"ITACHI!!!"
Yagg's heart-wrenching wails pierced through the smoke and gunfire, echoing in the long corridor at the exit of the Core Sector. The surrounding Hokage Boyz looked on, their expressions filled with unconcealed sorrow.
But while everyone's attention was drawn to the orb of "Destined Death," no one noticed that behind the Knight mecha Shadow Transformation, a dimensional rift edged with shimmering prismatic light had quietly opened.
Chaos energy churned within the portal, revealing the faint silhouette of the interior of the Measure of Discipline. A smirk of triumph played on Luna's lips.
As a follower of the Lord of Change, she had never intended to die with Raynor. Assessing the situation, preserving her strength, harvesting victory through schemes, and retreating when necessary were the survival instincts etched into her bones.
When she cast the dimensional portal earlier, Luna had used double-casting. One was used to guide the "Destined Death" orb to bypass defenses and kill Raynor. The other was the escape route she kept for herself.
While everyone was distracted by Raynor's "death," and while Sarah: Major Cold was focused on Raynor's mangled remains—even Siss was still paralyzed by the shock of the terrifying annihilation energy—Luna pushed the mecha's thrusters to their absolute limit. The battered Shadow Transformation lunged into the dimensional portal like a bolt of lightning.
This was her true escape route!
"All forces retreat! Repeat, all forces retreat!" Luna barked the order into the encrypted communication channel without a trace of hesitation. "Everyone capable of moving, enter the portal immediately! Abandon all heavy equipment and the wounded!"
The officers of Luna's fleet had long been ready to flee. Seeing their commander take the lead in retreating, any remaining will to fight vanished. They turned around, scrambling and shoving to reach the dimensional rift.
The engines of Chimera armored transports roared, their treads crushing the corpses of their comrades. The few surviving Armiger Knights engaged maximum thrust, even knocking aside their own infantry to clear a path. No one looked back at the comrades they were abandoning. For this Chaos-corrupted force, loyalty and honor were the cheapest of commodities.
The dimensional portal slowly closed after the last officer charged through. It left behind a ground littered with weapons, burning wrecks of armored vehicles, and thousands of fodder soldiers who were too slow to escape. These abandoned soldiers looked at the surrounding Greenskins—whose eyes flickered with bloodthirsty red light—and their faces filled with despair.
The response they received was the Orks' Waaagh! roars.
"Kill dese Humies! Revenge for Boss Itachi!" "Tear 'em apart! Chop off dere heads to use as mugs!"
In just ten minutes, every abandoned Imperial soldier was slaughtered. Not a single intact corpse remained. Dark red blood flowed across the ground, mixing with the green fluids of the Orks in a nauseating stench.
But the death of the Humies did not bring the battle to an end.
The scent of blood and the thrill of slaughter acted like the strongest mushroom wine, fully igniting the Boyz' warlike genes. The Greenskins, who had been fighting side-by-side against the humans moments ago, turned their weapons on one another in an instant.
A Deathskull Boy snatched a newly looted plasma rifle from a Hokage Boy next to him. Without a word, the Hokage Boy retaliated by driving a blade into his gut. A Goff big-un, annoyed by the sight of an Evil Sunz' red space-bike, swung a massive axe and cleaved the vehicle in half. The Evil Sunz Boyz immediately swarmed him, engaging the Goffs in a brawl.
Even the spectators who had been drinking and boasting together in the stands just an hour ago quickly grasped the situation. They began trading blows, and the conflict rapidly escalated into a large-scale riot.
"Deathskull filth! Give back me plasma gun!" "Evil Sunz gitz! Pay for me bike!" "Whoever's got da biggest fist says wot's wot! Waaagh!"
The fires of war, centered at the Core Sector exit, spread across Karl-2 like a wildfire on a prairie. On the middle-tier platforms, Greenskins drove modified war vehicles into one another, firing mounted weapons frantically. In the corridors, Boyz from different clans formed battle lines, engaging in bloody melee with primitive weapons. In the docks, the warships of various factions opened fire, their shells landing in the berths and triggering a chain of massive explosions.
The Greenskins who had just been mourning "Boss Itachi" had already tossed their sorrow to the back of their minds, immersing themselves in the ecstasy of the kill. The civil war Raynor had personally engineered was finally ignited across the entire planet, catalyzed by the human invasion.
Siss stood atop the ruins, looking down at the chaotic battlefield. His expression was so dark it seemed he might drip ink. The psychic energy around him surged uncontrollably, causing nearby rubble to float.
"STOP IT ALL!!!" he roared, his voice bolstered by psychic power. The sound hit like a thunderclap, reaching every corner of the Core Sector. "Da Humies have been driven off! Stop killin' each uvva! Chandler! Tell your gitz to stop!"
But his roar was insignificant against the Waaagh! bellows of billions of Greenskins. Not a single Ork listened to him. The Boyz, eyes red with bloodlust, continued to hack at each other. A few Orks who had lost their minds even aimed their guns at Siss. Siss casually reduced those fools to charcoal with a bolt of psychic lightning, but he still could not stop the massive civil war.
More Greenskins poured out from their respective clan camps, joining the fray. The situation was completely out of control. He finally realized that he could not stop this alone. Unless he and Chandler put aside their grievances and joined forces, using absolute power and authority to suppress the chaos engulfing Karl-2, there was no hope.
Siss turned his gaze toward the nearby plaza. There, the Gargant mecha was still spinning at high speed. Chandler's "King of the Tops" performance had lasted for a full hour. He seemed entirely immersed in the thrill of the rotation, oblivious to the events outside.
The weapons across the Gargant's body were still firing wildly—shoulder cannons, Snappers, Sludgecannons—every available muzzle poured out ammunition, disregarding friend or foe. More absurdly, many Greenskins who naturally worshipped power were charging toward the spinning Gargant like mindless beasts.
They shouted "Too Waaagh!" and "Boss Chandler is da best!" before being shredded into meat paste by stray bullets or flying metal fragments. Even so, those behind them followed in waves. In their eyes, dying under such a Waaagh attack was a form of honor.
The Gargant's rotation speed grew faster, fueled by the cheers and worship of these Orks. The Waaagh! field around the mecha strengthened, making its firepower even more ferocious. The ground of the entire plaza was plowed over and over by artillery, turning into a wasteland.
"Chandler! Stop spinnin', ya git!" Siss bellowed at the Gargant mecha through a psychic link.
"Da Humies are gone! We gotta stop now and clean up dis mess! Overwise Karl-2 is gonna be scrapped by our own hands!"
There was no response. Only the relentless roar of the Gargant's engines and the rhythmic thundering of its weapons filled the hall. Siss' brow furrowed deeper. He shouted a few more times, shifting from reason to sharp rebukes, but Chandler remained unresponsive, completely oblivious to his words.
"Hmph, scared to answer me?" Siss' tone carried blatant mockery. "I reckon ya just can't stop, can ya? Gettin' slapped around by five Humie walkers 'til ya started spinnin' like a groggy squig—wot a disgrace."
"An' dat time ya took da whole fleet to ambush da Humies, only to come limpin' back wiv half a body an' your precious Mad Bull blown to bits."
"If I wuz you, I'd find a hole to hide in. You really got da face to keep spinnin' dere?"
He expected such biting insults to enrage Chandler, forcing him to stop and confront him. Chandler was notorious for his explosive temper and inability to ignore a provocation. Yet, the Gargant continued to rotate at high speed without the slightest hesitation.
Siss froze for a moment, a look of absurd frustration crossing his face.
He... he couldn't have actually spun himself unconscious, right?
The thought made even Siss want to laugh and cry at the same time. But thinking about it, the git had been piloting a thirty-meter mecha in high-speed circles for forty minutes. Never mind a person; even the mecha's gyroscopes were likely fried by now. Currently, Chandler might very well be slumped in the cockpit, vomiting his guts out and unable to even grip the controls.
"Proper hopeless moron," Siss cursed under his breath. The psychic energy around him began to condense.
Since shouting didn't work, he had to take action. He would force this damned top to a halt first, then deal with the brawling Boyz later. He raised both hands, green psychic energy pooling in his palms, preparing a powerful blast to forcibly arrest the Gargant's rotation.
But just as he was about to strike...
Hum!
A pale blue neural pulse struck Siss with surgical precision. Siss' body stiffened, his gathered energy instantly dissipating as a piercing pain shot through his head. His vision blurred, and a flood of chaotic thoughts rushed into his mind, nearly causing him to fall from the air.
He snapped his head toward the source of the pulse, his eyes burning with incandescent rage. Sarah: Major Cold stood silently not far away, her icy eyes locked onto him. That neural pulse had been her work.
"Hmph, finally couldn't help yourself?" Siss' voice was frigid. Green psychic energy erupted around him like a roaring bonfire, warping the very air.
"I wuz gonna wake dat idiot up first before dealin' wiv a lurkin' freak like you."
"Didn't fink you'd come knockin' yourself! Fine den, I'll scrap you first!"
Siss soared into the air above the hall and reached out with a grasping motion. Scattered mechanical wreckage, alloy plates, discarded weapons, and even rebar buried deep in the ground were guided by a powerful suction, swirling frantically toward his hand. Metal fragments collided, compressed, and fused, shrieking with the sound of twisting steel.
In mere seconds, a massive iron sword—one hundred and twenty meters long—formed in his hand. Arcs of green Waaagh! lightning danced across its surface. The blade was fifty meters wide, radiating the crushing weight of a blunt executioner's tool.
"Die, monster!"
With a roar, Siss gripped the giant sword with both hands and swung it down at Sarah with everything he had. He held nothing back. The giant blade tore through the air with a piercing shriek, carrying enough force to shatter a mountain peak. The air ahead of the strike was compressed into a visible shockwave, blowing away the Boyz in the vicinity.
To Siss' utter shock, Sarah did not move. She simply stood her ground, her feet firmly planted on the floor. As the giant sword was about to crush her, she raised her hands, bringing her sharp chitinous forelimbs and palms together in a clapping motion.
CLANG!!!
An ear-splitting metallic crash resounded throughout Karl-2. Sarah had caught the hundred-meter iron sword between her four palms!
The terrifying impact traveled down the blade, instantly shattering the alloy floor beneath Sarah's feet. Cracks spider-webbed outward for a hundred and fifty meters. Metal shards and dust billowed into the air, and the ground depressed by a full five centimeters. The surrounding walls collapsed again under the shockwave, plunging the area into a dim, dusty haze.
Yet Sarah's body remained motionless. Not even a faint scratch was left on her ultra-dense chitinous armor. Siss' pupils shrank as disbelief washed over him.
"How is dis possible?!"
That strike had utilized his full strength; even a Gargant's kustom force field should have been scarred by it. But this five-meter monster had caught it bare-handed and appeared to have strength to spare! Was her power actually superior to his?
In that split second of Siss' shock, Sarah vanished.
"Wot?!"
Siss' pupils dilated to their limit. He immediately pushed his psychic perception to its maximum, searching for any trace of her. But no matter how he probed, he couldn't find a single ripple of her presence. She had disappeared as if she had never existed, leaving no psychic fluctuation behind.
Wrong!
Siss' psychic precognition screamed a sharp warning. Without thinking, he instantly manifested five layers of psychic shields around himself, stacking them like a fortress. Almost the moment the shields formed, a cold presence appeared behind him.
Sarah materialized. The pair of meter-long chitinous blades on her forelimbs, wreathed in bone-chilling purple psychic energy, hacked down at Siss' back.
The power of the "Shadow in the Warp" was on full display. Tyranid psychic energy is essentially a collective of billions of minds—emotionless and devoid of individual ego. This absolute barrier of "soullessness" can forcibly sever the connection between a psyker and the Immaterium, which is formed by the warped emotions of sentient beings.
Whether it was the sorcery of Chaos wizards, the psychic spells of humans, or the Waaagh! field—which is essentially a field of Orkish fanaticism and worship of power—the Shadow in the Warp exerted a suppressive effect.
Siss' fully charged psychic shields were as fragile as wet paper under the erosion of the Hive Mind's shadow.
CRACK! CRACK! CRACK!
The five layers of shields shattered one by one under the pressure of the chitinous blades. At the critical moment, Siss teleported away, narrowly avoiding a fatal blow. The blades grazed his shoulder, tearing through his robes and leaving a wound deep enough to show bone.
Siss reappeared a hundred meters away, clutching his bleeding shoulder. He looked at Sarah with a grave expression. He finally understood why his shields were so pathetic and why the Humie leader's teleportation had been interrupted earlier.
This monster's psychic power could suppress other forms of psychic energy at their very source!