novelraw Chapter 235 235: War Was A Art Form?
Chapter 235 235: War Was A Art Form?
Next Goal = 1500 Powerstones.
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Vashtorr was rarely this reliable. Zeke inspected the newly modified Ender Dragon Titan.
The entire chassis had been completely refurbished, the armor plating reforged with adamantium alloy. The silhouette had also been redesigned—sharp-edged yet sleek. According to Vashtorr, this Titan could now achieve brief periods of flight using Warp-based technology.
Zeke headed to the vacant energy chamber and replaced the original power source with the Burning One from his Poké Ball. Using a C'tan Shard to provide near-limitless energy for an entire Titan—such an extravagant luxury was something only someone with Zeke's massive wealth could pull off.
As for the Ender Dragon trapped within the chassis, its living quarters had also been upgraded to a deluxe version. Coupled with the Burning One keeping it company, it probably wouldn't feel lonely anymore.
"Move out," the Lion ordered. The Astartes boarded the Drop Pods within the transport ships, forming up and standing by.
The Ender Dragon Titan, however, was far too massive; no transport ship could carry it.
Zeke pulled out the Knockback 100 wooden stick from his inventory and handed it to the Lion. "Just aim it in the right direction and give it a tap." With that, Zeke climbed into the cockpit of the Ender Dragon Titan.
The Lion looked down, examining the wooden stick glowing with enchantment in his hand.
"Ready," Zeke's voice came through the vox.
Holding the wooden stick, the Lion aimed it at the Ender Dragon Titan and gave it a light tap.
Whoosh! The Ender Dragon Titan launched off the ground, piercing straight into the sky. In the blink of an eye, it breached Caliban's exosphere and vanished into the vast sea of stars.
Inside the cockpit, Zeke fine-tuned the flight system's trajectory, catching a distant glimpse of Armageddon's thick yellow atmosphere. Gravity caught hold of him, and the Titan began its accelerated descent, hurtling toward the designated reinforcement coordinates.
–
In the trenches of Armageddon, the mortal auxiliary troops' lungs were filled with the charred stench of Ork spores. Their gun muzzles spat tongues of fire. Bullets plunged into the green tide, only managing to stir up a tiny splash before vanishing completely.
Wave after wave of Greenskins surged forward relentlessly, seemingly endless. For every one struck down, ten or a hundred more rushed in from behind.
Commissar Yarrick's voice still echoed above the trenches, his figure standing unyielding. The Imperial soldiers were in high spirits, but they knew deep down that morale couldn't replace rations or ammunition. It wouldn't be long before they were completely overrun by the Orks.
Ammunition was running critically low, the defensive line was shrinking, and casualties were climbing.
"Look at the sky! What is that?" A recruit happened to look up and saw trails carving through the clouds.
A streak of fire tore through the turbid atmosphere.
"Drop Pods! It's the Emperor's Angels!" a veteran roared. In this era of returning Primarchs and manifesting miracles, nothing comforted mortal souls more than the descent of the Astartes.
The recruit jumped to his feet. "An Astartes! We're saved!"
The veteran beside him smacked the back of his head. "Look closely, kid."
The young soldier focused his gaze, finally realizing it was far more than just one Drop Pod.
"That's an entire squad of Astartes..." the young soldier's voice trembled.
The veteran's eyes held complex emotions. Speaking from experience, he knew that when an entire squad of Astartes arrived, it usually meant the battle was escalating to a horrific degree—and that many, many more people were about to die.
At least with the Astartes here, we can secure victory... right? the veteran thought to himself.
The Drop Pods slammed squarely into the densest center of the Ork swarm. The closest Greenskins were crushed into paste; green blood splattered wildly, flowing like a river over the scorched earth.
An Ork Boy had just hollered and tried to rush closer when the Drop Pod door was kicked flying. From behind the hatch, a hand encased in deep crimson power armor reached out, gripping the lunging Ork's head. Brain matter and shattered bone fragments exploded outward.
Immediately after, the muzzle of a meltagun was raised, and dense streams of superheated plasma poured down like a torrential rain, blanketing everything nearby in searing white flames. The Greenskins melted into ash and evaporated in the fire, destroyed before they could even scream.
The Imperial soldiers in the trenches were dumbfounded. They couldn't clearly track the Astartes' movements—not because they were too far away, but because their speed fundamentally exceeded the limits of mortal perception. They could only watch as the Greenskins vanished in massive swaths. It was as if time had abruptly stopped on that section of the battlefield, and when it resumed flowing, only scorched earth and corpses remained.
The Greenskins did not retreat. "Fightin' dese can-boyz is a proper WAAAGH!"
Fear? It didn't exist for them. The gruesome deaths of their kin didn't make them flinch; instead, it acted like a spark, completely igniting the fighting spirit of the entire horde.
The Greenskins began converging on the Drop Pod landing zone. First a brisk walk, then a jog, then a mad sprint, and finally a howling, leaping charge. The green flood surged once more, far more violent than before.
The Weirdboyz hiding at the back of the mob also made their move. These creatures, their eye sockets burning with eerie light, gathered twisted psychic energy at their fingertips, attempting to force their terrifying willpower directly into the minds of the Astartes. The fate of most Weirdboyz was their own heads exploding like fireworks before they could even make the attempt, but a few succeeded.
Dante's head suddenly throbbed violently. It felt as if something was brutally and savagely tearing his consciousness apart from the inside. He immediately locked onto the positions of those Weirdboyz.
"Blood Angels, on my command," Dante ordered. Alone, he charged straight toward that direction.
Not a single Ork Boy blocking Dante's path could hold their ground. They were forcibly sent flying and crushed underfoot by Dante, leaving a shocking, bloody trail in his wake. The power contained within his Warden-modified body already far surpassed that of an ordinary Space Marine.
From a hundred meters away, the boltgun in Dante's hand fired with lethal precision. A bolt round bored into a Weirdboy's chest, detonating and reducing him to a shower of glowing green gore.
This invincible display caught the attention of another presence on the battlefield: the Big Mek.
With every Greenskin Dante slaughtered, the Big Mek's inner glee grew by a fraction. The Big Mek spread his jaws, baring a set of jagged, mismatched fangs. "Finally, a proper scrapper!"
He completely forgot about Commissar Yarrick and slapped the Mekboy beside him on the head. "Heh heh! Dat red Can-Boyz head is mine!"
The Gargant roared as it turned, aiming the entire arsenal of the fifteen-meter-tall behemoth directly at Dante.
Dante found the situation troublesome. The Warden modifications had granted him near-invulnerable defenses and terrifying strength, but a Gargant was another matter entirely—it was the Ork equivalent of a Titan. Taking it head-on was not a wise idea.
The trash-cannons mounted on the Gargant fired a synchronized volley. Dante could not fathom how a weapon cobbled together from scrap metal could produce such an explosion, but it undoubtedly did. Engulfed in a blaze of orange-red fire, Dante was blasted straight into the air.
The Gargant stomped forward, the Big Mek already losing himself in triumphant glee in his pilot's seat. Dante rolled backward. As he looked up at the Gargant again, he paused for a brief moment, then swiftly got up and began retreating.
"Hah! Da can-boyz is scared of us!" the Big Mek laughed uproariously. "Boyz, chase 'em down—!"
Suddenly an overwhelming oppressive force descended from the sky, shrouding the entire battlefield as a massive figure slammed into the ground right in front of the Gargant.
The Big Mek froze in his pilot seat, staring up at the silhouette that blotted out the sun.
Inside the cockpit of the Ender Dragon Titan, Zeke rolled his wrists. "What's so great about bullying Dante? Come on, let's play, you and me."
"I fink..." the Big Mek mumbled, his voice carrying an air of incredulous bewilderment. "A Titan dis big... it ain't possible to build..."
As one of the greatest builders among the Greenskins, he had personally cobbled together this Gargant out of scrap metal and trash. Yet the monstrosity standing before him was a full eight times taller than his rig. It was three times larger than the biggest Ork Titan, the Mega Gargant, making his own Gargant look like a pathetic toy. This didn't fit his "I fink" logic at all.
The WAAAGH! logic of the Greenskins had a ceiling. They could slap garbage together to make a beggar's Titan, or make a motorcycle run without fuel, but they couldn't completely shatter physical laws—for example, building a Titan that completely defied the hardness limits of its materials, like Zeke had done.
"Skill issue. Just because you can't build it doesn't mean I can't." Inside the cockpit, Zeke looked down at the Gargant. He turned his head and spoke toward the depths of the chassis. "Burning One, turn up the heat."
Sealed within the energy chamber, the Burning One let out a low hum and unleashed its flames to the maximum. The fire converted into raw energy, surging through every conduit of the Ender Dragon Titan. The runic lines on the external armor suddenly lit up, flowing with magma-like orange-red light, while scorching steam blasted from its joints.
Power output: seventy percent.
Zeke pushed the control stick forward, and the Ender Dragon Titan took its first step.
"Stupid humie... nah, dat's a super-big humie!" The Big Mek sat in his violently trembling cockpit. Fear burned in his chest for three seconds, quickly ignited by shame, which was then completely consumed by pure rage. The Big Mek thrashed his head and howled, spraying spit all over the Mekboy beside him. "Dare to look down on me?! Full dakka! I'm gonna show dis big humie who da real King of Titans is!"
The Gargant's weapon systems opened fire with everything they had. Artillery shells, junk bombs, and a terrifying assortment of projectiles spat from bizarre pipes scavenged from who-knew-where rained down on the Ender Dragon Titan.
Zeke simply let the barrage smash against his armor. Listening to the clink-clank of the impacts, he didn't even bat an eye.
"Instead of retreating, you're actually approaching me?" Zeke watched the Gargant accelerate into a charge, the corners of his mouth curving slightly. "Interesting."
"Can you handle a punch at seventy percent power?" Zeke operated the Ender Dragon Titan, drawing its right arm back to charge up.
In that moment, all the energy generated by the Burning One's flames poured into the right arm, dying the entire limb a blazing orange-red.
Then, he threw the punch.
The Ork Boyz swarming around the Ender Dragon Titan—hammering and hacking as they tried to leave even the slightest scratch on the behemoth's armor—were swept up like fallen leaves in a hurricane. Entire hordes of them were launched into the air, flying in all directions.
"Just a weezy puncha! Watch me take dat!" The Big Mek piloted the Gargant, shifting the massive wrecking ball attached to its arms to cover its chest, adopting what he believed to be an indestructible defensive stance.
The two collided. The Ender Dragon Titan's right fist smashed into the spike-covered wrecking ball. Steel plates exploded, welds ruptured, and the Big Mek's meticulously constructed defense disintegrated into a shower of shrapnel before that single punch.
"My masterpiece!" Before the Big Mek could even finish his wail, the force of the Ender Dragon Titan's punch continued forward without the slightest decay.
Struck squarely by that blow, the Gargant's entire chassis simply disassembled.
The internal piping and components blasted outward like a firework display. The entire Gargant was reduced to a sky full of flying junk, returning to exactly what it was in the beginning. Grot riggers rained down from the sky, screaming as they scattered and fled.
As the smoke cleared, the pilot's seat hung isolated in the air. The Big Mek sat inside; everything around him was gone. Only he and the control stick in his hand remained, completely eclipsed by the shadow of the Ender Dragon Titan looming over him.
He looked down at the control stick in his hand, then looked up at the Ender Dragon Titan.
"Ya bullyin' me... I ain't playin' wiv ya no more," the Big Mek suddenly felt like crying. "Our Big Boss ain't gonna let ya off..."
His Gargant, built in the sacred image of Gork and Mork, was just... gone.
The Ender Dragon Titan gazed down at the Big Mek, snatching him up in one hand. The extreme heat of the Burning One conducted through the metal, instantly vaporizing the Big Mek.
Zeke operated the Ender Dragon Titan, turning it around to cast its gaze upon the surging green tide before it. Looking down from that altitude, the Ork swarm resembled a mass of ants crawling across the ground.
"Burning One," Zeke called out.
A deep, resonant response echoed from the depths of the chassis. The Titan strode directly into the Ork tide. Every step was a localized earthquake; every footfall kicked up a massive mist of green blood.
Following closely behind were crimson and darkness. The Blood Angels and Dark Angels advanced along the flanks of the path the Ender Dragon Titan had plowed. Meltaguns and blades purged any remaining enemies that slipped through, ensuring not a single Ork was left clinging to life in the ruins.
The mortal auxiliary forces brought up the rear. Unable to intervene in the frontal clash against the Ork tide, all they could do was wield heavy flamers and trail behind the Astartes, meticulously torching the Ork spores buried deep within the soil. As they worked, they exchanged hushed whispers, debating exactly what kind of creation that bizarre Titan could be.
At the edge of the trenches, Commissar Yarrick widened his laser bionic eye. He watched the Ender Dragon Titan rampage through the Ork horde, watching the entire frontline push forward in a manner he had never seen before.
Is this how wars are fought?
Yarrick suddenly found himself doubting the decades of military education he had received. According to everything he had learned at the Schola Progenium, waging war was supposed to go like this: assemble your forces, evaluate the battlefield conditions, analyze friendly and enemy postures, coordinate combined arms, and deliver a decisive strike by projecting precise force at the absolute perfect moment.
War was an art form.
But the individual before him had clearly never attended the Schola Progenium.
Yarrick watched as the Ender Dragon Titan casually swatted another Gargant flat. Feeling the undeniable reality that the battlefield before him was charging toward victory at a visible pace, he finally let out a long breath.
Well, fine. At least the results speak for themselves. Commissar Yarrick watched as Zeke ruthlessly trampled over a lifetime's worth of his tactical theories.