Hammurabi raised his shield and squeezed past the corpses. An explosive round flew past him, blasting the shoulder and arm of the Mutant hurling lightning at him into bloody fragments. Before the Inhuman's brain could register the pain, Hammurabi dashed forward at a staggering speed too fast for the eye to follow and split the Mutant's chest in two with a single stroke, ending its life completely. Filthy blood and pieces of viscera were disintegrated into smoke by the energy along the broad blade. Hammurabi continued advancing behind his shield, his greatsword resting along its upper edge as the Explosive Rounds Gun on its crossguard fired shot after shot.
He abruptly halted, swinging his shield to smash a soldier who had burst from a side passage against the wall. At the same time, he used the crossguard-mounted Explosive Rounds Gun to blow apart a distant Mutant attempting to manually close the blast door. Then a Golden Spear thrust through the gap above the shield, pinning an Attilan guard burning with living flames to the wall. The burning body was pierced through the skull, then turned into a charred corpse. Hammurabi stepped aside as another Praetorian Guard thrust out the Spear of the Garrison and fired several shots in succession, shattering an entire row of nearly ten "superpowered individuals" in that narrow side passage.
The Sacred Guard fought in silence, advancing like a soundless wall of gold. But the Sacred Guard's defensive network shifted dynamically. After dealing with the attack from the side passage, Hammurabi, who had been serving as the assault vanguard, immediately became the Emperor's personal guard. Amon, who had previously held that role, took over Hammurabi's original task. Even newcomers who had only just formally joined the Praetorian Guard could integrate seamlessly into this system, because they had