Chapter 109: The War Ends
"The Emperor forbids us from researching the Warp. Enough said, get to work," Omegon said.
Company Commander Bright acknowledged, his mind shaken. As a newly-promoted Company Commander, this was his first time learning that such a bizarre matter was connected to the Warp.
Omegon quickly contacted Fabricator-Locum Albert to inquire about the inventory of antimatter warheads.
Due to the difficulty in collecting antimatter, there had only been three warheads initially. After using one, only two remained.
One month later, the war on Shadowtooth concluded.
Throughout the conflict, the Iron Warriors and Alpha Legion fought largely separate campaigns. Aside from chance encounters on the battlefield, there were no further high-level meetings between the two Legions.
In the dense northern forests of Shadowtooth, the light was dim as twilight. Several Thunderhawk gunships flew across the sky.
Company Commander Ingpeck sat in the cockpit, looking down at the dark, undulating terrain below. Thinking of this mission, he felt nervous. Soon, a blurry outline of a mountain several thousand meters high appeared in the darkness ahead.
Undulating ranges surrounded the mountain. Strangely, at its base was a massive dark cavern, faintly visible with Hrud soldiers guarding its perimeter.
The Thunderhawk gunship immediately ascended.
Company Commander Ingpeck, seeing this, exclaimed in surprise, "The Hrud's Dark God is actually here! Company Commander Bright, that new officer, is quite capable to have found this!"
Recalling the mission assigned by Primarch Alpharius, Ingpeck quickly contacted the battleship in orbit. Soon after, ten mighty orbital lance strikes lanced down from the sky, striking directly at the mountain.
Boom!
In the dark forest, the lance beams were dazzling, illuminating the surrounding primeval trees.
The devastating bombardment struck the mountain but was blocked mid-air by an incredibly thick energy shield. Ingpeck watched the standoff in the air clearly.
At the foot of the mountain, the Hrud soldiers looked up at the sky in alarm. Inside the dark cavern, there was no light until deep within, where faint crystals dotted the surroundings.
Under the weak luminescence, a large number of Hrud, led by one priest and his attendants, guarded a five-to-six-meter circular platform.
On the platform, a bizarre dark spherical object floated motionless in mid-air.
This was the Dark God of the Hrud civilization, quietly hidden in the dark cavern.
Outside, continuous orbital lance strikes rained down from orbit. After a hundred strikes, there was still no sign of the energy shield weakening, but the bombardment from space did not stop.
After countless strikes, Company Commander Ingpeck saw the energy shield begin to shake violently and reveal weak points.
Ingpeck quickly notified the flagship in orbit. He snorted coldly upon seeing Hrud emerging at the foot of the mountain.
The surrounding Thunderhawk gunships immediately rushed through the weakened energy layer to attack the Hrud guards.
After a short, chaotic firefight, many Hrud soldiers and several attendants lay dead at the dark cavern entrance.
Ingpeck seized the opportunity to rush forward. Just as he was about to deploy the warhead, he was startled to see a one-meter-thick dark tentacle rapidly shoot out of the cavern entrance.
The Thunderhawk gunship retreated in alarm, and a large number of heavy bolters opened fire at the dark tentacle.
The heavy bolter fire did not affect the dark tentacle. As he reacted in shock, he heard Omegon's command over the vox: "Don't engage it! Drop the warhead and run!"
"Yes!" Ingpeck, seeing that the cannon fire was useless, was alarmed by the Dark God's strangeness and responded decisively.
A black spherical antimatter warhead was deployed. Several Thunderhawk gunships rapidly withdrew, and the countdown on the antimatter warhead above the dark cavern entrance quickly approached zero.
The dark tentacle floated agilely above the warhead, then flashed and disappeared, retracting into the cavern. The warhead's countdown reached zero immediately.
BOOM!
An incredibly violent explosion of light burst forth from the cavern entrance, then rapidly expanded at an astonishing speed. The terrifying power pulverized the nearby mountain, several thousand meters high, into ash like soft clay.
Company Commander Ingpeck and his team flew beyond the weakened energy layer, climbing high into the sky to escape as the dazzling explosion on the ground rapidly approached.
In the terrifying explosion below, as the mountain was blasted into fragments, the surrounding Hrud soldiers and their attendants were instantly killed.
The incredibly intense light illuminated the deep cavern, and the surface of the spherical dark object violently rippled upon contact with the light.
Within moments, the dark object was engulfed by the astonishing explosion, disappearing into a white blaze of annihilation.
One day later, inside the bridge of the fleet's capital ship, Omegon looked at Ingpeck, who had narrowly escaped.
He felt speechless at the officer's confident expression.
This warrior was even more reckless than Company Commander Skorr.
Ingpeck had been instructed before the mission to drop the warhead from high altitude and escape when the energy shield showed weakness. But this man insisted on leading his men through the shield, even wanting to engage that bizarre Dark God in combat.
Skorr reported from beside him, "After the explosion, the reconnaissance unit searched over a dozen times. All objects within a hundred miles of the mountain were destroyed. No suspicious objects were found."
"....Good. The war with the Hrud has finally concluded successfully," Omegon nodded, his expression noticeably more relaxed.
Ingpeck, seeing this, asked curiously, "Although I haven't seen that Hrud's Dark God, it can indeed shapeshift, and heavy bolter fire had no effect on it. Should we have the Librarius research it?"
"I've told you everything I know," Bright said clearly from the side.
"I'm talking about the Librarius, not the Data Repository. Why don't you warriors change your names, otherwise it will get confusing if we keep calling them this way!"
"Never!" Bright, regardless of the fact that the person before him was a senior officer, was very firm in his refusal.
The Chief Librarian beside them, an old warrior in dark robes named Horace, smiled slightly.
Leaning on his force staff, he said, "In the future, just call the Data Repository by its full name. As for the Hrud's Dark God, it's my first time encountering such a thing as well."
"With the terrifying power of the antimatter warhead, no matter how bizarre it was, it must have been annihilated."
With Shadowtooth settled, Omegon glanced toward the Iron Warriors Legion in distant orbit and contacted Forrix, the First Company Commander of the Iron Warriors.
After some discussion, both sides confirmed the operational plans for the star systems surrounding Shadowtooth.
The Hrud civilization of Shadowtooth possessed interstellar travel capabilities.
Although they lacked Warp engines, relying on sub-light speed drives and accumulated time, their reach had expanded to surrounding star systems, covering an area of seven or eight systems.
Of course, the development of these star systems was far inferior to Shadowtooth, and the Hrud populations were limited.
After the Alpha Legion and Iron Warriors allocated the star systems they would attack, both Legions proceeded with their respective military actions.
Omegon learned through the Data Repository that the war on Shadowtooth had consumed most of the ammunition inventory.
One-third of the Astra Militarum fleet was dispatched back to Forge World Sophis to replenish a vast quantity of logistical resources.
After a month of major repairs, the main fleet translated directly to nearby star systems, continuing to eliminate the Hrud.
By the time the Hrud in the nearby star systems were dealt with, the entire war had lasted two years. Everyone in the Alpha Legion's massive fleet felt exhausted.
Finally, they returned to Forge World Sophis.
In the spaceport of the Forge World, the twenty-plus-kilometer-long Gloriana-class battleship was docked. On the bridge, Omegon lay on a large sofa, eyes closed, sleeping.
Magos Russell, clad in crimson robes, arrived nearby at some unknown point. Four mechadendrites behind him swayed gently. In one manipulator, he held a chronometer, timing. His high-precision augmetic eye quietly observed the sleeping Omegon.
Beside him, Fabricator-Locum Albert looked at Magos Russell with a strange expression, his internal biological processing unit also secretly timing.
Three hours later, Omegon woke. Seeing everyone busy with their own affairs on the brightly lit bridge, he sat up full of energy.
Thinking of the war with the Hrud, Omegon couldn't help but shake his head in recollection.
Legiones Astartes campaigns were always highly efficient. Conquering a planet in a month had become the default estimated timeframe.
But the burrowing Hrud were too difficult to deal with.
They hid underground with stealth, and even with the Data Repository's predictions, accuracy couldn't reach 100%. Sometimes, it was necessary to go underground and eliminate the hidden Hrud one by one.
This back-and-forth dragged the campaign out for two years. During this period, Omegon had crawled through countless warren tunnels, and the experience was truly unpleasant.
The Data Repository developed rapidly during these two years.
It could now thoroughly analyze the vast data streams of the entire Alpha Legion, and the entire Legion gained detailed, practical experience with data prediction during this war.
[End of Chapter]
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