"Fire! Give them everything we've got! Break out!"
Luna roared hysterically. The thermal cannon of her Knight mecha fired first, a searing beam of light blasting into the Greenskin army. Her remaining forces opened fire simultaneously—lascannons, heavy bolters, and high-voltage currents slammed into the green tide.
The first few hundred Orks were vaporized instantly. However, instead of deterring the Greenskins, the carnage only drove them into a deeper frenzy.
"WAAAAAGH!!!"
Countless Orks trampled over the corpses of their comrades, charging forward with reckless abandon. Utilizing the narrow, winding terrain, they quickly crashed into the human lines. One Greenskin Boy was hacked in half by a chainsword, but in his dying breath, he managed to shove a stikkbomb into the treads of a Chimera APC. Goff Boyz wielding massive axes hacked a gaping hole into a Centaur vehicle, dragging out the driver and tearing him to pieces.
Luna's forces were swallowed by the green ocean in an instant. She piloted her Knight, desperately trying to carve a bloody path, but Greenskins were everywhere. Even as her weapons mowed them down and her ion shields kept them at bay, the Orks threw themselves at her without fear. Their suicidal madness filled her with an instinctive dread.
In her desperation, Luna looked toward the core district. There, Raynor stood on the shoulder of Sarah: Major Cold, watching her calmly. Luna couldn't see his face, but she knew he was wearing a look of triumph—watching a trapped beast make its final struggle.
She had fallen into Raynor's meticulously laid trap from the very beginning. Although she didn't know how Raynor had incited the Greenskin civil war, she realized he had intentionally slowed the expedition fleet's progress to let her push into the core district first. His goal was to let her exhaust the Greenskins' strength.
Now, she couldn't escape. These Greenskins, who had been absent earlier for unknown reasons, had reappeared to ambush her. This plan eliminated Luna, a major threat, while pinning the blame entirely on the Greenskins, leaving no room for suspicion. She might even be posthumously branded with the crime of "reckless advancement."
Luna piloted the scarred Shadow of Change, swinging her Reaper Chainsword to cleave the lunging Boyz in two. Scalding blood splattered across her armor, and the multi-colored ion shield—once etched with blasphemous runes—grew dim and flickering. Yet the green tide was endless. Their eyes burned with fanatical bloodlust as they screamed slogans about "killin' da Humies," moving like tireless, painless killing machines.
Sasuke, leading the charge on his champion Squig "Chidori," rampaged through the human lines. This genetically specialized Squig was several sizes larger than a standard war-beast; its razor-sharp tusks dripped with saliva, and it could bite through the armor of a Chimera in a single snap. Every swing of Sasuke's Kusanagi blade brought a rain of blood. Despite having just finished the Elf-Gauk, his exhaustion didn't hinder his speed. He could lean off the back of his speeding Squig to dodge las-beams and decapitate Skitarii soldiers with a backhand strike.
Against these Greenskins, whose hormones were peaking after the race, the once well-trained private soldiers were as fragile as paper. Their defensive lines shattered instantly; soldiers threw away their gear and fled in terror, only to be flanked by Orks emerging from side alleys and dragged into the shadows, letting out final screams of despair.
Luna's heart sank. Trapped between two fronts, she knew she was about to face another defeat. Gritting her teeth, she pushed the Knight's power output to the limit, channeling pale blue Chaos energy into the thrusters. The mecha erupted with powerful thrust, slamming through a dozen Ork cavalrymen on giant Squigs and temporarily creating distance from the green army.
Seizing this precious gap, she used a bone knife to carve a Tzeentchian teleportation rune into the air of the cockpit. Swirling Chaos energy flowed like a living thing over the rune, struggling to bridge the gap to the Immaterium.
"Great Lord of Change, protect me..." Luna whispered, cold sweat dripping from her forehead.
In this territory, heavily blanketed by the dense Waaagh! field of Karl-2, the energy of the Warp was already extremely turbulent. The collective will of the Greenskins acted like a thick, indestructible wall, blocking most passages to the Warp. Her teleportation sorcery was exceptionally difficult to activate; the runes flickered several times but failed to open a stable rift. Instead, the magical backlash caused a throbbing pain in her head, and her vision began to darken.
Just as she finally mustered a sliver of Warp energy and was about to lock onto the coordinates of the Measure of Discipline—
Shing!
A pale blue neural spear arced through the air with elegant precision, striking the mecha. Although the spear was caught mid-air by the ion shield, the strange purple psychic energy disrupted the local psychic fluctuations around her.
Splurt!
The runes shattered instantly. Colorful Chaos energy scattered, and the intense backlash caused Luna to cough up a mouthful of blood. Her vision went black, and she nearly fell from her pilot's seat. Her ears rang, and even the sounds of gunfire and explosions became a muffled blur.
"Who?!" Luna looked up in shock and rage, her crimson eyes locked onto the core district.
Atop the ruins, that translucent, massive figure stood silently. Sarah: Major Cold's cold eyes were locked onto Luna.
The Tyranid "Shadow in the Warp" was already unparalleled at blocking the Immaterium, let alone a Sarah augmented by the Crown of the Swarm. Under her interference, opening a Warp portal—or even conducting simple long-range communication—was impossible. Any attempt to commune with the Warp was ruthlessly crushed by the collective will of the Swarm.
This precise neural spear also caused Siss's eyes to narrow from a distance. He hadn't originally paid much attention to the Hokage Clan's so-called "Envoy Major Cold." Greenskins were a mad race, and every clan had its own bizarre beliefs. Some worshipped an avatar of Gork or Mork, treating a particularly powerful mecha as a god. The Snakebites worshipped primal strength and despised high technology. To him, the Hokage Clan keeping a powerful monster as a religious icon was perfectly normal.
However, that neural spear had allowed his sensitive psychic perception to catch an extremely alien energy fluctuation. Greenskin psychic power was always tied to the Waaagh! field, carrying a primal, wild, and bellicose aura. Even the most powerful Weirdboy couldn't cast a spell without the backing of the Waaagh! field.
But that attack just now was cold, precise, and efficient, carrying a will of consumption. It bore none of the characteristics of Greenskin psychic power, and it was even fundamentally different from the psychic energy of the Humies.
Siss remained silent, withdrawing his gaze, but a storm was already brewing in his mind.
Siss began to calmly reconstruct everything that had transpired over the past month.
First, the Hokage Clan emerged as a sudden power through the Waaagh! GP and the Elf-Gauk Rally, earning top honors during a massive Humie raid. They leaped from an obscure small clan to a rising force on Karl-2.
Then, Yagg approached him, directly addressing the deep-seated concern about Chandler that Siss hadn't even admitted to himself. They helped him absorb the desperate remnants of the Blood Axes, repelled the Humies' two-pronged assault with perfect tactics, and established his authority.
Next, they used a duel of speed and heavy blows to completely subdue the unruly Evil Sunz Clan. They offered counsel, step by step leading the Bad Moons to be purged due to their own greed, dragging the entire middle tier of Karl-2 into the quagmire of civil war.
Then Chandler was forced out of seclusion early, leading to the total rupture between the two camps. And finally... the human fleet "happened" to launch a full-scale invasion at this exact moment, resulting in a three-way chaotic battle where the situation spiraled out of control.
Everything seemed to follow a logical sequence, but upon closer inspection, the shadow of the Hokage Clan was present at every critical node. Every time, it was Yagg who offered a timely suggestion. Every time, it was the Hokage Clan charging at the front, pushing the situation toward an irreversible direction in the most "reasonable" way.
Were they really helping him?
Siss's gaze shifted to Raynor's position. That silent, unassuming Ork big-un, "Itachi," who always stood behind Yagg. He was standing in the shadow of the so-called "Envoy Major Cold," watching the chaotic battlefield below with composure. His eyes lacked the fanatical bloodlust typical of Greenskins; instead, they held the calm indifference of a spectator. It was as if the slaughter unfolding was merely a set of pieces on his chessboard.
A terrifying thought slowly rose in Siss's mind. Perhaps, from the very beginning, he had been used as a pawn by the Hokage Clan—by this Ork named "Itachi." He had exploited Siss's wariness of Chandler and the Orks' innate desire for power to deepen the conflict and ignite a civil war capable of destroying Karl-2.
Siss said nothing. He quietly extended his psychic perception, letting it seep like rainwater into the ground, cautiously enveloping Raynor and Sarah's direction. He wanted to probe their true identities and the secrets hidden in the depths of their souls.
"That Ork named Siss has begun to suspect us," Sarah's voice transmitted through the mental link, cold and alert. "He is probing us with psychic energy."
Siss's psychic strength was immense, dozens of times stronger than Luna's. In this space station, his psychic presence was as conspicuous as a small moon. Every move he made was glaringly obvious to Sarah.
"It's fine," Raynor's tone remained casual. He had long expected Siss to notice something was amiss. No one who became an Alpha-level psyker was a fool. Previously, Siss was intoxicated by the rush of power and authority; now that he had calmed down, he would naturally spot the flaws. He paused and asked with slight concern, "Did he realize you were watching him?"
When you gaze into the abyss, the abyss gazes back.
"No," Sarah said with certainty. "My psychic power is above his."
Raynor chuckled and reached out to lightly pat Sarah's cold armor. Eating "soft rice" (relying on a strong woman) felt good.
While Raynor and Sarah spoke, Luna—whose teleportation had been interrupted—had fallen into total madness. Looking at the increasing number of Greenskins and the relaxed Raynor in the distance, the fury and resentment accumulated over months exploded.
She had been set up by Raynor again and again, fled in humiliation again and again, and failed again and again. All the disgrace and frustration converged into a tidal wave of hatred. She could imagine Raynor laughing at her stupidity and incompetence.
"RAYNOR!!!"
Luna let out a hysterical scream, her voice sharp and ear-piercing with rage. She jerked the control lever, and pale blue flames erupted, enveloping the entire mecha. She ignored Siss's psychic attacks from behind and the concentrated fire from the surrounding Greenskins.
She focused all power into the thrusters. The fifteen-meter-tall mecha charged like an out-of-control bull toward Raynor on the ruins, carrying the momentum of a mutual suicide.
"Gone mad?" Raynor raised an eyebrow, watching the charging Luna with some surprise.
A bolt of Siss's pitch-black psychic lightning struck the back of the Knight, the impact causing the mecha to stumble. Countless bullets struck the mecha's shield, creating ripples. Yet the mecha pressed on regardless, eyes fixed on Raynor in a full-speed charge.
Luna's eyes were bloodshot, her face twisted into a manic grin. No one knew what she was thinking. When she was less than a hundred meters from Raynor, her flickering ion shield finally began to pulse erratically, on the verge of total collapse. The blasphemous runes on the shield's surface lit up one by one, then shattered with shrill screams. Sarah could sense that within every scream were the tortured souls of dozens of mortals.
At that moment, Luna slammed a hidden red button on the control console. This button was the true secret of that STC data slate and her final trump card, one she would never use unless absolutely necessary.
The ion shield, originally covered in a multi-colored glow, suddenly began to rotate at high speed. Energy circuits flowed rapidly across its surface, producing a deafening howl. The gale generated by the rotation kicked up rubble and dust from the ground, which adhered to the shield.
"What, are you turning into a top too?" Raynor couldn't help but mock her.
But in the next second, a strong sense of crisis erupted from Raynor's heart, making his hair stand on end. This feeling was no less intense than the crisis he felt when facing the Keeper of Secrets.
In the center of the high-speed rotating shield, a fist-sized spherical orb of light was slowly condensing. The orb looked unremarkable—transparent, with no energy fluctuations and moving slowly as it drifted toward Raynor.
However, anyone with even slight sensitivity could feel the terrifying energy within it, capable of destroying everything. It was a chaotic energy compressed to the extreme, containing the power of every attack Luna had received in the last ten minutes. Siss's violent psychic energy, the Orks' hacking blades, and the thermal and kinetic energy of the artillery—all the damage and energy were condensed into this tiny orb of light.
"What on earth is that thing?" Raynor's expression shifted, his previous composure vanishing instantly.
Without hesitation, he turned and accelerated away on the standard Hokage Clan war-bike. But the sphere of light seemed to possess eyes of its own; it locked onto him, drifting behind him with an unhurried but relentless pace. No matter how much he accelerated or swerved, it remained fixed on his tail, its speed gradually increasing.
A few nearby Ork Boyz, seeing something flying toward their "Boss Itachi," roared and raised their scrap-metal shields to block Raynor's path.
"Watch out, Boss!" "If ya wanna touch Boss Itachi, ya gotta go fru us first!"
The sphere passed through the shields and the Boyz' bodies without resistance. It left behind perfectly smooth, circular holes with surgically clean edges, as if that portion of matter had been erased from existence. The sphere itself remained unchanged, continuing its pursuit of Raynor.
Several other "Shinobi Boyz" attempted to attack the orb with ranged weapons, but every projectile melted into the light upon contact, achieving nothing.
Raynor wiped his damp forehead. "Am I actually sweating?"
He could feel it; this sphere would not dissipate on its own. It would pursue its target until the mark was utterly annihilated.
"That is the true charm of that STC," Luna's voice echoed with manic laughter. "It doesn't just generate the strongest ion shield; it stores every bit of damage received over a period and reflects it all at once!"
"I call it 'Destined Death.'"
"Raynor, enjoy my final gift to you! Hahaha!"
The sphere grew faster, closing the distance. The crushing weight of the destructive energy caused Itachi's Ork body to tremble slightly. Just as the sphere was about to strike, a massive blue-and-white silhouette lunged in front of him.
"Sarah!"
Sarah: Major Cold spread her arms, pouring every ounce of her psychic power into a dense shield. The purple barrier was so thick it appeared black, firmly protecting Raynor behind her. To maintain this shield, she temporarily severed her connection to parts of the hive, concentrating all psychic reserves on defense.
BOOM!!!
The orb slammed into the psychic shield. An ear-splitting explosion followed, causing the entire corridor to vibrate violently as alloy plates peeled off the walls. A terrifying shockwave radiated outward, shredding every Ork and human soldier within thirty meters. Blinding white light erupted from the point of impact, searing the eyes of everyone nearby.
Sarah's shield flickered wildly, and she let out a muffled groan. Yet she stood her ground, refusing to retreat a single step. Even if this was merely one of Raynor's personas, she would not allow anyone to harm him in her presence.
Suddenly, Luna's expression turned cold. She pressed her palms together, and a surge of chaotic Warp energy erupted from her. Her form began to blur and distort, as if she were about to merge into the Immaterium.
"Did you think you could survive like this? Raynor, you are too naive."
As she spoke, the sphere that had been grinding against the psychic shield suddenly accelerated backward. Simultaneously, a dimensional rift edged with shimmering prismatic light opened just in front of Sarah. The rebounding sphere plunged into it and vanished.
A second later, an identical rift appeared directly above Itachi's head. Beside him, Yagg saw the opening and shoved Itachi away with all his might.
But how could "Destined Death" be avoided by a cliché act of self-sacrifice?
The sphere shot out of the rift, seemingly having predicted Raynor's movement, flying straight toward where he was falling. Carrying the power to end worlds, it slammed into Itachi.
The moment it touched his body, the sphere expanded rapidly, annihilating everything it touched. Three-quarters of Itachi's body, along with his heavy Ork armor, vanished instantly. Not even ash remained. Only half of his upper torso and half of his head were left lying on the cold alloy floor.
Green Ork blood flowed slowly across the ground. The Orks' legendary regenerative abilities were useless; the "Destined Death" orb had not only destroyed the flesh but had also erased the very life force of the body.
"ROAR!!!"
Sarah: Major Cold let out a mournful cry of rage and despair. The psychic energy around her spiraled out of control, creating a storm that pulverized everything in the vicinity.
Yagg rushed over like a madman. He knelt beside Raynor's mangled remains, his body shaking uncontrollably as he began to wail.
"Itachi! Itachi, wake up!!"
"Ya can't die, Itachi!!"
"Da Hokage Clan ain't da best yet! How can ya leave?! Waaaaagh..."
Yagg's howling was so heart-wrenching that even Sarah paused. She wondered how someone could be more devastated than her.
Yagg clumsily wiped the blood from Raynor's face with his hands, his tears mixing with Ork snot and dripping onto Raynor's cold skin. He remembered the first time he met Raynor—the confused, "silly" Ork who had just woken up. Back then, Yagg thought he had found a dim-witted subordinate to boss around.
Then Raynor had led him to ambush Arvin, and his life had changed forever. In just a few months, he had gone from a bottom-tier Gretchin shoveling dung to the respected leader of the Hokage Clan. Those memories flashed back, making him sob even harder. He didn't care who Raynor really was, whether he was a true Greenskin, or if he had simply been using him.
Raynor's lingering consciousness looked at the grieving Yagg, and a bitter smile tugged at the corner of his mouth. He hadn't expected that during this short experience as a Greenskin, he would actually make a friend who would cry for him.
Summoning his last bit of strength, he raised his remaining functional hand. With a blood-stained finger, he lightly tapped Yagg's forehead.
"Forgive me, Yagg... I used you," his voice was so faint it was nearly inaudible, carrying a trace of sincere apology.
"But do not be sad," Raynor's eyes held a glimmer of a smile. "Live well. It won't be long until we see each other again."
His arm fell limp, and the green pupils lost their focus.
"ITACHI!!!"
Yagg clutched the remains, letting out a soul-piercing cry.
At that moment, a familiar voice echoed in Sarah's mind.
"Sarah, wait for me."
Raynor's final farewell was for Sarah.
Simultaneously, in the captain's quarters of the Peak Obsidian in orbit around Karl-2.
A handsome human man with deep purple eyes opened them.