.
Following closely was a stream of murky green unknown liquid.
The stone sword in David's hand struck toward the opponent's head first, while his body dodged to the right, narrowly avoiding the unknown liquid.
However, the thick stench emitted by the liquid still entered David's nostrils.
Just from one whiff, David felt a wave of dizziness in his head.
Debuffs like Nausea (10s), Weakness I (30s), and Hunger (60s) appeared on his status bar.
His Hunger bar, already depleted from mining to only six units, began to shake precariously.
The fat zombie didn't dodge, meeting the stone sword with its large belly.
Under the effect of Weakness, the stone sword struggled to slice through the skin of the belly, blocked by the thick layer of fat within and unable to penetrate further.
David retreated repeatedly, wiping his nose as a violent urge to vomit welled up in his heart.
His vision began to shake and distort, as if he had drunk bootleg alcohol.
Under the Level 1 Weakness buff, David's stone sword only dealt one point of damage. The fat zombie still had 24 HP left.
So troublesome, David cursed inwardly, trying his best to steady himself and not collapse under the Nausea effect.
'I need me some Milk boye'