Chapter 431: Warhammer: What Do You Mean You Conquered the Zerg

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Protagonist:

Lin En

Lena

"Take cover!! Open fire!"

The moment the door fell, Keller roared and dodged sideways behind a thick ventilation pipe.

The bomb gun in his hand was raised almost simultaneously, aimed at the gap in the gate, and he pulled the trigger.

What responded to him was a barrage denser than the bomb gun.

Spraying from behind the door was not the red beam of a laser gun, nor the piercing shriek of a conventional bomb breaking the sound barrier, but plague bullets wrapped in dark green venom.

The green shells carried rot, and when the venom on the bulletheads hit the metal cabin wall, it hissed, instantly melting out pits emitting white smoke.

Corrosive energy spread along the metal grain, and even the thick pillars were eaten into pockmarks.

The guards who had hastily taken cover immediately counterattacked, purification shells forming a line of fire toward the shadows behind the door.

But when the firelight illuminated those burly figures inside the door, everyone who saw the targets clearly felt as if they had fallen into an ice cellar.

Keller found it hard to believe; he stared at those figures, squeezing out a few words from between his teeth, his voice trembling with shock:

"Plague warriors... Fourteenth Legion."

They were twenty-two Space Marines wearing MK3 "Iron" power armor.

No, once were.

Now they had thrown themselves into the embrace of the great plague enemy.

The proud armor had long lost its original iron-gray paint, and the thick armor plates were covered with pitted rust and festering wounds.

Dark green pus constantly seeped from the gaps in the armor, pooling into small puddles beneath their feet.

Some warriors had their abdominal armor completely ruptured, with swollen rotten flesh surging outward, pink intestines mixed with milky-white maggots hanging between their waists and abdomens.

Swaying slightly with their steps, yet they showed not the slightest pain.

The warrior at the very front had his helmet completely fused with flesh and blood; his distorted, swollen face was crowded with over a hundred cloudy yellow eyeballs.

Four or five cracked mouths emitted hoarse breathing at the same time, and every breath sprayed gray mist carrying plague spores.

Those eyeballs turned simultaneously, all sweeping toward the guards behind the cover, as if sizing up a group of livestock awaiting slaughter.

They were Death Guard, Dusk Assaulters.

Warriors of the Fourteenth Legion under the Emperor, famous across the galaxy for their tenacious will and powerful assault capabilities.

But in the Horus Heresy, they fell into the embrace of the God of Plague, Nurgle.

Completely remade by the Father's plagues and blessings, they became walking plague carriers, undying, undying rotten vanguards.

The Empire's textbooks were filled with their atrocities; behind every planet's fall and every plague outbreak, there might be traces of these rotten traitors.

Keller never dreamed he would face twenty-two plague warriors head-on on the lower deck of an Imperial Battleship.

"Focus fire on the head, flamethrowers at full output!" He suppressed his shock and ordered hoarsely.

"Fire all holy ammunition!"

The soldiers immediately adjusted their firepower; two heavy bomb guns roared as they poured out ammunition, and the tongues of the flamethrowers surged several meters.

Crimson holy flames swept over the plague warriors at the gate.

Purification shells precisely hit the face of the leading warrior, splashing pus everywhere.

But this time, the invincible purification firepower failed.

The silver-plated bullet core pierced through the surface rotten flesh and drilled into the rusted power armor, but could not go in half an inch further.

Dark green pus flowed out from the bullet holes, and instead, propelled by the impact, splashed even farther, etching deeper traces on the metal surface.

Tiberium holy flames wrapped around the warrior's body; golden flames licked the rotten flesh but could only char the surface dead skin.

The plague power blessing within could actually contend with the holy flame, allowing them to maintain a stable form.

MK3 power armor was renowned for extreme protection, plus Nurgle's blessing of rotting flesh and disease protection.

Conventional purification weapons were no different from tickling them.

After a round of volley fire, the twenty-two plague warriors were unscathed.

Bearing the firepower, they moved.

The heavy power armor stepped on the metal floor, emitting dull tremors, yet their speed was completely incompatible with their huge size.

Ordinary people could not see their movements at all, only feeling a flash before their eyes, and the rotten evil wind had already reached the frontline.

A guard in the front row had just removed an empty magazine when a power axe with tentacles came slashing at his face.

The axe blade wrapped in Nurgle's corrosive power easily split his helmet and skull, and the rotten poison spread through his whole body instantly along the wound.

The soldier couldn't even scream; his whole body turned black and swollen at a visible speed, and in less than a second became a bloated corpse, heavily falling to the ground.

The bodies of the plague warriors harbored over a hundred of Nurgle's plagues: necrosis disease, rot fever, bloody dysentery, zombie plague...

Even inhaling a trace of the mist they exhaled would cause persistent high fever, rotting muscles, and a cliff-like drop in bodily functions within minutes.

The guards in the corridor soon showed symptoms.

Dizziness, nausea; the hands holding their rifles began to weaken, their lungs felt as heavy as if filled with lead, and every breath carried a strong rusty smell.

Someone couldn't hold on and knelt on the ground; as soon as he opened his mouth, he spat out mouthfuls of black blood, his organs already beginning to dissolve under the plague's effect.

Chain swords slashing on power armor left only white marks, and bombs hitting rotten flesh stirred not a ripple.

Instead, every swing of the plague warriors' axes and every punch could bring a rain of blood and flying flesh.

Rotten flesh flew everywhere, screams and the sound of shattering bones intertwined, and the narrow corridor instantly became a slaughterhouse.

Keller leaned against a pillar, his left arm already burned by splashing corruption flesh, his protective suit corroded through, the skin beneath rotted over a large area.

He watched his soldiers fall like wheat in swaths, watched those walking corruption flesh monsters harvest lives expressionlessly, and a bone-deep chill and despair rose in his heart.

The last thing he saw was the leading plague warrior walking slowly toward him.

Rusted gears and flask emblems were carved on the other's chest armor, the mark of a Plague Engineer.

There was not a shred of emotion in his clouded eyeballs, as if looking at a dead thing.

Then the rusted warhammer fell.

Keller's consciousness, along with the entire military police squad, fell together into eternal darkness.

Close combat contact took less than ten seconds.

Three hundred well-trained navy military police, before twenty-two Death Guard, their powerless defensive line like cotton collapsed in an instant.

At the end of the corridor, Phelps shook the blood and bone fragments off his warhammer.

Beneath his mask came a low laugh like escaping air, the corruption flesh in his chest gurgling with the laughter, dark green mist slowly seeping out from the gaps in his mask.

"The Father's gaze always precedes the enemy's bullet."

His voice was hoarse like rusted iron plates rubbing together, carrying the sluggishness of not having spoken for a long time.

Everything was as he had expected.

Taking advantage of the chaos of the Pale Rose exploding in orbit, he brought twenty-one elite plague warriors.

Through a warp teleportation array anchored in advance in the lower cargo hold, he directly jumped into the interior of the James Tong.

Half a month earlier, the "inside man" in Brévès Bottom City had taken the opportunity of delivering supplies to the Tithe Fleet to secretly hide plague spores and teleportation anchor points in the supply crates.

The corrupted slum crewmen and deck workers whose soul faith had wavered became the best breeding ground for the spread of the Father's soul faith.

They silently infected the entire H4 Living Area, tampered with inspection records, blocked monitoring signals, and put on a full five days of "everything is normal" theater for the Imperial Navy.

Had he not laid this dark chess move, he and the twenty-one warriors behind him would probably have followed the Pale Rose into nothingness in the Holy Flame.