Sith raised his gun and fired, the laser passing cleanly through at least three unprotected rebel heads.
Then he brought down his saber, hacking a frenzied rebel wielding a great axe to the ground.
The saber's edge had long since rolled. At this point, Sith was bludgeoning people rather than cutting them.
He raised his gun again and killed four more rebels who refused to learn. Corpses littered the ground at his feet, and blood once again drenched his body.
Even the frenzied rebels surrounded him in terror when they saw how he looked, not daring to approach.
Sith took the opportunity to reload while casting his eyes around.
At the gate, endless rebels surged madly out of the deep passage, as though their numbers would never run dry.
Outside, Brunok and the other remnants, along with the veterans of the 101st Regiment, were desperately resisting the surging enemy tide with every weapon they could find.
But together, they numbered fewer than two thousand. Against the endless rebels, almost everyone had been scattered, forced to face simultaneous attacks from several or even a dozen enemies alone.
The 101st's veterans fared better, already blessed with "Survivor of Two Hundred Battles." But Brunok and the other remnants who had only just come under Sith's command suffered enormous casualties despite giving their all in loyalty to the Emperor.
Only after getting through the initial hundredfold accumulation did they gradually find their footing.
Sith finished reloading. Looking at the densely packed rebels watching him, once again itching to attack, he tossed his saber aside, swept his gaze around, and picked up a rather disloyal-looking serrated sword from the corpses at his feet.
As though it were a signal, the densely packed rebels around Sith lunged at him again when he straightened.
This time, Sith strode toward them!
At the beginning of the battle, the rebels had at least barely managed to trade blows with them.
But after so much fighting, at least ten thousand rebels lay dead outside the gate, and every one of Sith's soldiers who had survived this long had undergone a complete transformation.
Every person they killed counted a hundredfold, as though they had killed a hundred people, instantly bringing a qualitative leap in their strength.
So much so that, from being driven back by the rebels at first, they gradually began pushing back.
The speed at which the rebels poured out of the passage was actually becoming too slow to keep up with the rate at which Sith's soldiers killed them.
And as their kills mounted, the soldiers' fighting strength grew increasingly outrageous. It was actually beginning to feel a little like farming experience.
Sith was busy doing his loyal duty to His Majesty the Emperor atop a heap of rebel corpses and had little attention to spare for anything around him.
But the rebel commander directing the battle at the gate had gone completely rigid in the face, his eyes bloodshot as he glared furiously at this Imperial Army force that had suddenly appeared outside.
In particular, the corpses beneath Sith's feet had piled into a mountain, forcing the attacking rebels to look up and climb a slope!
Watching rebel corpses continually tumble down the mountain beneath Sith's feet, the commander looked like a gambler driven mad by his losses. Facing his equally terrified officers, he could not help pointing at Sith and his soldiers and cursing:
"Are these fuckers even human?"
The commander felt aggrieved, but the officers around him felt even more so. After all, while he sounded as though he was merely cursing, he actually had a point.
Even the Astra Militarum could not hold off tens of thousands of rebels with fewer than two thousand men.
It was not that he only had tens of thousands of men under his command, but that he had sent tens of thousands out since the gate opened.
It was only because the rebels farther back could not see what was happening outside, and had some measure of cult encouragement, that their morale had not already collapsed in the face of this slaughter.
Yes, slaughter!
Watching the situation outside, the rebel commander actually had no other word left in his mind.
"How about we pull back for now?"
"Yes, yes, let's pull back first and bring up some heavy weapons before trying again!"
Several rebel officers spoke hesitantly. But the commander's eyes widened at their words, the already furious red veins swelling until they gleamed.
He raised his gun and shot the officer who had made the suggestion. As everyone around him fell fearfully silent, his face held only the madness of a man unwilling to leave the gambling table.
"Keep sending men! I refuse to believe they can keep getting stronger the more they kill!!!"
The sky gradually darkened.
Sith yanked his serrated sword free and kicked a rebel in noticeably higher-ranking attire down the mountain of corpses.
Then his chest heaved like a bellows. He planted his sword in the ground and gasped for breath.
The rebels before him surged frantically back into the Hive City. Even those who had only just emerged behind them retreated in terror after seeing their commander cut down atop the mountain of corpses by a "humanoid demon."
Only Brunok, his eyes red with bloodlust, kept holding his long-empty machine gun and madly pulling the trigger at the fleeing, terrified rebels.
And each crisp click of the trigger, without a single hail of bullets, still made the rebels tremble violently.
Sith took a look, confirmed that the rebels would not be coming out again for now, and finally tossed aside his serrated sword, dropping onto the heap of corpses.
His weary gaze swept over the ground below. The men he had brought out were now far fewer than before the gate opened.
Once the survivors were sure they were safe for the moment, they lay straight down on the ground without a care. Apart from their still-heaving chests, their blood-drenched bodies looked no different from the corpses around them.
No one spoke. Beneath the increasingly dark sky, only the rise and fall of panting remained.
Only when night had fully fallen, leaving the whole world pitch-black beneath the clouds, and the night's icy chill began blowing in with the moaning wind, did a hungry stomach's growl abruptly break the silence.
Sith suddenly sat up on the corpse heap and looked at Brunok, his sole remaining foul-mouthed adjutant. But the answer he hoped for never came, and his brows only drew tighter.
Because that hungry growl had come from Brunok.
"We've been out of food for over a day."
Brunok knew Sith wanted to ask whether he had any supplies, so he answered directly.
At that, Sith looked toward the distant land behind him and the empty, pitch-black night sky, abandoning any extravagant hope of headquarters airdropping supplies.
All the surviving veterans looked at Sith. After all, however strong they were in battle, they still needed to eat.
Quite a few had even begun turning their attention to the rebel corpses.
Seeing this, Sith's gaze immediately hardened.
"No eating people!"
The soldiers' hearts lurched, and they hurriedly looked away.
It was not that Sith insisted on preaching humanity in this fucked-up world. After all, Corpse Starch was an Imperium specialty, and plenty of people had to queue up even to get some.
But who the fuck knew whether these rebels included Genestealers or carried some little gift from Grandfather Nurgle?
Sith did not want to finish a meal only to somehow join the Horus Heresy! Or suddenly decide the Emperor should fucking have four arms!
After this battle, no one dared show Sith the slightest disrespect. Faced with the mountain of corpses piled beneath his feet, even Brunok instantly rediscovered the manners he had lost years ago.
So when Sith forbade them from eating, everyone abandoned the idea completely.
But their hunger would not disappear just because Sith forbade it. As they recovered, more and more stomachs began to growl.
Helpless, Sith thought for a moment, then had no choice but to turn his gaze toward the deep, pitch-black Hive City before him.
"According to the map, we won't have to go very deep to reach the supply station."
Sith spoke as he looked into the passage. Brunok glanced at it too, then raised his long-empty machine gun.
Seeing Brunok indicate that he had no ammunition, Sith exhaled a cloud of white breath. He picked up his own equally depleted sidearm and looked at it, then tossed it aside after a moment's thought.
"It's cramped inside the Hive City. Use the rebels' blades and axes."
At Sith's words, the soldiers around him paused only briefly before throwing away their rifles, which had long since been hacked into wrecks, and bending down to pick up whatever weapons suited their hands from the rebel corpses.
But a short while later, once everyone had armed themselves and stood at the gate, Sith froze at the sight.
They had already been short on armor, and continuous fighting had long since left their clothes in tatters.
Now a crowd of burly men stood bare-chested, drenched in blood, their hands filled with serrated swords, great axes, and other exaggerated melee weapons.
Brunok in particular, now without his machine gun, had outright turned into a berserker with twin axes, standing menacingly at the front.
If Sith had not known better himself, an outsider would have thought these were some fucking Khorne fanatics who had appeared out of nowhere.
He did not even know whether it was because they had hacked down too many people earlier, but once the soldiers switched to melee weapons, what Sith saw next left him utterly rooted to the spot.
Lowering his head slightly, Sith looked at his hands gripping the serrated sword, then at the veterans before him who were beginning to glow, his face full of bewilderment.
"Why are we..."
"Glowing red?!"