"Boss!"
Sharkteeth cried out and tried to step forward, only to be forced back by a single look from Griffin.
Gavo's heart trembled violently. Looking at Griffin, whose eyes now held a strange peace, she instinctively placed her index finger on the trigger.
That cruel initiation ritual was still deeply carved into her soul.
And the one responsible for it had been the most vicious brute in the underhive standing before her now.
She had felt the urge to kill this moody bastard countless times.
But...
This man had helped heal her adoptive father.
He had helped her find the ones who had harmed him...
He was both the enemy who had tormented her and the benefactor who had done her kindness.
Complex emotions surged through her, only to finally turn into a long sigh.
In the end, Gavo moved her finger back off the trigger.
Just like two years ago, she still chose not to fire.
Seeing that, a smile curved across Griffin's mouth.
At that moment, he finally understood what he should say.
"Kid... live on."
The little one in front of him was destined to walk a different road from his own.
And so the only thing he could give her was the sincerest blessing the underhive had to offer:
Live.
After saying that, he did not hesitate for even a moment. With his left thumb, he pulled the trigger of the logging gun himself.
Amid a rain of blood, his body dropped down into the garbage heap below.
That was the grave he had chosen for himself.
The cruelest scum of the underhive ought to be buried in the largest garbage heap of the underhive.
Watching this, Medic, whose face was usually calm as still water, could not help showing a trace of sadness.
Sharkteeth stood there for a long while, then let out a roar and began firing wildly toward the direction of the setting sun.
Griffin had indeed carried countless lives on his back, a butcher through and through, but he had never once wronged the brothers of the Weepers.
Gavo remained frozen in place.
She found it hard to believe that such a cunning beast had just lost his life like that.
For a while, that corner fell into an eerie silence, broken only by the thunder of Sharkteeth's grieving gunfire.
Only after he had emptied all of his magazines did the sorrowful brute finally stop.
Then this most loyal subordinate of Ironarm took a deep breath, slowly turned around, and looked at Gavo, who was still holding the logging gun.
"I understand what Ironarm Boss meant by giving you his logging gun."
"From now on, you are the leader of the Weepers."
"You are the boss of the First Warband."
Everything that followed felt unreal, like a dream.
Medic and Sharkteeth brought along Gavo, who was still mentally frozen, and announced Ironarm's death.
Then they raised her right hand, the one holding the logging gun, and declared the birth of a new leader.
The warband was stunned by the news of Griffin's death, and the original Weeper gunners were also plunged into a rare sorrow.
They could hardly believe or accept Ironarm's death, but not a single one of them questioned whether Gavo was qualified to take his place.
After all, over two years of campaigning, they had all seen this little one's astonishing combat power and sharp battlefield instincts.
And in that life-and-death crisis just now, it had been she who risked her own life to plant the shaped charge.
On top of that, the valuable scrap she kept bringing back had greatly strengthened the warband's arsenal.
No matter how one looked at it, Gavo possessed advantages far beyond ordinary people. She was a perfect all-round fighter.
With abilities like that, she was naturally qualified to lead.
As for seniority...
Not to mention that the two people with the most right to talk about seniority, Medic and Sharkteeth, were openly supporting her.
Gavo herself had also once been a member of the Weepers Strike Team, the predecessor of the First Warband, and the blood-tear tattoo hidden beneath her mask was proof enough of that.
And if anyone blind enough still dared talk about seniority, then the Weepers would probably send them off to meet Griffin.
And so, with no one objecting, Gavo successfully ascended to the position Griffin had prepared for her and became the leader of the Tearblood Gang's First Warband.
That year, she was eleven.
...
Across the damp earth bubbling with foul water lay countless broken bricks and shattered tiles.
Not far away, a base still stood, but the terrible explosion had turned even that relic of the Golden Age into ruins.
A tower had once stood here, just like the hive city in the distance that blotted out the sky, enduring with this planet for many long millennia.
Clang...
After a short silence, with the sound of metal bars shifting, a collapsed fragment of wall was pushed from beneath by something below it, rolled down from the top of the rubble pile, and kicked up clouds of dust.
Within the dust, a ruined hand stretched out from a large hole under that broken wall.
It clawed desperately at the edge of the opening, dug itself into the rough surface, and with a near-screamed howl, a blood-drenched figure struggled out of the hole.
Though his outer appearance was already mangled flesh and his clothes were in tatters, the fragments of armor still hanging from his shoulders made his identity clear.
He was the purification tower guard captain who had once looked down on everyone from above.
"Damn it... damn it..."
He panted heavily, cursing in a blurred, broken voice.
Looking at the tower's wreckage all around him, and at the underhive mud now soaked through with the precious pure water that had once been stored within it, he could not help punching the ruins beneath him in fury.
Like a madman, he kept striking the remains of the purification tower without sensing the pain, even though his fingers were already missing pieces.
That shaped charge had not only destroyed this tower of purified water.
The tower in his heart had also suffered a fatal crack in that explosion...
In his mind, the world itself was shaped like a tower.
Those at the top could indulge in everything without restraint, while those at the bottom should give up everything without complaint.
The underhive vermin should have lived obediently in this lightless garbage pit, then rotted away through a life of meaningless labor and mutual slaughter.
But how had those scum dared to break this iron law?
How had they dared challenge an eternal rule?
"No... they were wrong..."
"The rules, like the glorious hive city itself, are eternal and indestructible!"
Facing the immense steel forest before him, a wall without end, he spread his arms and knelt before it like a pilgrim, roaring in near madness.
Yet before he could stand and go search for a communicator, an even more terrifying sight appeared before him.
In the direction he was kneeling toward, that great Imperial machine, run by countless laborers as living components, suddenly erupted in blazing fire.
Massive explosions began going off one after another, and each one reflected deep within his eyes.
Amid the endless thunder of blasts, large sections of the hive city's outer wall came crashing down.
And with them, the tower inside one man's heart collapsed too.
He stared at the scene in utter shock, completely unaware that under the illumination of the raging fire at the horizon, one mutated figure after another was also rising from the surrounding rubble.
Countless crimson eyes turned toward him.
In an instant, a scream so horrible it could barely be called human rang across the ruins, blending with the thunder of artillery from above.
Together, they became a perfect funeral song, celebrating the death of this hive city...
(End of Chapter)
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