Plunderer

Korax looked forward in the direction indicated by Sandman's sword tip. The small room was filled with various melee weapons.

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

The motley assortment of weapons was very well maintained. Even the dim light couldn't hide the cold glint of the sharpened edges.

"This one," Korax chose a slender combat knife and, as if by instinct, performed a flourish identical to Sandman's.

"A combat knife? I thought you'd pick claws or a whip?" Sandman looked at Korax's flourish with surprise.

"I can understand claws, since we're fighting in narrow mine shafts, claws would be effective. But these aren't power claws, and they offer less room for error than a short blade. But how did you even think of a long whip, which is so unsuitable?" Korax asked, a little confused...

A long whip is difficult to wield in confined spaces, and its lethality is insufficient.

"Oh, it's nothing, I was just asking," Sandman didn't explain.

He couldn't possibly tell Korax now that when his father came to pick him up, he'd carelessly given him a power whip.

This was something Sandman found incredibly frustrating. The Emperor had been too careless. Knowing Korax's combat style focused on stealth and infiltration, the weapon he was given was completely mismatched!

Even if he couldn't give him divine artifacts like the Spear of Bacchus or the Claws of the Emperor, he could have at least had Vulkan craft something more suitable for Korax.

But what the hell was a power whip??

As for power claws, that was naturally a stereotype born from a series of Korax's background stories and fan art of the Primarchs.

"Weapons chosen, let's go!" Sandman led Korax out of the armory. The Shadow Kill had already assembled.

Nekser had assigned twenty men to stand guard. The other dozens of Shadow Kill members, clad in black robes, were ready and awaiting Sandman's command.

Under the cover of night, the group left the camp through a hidden passage and headed towards their mission objective.

West of the High Tower, this area was originally a normal mining settlement.

But then, in some forgotten era, a Giavan ruler had a sudden inspiration. They abolished the death penalty and threw the most heinous criminals onto the planet to work as miners, and that's when things slowly began to change.

The west was the earliest developed region on Lycaeus, covered in mines, with the largest abandoned minefields.

As many camps relocated, this area gradually became a haven for these criminals.

With its intricate network of tunnels and sprawling minefields, it allowed these cancers on Lycaeus to freely plunder other camps for supplies, ore, and anything else of value, including people.

Even when encountering patrolling Overseers, they would look at them like prey, contemplating whether they could take them down.

Even heavily armed Overseers didn't dare to be careless when patrolling this barren land. The Overseers patrolling this area were equipped with Laser Guns, not stun batons.

Therefore, this area was a major headache for the Overseers. These desperate criminals didn't adhere to any exchange rates.

They didn't engage in production; everything was obtained through plunder. Of course, the High Tower didn't care about this; only the Overseers were troubled.

In a dark and eerie mine shaft in the west, a series of low, hoarse "quack, quack, quack" calls suddenly echoed. These unique calls were the sounds of the vultures kept by Shattered Skull.

The vultures gathered around piles of corpses, their sharp beaks pecking into the white bones like chisels, making crisp "crack, crack" sounds.

They tore at tendons, crushed joints, and even fought over a bone marrow-filled leg bone. The largest vulture suddenly spread its wings, a black shadow with a wingspan of over a meter stirring up a foul-smelling whirlwind. Scattered bones were swept up by the airflow, tumbling like dead leaves before falling back onto the piles.

"Thud--"

A skull heavily impacted the ground. Its hollow eye sockets seemed to hold the last vestiges of fear. It rolled through a pool of blood, finally stopping at the foot of a bare, whip-scarred leg.

Deep within the piles of corpses, several bodies that had not yet died twitched slightly, emitting faint moans. Their fingers dug into the dirt, trying to crawl away from this hell, only to watch helplessly as a vulture hopped onto their chests, its beak slowly descending towards their eyes...

The stench of rotting flesh, blood, and excrement fermented in the air. Amidst the vultures' revelry, the faint sound of rattling chains could be heard--those were the Miners chained to the rock walls. Their cracked lips moved, but they had long since lost the strength to even scream.

Shattered Skull's minions had long since departed, leaving only these carrion eaters, whose gluttonous feast proclaimed a harsh law:

In this mine, once their value is lost, humans are merely breathing feed.

"Boss, the vultures are unusually cheerful tonight. Could it be that the corpses we plundered from that large camp a few days ago were particularly delicious?" In a spacious underground cavern within the deep mine shaft, a short, sleazy-looking dwarf said with a fawning expression to a tall figure deeper within the cavern.

"Hahahaha, naturally. That camp was the largest in the surrounding area. Their mining income was naturally much higher than those miserable camps with only a few hundred people. Good food, combined with prolonged high-intensity labor, makes the muscles naturally firm. After a few days, vultures love this kind of thing the most." Erwin Schuster, the leader of Shattered Skull, took a swig of wine and laughed heartily.

These vultures were their treasures. Through their unique beast-taming methods, the vultures could accurately locate teams going to exchange for supplies during the day, or even attack camp layouts and armed Overseers.

"Boss, but that camp is quite large. Should we lie low for a while?" the short, sleazy criminal suggested to Erwin Schuster.

"Nonsense. That camp is huge, tens of thousands of people. We should find an opportunity to strike them again. No matter how fierce a wolf pack is, it's no match for a lion," a burly man with a face full of scars said disdainfully to the dwarf.

"Have the vultures find the location of that large camp during the day, and scout it out first," Erwin Schuster decided.

The Miners on Lycaeus were not truly weak. When facing a life-or-death crisis, humans could always unleash unprecedented potential.

Even these criminals who lived by plunder mostly chose to invade camps they were confident they could take during the pre-dawn hours when people's spirits were most lax.

More often, they chose to ambush teams going to exchange for supplies.

This was the ecosystem on Lycaeus.