Chapter 416: MVP Standings, War-Machine Battle
Kian flipped a Dreadnought over, and by then his left-arm plasma cannon had finished cooling. He fired three fresh bolts forward, blowing apart several more killer-cans in the process.
He checked on the others. The Traffic Light Trio had already finished off their own targets, their suits' raw strength making short work of it.
The path ahead clear, Kian led the group back up the ridge at a run. They'd barely reached the summit and settled into cover when the Ork vehicle column arrived, unloading everything they had up the slope, the whole hillside erupting in smoke and dust.
From there, Kian's group fought from the high ground, leaning out of cover periodically to fire one or two plasma bolts down at the vehicles below, blowing them apart, then pulling back to let their weapons cool. The Ork vehicles couldn't climb the slope, leaving them exposed to a merciless picking-off from above.
The fight dragged on for another ten minutes or so before the vehicle column below had been ground down to nothing under the combined plasma and laser fire of the four squire-suits.
When it was over, all four suits had taken minor armour damage, weapons overheated and steaming, but nearly three thousand Ork units of every size lay dead across the battlefield. Corpses, wrecked war-machines, and pools of melted armour blanketed both sides of the ridge.
Amid the graveyard of wreckage, one killer-can stirred, shaking itself upright. It had been knocked flat by a plasma blast earlier and only regained consciousness after the fighting had ended. The Gretchin pilot inside took one look at the sea of destruction around him and let out a terrified squawk. He spun to flee and ran straight into the yellow squire-suit's leg.
The suit kicked the killer-can flat with almost casual force, the disparity in power roughly that of an adult swatting an infant. The killer-can hit the ground, wailing, and tried to swing back with one of its saw blades, but the squire-suit simply stomped the blade off with one foot and sheared the other clean off with a swing of the chainsword.
Then it raised the chainsword and drove it straight at the killer-can's cockpit face.
"Wait!"
Kian called out immediately. The blade stopped a hair short.
Yellow stepped aside, and Kian walked up.
"Leave one alive. Let him go spread word of my glorious deeds."
He planted a foot on the killer-can and used the Hellstrike chainsword like a scalpel, slicing the frontal plating open in a few clean strokes, exposing the small Gretchin pilot fused into the machinery inside.
The little Gretchin had already been scared half to death, and with his own cockpit peeled open in front of a full-sized war-machine, he broke down entirely, sobbing and snotting everywhere.
"Kekekeke! Little Gretchin, do you know who I am?! I'm the Gretchin Sla—"
"Eek! It's Old Fart Kian! I know that voice! The horrible, evil, merciless Old Fart Kian!"
"You son of a—"
Kian went silent for a moment. That damn nickname just wouldn't die.
"I am the Gretchin Slayer. Not Old Fart Kian. Remember that."
He pointed the chainsword out across the wreckage-strewn battlefield like a raised hand.
"Kekekekekeke! Take a good look. Every single Ork here died at my hand. This was just an appetizer. I've got a lot more of you left to kill after this. As for you, you're going to crawl back to your filthy little burrow and spread the word. Spread the terror. Spread the glorious legend of the Gretchin Slayer! Wahahahahahaha!!"
He lifted his foot off the little Gretchin, who scrambled shakily to his feet, looked at the towering squire-suit, then out at the sea of wreckage surrounding him.
Kian let out one more theatrical roar. The Gretchin dissolved into tears and snot, wailing like, well, a Gretchin, and stumbled off running as fast as his little legs could carry him.
Battle over. Victory belonged to the righteous Old Fart Kian.
The Traffic Light Trio started their post-battle celebration, shoulder-popping and dancing where they stood. Kian, meanwhile, mulled over what the fight had taught him.
First, the Knight's weapon loadout, he still felt underequipped. Room for more, if he could find it.
Second, Ork war-machines. Every single one ran at least four mechanical arms, two for ranged weapons, two for melee. A squire-suit only had two arms total, which meant in close combat, one arm could only ever handle one of the enemy's melee limbs while the other one got a free swing straight at him. If a squire-suit could mount four arms too, two dedicated to ranged weapons and two to melee, he could tear through Ork war-machines in close combat without taking damage at all.
While he was working through the idea, a comm connection opened, and Boothe's voice came through.
"Well fought, my lord. Every Ork combatant has been eliminated. Please hold position, we're dispatching transports to retrieve you."
Before long, four Mechanicus atmospheric transports arrived, and alongside them, thousands of heavy Mechanicus recovery vehicles rolled onto the battlefield in force.
As Kian and his squire-suit boarded the transport and lifted off, he looked down and saw the Mechanicus recovery convoy already swarming the wrecked Ork war-machines, hauling them away. Every scrap of it would end up in the slag river, melted down for good, so none of it could ever fall back into Ork hands and be rebuilt.
Back at the Titan Temple, Kian disembarked from the transport, piloted his squire-suit into the outfitting bay, disengaged the neural link, popped the cockpit hatch, and climbed out. Tech-priests swarmed in immediately to begin maintenance on the suit.
Kian pulled Boothe aside and shared what he'd taken away from the fight.
"Can we upgrade my Knight to four mechanical arms? Two for ranged weapons only, and the other two built with a proper upper arm, forearm, and hand, so I can replicate the natural grip and feel of wielding a sword."
Boothe cautioned him. "My lord, fitting a pair of bionic mechanical arms to your frame isn't technically difficult. But it would place a tremendous additional strain on your mind. The human brain evolved to operate two arms. Suddenly controlling four, arms this massive, at that, is no small mental burden. You'd need genuine multi-threaded cognition. Can you blink your left and right eyelids independently, on command? Can you draw a square with one hand and a circle with the other, simultaneously? If not, I'd strongly advise against the refit. You simply wouldn't be able to control four arms properly."
Hearing that, Kian immediately demonstrated by blinking each eyelid independently, right there on the spot. Then he traced a circle with one finger in the dust on the floor while simultaneously tracing a perfect square with the other hand.
That kind of so-called multi-threaded capability had been within his reach ever since his Focus stat broke seventy. He could isolate and control individual muscles across his entire body with total precision. He could even flex the left half of his glutes completely while keeping the right half fully relaxed, something an ordinary person simply couldn't do.
Honestly, be truthful: reading that last line, did you just do a kegel?
Watching Kian draw a perfect circle and square at once, Boothe nodded.
"Given that you possess this level of capability, my lord, I'll defer to your judgment. We'll fit your Knight suit with a pair of bionic mechanical arms."
☆☆☆
-> 20 Advanced chapters Now Available on Patreon!!
-> https://www.pat-reon.co-m/c/Inkshaper
(Just remove the hyphen (-) to access patreon normally)
If you like this novel please consider leaving a review that's help the story a lot Thank you