167: Chapter 167 Iron Man

Forest Wolf was quite open-minded, commenting, "This is true pragmatism. Who cares if it's a righteous god or an evil god? As long as it can serve the people, get work done, and find things, it's a good god."

Under the dual influence of the Servo-skull's Warp divination and the large-scale radar scanning of the drones, within just a few minutes, Cain's flickering mechanical eye locked onto a signal source with an anomalous band.

"Found it, over there!" Cain pointed.

The group immediately maintained a tight tactical formation and rapidly advanced toward a towering heavy forging factory a few kilometers away.

However, just as the squad stepped into the factory's main gate, "Bang!" A crisp sniper shot suddenly shattered the dead silence.

The bullet grazed Qianlong Wuyong's helmet, sparking a series of flashes against the steel plate behind him!

Immediately after, over a hundred fully armed gang thugs suddenly swarmed out from the dark second-floor corridors and behind metal pipes all around.

Without a word, they raised their lasguns and Logging Guns, pouring dense firepower down on the squad from their superior position!

If it were average casual players facing such a sudden ambush, they would surely have panicked and screamed.

But this tactical squad, composed entirely of soldiers, displayed textbook-level terrifying reaction speed the moment the gun went off!

No one panicked or screamed.

"Enemy contact! Sniper at twelve o'clock! Machine gun positions on the high ground on both flanks!"

Forest Wolf's voice rang out cold and urgent on the channel, "Squad One, find cover! Squad Two, suppress with crossfire! Squad Three, concentrate plasma fire on the right load-bearing pillar and collapse the platform they're on for me!"

"Received!" The twenty players moved in perfect unison.

Without even needing to communicate verbally, relying entirely on instinctive tactical tacit understanding, they instantly found the most perfect shooting cover nearby.

They raised their individual plasma rifles.

Instead of firing blindly, they engaged in precise single-shot bursts!

"Puff! Puff! Puff!" Deep blue plasma orbs flashed within the factory.

Every time they fired, it was invariably accompanied by the scream of a thug falling from above.

Subsequently, several players concentrated their firepower, directly blasting apart the right metal load-bearing pillar.

The massive steel platform collapsed with a roar, crushing dozens of gang members into pulp.

In less than five minutes, this group of aggressive ambushers, whose numbers were several times that of the players, was easily wiped out by more than half by this disciplined squad, with the rest fleeing in terror.

"Is that it?" Leigong Zhuwo changed a battery, "This is too weak."

However, before they could catch their breath, the metal plates on the factory floor suddenly emitted a violent tremor!

"Thud! Thud! Thud!" Heavy mechanical footsteps approached.

The enemy's main force surrounded the place with incredible support speed!

Furthermore, among these dense masses of thugs, over a dozen Astra Militarum Knight mechs, several meters tall and equipped with heavy Gatling guns and thermal lances, appeared!

"Fire!" Accompanied by a deafening roar, over a dozen Knight mechs poured out firepower simultaneously.

The terrifying web of fire instantly suppressed the players behind cover, making it impossible for them to even lift their heads!

The thick metal cover began to melt into molten iron under the irradiation of the thermal beams.

"The firepower is too heavy! We need anti-armor weapons!" Forest Wolf shouted.

Just as the players were preparing for a desperate fight, Cain, who had been hiding in the middle of the team, completely erupted!

"Heretics who blaspheme the truth!" Cain let out an angry electronic roar.

He suddenly tore off the red robe he was wearing!

From his semi-mechanical spine, four thick, flexible metal servo-arms shot out instantly like vipers!

The tip of each mechanical arm was equipped with different lethal weapons—plasma guns, thermal cutters, and radiation cleansing guns!

Cain's seemingly frail body erupted with terrifying speed that was hard to capture with the naked eye.

He wove flexibly through the hail of bullets.

The mechanical arms on his back seemed to have eyes of their own, firing precise beams.

"Hiss!" A thermal beam directly and precisely burned out the optical sensor probe of a Knight mech, instantly rendering it blind!

Immediately after, Cain's mechanical legs, loaded with hydraulic engines, exerted force!

"Boom!" A deep pit was stomped into the ground.

Cain leaped over ten meters high like a cannonball, jumping directly onto the top of that blinded mech!

He raised the massive omnissiah Axe high with both hands, the power field roaring wildly on the axe blade.

"Slash!" A heavy, powerful jumping strike!

Accompanied by the ear-piercing sound of metal tearing, that heavily armored Knight mech was actually cleaved in two, straight from the shoulder to the chest, by Cain's axe!

Sparks and machine oil gushed out, and the massive body collapsed with a roar!

The players hiding behind cover were stunned.

"Holy crap! The oil-guy is awesome! This melee combat ability is too damn heaven-defying!" Leigong Zhuwo shouted.

But at the same time, a strong question arose in the players' hearts.

In this universe, Tech-Priests were demigod existences holding the lifeblood of all technology.

Ordinary Imperial civilians or gangsters, upon seeing such big shots in red robes, would usually be scared enough to kneel on the ground and kowtow, fearing to offend the omnissiah.

Leigong Zhuwo asked loudly while firing back, "Are these people crazy?! How do they dare to open fire and try to kill when they see a Tech-Priest of Cain's level appear?!"

Qianlong Wuyong, hiding behind a steel pillar, calmly analyzed, "This just proves the point! If they were just ordinary gangsters, they wouldn't dare to fire at a Tech-Priest from Mars even if they had ten times the guts!"

"Since they dare to kill despite seeing Cain, this group definitely has a very strong background! Combined with the intelligence posted by other players on the forum earlier, this group of well-trained people is definitely in league with the mastermind behind the riots on this planet!"

Under Cain's powerful eruption and the players' precise shooting, they barely repelled the first wave of the Knight mechs' charge.

But the situation inside the factory remained grim.

The main gate had been sealed, and they found themselves completely surrounded.

Cain swung the axe to shake off the machine oil, his mechanical eyes flickering wildly.

"Data analysis complete." Cain said in a deep voice, "This was a trap from the beginning! The signal for that STC forging fragment is indeed here, but it's most likely just bait used to lure and kill the remaining high-ranking members of the Adeptus Mechanicus!"

Facing this desperate situation, Forest Wolf still maintained the calmness of a soldier.

"Don't panic." Forest Wolf said while checking his ammunition and quickly observing the factory's terrain, "Check shield readings, Squad One prepare high-explosive grenades, we will forcibly blast a path through the ventilation duct on the left, plan to break out!"

However, just as the few gathered and prepared to launch the breakout, the enemy formation suddenly split to both sides.

Accompanied by a heavy sound of footsteps with a certain metallic resonance, a massive robot, a full three meters tall and shimmering with a cold metallic luster, slowly walked out from the shadows!

This was definitely not the stiff-moving Servitor, nor was it the common Imperial Kastelan robot.

Its body exuded a cold aura filled with intelligence and murderous logic.

The robot's left arm was a thick, strangely shaped cannon barrel of unknown principle; the right arm consisted of five sharp metal claws shimmering with high-frequency red light.

On both sides of its broad shoulders, it also carried a multi-barreled rotary machine gun and a micro-missile launch platform.

Its glowing electronic eyes coldly locked onto the player squad.

Subsequently, the robot slowly raised the strange cannon on its left arm, aiming at a player who was charging at the very front, wearing the thickest model of Power Armor.

There was no muzzle flash, nor any laser.

Only an eerie distortion and collapse suddenly occurred in the air.

"Hum—Splorch!"

That player wearing heavy Power Armor didn't even have time to scream.

Within 0.1 seconds, his entire body, along with his indestructible armor, was instantly crushed and compressed by an extremely terrifying gravitational field into a puddle of bloody, mangled metal meat paste! Then it turned into dust filling the sky!

Leigong Zhuwo watched this scene, his pupils instantly contracting to the size of pinpricks.

He suddenly remembered the description of a certain lost weapon he had seen in Shelter's database, and screamed hoarsely in terror: "Good lord! Gravity Collapse Cannon! Could it be a Men of Iron?! Brothers! Everyone scatter and take cover!!!"

Intense firefights broke out again throughout the factory.

The Men of Iron's terrifying robot had horrifyingly accurate firepower!

Moreover, the power of its Gravity Collapse Cannon was simply too great; as long as it hit something, whether it was cover or Power Armor, it would instantly be crushed into powder, killing them instantly on the spot!

But the players were, after all, battle-hardened veterans.

After paying the price of several teammates dying, they quickly figured out the small pre-action pattern of the Gravity Cannon's charging and firing.

"Three-second charge! Roll to evade!" Forest Wolf shouted, directing tactical movement.

The players utilized the terrain of the ruins, weaving back and forth like loaches to avoid the Gravity Cannon's lock.

At the same time, the plasma rifles in the players' hands weren't just for show.

Although ordinary live ammunition had no effect on the Men of Iron, the high-energy plasma orbs could still leave deep molten scars on its metal shell.

Besides this Men of Iron posing a fatal threat to the players, the surrounding gang thugs were simply targets coming to feed kills in the face of the players' marksmanship.

For a time, both sides were stuck in an intense tactical stalemate in the spacious factory building.

At this moment, the three-meter-tall Men of Iron stood behind cover.

In its cold electronic eyes, a massive waterfall of data streams flickered.

It looked at the corpses of the gang thugs all over the floor.

The cannon fodder it had painstakingly armed with weapons on this planet had actually been slaughtered by more than half by this twenty-person squad in just over ten minutes!

"Combat ROI assessment: Negative, not worth continuing to consume armed forces." The Men of Iron's core quickly reached a conclusion.

Obviously, this time throwing out the STC fragment to fish had accidentally hooked a hand-biting star crocodile!

At the same time, its core database was also running frantically, attempting to analyze the origin of this mysterious armed force.

"Target armor scan complete: Non-Imperial active service equipment. 99% match for Golden Age [Ranger-type Power Armor]."

"Target tactical equipment scan complete: Quad-rotor semi-automatic reconnaissance drone."

The Men of Iron's blue electronic eyes flickered suddenly.

Obviously, this team was definitely not the remnant Adeptus Mechanicus forces on this planet!

Because those gear-worshipping blockhead fanatics on Mars would only denounce such drones as heresy for not having a human brain implanted; it was absolutely impossible for them to use such equipment!

After reaching this conclusion, the Men of Iron immediately issued a ceasefire order on the internal communication channel.

The gangsters and mechs that had been pouring out firepower frantically instantly stopped shooting and retreated into the depths of the corridor.

The factory fell into an eerie silence.

"Hum..." The Men of Iron lowered the gravity cannon on its left arm and slowly walked out from behind cover.

From its built-in loudspeaker came a flat, pure, mechanically synthesized voice: "Cease meaningless exchange of fire, armed forces of unknown origin."

"You have earned my respect; I now officially propose negotiations to you!"