Chapter 15. Single-Handedly Hacking Aliens
Barbarus, Southern Swamps, Diderot Highlands.
Hades's first year of arrival in the south.
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Hades gripped his scythe, moving fluidly amidst the horde of Puppet Aliens.
Yet the aliens surrounding him turned a blind eye to Hades. Whenever Hades approached, the ferocious-mouthed monsters would drover, unconsciously shifting aside to automatically form a spherical space with a radius of about three meters, making way for Hades's stride.
An ordinary man, fully armed and carrying a scythe, swaggered through a pile of puppet monsters while the monsters automatically cleared a path for him—the entire scene was indescribably bizarre and absurd—
—Yes, a powerful Blank could even achieve a state of complete invisibility in front of souls-possessing creatures.
This was practically hacking and altering the field of view.
Hades thought silently.
Yet this had both pros and cons. Hades recalled that there once was an awesome Silent Sister who went on a swaggering, stealthy stroll inside the World Eaters in stealth mode, preparing to harvest heads—
Then she got her head blown off by a single axe blow from the World Eaters big shot Karn, who even felt quite confused as to why the number on his head-count counter had increased by one.
This truly was the most Warhammer of dark jokes.
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Twenty, forty, sixty. Hades estimated the number of puppets while sneaking through the puppet crowd.
This was the territory of Dursley, a small-to-medium Alien Lord. In earlier observations, this Alien Lord should have possessed three to four hundred low-tier puppets, alongside a domesticated pack of about fifty Foul Hounds.
Based on his advance and observations inside the territory, Hades surmised that the count of these monsters should be roughly similar to what he had previously observed.
Hades had no intention of going berserk and hacking randomly all the way through the monster pile like a berserker; that was a rather unwise choice.
Besides Mortarion and his Alien Foster Father Nac'Lare, probably no existence in all of Barbarus was this frantic.
Hades's strategy was to capture the ringleader by capturing the king, sneaking in and severing the Alien Lord's head.
This was experience he had gained from countless previous battles against small-to-medium Alien Lords.
Compared to medium-to-large lords, especially large lords, these small lords generally used low-tier puppets as their army; they possessed neither higher-tier puppets nor other high-intelligence creatures to act as generals for them.
This consequently resulted in the fact that once the small lord's head was chopped off, lacking higher-level management, those puppets controlled by the small lord through Psychic Sorcery would rapidly collapse and scatter. What was more, for those lowest-tier puppets, as long as the sorcery controlling them vanished, Hades only needed to shine his Null Field, and their ugly flesh-stitched bodies would disintegrate on their own.
As for these scattered individual puppets, they were simply no match for a well-trained Death Guard.
Moreover, with great experience, Hades had planted landmines near all the exits and entrances of the entire territory. The moment the puppets routed, it would trigger explosions, further weakening the puppet horde's combat strength.
As for those Foul Hounds... they were indeed somewhat tricky, but towards them, Hades already had some ideas.
All of these prerequisites were conditioned upon Hades successfully assassinating the Alien Lord Dursley.
Through the heavy gas mask, Hades's breathing hissed.
Next was naturally an uphill battle, but of course he had a probability of winning.
In fact, this annihilation of the small-to-medium lord Dursley might still be a relatively relaxed one.
When he had first arrived at the Southern Swamps region, Hades would go find wheat fields near villages to sleep during the day, while patrolling and wandering from village to village at night. If he bumped into monsters coming to hunt or slave-raiding parties, he would engage in combat with them.
Although the Death Guard had since garrisoned most of the southern villages, at night, the people all chose to defend within the villages, rarely choosing to roam and fight outside.
One reason was that doing so might cause even more severe casualties, and the other reason was that the poisonous fog during night hours would be even thicker, such that some crude gas masks simply could not endure the erosion of these poisonous fogs.
Hades's gas mask had already been improved by him hundreds of times. To the extent of completely lacking any higher-grade electronic components, Hades's gas mask was sufficient to withstand the poisonous mists up to the mid-to-high altitude mountains of Barbarus.
Persevering and seeking out monsters to hack every night, Hades was gradually called the "Wraith" by the people.
[The Wraith wielding a giant scythe shuttles through the poisonous mist, harvesting the lives of aliens. He is the arbiter, he is the destroyer; any creature, as long as they glance at him, will feel a spiritual disquiet.]
--by nearby villagers
Accompanied alongside this were the small lords who had since holed up in their territories, hacked into autism.
In reality, most small lords primarily relied on the poisonous fog environment coupled with Psychic Sorcery to suppress mortals.
Some relatively poor petty lords would even personally go down the mountain to capture slaves.
Before Hades's arrival, these small lords utilizing Psychic Sorcery under the cover of the poisonous fog were the nightmare of the villagers.
Yet after Hades arrived here, the high poison-resistance mask and the Null Field of the Blank were precisely creatures designed to counter them.
Psychic Power? Your daddy beats Psychic Power!
After several small Alien Lords who personally descended the mountain were blasted to pieces by Hades, the remaining Alien Lords decisively muted themselves and holed up at home.
After several consecutive weeks of failing to hack any aliens, Hades pondered to himself, and then went to tell the nearby Death Guard that he was going to take his blade up the mountain to hack lords.
Then Hades went off to provide door-to-door head-chopping services for the various small lords.
Dear, door-to-door service, remember to leave a good review~
Hades still remembered the first time he tried to actively enter an alien territory to farm instances—
Then the opposing side beat him up relying on home-field combat advantage, and he almost kicked the bucket, relying entirely on the Null Field burst before near-death to barely scavenge a tiny life.
Ahem, those were all dark history, plus he didn't die anyway.
Along with battles time and time again, Hades's manipulation of the Null Field also grew increasingly exquisite. He could already utilize the Null Field to conceal himself, as well as inflict control, silence, and sluggishness debuffs upon the opposite side.
Compared to the Death Guard who directly fought head-on, Hades's flanking decapitation operations were extremely suitable against these small-to-medium lords.
Hades alone was pacifying the south.
Yet now, he was still carrying out his work.
Hades continued to thread through the incessantly flowing puppet horde; the poisonous fog and the hot breath exhaled by the monsters drifted away with his movements.
The small fortress ahead, enshrouded by the poisonous fog, abruptly appeared before Hades.
Hades took a deep breath, tightening his grip on the giant scythe in his hand. It was about to begin.
He hoped he could smoothly assassinate this time as well, without losing his life.
While writing this chapter, my fucking house caught on fire, and I was the one who smelled the burning odor first and ran out.
What the actual fuck.
So this chapter, and the next few chapters, were written rather chaotically; I am extremely sorry.
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In addition, all lords on Barbarus are psykers, official lore.
Making a simple Barbarus combat power tier list:
Foster Father Nac'Lare
Mortarion
Medium-to-Large Lords
Hades
Small-to-Medium Lords
Death Guard
Puppets
Low-tier Monsters
Ordinary Villagers
Before you continue