Efficient Slaughter

With the Red Mist Clan's Ork Warboss's head sliced to pieces, the battlefield in this sector took a very different turn.

The Orks grew even more berserk.

Although the Red Mist Clan's Warboss had never explicitly accepted the Duel.

The other Orks in the sector had nevertheless taken it for granted that their Boss was dueling the enemy.

To the Orks, Iax suddenly appearing and killing their Boss in an instant was not merely a provocation, but an insult.

It drove the Orks present into a frenzy.

The Ork Boyz grew increasingly crazed, roaring at the top of their lungs. Shoota Boyz fired wildly with all manner of guns cobbled together from scrap metal, while even the Gretchin worked up their courage and hurriedly assembled assorted ramshackle weapons and miniature vehicles across the battlefield of rubble and metal.

Some Gretchin had even started putting together a miniature tank.

These tiny contraptions often packed tremendous power—and instability.

Whether used in combat or blown up, they could cause immense destruction.

Seeing how drastically the situation had changed, the Black Templars warrior whose Duel had been interrupted also gave Iax a disgruntled grunt.

"A Duel is an honorable thing. Are you robbing me of my honor, Ancient Construct? Though I admit that I cannot defeat or destroy you, dying in a Duel is also glorious. I cannot tolerate such behavior!"

Iax responded calmly to the Black Templars warrior's accusation.

"The weak have no right to speak of honor to the strong, especially honor as foolish as this."

Iax's first reaction to these Black Templars Astartes, whose minds were filled with nothing but the Duel and drawing blades to fight, was that they were fools.

This was a war, a war against an invading species.

Back when his own kind had still been around, the battlefield would have been straightforward: blanket bombardment, followed by an advance of automated machines. Battlefield Duels?

Meaningless.

The correct choice was to annihilate the enemy outright with the most powerful weapons available, or deploy TR-09 units.

In Iax's databanks, the TR-09 Moramad intelligent assassination robots had been instrumental in the ancient age of expansion.

When the Creator deemed an alien species or civilization valuable and extermination was inappropriate, Moramad robots would be dispatched to assassinate specific targets, followed by military coercion. Alien races deprived of their leaders were easily conquered.

Even in battles that had to be fought, deploying these robots to assassinate the enemy's commanders and ruling class and sow chaos greatly accelerated the war.

The TR-09 was a small robot equipped with nanoblades, forty-two biological toxins, and fourteen lethal synthetic poisons. It carried a miniature hyperfusion nuclear core and an omnidirectional cloaking system, along with a short-range directional quantum Teleportation system, though this was inferior to Iax's Warp system and had a shorter range.

The specialized power core, which occupied most of its body, allowed the Moramad robot to perform short-range quantum Teleportation and carry out assassinations while remaining cloaked.

If the mission failed, it would immediately overload its core. The tremendous nuclear explosion would destroy every living organism within hundreds, or even thousands, of meters.

Although Iax had never seen any record of these TR-09 robots, which stood less than a meter and a half tall, self-destructing, he knew full well that his core databanks contained their complete specifications.

Their listed functions explicitly included the capability to carry out suicide attacks.

They could even be used as miniature nuclear bombs when heavy weapons were unavailable.

And because of their particular nature, these robots had relatively low intelligence levels and hardware specifications, typically employing swarm intelligence.

Iax knew perfectly well that if they possessed fully independent intelligence like the other Men of Iron, they might hesitate when it came time to self-destruct.

After all, no one wanted to die, not even the Men of Iron.

As for intelligence-uploading technology, that was not a privilege granted to all Men of Iron.

Only special types or models had permission to upload their intelligence to replace their bodies or activate backup bodies.

Ordinary automated combat robots had no such authorization.

Besides, in Iax's view, these automated robots did not even qualify for the name Men of Iron. They were merely combat weapons with rudimentary intelligence.

They were like the machine intelligence Servitors and Automated Sentries Iax had activated when he awoke. None of these belonged to the Men of Iron; they were merely automated combat machines or self-directed servants.

The situation before him was clear. Iax had interrupted an honorable Duel, the Black Templars warriors were expressing anger and displeasure, and the Orks were running wild. The handful of Black Templars warriors clearly could not handle these frenzied Orks.

More and more beams and rounds streaked through the space. Even the Black Templars warrior whose Duel had been interrupted no longer had time to rage at Iax.

The Enemies of the Emperor were surging forward.

Feeling that they had lost their honor, these Black Templars warriors had abandoned any thought of retreat.

Rather than make a tactical withdrawal, they would die gloriously here.

Their obsession with honor baffled Iax.

Their Bolt Pistols soon ran dry, and the Black Templars wielding Power Swords crashed brutally into the Orks swinging Choppas.

Although Iax stood motionless, the Orks kept swarming him.

The Orks' crude weapons had no effect on Iax's alloy shell. His full metal casing even enclosed the normally vulnerable joints.

Then a Gretchin rushed up beside Iax, clutching a Melta Bomb it had found somewhere.

The massive explosion nearly punched through both the upper and lower levels of this compartment.

Blood drifted through the air, filling the space. The gravity system in this sector had failed completely.

The Orks began floating through the gaps in the Space Station.

Their already inaccurate gunfire became utterly chaotic.

The tremendous recoil sent Shoota Boyz flying all over the compartments above and below, and their wildly straying bullets did not spare even the other Orks.

The few Black Templars Astartes seized the chance to catch their breath and looked back toward the center of the explosion.

Iax's figure remained clearly visible, his bright silver chassis reflecting the light of the now-unstable lighting system.

With the sudden explosion interrupting his thoughts, Iax set aside his musings on the Black Templars' foolish honor and began moving rapidly.

Using his immense strength and the resulting reaction force, Iax leaped onto a section of the compartment's framework. Then he began ricocheting through the space like a cannonball.

His golden blades extended, and his body began rotating slightly.

Like a golden spinning top, he sliced every Ork in his path to pieces.

Within minutes, only a scattering of Shoota Boyz and Big Shoota Boyz remained in the entire sector. These dispersed enemies soon became chunks of charred, roasted mushroom after Iax retracted his blades and reconfigured his arm to reveal the Neutron Beam Emitter.

In little more than ten minutes, nearly a thousand Orks had all been reduced to dismembered corpses and charcoal floating through the air.

The sheer efficiency of the slaughter made even the few Black Templars Astartes nearby, their ammunition exhausted, swallow hard.