A hot wind swept past, gradually dispersing the thick smoke, dust, and steam inside the crater.
At the crater's deepest point, amid a pool of still-boiling molten iron, a shadow so immense it took the breath away straightened with an air of unstoppable authority.
The instant Ghazghkull fully straightened his back, the scrapyard, which had been seething with noise and piercing war cries, fell deathly silent, as though a pair of enormous invisible hands had seized it by the throat.
What kind of creature was this!
He stood a full fifteen meters tall, like a moving mountain forged from muscle and steel. Unlike the stunted, twisted physiques of modern Orks, Ghazghkull's body was proportionate and upright. Every bulging muscle conformed to perfect biomechanical proportions, brimming with enough explosive strength to tear an interstellar warship apart with his bare hands.
Ghazghkull stood at the bottom of the crater, his eyes gleaming with astonishing intelligence as they coldly swept over the densely packed ranks of his "kind" around the rim.
Under his gaze, an absolute dominance rooted in the deepest reaches of their genes and spanning tens of millions of years swept through the nerves of every modern Ork present like an invisible psychic storm. The Orks who had been clamoring to pull out teeth moments earlier now trembled involuntarily.
In Ghazghkull's eyes, these creatures were nothing less than the ultimate desecration of the sacred name "Orks," a name that had once made the entire Milky Way Galaxy tremble!
What did he see?
He saw a horde of defective specimens whose genetic chains had completely collapsed, deformed to an appalling degree.
Their skulls were pitifully shrunken, their pathetic little brains utterly incapable of contemplating any truth of the universe. In those tiny red eyes filled with brutality and stupidity, he saw only