Silent Slaughter

"Phew..." Korax adjusted his breathing and state of mind, then began focusing on blending into the darkness.

As Korax concentrated on merging with the darkness, a marvelous sensation of perfect harmony enveloped the Raven King.

At that moment, Korax could feel the darkness around him cheering with joy, like subjects who had long awaited their king's return and were now welcoming him home.

Not only that, the darkness seemed to be constantly guiding Korax toward the locations of enemies hidden within it.

"Was this cheating?" A term he had never encountered before automatically surfaced in Korax's mind.

"It's like having X-ray vision..." Korax muttered...

Then, the combat knife in his hand silently sliced across the throat of a criminal hiding in the mine tunnel, preparing to fire at the intruders...

In the pitch-black mine tunnels, only the dull thuds of bodies hitting the ground sounded from time to time. Bright Laser Gun beams flashed, instantly illuminating the tunnel before it sank back into deathly darkness, followed by the clatter of knives, swords, and other weapons falling to the ground...

Within the silent mine tunnels, intermittent screams sounded like the cries of life-reaping demons. Korax, blending into darkness for the first time, did not rush to kill every enemy. He was continuously adapting to his abilities.

What began as vague perceptions gradually developed into something like thermal imaging, revealing the heat emitted by human bodies.

Through Shadow Power, Korax successfully located the leader of this criminal organization, but he did not hurry to finish him off.

Instead, he began his slaughter from the outermost enemies and steadily pushed inward...

The various sounds and the scent of blood that rang out from time to time filled the criminals lying in ambush with terror. Even the Skull Breakers leader's personal guards could not withstand the horrifying pressure of such a dark environment.

The dull sound of human bodies hitting the ground was far too familiar to them. Every person here had, to some extent, blood on their hands.

"The smell of blood... It's so strong..."

"The Death God... The Death God must have come..."

"Run..."

The chaos began...

"Ah..."

As several shrill screams rang out, the panicked crowd became even more terrified...

Yet this time was different from the previous silent deaths. Those piercing cries continued to echo through the cavern.

This time, Korax had merely robbed them of their ability to move rather than directly severing their heads.

"Is this Koz's terror tactics?" Sandman realized.

"No, it cannot really be called imitating Koz's terror tactics. Koz's methods were far more cruel. Even Vulkan, a fellow Primarch, had been tortured into losing his sanity. Korax is simply using the environment to crush their minds." Sandman quickly understood the Raven King's intentions.

"Come out! Come out, you spineless cowards!" Shuster wildly sprayed his Laser Gun into the empty mine tunnels.

Bright laser beams constantly danced through the darkness, illuminating the black mine before vanishing in an instant. Yet no matter how he and his men fired, they could not find that demon who was constantly harvesting lives in the darkness.

That terrifying presence seemed to have completely merged with the darkness, brazenly reaping enemy lives as it pleased, as leisurely and at ease as taking a stroll through his own backyard.

Shuster could only watch as the beams lighting up in the darkness steadily dwindled, until only the Laser Gun in his own hands remained.

Only then did Shuster understand that his position had long since been exposed. His opponent had merely saved him for last, to savor as the final dessert.

"It is time to end this boring farce." Korax's drifting voice suddenly sounded beside Shuster's ear from within the darkness.

Then a sharp blade directly severed his head. Until the very end, Shuster did not catch even a glimpse of his opponent.

"What a magnificent game of silent slaughter. I thought you would leave someone alive to interrogate for information." Sandman applauded as he emerged from the darkness. At the same time, dim lights gradually began to come on throughout the black mine tunnels. Shadow Kill's members had reconnected the severed wires.

"There is nothing to interrogate. We can simply use our own eyes to see." Korax shook the blood from his combat knife, then cleanly sheathed it.

"Search the place. We do not need prisoners. See whether there are any miners from other camps who were abducted and brought here." Sandman ordered.

As for the criminals who had escaped, Sandman did not believe they could evade Shadow Kill's pursuit. If Shadow Kill could not handle even this sort of task, he might as well disband them.

"Come on. Let's see the suffering these wandering criminals have inflicted upon the people of this already unfortunate land." Sandman spoke to Korax with an extremely grim expression.

Even after all the time since he had transmigrated here, he still could not accept the deeds of these vicious thugs. And these were merely obscure Lycaeus criminals. How cruel must the Night Lords, the World Eaters, the Dark Eldar, the increasingly deranged Imperial Cult ten thousand years later, and the Inquisition be?

A soul from the ancient 2K era simply could not accept such things. The first time Sandman had wiped out the criminals' lair after they dared invade Saviors Camp, he had returned under immense workloads yet still gone days without eating a single bite. Whatever he ate, he threw up.

But to let Korax see this world clearly, Sandman still suppressed his discomfort and led the Primarch deeper into the mine tunnels.

That was where the miners abducted by the Skull Breakers were imprisoned. It was also where hell on earth lay.

"Boss, let me take Korax in to have a look instead." Nekser said.

He knew very well what scenes awaited inside, and it seemed his boss could not handle such sights. For the sake of the camp's development, he should take on the task for him.

"No. I'll take Korax in myself." Sandman refused Nekser's suggestion.

He knew full well that countless places in the future would present scenes ten times, a hundred times crueler than what lay before them. You could avoid it once, but not forever.

The Xenos encountered during the Great Crusade would not show even the slightest goodwill toward human worlds that had once colonized their home planets and whose own species had suffered calamity after calamity.

Entire planetary populations being slaughtered, flesh turned into food, and souls sacrificed to the Chaos Powers within the Warp were all exceedingly commonplace.