Fortune Favors the Bold

"What... what?"

"I said, ram them." Rovi repeated. "Priest Alpha fitted our front with 'new teeth.' Now it's feeding time."

The Chimera personnel carrier at the head of the convoy suddenly accelerated.

The roar of the engine drowned out the buzzing of flies.

The Bio-Armor plates of the Wall of Gluttony seemed to sense the coming feast.

The purplish-red flesh buds on the surface began to pulse wildly.

Several thick metal barbs spread open like Venus flytraps.

The Walking Dead's sluggish senses had no time to react to this storm of steel before the violent impact turned them into flying chunks of gore.

"Boom!"

A dull, heavy crash.

The Chimera's front end slammed hard into the horde of Walking Dead.

At that moment, there was no crisp sound of metal striking flesh.

Instead, a chewing noise, spine-chilling.

Rovi's view was clear.

The black pus and blood splattering onto the front armor were quickly absorbed by the bio-metal, like water seeping into a sponge.

Several barbs precisely pierced a bloated Walking Dead blocking the road, hanging it like cured meat on the front.

The Walking Dead still struggled.

But the strong acidic digestive fluids secreted by the armor plates quickly enveloped it.

In just a few seconds, the virus-ridden body rapidly shriveled, dissolving into a pool of black liquid that nourished the metal veins on the armor, deepening their dim luster.

Inside the cabin, several new recruits, seeing this for the first time, turned pale, and some couldn't help but dry heave.

"Watch it." Rovi's voice echoed through the comm channel, cold and rational. "This is how you survive on this planet. Either eat or be eaten. If you don't want to become that black puddle, keep your guns tight."

The convoy rolled over the remains, tracks caked with sticky biomass, continuing toward the gray horizon.

An hour later, the outline of Granary Four appeared in view.

It was less a granary and more a massive industrial graveyard.

Dozens of spherical oil tanks, each a hundred meters tall, stood on the wasteland.

They should have been painted bright red warning paint, signifying danger.

But now, most were covered in gray-green mold.

Some had ruptured.

Black promethium flowed down the tank walls, pooling into toxic lakes on the ground.

It was too quiet here.

No Nurgle creatures' usual cacophony—

No buzzing of flies.

No moaning of Walking Dead.

Even the wind whistling through the ruins felt hollow.

This silence unsettled Rovi.

He instinctively touched the lead box on his chest. The Amulet Fragment inside was only slightly warm, not scalding like when it encountered a large demonic presence.

"All units, halt. Form defensive positions."

Rovi gave the order.

The convoy stopped on a high ground five hundred meters from the tank area.

Five modified trucks quickly turned around, shielding the vulnerable fuel tanker beds inside.

The two Chimeras flanked left and right, forming crossfire support points.

"Buck, take two squads and come with me for reconnaissance. Everyone else, hold position. Priest Alpha, monitor the radar."

Rovi jumped out, his boots sinking into the soft, decayed soil.

He tightened his trench coat, holding a Bolt Pistol that Priest Alpha had "blessed."

Dozens of new recruits followed him nervously.

They wore ill-fitting carapace armor, like skinny monkeys stuffed into shells.

Only the Lasguns in their hands gave them a pathetic sense of security.

"Listen up." Rovi's voice was low, his gaze sweeping over these rookies. "I don't expect you to be sharpshooters—that's for veterans."

"If you encounter enemies, you only need to do one thing: form a wall of fire. Dozens of guns firing together, even blind shots will cook them. Anyone who runs off, I'll stuff them into the front armor as Fertilizer."

The recruits swallowed and nodded earnestly.

Using the abandoned pipes for cover, the group crept toward the nearest fuel tank.

The closer they got to the core zone, the heavier the unsettling silence became.

Signs of battle were everywhere on the ground.

Clearly left by the garrison days ago.

A Sentinel Walker corroded down to its skeleton.

Charred sandbags.

And laser gun batteries scattered all around.

Yet strangely, there were few bodies here.

Neither the garrison's nor Nurgle's Walking Dead were anywhere to be seen.

"Advisor, look at this." Buck crouched by a valve, tense.

Rovi walked over and his expression hardened.

A head.

Belonging to a Nurgle Plague Carrier.

This low-tier daemon had an abnormally tenacious life force.

Even if half its body was blown apart by a Boltgun, the remaining rotten flesh could keep attacking.

But this head was thoroughly "dead."

Its cut was impossibly smooth.

As if severed instantly by some ultra-high-temperature monomolecular blade.

So much so that little fluid had leaked from the wound.

The cross-section showed a strange, charred crispness.

This kind of wound wasn't caused by a laser gun—that would leave burn craters.

Nor by a Boltgun—that would blow the target to pieces.

"Too clean," Buck muttered, fear flickering in his single eye. "Like it was cut with a scalpel."

Rovi stood up and looked around.

He found this kind of mark everywhere.

On a thick adamantium pipe, several deep claw marks gleamed with a bluish metallic fatigue sheen.

On the wreck of an overturned Leman Russ Battle Tank, a neat, large hole had been cut through the side armor.

The crew inside had vanished without a trace, leaving only an empty cockpit.

"Kais." Rovi opened the comm and called softly.

"I'm here, Advisor."

"Rescan that unknown signal."

"The signal source is right beneath you, about thirty meters down in the pipe network," the Kais Server reported. "The waveform is clearer than before. It's a biological pulse, with a very 'sharp' frequency."

A sharp biological pulse.

In Rovi's mind, several entries from the Imperial Xenos Threat Handbook flashed by.

Not Chaos.

Nurgle was decay and rebirth.

Khorne was rage and blood.

Tzeentch was change.

Slaanesh was overloaded sensation.

This cold, efficient, stealthy style that loved hunting in dark corners...

Genestealers!

Or maybe some kind of Tyranid vanguard strain.

They lurked in the shadows of ruins, digging and infiltrating like patient miners, until they hollowed out the entire planet.

"Damn it," Rovi cursed inwardly.

This was more trouble than running into a nest of Nurgle's Walking Dead.

Nurgle's forces were disgusting, but they were slow, noisy, and easy to suppress with heavy firepower.

But Genestealers—those things were born assassins, so fast the naked eye could barely track them.

"Advisor, should we pull back?"

Buck seemed to sense something was off too, gripping his Boltgun nervously.

"Retreat? Where to?" Rovi sneered. "Going back empty-handed means death in a couple of days."

"Since they haven't attacked us immediately, it means their numbers are still small, or they're busy with something else."

Rovi looked toward the massive fuel tank.

The level gauge showed at least three hundred tons of Promethium still inside.

"Fortune favors the bold."

Rovi made his decision swiftly.

"Buck, have the rookies set up a circular perimeter around the pump station. Turn on all the searchlights—no blind spots. These things love the dark."

"Alpha, hook up the pumps. Skip the complicated filtration—just pump it straight! As long as it burns, it's fine. I want five trucks loaded in twenty minutes!"

"Understood."

With Rovi's orders, the once-silent ruins erupted into noise.

High-powered searchlights pierced the dim haze, illuminating the pump station like daylight.

The rookies stood back-to-back in a circle, nervously watching the dark pipe openings around them.

Alpha the Priest moved with astonishing speed.

Several thick fuel hoses were forcibly jammed into the tank's connectors.

With the hum of overloaded motors, the black liquid gold began to gurgle into the trucks' tanks.

One minute.

Five minutes.

Ten minutes.

Every second felt like an eternity.

Rovi kept his eyes on his pocket watch, his other hand gripping his Bolt Pistol tightly.

"Advisor, the first truck's full."

"Switch trucks. Move it!"

Just as the second truck connected to the hose, something changed.

"Clang!"

A sharp metallic sound came from the left side of the perimeter.

A rookie screamed in terror: "Who? Who's there?"

All the searchlights snapped toward the spot.

But there was nothing there.

Only a dangling pipe, still swaying slightly.

"Don't panic!" Buck roared. "Hold formation!"

"Shh."

A shadow dropped from above without warning.

It was too fast—like a bolt of purple lightning.

A rookie on the outer edge didn't even have time to scream before the shadow tackled him to the ground.

Then came the sound of bones crunching.

The rookie's head burst like a rotten melon, crushed instantly by an arm with four razor claws.

Blood splattered across the face of the soldier beside him.

"Ahhh, a monster!"

Fear spread like wildfire.

The rookies instinctively pulled their triggers.

"Zzzzt."

Dozens of red laser beams danced wildly in the dark, most hitting empty ground, only a few grazing the creature's body.

In the flash of the lasers, Rovi got a clear look at the monster.

A humanoid torso, standing upright.

Its skin was a sickly pale purple, chitinous.

Hunched back, four arms.

The upper two ended in scythe-like claws.

The lower two had hands resembling a human's, dragging the headless corpse into the shadows.

The creature's face had no nose—only a pair of emotionless black Compound Eyes and a mouth full of jagged teeth.

A Purestrain Genestealer!