Raiders

Korax followed the direction indicated by Sandman's sword tip and looked ahead. The small room was filled with all kinds of cold weapons.

Longswords, hand axes, short spears, long spears, war hammers...

The varied weapons had been maintained exceptionally well. Even the dim lighting could not conceal the cold gleam flickering from their sharpened edges.

"I'll take this one." Korax likewise chose a long, narrow combat knife and, as if he had learned it without being taught, spun it through the same "flourish" Sandman had made.

"A combat knife? I thought you'd pick claws or a whip." Sandman looked in surprise at the flourish Korax had just performed.

"I can understand claws. Since we'll be fighting in narrow mine tunnels, they can still be quite effective. But this isn't a Power Claw, and it leaves less room for error than a short blade. As for a whip, how did you even think of such an unsuitable weapon?" Korax was somewhat puzzled...

Whips were difficult to use in confined spaces, and their killing power was insufficient as well.

"Oh, nothing. Just asking." Sandman offered no explanation.

He couldn't exactly complain to Korax right now that, when his old man came to collect him in the future, he would casually hand him a Power Whip.

That was something Sandman found especially worthy of ridicule. The Emperor had handled this far too crudely. He clearly knew that Korax's fighting style centered on stealth and infiltration, yet the weapon he gave him did not suit him at all!

Even if he did not give him some divine weapon like the Spear of Bacchus or the Claws of the Emperor, he could at least have had Vulkan make something reasonably suited to Korax.

But what the hell was a Power Whip supposed to be??

As for the Power Claw, that was naturally a stereotypical impression formed from Korax's various backstory accounts and the GW primarch biography images online.

"We've picked our weapons. Let's go!" Sandman led Korax out of the weapons storeroom. Shadow Kill had already assembled.

Nekser had sent twenty men to keep watch. The other several dozen assembled members of Shadow Kill, dressed in black hooded robes, were ready and waiting for Sandman's orders.

Under cover of night, the group left the camp through a concealed passage and headed toward the target of this mission.

West of the Tower, this area had originally been an ordinary mining camp as well.

But later, in some unknown era, a ruler of Kiavahr suddenly had a flash of inspiration and abolished the death penalty, throwing even the most vicious criminals up here to work as miners. That was when things slowly began to change.

The west was the earliest developed region on Lycaeus. It was filled with mines, including the largest abandoned mining sites.

As many camps relocated, this place gradually became a paradise for those criminals.

The tangled mine tunnels and interconnected shafts allowed these cancers on Lycaeus to freely raid other camps for supplies, ore, people, and anything else of value.

Even when they encountered patrolling overseers, they would look at them like prey and consider whether they could take them down.

In this barren place, even armed overseers dared not let down their guard while patrolling. The overseers assigned to patrol this region carried Laser Guns rather than Stun Guns.

Thus, this area was also an enormous headache for the overseers. These vicious criminals did not care about exchange rates or anything of the sort.

They did not engage in production. Everything they had came from raiding. Of course, the Tower did not concern itself with that; only the overseers suffered the headaches.

A series of low, hoarse caws suddenly echoed through a dim and sinister mine tunnel in the west. Those distinctive calls belonged to the vultures raised by Shattered Skull.

The vultures clustered over a mountain of corpses, their sharp beaks chiseling into the white gaps between bones with crisp, clacking sounds.

They tore at tendons and pecked apart joints, even fighting one another over a leg bone rich with marrow. The largest vulture suddenly spread its wings. Its shadow, with a wingspan of over a meter, whipped up a foul-smelling gust. Scattered bones were swept into the air, tumbling like dead leaves before crashing back onto the pile.

Thud—

A skull smashed heavily onto the ground. Its hollow eye sockets seemed frozen with their final terror. It rolled through a pool of blood before finally stopping beside a bare foot covered in whip marks.

Deep within the corpse pile, several bodies that had not yet stopped breathing twitched faintly and let out weak groans. Their fingers dug into the dirt as they tried to crawl away from this hell, but they could only watch helplessly as vultures hopped onto their chests and slowly lowered their beaks toward their eyes...

The stench of rotting flesh, blood, and excrement fermented in the air. Amid the vultures' revelry, the clatter of chains could faintly be heard—the miners shackled to the rock walls. Their cracked lips moved, but they no longer had the strength even to scream.

Shattered Skull's lackeys had long since departed, leaving behind only these scavenging messengers to proclaim an iron law through their gluttonous feast:

In this mine, once a person lost their value, they were nothing more than breathing feed.

"Boss, the vultures are especially lively tonight. Could the corpses we brought back from that large camp we hit two days ago be particularly delicious?" In the spacious underground cavern deep within the mine tunnel, a short, sleazy-looking man spoke fawningly to the tall figure farther inside.

"Hahaha, of course. That camp is the largest one around. Their mining income is naturally far greater than those miserable little camps with only a few hundred people. They eat well, and after long periods of high-intensity labor, their muscles are naturally nice and firm. Leave the bodies for a few days, and the vultures love that flavor most." Erwin Shuster, the leader of Shattered Skull, took a swig of liquor and laughed heartily.

These vultures were their treasures. With their unique beast-taming methods, the vultures could precisely locate, during the day, teams going out to exchange for daily supplies, reveal the layouts of camps, and even identify armed overseers whom they dared to target.

"Boss, that camp is pretty large. Shouldn't we hide for a while?" the sleazy, short criminal suggested to Erwin Shuster.

"Bullshit. That camp is enormous, with tens of thousands of people. We should find another chance to hit them again. No matter how fierce a wolf pack is, it's no match for a lion." A burly man with a fleshy face spoke dismissively to the short man.

"Have the vultures find that large camp's location during the day. We'll scout it out first." Erwin Shuster made his decision.

The miners on Lycaeus were not truly weak. When people faced a crisis of life and death, they could always unleash unprecedented potential.

Even these criminals who lived by raiding usually chose to invade only those camps they were confident of taking at dawn, when people were at their least alert.

More often, they chose to ambush teams heading out to exchange supplies.

That was the ecology of Lycaeus.