152: Chapter 152 Post-War

When Slaanesh, in that three-meter-tall purple-skinned mutant body, crashed through the banquet hall doors and charged in murderously...

To his surprise...

The female Warden, Madam Mary, did not panic because of the riot outside.

She sat quietly in the main seat, holding a glass of wine emitting an eerie red glow, and took an elegant sip.

Seeing the massive and hideous Slaanesh rush in, there was not only no fear in Madam Mary's eyes.

Instead, she showed a fanatical and obsessed expression.

"My goodness..."

Madam Mary put down her wine glass, stood up, and looked at Slaanesh as if admiring a perfect work of art,

"What a strong carapace, what a perfect evolution of a lifeform."

Slaanesh felt his skin crawl under her gaze.

He waved the two blood-stained mantis claws on his chest and asked coldly:

"Aren't you curious why I'm still not controlled or influenced by your so-called Hive Mind after being infected?"

"Whether I'm curious or not is no longer important." Madam Mary smiled slightly.

She raised her right hand and gave a gentle wave.

Instantly, all the side doors around the banquet hall were smashed open!

A large number of half-insect, half-human mutants surged out like a tide.

There were hundreds of them, instantly crowding the spacious hall!

Slaanesh took a rough glance at these mutants.

Their physical characteristics were very obvious; some retained human faces but had insect claws, while others had full insect heads atop human shoulders.

From the Warhammer background setting, these were clearly the first or second generation hybrid offspring produced after Genestealers infected humans.

Because once they reached the third generation, these monsters' appearances would be basically indistinguishable from ordinary humans.

Slaanesh sneered.

During the process of releasing prisoners from the underground prison just now, he had noticed a detail.

The prisoners held in this Abyss Prison were almost exclusively strong male gang members; no females could be seen at all.

This meant that these bugs couldn't find enough human female hosts here for long-term genetic hybrid breeding!

Therefore, there were very few third-generation hybrids here.

Most of the Defense Force outside were likely just mentally controlled by the Genestealer Cult using psychic hypnosis.

"You think this rabble can stop me?"

At Madam Mary's command.

Hundreds of insect-men holding various weapons roared and pounced toward Slaanesh.

Slaanesh was not afraid at all.

His massive mutant body instantly erupted with terrifying muscular strength. With a sudden kick of his legs, his body turned into a purple afterimage and charged into the swarm!

This was a one-sided slaughter with no suspense.

Relying on the crushing advantage of his base attributes and those four razor-sharp arms.

Slaanesh was like a crazed, spinning meat grinder.

In less than half an hour.

Dead silence returned to the hall.

Purple-black blood and the mangled limbs of insect-men were everywhere.

Throughout this bloody massacre, Madam Mary still stood quietly at the end of the long table, not moving or intervening, just obsessively watching Slaanesh's violent combat posture.

Slaanesh stepped over the wreckage on the floor, walked step by step to Madam Mary, and looked down at her.

"Show your true form."

Slaanesh shook the blood off his claws,

"With such a beautiful Big Sister face, I really find it a bit hard to bring this scythe down on you."

Madam Mary seemed not to hear Slaanesh's threat, still sighing to herself:

"I really didn't expect that a mutant with absolute independent will could actually be bred by accident. But... you are just an isolated case. Under what conditions can such a miracle be successfully replicated?"

For the Hive Network, while the emergence of an independent will was very rare, it was not absolutely impossible.

It was just that the conditions were extremely demanding.

This situation usually occurred after Genestealers had completely controlled a planet.

Due to the Hive Fleet's long delay in arriving, the Cult Patriarch might awaken self-awareness during prolonged rule and view the entire planet as their own private property.

Once the Hive army actually descended, they might even turn around and lead the infected to attack the Hive Mothership!

Slaanesh looked at the female NPC talking to herself and felt it was inexplicable.

"Is this woman's brain fried? Is she giving me a biology lesson here?"

Slaanesh muttered to himself, "Could there be some hidden chain quest behind this?"

Finally, Madam Mary seemed to snap out of her fanatical research conjectures.

She turned her head and looked toward the outer perimeter of the prison.

There, the deafening sound of artillery fire was becoming more and more dense, even making the glass of the high-rise buildings tremble violently.

Obviously, those cult followers and Defense Force who only knew mechanical obedience were no match for the steel torrent of the The Fourth Calamity.

The defensive line was collapsing.

Madam Mary turned back and glanced at Slaanesh.

She seemed to have made a decision in her heart.

The expression on her face instantly became very painful, and purple veins began to crawl frantically under her originally fair skin.

"Blegh—"

She suddenly opened her mouth, retched, and actually spat out a small purple piece of meat the size of a soybean.

Subsequently, her voluptuous body began to rapidly shrink and mutate.

Within just a few seconds, she turned into a bald, long-limbed, purple-skinned purebred Genestealer monster!

Using her deformed claw, she tremblingly handed the small piece of meat to Slaanesh.

"This is the Core Gland of the Ymgarl variant."

"Swallow it, and you will have the ability to change your form at will."

Slaanesh was stunned for a moment, hesitated for two seconds, but still reached out to take the small piece of meat that was still warm.

"The situation outside is irreversible; the Cult cannot hold."

Madam Mary gave him one last look.

"You need to stay hidden, carry this miracle of evolution, and survive!"

Slaanesh finally understood completely.

This Genestealer leader treated him, with his independent will, as some kind of advanced hope for Tyranid evolution!

She intended to sacrifice herself and leave this unique mutant gland for him to escape!

Although the plot development was a bit cliché.

But what Slaanesh was thinking was:

"It really is a hidden quest reward! In other words, with this thing, I can change back to my peak human handsomeness anytime! This hidden quest is so damn generous!"

Slaanesh wasn't afraid at all.

At worst, he'd just die from poisoning and restart.

He tilted his head back and swallowed the purple meatball in one gulp!

The moment the gland entered his stomach.

Slaanesh closed his eyes, and with a slight thought.

His three-meter-tall massive mutant body, bones, and muscles began to make tooth-gritting restructuring sounds.

Within just a few seconds, he returned to a normal human physique!

Slaanesh looked down at his human skin, which was restored to its original state, without even a single scar.

Just as Slaanesh was calculating how to handle this bug leader who had proactively given him benefits.

A brilliant idea suddenly popped into his head!

"Madam."

Slaanesh said sincerely in Tyranid tongue,

"I have a good way to infiltrate those outsiders' ranks."

"In a moment, I will pretend to be a captured undercover agent and bring those humans attacking the city here. Then, in front of them, I will kill you with my own hands! I'll use your head to earn their absolute trust!"

Hearing this plan that could be called betraying one's master and ancestors.

In Madam Mary's eyes, that extreme obsession with perfect evolution ignited once again.

"Good! As expected of a miracle of evolution! You understand survival better than I do!"

Slaanesh nodded seriously.

Just as he was about to turn and welcome the Calamity main force, he suddenly remembered something and turned back to ask:

"By the way, that set of crimson Power Armor this body was originally wearing, where did you guys put it after stripping it off?"

"Go that way, the fifth utility room." Madam Mary pointed to the hallway.

A few minutes later.

Slaanesh was once again wearing that familiar and security-filled Competitive Power Armor.

He stood at the door and took one last look at that purebred Genestealer sitting quietly in the main seat, preparing to face death.

"Is it a bit unethical of me to trick an NPC by playing with their feelings like this?" Slaanesh reflected inwardly.

But he only reflected for a single second.

"Wait, no! Why the hell am I talking about feelings with an alien bug? I'm not that Pure Love Warrior Flash who's always thinking about living a life with an NPC wife!"

Without any psychological burden, Slaanesh turned around and strode out of the banquet hall.

...

Meanwhile, outside the Abyss Prison walls.

The battle had long since become a one-sided crushing situation.

At the rear fire positions of the Scourge Legion.

More than fifty hover self-propelled artillery pieces were letting out synchronized roars!

Since the hover chassis completely removed the need to consider the annoying recoil effects of traditional tracks.

The Arsenal had insanely mounted triple-barreled 220mm heavy howitzers on every single artillery piece!

Although physical gunpowder weapons were inferior to plasma and laser cannons in terms of single-shot armor penetration.

Their advantage lay in absolute fire coverage, and their range was extremely long, with power that didn't decay over distance.

Therefore, players could comfortably hide in the rear over ten kilometers away and frantically pour out firepower.

"Port thirty degrees! Three rounds rapid fire! Fire!"

Moreover, under the real-time guidance of those low-altitude reconnaissance drones in the air.

The hover artillery was like it had eyes; almost every volley could precisely take out those heavy machine gun bunkers that had just been exposed on the walls.

Next to the fire positions.

The drone operators of the Galactic Empire Stormtroopers also brought out their new equipment, which they had just crafted in The Arsenal based on Earth's military concepts.

Besides some VTOL drones responsible for dropping bombs, the most interesting one was a suicide drone rocket named Lancet!

The principle of this thing was very simple and crude.

It was basically a large-caliber rocket with a drone flight control system and camera installed inside!

This perfectly compensated for the traditional rocket's weaknesses of large dispersion and poor accuracy.

Operators wearing VR headsets could control the rockets to turn in mid-air, just like playing with an FPV drone, and fly them directly through the wall's firing slits into the enemy's bunkers!

"Boom! Boom! Boom!"

Fire soared on the walls.

And on the front assault line.

Dozens of heavily armored hover tanks, coordinated with Gladiator Mechs, were slowly advancing like a moving Great Wall of steel.

Behind the tanks, thousands of heavy infantry players wearing Ranger Power Armor were being covered.

Faced with a steel torrent of this scale.

The laser guns and Logging Guns held by the prison guards and those brainwashed Defense Force soldiers couldn't even leave a dent on the mechs' shields or the tanks' armor; they simply couldn't break the defense!

Additionally, the sea breeze no. 9 ship stationed in low Earth orbit would occasionally play the role of an orbital bomber.

Based on the coordinates sent by ground players, it would drop several precise electromagnetic acceleration shells, blowing the mutants trying to gather for a counterattack into mincemeat.

It could be said without exaggeration.

Once the battle started, it was a complete all-around crushing dimensional strike, from dimension and air superiority to fire coverage!

The Defense Force's only advantage was their dense, locust-like infected population that didn't care about death.

But in the face of this violent carpet-bombing firepower, no matter how large the population, it was just a laughable number.

After four full days of steamrolling combat.

The players advanced triumphantly.

When encountering defenders who fought to the death or refused to surrender, they didn't waste words and simply shot them dead!

After all, everyone knew the opponents were monsters brainwashed by bugs, so they didn't have the slightest psychological burden in killing them.

Now.

The army had arrived at the city gates.

The weapons that were once densely packed on the prison's hundred-meter-high walls had long been blown into a pile of burning scrap metal.

As long as they crossed this wall, they could begin the final inner-city street fighting and mopping up.

However.

Just as Ming Shen was commanding several mechs to forcibly flatten the metal city gates.

That metal gate, several meters thick, actually opened slowly inward with a harsh grating sound!

A familiar figure wearing crimson Competitive Power Armor, leading a large, dark crowd of ragged prisoners, walked out of the city gate in a swaggering manner.

"Brothers! Didn't expect it, did you? I'm back!"

Slaanesh shouted excitedly in the public channel.

Ming Shen stood next to his mech, initially thinking someone had stripped Slaanesh's clothes and was impersonating him.

It wasn't until Slaanesh proactively opened his helmet's faceplate to reveal that familiar face that Ming Shen sighed in relief.

But thinking that the Genestealer Cult had various strange transformation and parasitic methods.

Ming Shen immediately raised the plasma gun in his hand, aiming the muzzle at Slaanesh.

"Halt! Give the password!" Ming Shen shouted.

"Gongting Yuye Jiu!"

Slaanesh rolled his eyes and blurted out:

"Ting wo gei ni chui!"

"The password is correct; it's definitely him." Ming Shen finally relaxed completely and waved for the surrounding players to lower their guns.

"Didn't you say you were forcibly kissed and turned into a three-meter-tall purple bug? How did you turn back into a human now?" Ming Shen walked forward, full of confusion.

Slaanesh raised his chin proudly:

"Heh heh! This bro made a huge profit! I'll show you something big!"

As soon as he finished speaking.

Slaanesh's mind moved.

Under everyone's watchful eyes, his form began to violently twist and change like liquid metal.