The Dead Titan

The sudden arrival of Ultramarines reinforcements disrupted the Word Bearers' formation. Shadowsword tanks unleashed a barrage of fire, sending all detected Word Bearer vehicles into the air.

A consensus has long existed in military circles: anti-vehicle weapons are often more effective against infantry.

Even Space Marines, when facing a heavy tank at an advantageous range with a locked-on target, are not much better off than a Guardsman.

The righteous fury of the loyalists echoed across the battlefield. The Word Bearers' losses rapidly escalated, forcing them into a defensive posture and a temporary retreat. After the Space Marines withdrew, the Word Bearers' mortal followers finally began to break.

No matter how the leading cultists encouraged or threatened them, the Warp entities they invoked grew weaker. They began to scatter, but under the relentless pursuit fire, they fell like straw. They dropped everywhere, their corpses mingling with those of the civilians they had slaughtered.

"Captain Sedantus! We've finally been waiting for you!"

Ventanous's heart surged. He had held out until the reinforcements arrived. The Ultramarines elsewhere shared a common understanding: they were reorganizing, they were mustering, they were sounding the horn of counterattack.

Kaos had suffered immense casualties, and the Ultramarines had bled profusely.

The reinforcements led by Captain Sedantus were actually a mixed force, composed of elements from the scattered Eighth, Third, and Ninth Companies. They had cast aside the doctrines of warfare emphasized by their Legion, updating the Ultramarines' laws of war with the lessons learned in this brutal conflict.

The Word Bearers could not destroy the Ultramarines Legion. Even though they had endured too many casualties and sacrifices in the past, the Word Bearers' expectations had been shattered.

They had deployed all their means, whether it was betrayal in space or traps on the ground. These could only wound the Ultramarines, but not kill them.

Even though they had greatly overestimated the Thirteenth Legion's strength, the facts spoke for themselves: they had still underestimated the Ultramarines.

Worse still, although the Ultramarines were heavily wounded, they were thoroughly enraged by the pain and hatred. The fires of vengeance burned throughout the Kaos system, and the Ultramarines' counterattack was turning the tide of battle against the Word Bearers.

In order to reverse the unfavorable situation on the local battlefield, approximately fifty kilometers southeast of the Omnissiah's Archive, the imposing figures of mighty Titan war machines appeared.

The Ultramarines' auspex detected the Titans' presence. Even on a chaotic battlefield, the movement of a Titan war machine was absolutely conspicuous.

"It's a Warlord Titan, with two Reaver Titans escorting it!"

Ventanous roared. Those were Titans, the pinnacle of ground-based power.

Moreover, these were not scout Titans like Warhound Titans, but genuine combat Titans. They were the most common Titan war machines of the Imperium, possessing adamantium armor and six void shield generators. Their armament of Vulkan Cannons and triple heavy laser batteries was enough to sweep aside all ground-based enemies.

They were capable of breaching the Omnissiah's Archive's void shield defenses and completely destroying the stronghold with long-range firepower from dozens of kilometers away.

"Where are our Titans?"

No one could provide an answer, because any surviving Titan war machines of the Thirteenth Legion would surely have been specifically targeted and hunted down by the enemy.

"We can't let them get any closer. Once the Titan war machines join the fray, even Space Marines will just be vaporized in a single shot."

Ventanous looked at the two recently arrived super-heavy tanks, Shadowswords, before him, his mind racing as he considered the possibility of ambushing the Titan war machines with super-heavy tanks.

The probability was too low. Even though super-heavy tanks had a chance to heavily damage a Titan war machine, it would be after overloading the void shields, and they had too few tanks.

Inside the Omnissiah's Archive.

Loci, who was helping Tasa of the Salamanders rescue the wounded, suddenly froze. An alert from a starship in orbit sounded in his mind.

[Titan unit detected]

[Recommend evacuation]

He was not unaware of the battlefield situation; he had simply chosen to maintain a relatively neutral stance.

When he awoke from his millennia-long slumber and saw humanity in its current state, Loci's mindset had already begun to destabilize.

His starship was humanity's Ark of Doom, entrusted to him by the Chief. He absolutely could not risk it entering the battle, for no one knew if the enemy might suddenly produce some relic weapon that could threaten the ship.

While the traitors who called themselves Word Bearers were certainly detestable, the loyalist Imperial faction represented by the Ultramarines was only slightly better.

They were all gene-modified warriors created by that Emperor.

This Imperium was filled with ignorance, feudalism, and anti-intellectualism.

Therefore, Loci had only chosen to help the Ultramarines out of sympathy for the innocent humans on this planet.

But after traveling together for a period, Loci gradually began to feel that these warriors called Adeptus Astartes were not just emotionless killing tools: Nikanna dreamed of seeing humanity's homeworld, Iron Father Willand was lost in the death of the Gene-Father, and Tasa of the Salamanders tirelessly treated the wounded, even if they were just ordinary mortals.

And Captain Ventanus, whom he had only met once, had been leading the Ultramarines against the attacks of those who had gone mad, and they were bleeding.

"Alas, alas," Loci sighed. He knew the Ultramarines could not stop those war machines called Titans.

His ship carried powerful, high-tech weapons hidden away. A single vacuum implosion bomb capable of creating a singularity would be enough to destroy all those Titans.

However, weapons do not distinguish between friend and foe. The loyalists and traitors on the entire planet were already intertwined, and an indiscriminate strike would heavily damage the loyalist forces.

He pondered for two seconds and decided to adopt a more moderate approach.

The Red Alert quietly appeared from orbit. It was invisible to all warship scanning arrays, and neither side engaged in the fierce battle noticed the appearance of a small starship.

A metal obelisk over three meters tall descended from space. The surrounding field emitters annihilated air resistance, preventing it from falling like a meteor from a drop pod.

The footsteps of the Titan war machine passed by, and the ground vibrated with a regular rhythm. The void shields of these war machines were linked together, resisting the occasional artillery fire from the ruins.

Besides Ventanus, many other loyalists attempted to stop the Titans.

The creation of the Omnissiah's vessel subtly rotated its head's sensor array, instantly locking onto the source of the artillery fire. The Vulkan Cannons held in the Titans' arms began to charge, their glow flickering like molten lava.

The world was illuminated in an instant. The Vulkan Cannons turned an entire section of ruins into a death zone flowing with molten lava and glassy crystals.

[Kill confirmed]

Inside the Titan war machine's cockpit, the Word Bearers' Titan pilot convulsed with madness.

His limbs had been severed, and he was immersed in an amniotic fluid tank, linked to the berserk Titan's machine spirit through neural interface units.

The Titan's machine spirit was so fierce and untamable that the pilot, with the assistance of the control group, struggled to control it.

Within the amniotic sac, the pilot felt as if the Titan was himself. His hands became the Volcano Cannon, his limbs' senses extended to the auspex, and his skin transformed into a thick adamantium shell, completely shedding human frailty.

The Titan's machine spirit exerted immense pressure and pain on his mind, yet this omnipotent-like synesthesia made him unable to stop.

He didn't notice at all that beside the Titan, a small metallic obelisk suddenly released an invisible radiance.

An electromagnetic pulse, capable of destruction, pierced the Void Shield and instantly overloaded the Titan's machine spirit. Inside the cockpit, the pilot, the control group, and the servitors' brains boiled, spewing forth a torrent of electrical sparks.

The Titan seemed to have its soul ripped out, its next step never falling.

Silently, the Titan had fallen.

"What happened? Why did those Titans stop moving?"

Ventanis, rushing to intercept the Titans, suddenly noticed the lights on his auspex had been stagnant for a long time. They didn't know what had occurred.

Had the Titan's pilot been killed by the berserk machine spirit? Or had another Ultramarine breached the Void Shield and decapitated the cockpit?

Ventanis didn't know, but his keen battle intuition sensed an external force interfering with the battle.

This was all too coincidental.

Besides the Ultramarines and the Word Bearers, was there a third party on Kaos?

The Ultramarines Captain cast a deep gaze at the Titans, which were like dead metal towers at the edge of his vision, and changed his decapitation plan.

The war continued, but Ventanus and his men finally had time to catch their breath. They returned to the shelter of the Omnissiah's Archive, treating their wounds with the help of the Salamanders and mortal medical personnel.

Thanks to Loci's assistance, healing supplies such as bandages and potions were not in short supply. Starships in orbit continuously produced these emergency supplies, which arrived at the Omnissiah's Archive via teleportation.

"We recovered the Slaughter Code from the port. With the escort of the Ultramarines, we didn't encounter much trouble."

Senior Technician Tauren and others also returned from the port. After learning that Hurst had hidden the compiled Slaughter Code at the port, they reached the target location with the help of an Ultramarines squad and successfully retrieved the mission objective.

The Slaughter Code was uploaded to the transmitter. The starship in orbit immediately loaded this weapon specifically designed to counter Chaos Junk Code. With the computational support of the AI, Kaos's broken, almost ruined mental space was being revived.

"Loci, you—" Ventanus looked at Loci, who was busy in front of him, and was about to say something, but swallowed his doubts.

"The influence of the Chaos Junk Code is continuously weakening, Captain," Loci said, a smile appearing on his face as he saw Ventanus return. "With the current number of Ultramarines assembled, and if we receive support from the Glory of Macragge, there's a high probability we can retake the orbital weapon arrays."

"But the flagship is unresponsive," Ventanus said softly. He put aside his doubts; at this moment, it no longer mattered who had destroyed those Titans.

He understood that the battlefield in space was equally brutal, with even Primarchs losing contact.

In this situation, a blind assault on the weapon arrays would be reckless. Ventanus ordered the assembled Ultramarines to continue searching for survivors centered around the Omnissiah's Archive and to absorb any arriving warriors. At the same time, he ordered the senior technicians to hail the flagship every thirty seconds.

[This is Kaos surface, calling flagship!]

[This is Kaos surface, calling flagship!]