In front of the Von Kleist Family mansion in the Upperhive, Mai Mai's Chainsword buzzed shrilly as its serrated blade bit into the gilded main gate.
With a harsh tearing sound of metal, spiderweb-like cracks appeared on the ornate gate panel.
Mai Mai roared, her Power Armor's servo system operating at full capacity, and with a fierce flick of her Chainsword, the three-meter-high gilded gate crashed down, heavily striking the marble steps and raising a cloud of dust mixed with metal fragments.
Before the dust could settle, the crisp sound of Lasguns being cocked came from inside the mansion.
More than twenty private soldiers, clad in dark red bulletproof armor, swiftly emerged from behind the fountain and between the columns, their family crests glinting coldly in the sunlight.
"For the glory of the Von Kleist Family!" the leading private soldier captain roared, raising his Chainsword, and the private soldiers behind him immediately formed three ranks: the first knelt and aimed their Lasguns, the second stood and aimed, and the Chainswordsmen in the third rank adopted a charging stance.
Mai Mai reacted even faster.
He rolled sideways, taking cover behind the fallen gate panel, and simultaneously yelled into his communicator, "Disperse!"
Before he finished speaking, dozens of laser beams whistled in, burning charred holes into the gate panel remnants.
Twilight led the other members of the Kill Team to quickly scatter, using the statues and fountains in the mansion's front yard as cover, and the roar of Bolters immediately echoed through the courtyard.
"Adeptus Arbites reinforcements have arrived!" a team member's voice came through the communicator.
Three black-painted Enforcer armored vehicles crashed through the mansion's exquisite wrought-iron fence, their heavy treads crushing the meticulously trimmed bushes.
The heavy Bolter turrets on top of the armored vehicles began to rotate, their muzzles spitting deadly tongues of fire.
Fully armed Enforcers leaped from the rear of the vehicles, quickly deploying into combat formations in the mansion's front yard.
Mai Mai seized this opportunity, leaping out from behind cover.
His Chainsword violently collided with a private soldier's chain axe, sparks flying from where the teeth interlocked.
Leveraging the advantage of her Power Armor, Mai Mai exerted force, pushing the opponent back several steps, then delivered a sweeping blow, her Chainsword directly slicing through the private soldier's bulletproof chest armor, and blood immediately splattered onto the marble sculpture.
Twilight, meanwhile, led a team to flank from the side.
His plasma pistol, with each shot, detonated a blue fireball within the private soldier formation, and the searing heat instantly turned the exquisite garden plants into charcoal.
The Adeptus Arbites Enforcers steadily advanced, their heavy weapons quickly suppressing the private soldiers' gunfire.
However, just as the battle seemed to be turning, the carved oak main door of the mansion's main building suddenly burst open with a muffled thud.
A squad of elite private soldiers surged out like a tide, their weapons glinting with dangerous cold light.
Even more unsettling, the group was mixed with several abnormally large warriors—these monsters' muscles were gnarled and twisted, straining their bulletproof armor with creaks, and their exposed skin was covered in bizarre blood-red patterns.
"Watch out for those big guys!" Mai Mai sharply warned over the communicator, while sidestepping a powerful, heavy swing of a chain axe.
His Chainsword clashed with an elite private soldier's weapon, sparks flying.
Twilight, meanwhile, led the Adeptus Arbites Enforcers in forming a crossfire net, and amidst the roar of Bolters, they steadily pushed deeper into the main building.
But all of this was within Count Herman's careful calculations.
For three hundred years, the Von Kleist Family, under the guise of hosting gladiatorial shows, operated a bloody gladiator arena beneath their mansion.
Those carefully selected gladiators didn't know that every life-or-death struggle was a sacrificial ritual, and every fallen warrior, their blood and souls, were secretly offered to Khorne.
When Mai Mai and the others rushed into the main hall, they found the ground suddenly beginning to sink.
Accompanied by the roar of machinery, the entire hall floor slowly descended, revealing a vast underground space below.
A heavy smell of blood and rust wafted up, and the ancient stone walls around were covered with layers of dried bloodstains, appearing eerily dark brown in the dim light.
The ground was etched with blasphemous Chaos runes, which glowed faintly red in the darkness, slowly pulsating as if alive.
"Welcome to the Von Kleist Family's gladiator arena," Count Herman's voice came from above.
He stood on an ornate viewing platform, holding a ritual dagger inlaid with rubies.
With a gesture from him, the surrounding braziers suddenly ignited with blood-red flames, illuminating the entire underground space.
These flames burned eerily still, emitting no heat whatsoever, but instead caused the temperature of the entire arena to plummet.
Mai Mai could see his breath condensing in front of him, and the bloodstains on the ground slowly writhed under the glow of these strange flames, flowing like living things towards the central altar.
"You will become the perfect sacrifices," the Count's voice suddenly became extraordinarily loud, and then he used the ritual dagger in his hand to cut his own palm, beginning to chant blasphemous incantations.
As his incantations grew faster and faster, the shadows around him began to twist and deform.
Eight gladiators slowly emerged from the dark passage, their figures nearly half again as tall as a normal person, their exposed skin covered with writhing blood vessels.
Most terrifying were their eyes—completely blood-red, their pupils contracted into thin slits, staring fixedly at their prey like beasts.
Their weapons were no longer ordinary steel, but covered in a layer of dark red energy, each swing leaving a blood-red trail in the air.
The ground suddenly cracked in several places, and eight Bloodletterss crawled out of the Warp rifts.
They let out piercing shrieks, brandishing their Executioner Greatswords and charging towards everyone, a bloody stench assailing them.
The battle instantly turned into a one-sided slaughter.
Though well-trained, the Adeptus Arbites Enforcers appeared so fragile before these monsters.
One Enforcer had just blown apart a gladiator's head with a Bolter when he was cut in half at the waist by another gladiator's Chainsword.
The Bloodletterss, meanwhile, weaved back and forth across the battlefield, their Executioner Greatswords easily tearing through the Enforcers' bulletproof armor, each attack raising a spray of blood.
Mai Mai noticed that with each fallen warrior, the runes on the central altar would brighten a little.
Just as the defensive line was about to collapse, the gladiator arena's main gate was blown open.
Inquisitor Craig led twenty Inquisitor elites clad in Power Armor, rushing in.
Their weapons spat deadly tongues of fire, temporarily curbing the enemy's offensive.
"We've been tricked!" Craig shouted to Mai Mai amidst the hail of gunfire, "Look up!"
Mai Mai looked up, and through the skylight, he saw eight blood-red pillars of light shooting up from different directions across the entire sky of the Upperhive.
These light pillars intertwined in the sky, forming a Chaos eight-pointed star that covered the entire firmament.
Most terrifyingly, with the appearance of the Chaos eight-pointed star, a shadow in the sky was devouring the sun; the eclipse had begun.
"We must break through!" Twilight shouted while firing.
But the defensive line formed by the gladiators and Bloodletterss was like an impenetrable fortress; every charge was repelled, and casualties were constantly mounting.
Just as Mai Mai was about to call Alex for support, the entire gladiator arena suddenly shook violently.
All the torches on the walls extinguished, and the light from the altar flickered erratically.
The gladiators suddenly knelt down in pain, while the Bloodletterss let out angry roars.
"Now's our chance! Go!" Craig seized the opportunity, leading the remaining forces towards the exit.
When they finally rushed out of the gladiator arena, the passage behind them collapsed with a loud bang.
But looking up, the eight-pointed star in the sky was still slowly rotating, and the eclipse was mostly complete.
"We lost this battle," Mai Mai said hoarsely, wiping the blood from his face.
In the distance, the first wave of birds corrupted by Chaos energy had already begun to attack the civilian areas of the Upperhive; the true disaster had only just begun.
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