Hummm!
The enormous humming sound made everyone present instinctively look up at the sky. A flash of violet light vanished in an instant, replaced by dozens of rapidly descending "black dots."
"Roar, roar!" No identification signal—enemy! Human reinforcements have arrived.
"Roar—!" All units, prepare to engage!
The red-armored Sangheili commander gripped his crimson Type-1 dual-bladed energy sword tightly and roared at the top of his lungs.
The next moment—
Boom! Boom! Boom—Rumble!!
Like a series of heavy aerial bombs accelerating in a second-stage dive, they crashed down and detonated. Within the circular wall, the entire drilling station seemed to "explode." The loose sand burst upward like a lake surface shattered by thrown stones. The air itself detonated, and an invisible shockwave rippled outward.
Sand waves more than a dozen meters high surged outward in a roaring tide. Dust connected into a vast curtain, blotting out the sky.
Spartan-125, who had just poked his head out, ready to charge from cover in desperation, had no time to cry out in shock. Clutching his heavy sniper rifle, he used the cover of sand and explosions to move along the inner wall of the drilling station toward the Master Chief's last known position.
Amid the unbroken thunder of explosions—
"The drilling station has been hit by suspected bombs. Silver Team, report casualties."
"South sector, Spartan-125 reporting. Crisis resolved. I've broken free and am moving to the rally point. Master Chief, are those reinforcements?"
"I did not request reinforcements. Around Madrigal, the UNSC has no additional forces deployed at this time."
At those words, Spartan-125's heart sank instantly. As a soldier, she did not fear death—but dying because of faulty intelligence was simply humiliating.
"Master Chief, then who are they? The Covenant, or insurgents...?"
"Roar! Roar—!" Open fire! They're enemies!
The Covenant Elites quickly realized the descending objects were not bombs at all, but a group of humans clad in heavy power armor.
Enemy!
The red-armored Sangheili commander raised his dual-bladed energy sword and shouted loudly, "Roar, roar, roar!" Attack—kill them all!
"Ao! Ao-ao!" Order the follow-up forces in the forest to reinforce us!
The Astartes who had already landed were clearly beyond restraint. With a terrifyingly savage assault style, they charged straight toward the xenos.
Boom boom boom boom!
"Blood for the God-Empress, skulls for the Golden Throne—!!"
A metallic, beast-like roar resounded across the battlefield. Its sheer volume and ferocity momentarily overwhelmed even the continuous explosions.
Thud! Thud! Thud—
Vmmmm! Vmmmm! Vmmmm—
Bang! Bang! Bang—
In an instant, it became a grand symphony. Within the drilling station, the Covenant Elites' roars, the chainsaw-like buzzing of revving chain weapons, the thunderous bellow of large-caliber autocannons, and the heavy thudding of power-armored boots striking sand intertwined together.
Through the active noise-canceling system built into her Mjolnir helmet, Spartan-125 clearly identified the valuable information within the chaotic din.
As a Spartan, she could confirm these were not Elite reinforcements—nor could they be minor Covenant troops like Grunts or Jackals. Even Brutes weren't this heavy.
Suddenly—
"Roar!"
Years of drilled muscle memory kicked in. Spartan-125 instantly ducked and performed a tactical roll—whoosh!—
A massive blue-armored figure flew sideways through the air and smashed violently into the circular wall of the drilling station. Reinforced concrete cracked upon impact. It was smashed deep into the wall, leaving a human-shaped crater.
Its chest plate was massively dented. Blood frothed unconsciously from its four-part mandibles. Its head lolled to one side, on the verge of death.
Immediately afterward, a gust of wind swept past. Reflected first in Spartan-125's visor was a towering gray-armored giant.
Compared to a Spartan's Mjolnir armor, his power armor was unquestionably thicker and more brutal in design.
Upon his breastplate, a golden double-headed Aquila gleamed brilliantly. A ribbon of honor hung from a crimson seal imprinted on his chest. On his right shoulder was engraved the emblem of two iron fists crossed like hydraulic presses.
At a glance, Spartan-125 saw numerous massive, chainsaw-like greatswords and plasma weapons faintly glowing blue hanging from the giant's waist and thighs.
And upon his gauntlet—was a brown-armored Covenant Elite.
Whoosh!
Silent and expressionless, this Astartes warrior of the Retributors swung his power-fist-clad heavy punch.
Boom—!
The brown Elite was blasted away in a single strike. Its hunched body crashed into the already-overloaded, nearly dead blue-armored Elite behind it—bang!
Under the tremendous force, metal twisted, skulls shattered, and blood splattered everywhere.
"Roar!" Humans!
Using his comrade's corpse as a brief cushion, the brown-armored Elite roared while firing continuous plasma bolts.
Zzzzt! Zzzzt! Zzzzt!
The plasma fire was absorbed by the power armor's built-in Honkai energy shield, rippling across it like waves of light. The gray-armored giant ignored it entirely, momentum unbroken. He lowered his waist, then hurled another punch.
With a thunderous explosion of the wall, the brown Elite was struck as if by lightning. With a deafening crash, it smashed through layer upon layer of reinforced concrete, its body plowing across the sand and carving a deep trench before finally losing momentum.
Collapsed wall sections came crashing down. Workshop glass and fragile structures shattered under the shockwaves.
"Roar, roar, roar!" Rescue the commander!
Many blue-armored Elites leapt down from the wall to reinforce.
Thud! Magnetic boots kicked up sand.
His energy shield already shattered, body convulsing, the brown Elite—barely clinging to life—spat out blood mixed with sand and struggled to raise the dual-bladed energy sword beside him.
"Cough... ao-ao..." Humans... Sangheili... the Covenant will not let this go.
In response, the gray-armored giant simply answered with a silent stomp.
Crash—
The wall trembled on the verge of collapse. Survivors hiding in corners near the structure screamed and fled. By now, the dust kicked up by the Astartes' hundred-meter drop had gradually begun to settle.
They stared in shock.
Amid the roaring of bolters and the howling of chain-axes, the drilling station was littered with alien corpses. The sight was utterly gruesome.
A group of heavily armored giants who had appeared out of nowhere were completely overwhelming the aliens.
From the finely crafted melta pistol of a Night Lords officer, an orange-red melta beam erupted. In an instant, it formed a horizontal blade of searing light.
Splurt!
Several Sangheili who failed to evade in time were sliced apart the moment they touched the melta beam.
Their mangled bodies crashed heavily to the ground, blood spraying in all directions.
Everything happened in a single instant!
"Does the Doctor have other biologically enhanced soldiers? What unit are they from?"
Spartan-125 arrived at the Master Chief's side, breathing slightly hard as she asked. The shock she had experienced today was no small matter. The sensation of narrowly escaping death left a faint ringing in her ears.
As for why she had already concluded these towering heavy-armored warriors were human—it was simple. Their armor's decorative style was one clue, and the markings on their pauldrons—"II," "VIII," "XII"—were Roman numerals.
Moreover, they had not attacked the human survivors here. Instead, they were wholly focused—almost excessively bloodthirsty and frenzied—in slaughtering the Covenant Elites.
Especially those white-armored giants with blue trim bearing the mark "VIII." They not only killed the Elites, they stomped their heads off and tied them to their waists, the severed skulls swinging back and forth, dripping blood. Savage. Brutal beyond words.
Bang! Bang!
Standard-issue bolt shells, propelled by high-energy compressed Honkai powder that imparted tremendous kinetic force, spun out of the muzzles at extreme speed. In the blink of an eye, they had crossed nearly a hundred meters, hurtling toward the retaliating Sangheili warriors.
An Elite who had been roaring triumphantly one second collapsed the next. The bolt shell blew a gaping hole in its chest—wide enough to fit a washbasin. Blood poured continuously from the cavity.
One round to strip the shield. One round to kill.
Each bolt was equivalent to a miniature missile. After leaving the barrel, the projectile continued to accelerate, detonating upon impact with its target.
"Dr. Halsey did not disclose information of this nature. I'm not aware," the Master Chief replied, shaking his head as he picked up an MA5 rifle from beside a slain Elite and magnetically secured it to the rear mount of his Mjolnir armor.
"Their weapons—I've never seen any unit in the UNSC equipped with gear like that." Logically, as the UNSC's ace force, the Spartans should have received any newly prepared experimental equipment.
...
Splurt!
"Xenos scum—scream! I shall toll the midnight death knell for you!!"
The hoarse, frigid voice transmitted through external speakers into the ears of the red-armored Sangheili commander, stunning him instantly. Within his field of vision, he saw a human butcher clad in dark blue armor, wearing a skull-faced helmet adorned with blood-red bat wings, his entire body stained with the flesh and blood of Sangheili. That gaze had fixed upon him.
"Human! How can you speak the Sangheili tongue?!"
"Heh... I'll let you die enlightened, xenos vermin. Capture a few mongrels like you alive, and reading your memories is hardly difficult."
True to their name, the Astartes of the Eighth Legion, the Night Lords, belonged to the unseen void and the darkest depths of the Empire. They saw themselves as Selene's executioners for unspeakable tasks, riot suppressors, and the Empire's most seasoned torturers.
They would sow agony worse than death and terror like a spreading plague upon all enemies of Empress Selene—including countless worlds within the Empire itself.
And taunting words were, in truth, a vicious weapon.
"Isn't that right, lapdogs of the San'Shyuum—reptiles from the Urs system?"
Multiple Astartes reconnaissance squads had used Shingu: Mindseer to violently extract memories from captured prisoners. Naturally, the information had been compiled.
The Covenant—this alien alliance—was no longer entirely unknown to the Astartes reconnaissance command ship at the front lines.
Not only the Sangheili language, but also that of the Jiralhanae and the Unggoy—along with the Covenant's history of formation—had been learned.
In practical combat application, this meant the helmet's built-in linguistic support system had received a new patch update, uploading language modules from the prisoners and enabling real-time translation and spoken conversion of Covenant alien tongues.
"Bastard—die!"
Hearing themselves called mongrels in their own language, the Sangheili fully understood. That lofty tone of contempt was infuriating. In an instant, led by a brown-armored Sangheili, more than a dozen blue-armored Elites surrounded him.
"You... are unworthy."
The moment they closed in, the Night Lords officer swung his lightning claws crackling with explosive thunder. Under the disruption field, the Elites' energy shields failed in less than a breath.
Splurt!
In the blink of an eye, blood and flesh flew through the air. The bisected Sangheili Elites crashed to the ground.
Their armor shattered into fragments. Their bodies were pierced clean through by terrifying force. Heads drooped lifelessly.
The lightning claw's blades impaled the brown-armored Sangheili's chest. Step by step, the Night Lord advanced, dragging the mangled body behind him, leaving a trail like a river of blood.
"Weak. So weak. Pathetically weak."
Before the furious stares of the remaining Sangheili, the Night Lord flung the brown-armored Elite aside like a discarded sack of meat.
"Next..."
The sharp lightning claws beckoned with a curl of talons. Blood dripped from the inactive disruption field. The claw tips pointed directly at the red-armored commander's throat.
"You."
"You—!"
"Leave him to me, Captain. You can have the honors. His head would make a fine trophy..."
Having finished clearing the eastern sector, a World Eater slung his unrevved chain-axe over his shoulder and spoke eagerly. Two brown-armored Sangheili heads hung from his belt.
Chunks of flesh still clung to the axe's serrated teeth. Clearly, when he had killed them, he had not even activated the chain mechanism—he had simply bludgeoned them to death with brute force.
As for whether chain weapons or power weapons were superior, it was hard to say. Purely in terms of efficiency and cutting capability, power weapons might hold a slight advantage. But chain weapons were by no means inferior. With equal force, they inflicted larger wounds—wounds far harder to heal.
After all, one merely sliced. The other tore away flesh and skin together, ripping it free in a savage sweep.
"No. His life is mine. The head is yours."
"Ah... if I don't kill him myself, the head's not very interesting."
The World Eater tapped his helmet idly with the back of his chain-axe, sounding bored.
As human giants closed in from all directions and Sangheili numbers dwindled, the red-armored commander's expression grew darker. His personal terminal reported that more than half of his forces had already been annihilated.
"I challenge you to a duel! If you still possess the pride of a warrior!"
The red-armored commander had no idea what was happening with the team transporting the sacred relic in the forest. But if he could delay a little longer, perhaps they would realize something was wrong and escape with the relic.
"Ha... ha... hahahaha..."
The Night Lords officer laughed so hard his pauldrons trembled. His cold, low chuckle sent chills through the air, as though souls themselves were freezing.
"Hahahahaha!"
The laughter rose one after another.
Are they really soldiers of the United Nations Space Command?
The same question flashed through everyone's minds.