Welcome to the Underhive

Even though New Kato had been established and most people had their jobs, there would never be a shortage of bounty hunters in the underhive.

Through their performance in the previous war, the bounty hunter group received a reward from Qin Mo: they could continue to operate as bounty hunters, but they had to turn over whatever they acquired during their missions.

The items turned in would be converted into Throneys, which could be used to buy more food or weapons and equipment.

Seven hundred kilometers underground from New Kato, a seven-person bounty hunter squad was in battle.

The two sides were engaged in a firefight in a narrow corridor.

The bounty hunters were hiding behind an energy shield, exchanging fire with the rebel xenos and psykers crawling towards them from a distance.

"Is the 'Boom Gun' preheated?!"

"Her name isn't Boom Gun, it's Lena."

"Okay, okay, is Lena preheated?"

"She is."

A bounty hunter carrying a multi-barreled heavy weapon squeezed to the front from the rear of his companions. As he aimed "Lena" at the rebels, a support brace automatically extended from beneath the weapon and planted itself on the ground.

The barrels spun rapidly for two seconds before a torrent of bullets poured towards the other end of the corridor.

Each bullet exploded on impact, scattering the xenos on the corridor walls. Occasionally, bone fragments or shrapnel would fly, but they were blocked by the energy shield.

The xenos on the walls couldn't advance even half a step under such firepower.

However, the main reason was that the xenos' bodies were swelling. Huge blisters were pushing out from beneath their hard bone armor. Some xenos' limbs were also swollen, forcing them to hobble forward.

These were a group of weaklings, already close to death, and the bounty hunters were merely accelerating their demise.

"Die... die..." A rebel psyker hobbled to the front, raising a blister-covered hand to unleash psychic power.

"Yao En!" As the captain shouted, a ragged youth pushed his way to the front from the rear of the squad. Without further orders, he knew what needed to be done.

Yao En moved forward, while the others advanced and provided cover.

When the squad provided cover for Yao En to get within twenty meters of the psyker, the psyker couldn't even maintain his psychic spell. First, his arms burst, and then his entire body rapidly liquefied.

After the psyker died, the xenos shrieked and also exploded into puddles of liquid.

"Run!"

"Hurry up, this fight with the rebels has taken too much time!"

After the battle, none of the bounty hunters rested or searched for loot. They sprinted forward through the corridor as if something terrifying was chasing them.

After running for ten minutes, the end of the narrow corridor was visible.

At this moment, Yao En couldn't help but look back.

"Don't you dare look back!"

Amidst the captain's angry and worried roar, Yao En, who had already turned his head, saw a xenos.

It was a corpulent spider. Its body, covered in steel-like fuzz, squeezed through the corridor, yet it was still moving at a rapid pace.

Upon seeing the spider, Yao En's mind froze from shock and terror, and he stood there frozen.

The current rebel threat in the underhive was not the primary concern for the bounty hunters. The mutated creatures born from millennia of pollution in the Hive City were.

"Forget him, run!"

"Hurry!"

The captain yelled and sprinted, leading the entire squad closer and closer to the exit. They could even see the light at the exit.

But the light was soon blocked, as if someone had shut a door.

The "door" immediately opened, but instead of the light outside the corridor, a giant, dark green eye was revealed.

Fear, horror, strangeness... these feelings caused the bounty hunters to freeze in place, unable to move as if petrified.

The giant eye blinked, then moved upward.

Outside the corridor, a massive mutated creature had its maw blocking the exit, its fangs extending in circles into its throat clearly visible.

But then, a beam of light pierced the maw blocking the corridor's exit. The intense energy even made the entire corridor scorching hot.

A bounty hunter wearing ancient temperature-regulating equipment silently activated the cooling function.

Shortly after the beam pierced the mutated creature's maw, two figures in Terminator Power Armor walked through the gap created by the beam, blasting away any fangs or obstacles in their path with their wrist-mounted shotgun lasers.

Until their feet touched the metal floor.

Some bounty hunters who had participated in the war recognized the markings on the two suits of Terminator Power Armor, as well as the individuals wearing them, at a glance.

It was Grey and Anreda.

The bounty hunters, except for Yao En, scrambled towards Grey and then hid behind his Terminator Power Armor.

Grey continued forward expressionlessly, passing by the stunned Yao En. After walking ten meters, he stared at the approaching mutated creature and activated his gravity shield.

The corridor warped and deformed under the gravity shield, and the mutated creature was crushed by the gravitational force.

Grey deactivated the gravity shield, turned to face everyone, and asked, "Why is there such a huge spider in the underhive? The one outside looked as big as a building!"

"Anything is possible in ancient ruins and relics... nothing is surprising."

"We... we even found female xenos in a ruin..."

The bounty hunters, on the verge of tears with excitement, explained it all in a jumble of words.

"Grey," Anreda said, walking up to Grey with a smile. "Welcome to the Underhive. Officially."

Grey nodded, suddenly recalling stories about bounty hunters he'd read as a child.

The Underhive held not only dangers but also ancient technological relics, or other valuable items.

After seeing it for himself, Grey finally understood why people in the underhive enjoyed stories about bounty hunters, but few were willing to become them.

"I advise you not to come back next time," Grey warned everyone, then turned and walked towards Yao En, intending to pull him up.

But as he got closer to Yao En, Grey felt a surge of disgust; in his eyes, Yao En was filthy.

Despite his revulsion, Grey pinched his nose and reached out to haul Yao En to his feet.

"Are you gods sent to save us?" Yao En asked, his voice filled with surprise.

"No, your wife found us," Grey shoved Yao En. "Now get home and buy your wife something nice as a reward, because if she hadn't reported us in time, we wouldn't have been able to get here."

"It doesn't matter, in my eyes, you are still messengers of the gods," Yao En said with a smile.

Grey found Yao En irritating and didn't say anything more, simply turning and walking towards the end of the passage.

As he boarded the transport and departed, Grey looked down at a spider the size of a building below, wondering how much waste it must have consumed in the Underhive to grow that large.

Meanwhile, inside the passage, as the bounty hunters prepared to leave, Yao En stood blankly at the exit, gazing up at the transport in the sky, looking incredibly excited.