Sandman was thinking about the heaven-shattering past events in the Milky Way, though in reality he had not intended to truly run into Trazyn.
If this Necron eccentric, who loved tinkering with all kinds of peculiar things throughout the Milky Way, happened to set his sights on him and lock him up in his museum, it would be all over.
He was not an unparalleled beauty, and playing a vase or anything of the sort really did not suit him.
Thinking to himself, Sandman hurried toward another top-secret area isolated outside the camp.
Sharojin's pitch-black figure was like a panther lurking in the dead of night; his left hand covered the mouth of an enemy hiding in the shadows, while his right hand, holding a matte-treated dagger, silently sliced across the throat of a Shadow Kill member, supporting the opponent's body as it slumped against the wall.
The entire process was crisp and decisive, without producing a single shred of sound.
Swish! A sharp combat knife tore through Sharojin's robe, and at the same time, another combat knife suddenly emerged from the darkness, stabbing straight toward Sharojin's chest.
"You're just the ones I've been waiting for." Sharojin's voice, sounding somewhat raspy from a prolonged lack of drinking water, rang out in the darkness like a patient hunter who had finally waited for the prey to slip up.
The flexible body he had honed through years of harvesting salt in the salt flats erupted with unbelievable agility and strength at this moment.
Sharojin's body twisted in an incredible fashion, dodging and evading the surprise attacks of these two Shadow Kill members who had been biding their time like poisonous snakes.
The combat knife swept across an enemy's throat at an unimaginably tricky angle.
"Your teammates have already been completely wiped out by me. It wouldn't be unacceptable for you to surrender now that you're the only one left." This time, Sharojin did not fade back into the shadows.
"There are only Shadow Kill who die in battle, never Shadow Kill who surrender!" The sole remaining member brandished a combat knife and launched a final, desperate struggle against Sharojin.
Sharojin wielded his knife and likewise met this courageous enemy. Regrettably, sometimes courage did not represent one's actual strength.
In just two or three moves, the last Shadow Kill member had his knife-holding hand pinned by Sharojin, and then Sharojin's combat knife was already pressed against the opponent's throat.
The cold blade pressed against the opponent's skin, raising goosebumps layer upon layer—seemingly out of fear of death. Sharojin only needed to exert a little bit of force to easily slice open the opponent's windpipe.
"Exercise over. The winner is Sharojin." An abrupt voice rang out while the two were locked in a standoff.
The dim lights inside the abandoned mine tunnel flickered on, banishing the darkness that had lingered for who knows how many ages.
"As expected of the instructor, we're still far too lacking..." The other two Shadow Kill members who had fallen to the ground popped up with a kyu-ki-tori spring and said in admiration.
Everything just now had simply been an exercise, with Sharojin squaring off against a three-person Shadow Kill assassination task squad.
Judging by the results, Sharojin completely wiped out his opponents. Aside from a slash in his clothes, he hadn't even injured a single hair on his own head, whereas the injuries of all three others were all in fatal locations like the throat.
The gap between them was so vast it could be described as an uncrossable chasm.
The reason the gap between both sides was so massive was that for the past two years, Sharojin had been following Korax to learn. Korax was naturally very interested in Sharojin, who had awakened his psychic power at a young age, and Sharojin's talent was indeed exceptionally brilliant.
Not to mention drawing inferences from other instances, at the very least he grasped many things Korax taught at the mere touch of a finger, and present-day Sharojin already possessed a trace of the demeanor of the future Shadow Sword Saint.
If the Great Heresy went ahead as before, in the future probably even two Luciuses wouldn't be enough for him to hack to pieces.
(Sharojin: In my eyes, you are nothing at all—merely a mad dog that must be put down.)
"Your stealth proficiency still isn't up to par. Starting tomorrow, I'll put you through special training, and I hope you prepare yourselves. Dismissed for now." Sharojin picked up a prepared water canteen on the side, poured a hefty gulp of water down his throat, and then issued new orders to these Shadow Kill members.
As for why it wasn't starting right now, it was naturally to give these fellows ample time to prepare, especially psychological preparation.
Sure enough, upon hearing that extra training was coming, all the Shadow Kill members present let out a round of ghost-howling, miserable screams.
Sharojin did not berate them; he was well aware of how grueling this kind of extra training was for Shadow Kill members. Getting the skin peeled off after a single session of extra training could be considered light—literally getting a layer of skin peeled off.
Physical damage was secondary; the main thing was that needing to learn Korax's Shadow Step was simply too difficult.
Shadow Step had a prerequisite: one needed to be a psyker in order to learn it. Korax had forged a new path, adding a great deal of foundational training on top of this prerequisite.
For non-psykers, these foundational trainings would be an extremely agonizing training process, because the psychic power of Korax or Sharojin would invade their brains to conduct drills. That sensation of feeling as though one's brain had been thrown into a washing machine for the spin cycle was not pleasant.
The good news was that people with a certain degree of psychic talent had a chance of awakening psychic power during such a process.
Beyond lurking and the path of assassination, the Shadow Kill members seemed to have heard that Korax was already conceiving a combat system called the Triple Shadow Path to adapt to different combat scenarios.
Although the consistent impression given by the Raven Guard Legion was one centered around stealth and infiltration, this was merely the inherent impression people held of the Raven Guard, and it did not mean the Raven Guard were not adept in other areas.
No commander would allow such glaring strengths and weaknesses to exist within their legion; the Raven Guard similarly possessed their own armored units and troops adept at frontal combat.
It must be noted that the combat methods utilized by Astartes—the Emperor's Angels of Death—during the Legion Era were completely different from those of the later Chapter Era. Even for a decapitation strike, the methods of the two eras were entirely distinct.
The decapitation strike of the Legion Era involved scout units determining the location of the enemy command post, reporting it to the legion commander, and the main force in the frontal battlefield pinning down the enemy's main force. Overwhelming drop pods would crash directly onto the heads of the enemy headquarters, stormbirds would transport various main battle tanks to designated locations, and tens of thousands of Astartes would crash straight down onto the enemy commander's skull, letting them witness what the Emperor's Angels of Death were all about.
The decapitation strike of the Chapter Era, meanwhile, involved determining the location of the enemy command ship, dispatching boarding torpedos carrying psionic beacons to board the enemy warship, and then activating the teleportation star beacon upon reaching the location. Afterward, the built-in psionic beacons on the armor of Astartes Terminator veterans were activated, and dozens or a hundred Terminator veterans would go up, output a barrage of firepower, and complete the decapitation.
Neither could be said to be better than the other; they were simply different methods adapted to their respective organizational structures and the enemies they faced under different eras.
However, if one could brute-force a path straight through, who would like the nearly gamble-like approach of the Chapter Era?
Before you continue