Two Ultramarines led a group of Greyshield Primaris warriors through the long, dim corridors that Iax and the Bodyguard Robot had swept clear.
Although they did their best to catch up, they found nothing but increasingly uneven floors and ever more Necron fragments. They still had not caught up with the ones Cawl had said were pushing the battle line forward.
Only when they approached the hall containing the Dolmen Gate's exit did they witness a shocking battle.
When Iax noticed the Astartes arriving, he still had a Necron head in his hand.
He had just casually torn it off a Deathmark Assassin who had tried to ambush him.
The relentless advance along the way had drawn the Necron commanders' attention to the sudden, enormous losses.
Not a single fallen unit's remains had been recalled through phase retrieval. The only possible explanation was that the enemy possessed astonishing destructive power.
Once the Necron command aboard the Tomb Ship learned about this unusual pair through other Necron units, they immediately took measures to counter them.
Several waves of attacks revealed that the medium-sized mechanical body at the front, with its astonishing destructive power, seemed to be protecting the mechanical unit behind it.
This led them to conclude that Iax might be some special core node within the pair.
To deal with these individual targets, the Necrons immediately awakened a Deathmark Assassin from the Tomb Ship's stasis chambers.
After marking the target using recorded battlefield footage, they deployed the assassin onto Cawl's Ark Mechanicus through the Dolmen Gate.
But just as the Deathmark Assassin emerged from the Dolmen Gate, Iax charged into the spacious compartment with the Bodyguard Robot.
The Deathmark Assassin recognized almost instantly that Iax, the target marked for death, was right before him.
He instinctively pulled an exceptionally long