After killing more than twenty Flayed Ones, Chen Xi and Master Guteres left the sewers and returned to the surface to catch their breath.
Given the attributes of the Inquisitor and Forge Master pieces they were using, they could have stayed in those nearly harmless sewers for a month without any trouble.
But to Chen Xi and Master Guteres, who had originally been ordinary people, the sewers were still too dark and cramped. The intense strain on their nerves and the battles with the Flayed Ones had left them both somewhat mentally exhausted.
So they returned to the surface to rest for a while.
Once they were above ground, the two put away their private casualness and each slipped back into character.
"Governor!" Rachel hurried over when she saw Chen Xi emerge from the sewer entrance.
This Chancellor, formerly a Commissar, had been exceptionally busy lately. Not only did she have to handle the planet's daily affairs, she also had to oversee the blockade of the affected areas, leaving her almost no time to rest.
It made Chen Xi notice the heavy dark circles beneath the Chancellor's eyes.
But in the Warhammer world, going several days without sleep was hardly a serious problem.
If 2077 could use all sorts of drugs and stimulants to make workers pull seventy-two-hour shifts without rest, the Warhammer world would only be more outrageous.
Of course, the Chancellor was not yet at the point where she needed drugs to stay awake and ensure everything got done. She simply had not been resting enough.
"Master Guteres and I have cleared out some of the Flayed Ones. Send people down to bring up the xenos corpses. The Sisters of Battle squad will assist you." Chen Xi showed no tenderness or concern for her; he merely assigned Rachel a new task.
The Chancellor naturally said nothing more. She nodded, then turned and arranged for personnel to carry out Chen Xi's orders.
"We've cleared roughly one-third of the area. From the current situation, there are more xenos than we anticipated." Guteres and Chen Xi put on a show of discussing the Flayed Ones.
"I think the number of xenos has dropped to an acceptable level. Let the Imperial Guard clear the rest. They need some training too."
Beside them, General Gregory of the Imperial Guard stood in full Flak Armor, listening carefully to their conversation.
As one of the few veterans in the Imperial Guard who had retired from the Astra Militarum back in the day, General Gregory was no stranger to all kinds of xenos and knew how to fight them.
But the boys in the Imperial Guard were not the elite Astra Militarum troops of old. The same tactics could be executed flawlessly by the Astra Militarum, yet would be full of holes in the hands of the Imperial Guard.
General Gregory naturally understood that problem. As an old Astra Militarum veteran, anyone who could survive to retirement in an organization where the average survival time did not exceed fifteen hours was no pushover.
So, faced with Chen Xi's decision, the old general merely said, "The boys really ought to see some blood."
Although the original settlers of Rostov II had all been retired Astra Militarum veterans, the Imperial Guard they had personally trained were nothing but rookies without combat experience.
"Rostov is a barren, sparsely populated world. In the past few decades, we old ghosts haven't seen a war—there have barely even been any riots! These boys have only fought lowlifes like rioting prisoners. It's truly difficult for them to build combat experience," General Gregory said helplessly. "Sending them into the sewers to fight xenos will certainly bring casualties, but that's still far better than throwing them straight onto a battlefield to die!
We all know how many enemies the Imperium faces. The peace of Rostov II is merely a beautiful illusion. If they cannot defend their homes, war will soon ignite on this planet. When that happens, they will have no choice but to learn how to become qualified soldiers through even more bloodshed and the destruction of their homeland."
General Gregory was a standard Valhallan. Valhalla had once been scenic, beautiful, and prosperous, but a meteor impact had knocked it out of orbit and frozen the entire planet. An Ork invasion had nearly destroyed the world, and the tenacious Valhallans had defended their homeland only through unwavering will and bloodshed.
Therefore, in General Gregory's eyes, letting the Imperial Guard rookies get a good taste of blood was not a bad thing.
A force's level of training and weaponry were certainly important in determining whether it could fight, but extensive combat experience was another crucial standard.
After all, soldiers who had never been on a battlefield might perform well in training and excel under ordinary circumstances, only to freeze in terror and have no idea what to do when they faced death in battle.
Thus, how to give a force sufficient combat experience became an important issue for its leaders.
In the Warhammer world, this was usually not a difficult problem. There were always endless enemies of the Imperium to kill, plenty of foes to farm experience from.
Back then, Commissar Yarrick had been able to lead a group of Hive City workers and gangsters against the massive Ork army of Ghazghkull only by building up extensive combat experience through enormous sacrifices and constant real battles.
The Planetary Defense Force on Rostov II had received training from the Valhallan Ice Warriors, but they had never experienced actual combat.
Their training level was certainly sufficient, but no one could guarantee what they would be like in a real fight.
Although the former Astra Militarum veterans on Rostov II had long wanted to find some real combat for these Planetary Defense Force troops, the Rostov System was so remote and marginal that there was simply nothing that could be called an actual battle.
Though going face-to-face with Flayed Ones in the sewers was a life-risking matter, General Gregory believed these boys who had never seen blood truly needed to be tempered by war.
"Then the remaining two-thirds of the area will be handed over to the Imperial Guard. I hope you can deliver a satisfactory result, General." Seeing that General Gregory felt this way, Chen Xi did not object.
After all, by the standards of the Warhammer world, his approach of leading elite troops down there himself to deal with the Flayed Ones was actually wrong.
The proper action for an ordinary Planetary Governor would have been to fill the entire sewer system with the flesh and blood of the Planetary Defense Force, then resolve the xenos problem through vast sacrifices and losses.
That had always been the Imperium's strategy, rather than using sufficient elite troops to reduce casualties.
But Chen Xi was clearly still not accustomed to such a costly approach. So while agreeing to let General Gregory take over the coming battle, he still dispatched Sisters of Battle.
Not the ten-woman Sisters of Battle squad at his side, but the first group of sisters who had already begun receiving Sisters of Battle training.
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