"How is this possible—"
The old man's face went deathly pale. He couldn't believe what he was seeing.
Lu Jin had realized that the hive city had fallen as soon as it began sending out statisticians.
But it should have taken time for the enemy to take Dortolia. How could this—
As Lu Jin wondered what was going on, he saw a tower built from the corpses of Space Marines and Defense Force soldiers.
Flesh and steel had fused together, but several heads and arms still protruded from it, clutching communication devices.
They were using the Sanctified Satellite's bandwidth to report the battle situation as if they were fighting a normal war.
"Industrial District 77 of Dortolia Hive needs reinforcements."
"The Silver Blades Chapter is already on its way. Hold on."
"Mortal, report your situation to me."
Lu Jin took a deep breath and directly relayed the situation to Lion over the comms channel. "Dortolia Hive has fallen. Don't trust any messages from Dortolia."
The Saturn Terminator's combat recorder had captured everything and was transmitting it to the command center.
Lion would learn what had happened here.
"There are no survivors," Lu Jin said. "Didn't you notice anything strange about the hive when you left?"
The old man racked his brains, then finally recalled something odd from what he had seen and heard.
"Dortolia's ruler, Soren IX— I watched that boy grow up. He liked torturing rats."
"No one corrected his strange habit, because rats were everywhere, and the boy was clever and righteous. He never tortured people."
"When I left, I heard that he'd been cursed by some god. Rats' heads would bite through his skin and crawl out of his body—"
As soon as Lu Jin heard that, he knew that the hive city's ruler, Soren IX, had