Seraphs of the Emperor’s Judgment

Chapter 10: Formidable Foe

Soshyan continued moving forward, passing through tall archways to enter the center of the mausoleum hall.

The space within the hall was extremely massive, the air suffused with green light, making it seem just like stepping into a mechanical hell.

Polygonal blackstone supported by pillars of light hovered horizontally all around him. Slender, silent Necrons lay quietly within them. Tens of thousands of remains were framed within light, blackstone, and gravitational fields, linked together via automated control systems.

If they were all to awaken, then even if everyone in the 7th Company threw themselves into the fight, they wouldn't be able to stir up a single ripple.

Fortunately, perhaps due to that mysterious curse, only a tenth of the Necrons had awakened, but that was still troublesome enough.

Soshyan carved his way through the steel jungle, arriving all the way at the center of the battlefield, which was also the place where his Company Commander had been surrounded.

However, he still arrived too late.

The company's Apothecary lay dead on the ground. His chest had been cleft open like a scallop. Internal organs and fresh blood were bubbling out, dyeing his white armor red—with the death of the company Apothecary in battle, the Gene-seeds of those dead warriors would forever be lost to the freezing void.

For any Chapter, this was a devastating blow.

Originally, this sight should have put Soshyan into a defensive posture with maximum speed and the highest level of vigilance.Even though he possessed superhuman instincts, the death of the Apothecary in battle still caused his mind to wander for a split second.

Consequently, the first strike caught him completely off guard.

The assault came from his flank. It was only by sheer luck that Soshyan's pauldron managed to block this strike.

The attacker's warscythe shattered his pauldron and stabbed into Soshyan's forearm.

"Damn it!"

He staggered backward, his face full of astonishment and fury.

Fury over the mistake of being distracted.

Astonished by the immense strength of the entity that ambushed him.

Soshyan regrouped, using his sword to parry the enemy's attack.

He was engaging in a face-to-face contest of strength with a Necron Lord. It was a fleshless beast, its smooth silver armor studded with various augmented organs and striking green crystals: these Xenos were typically the rulers of their pathetic race, as well as the elites within the Necron species.

That warrior's physical prowess was worthy of an evenly matched opponent. Its weapon was a reinforced halberd.

Following a brief standoff, the two of them attacked each other within the hall, twirling like dancers.

The challenge posed by the Necron Lord posed more of a threat than all the Necron cannon fodder Soshyan had destroyed this entire day combined. The combat skills of these elite warriors were extremely terrifying, and their augmented strength far exceeded Soshyan's.

Even its speed left the Astartes somewhat breathless.

You simply could not imagine that this was an agility a machine should possess.

In a hair-raising split second, Soshyan didn't know whether he was, at last, also personally experiencing a feeling of powerlessness.

They fought their way all the way to the center of the hall.

Placed there was a massive stack of biological stasis generators, carved with all sorts of bizarre figures, resembling a temple altar.

The Necrons lying in coffins were transported out from within, hovering up and down, stacked together.

Several massive black statues, as dazzling as snow, knelt respectfully around the stasis generators.

The Necron Lord's silver armor glinted with an oil-slick luster beneath the eerie light of the mausoleum sector. His halberd danced like a ribbon of light, launching each attack with cold, precise calculation.

But Soshyan's defense was even more seasoned.

"Ha!"

With a loud roar, he seized an opportunity and delivered a lightning-fast strike with the hilt of his sword, cracking the opponent's breastplate.

The Necron Lord staggered a few steps, immediately established its footing once again, and instantly launched a counterattack.

Clang!

The two weapons crossed, biting firmly against each other.

But the Chainsword's jagged teeth were at a disadvantage against the phase blade of the halberd. Accompanied by ear-piercing shrieks, flying shrapnel of shattered metal battered against Soshyan's Power Armor, and a few pieces flew past his face, carving out bloody streaks.

Seeing that the stalemate was disadvantageous, Soshyan was just planning to disengage and fight again when his opponent suddenly slammed its shoulder into him.

The Astartes staggered and fell backward, crashing into a row of automated control systems.

Sleeves were smashed apart, sending fragments flying in all directions, looking like withered petals under the illumination of the feeble light.

Some sleeves were knocked out of the area supported by beams of gravitational light, smashing to pieces on the polished metallic floor.

The mausoleum's energy supply instantly fell into a deficit. Those slumbering Xenos tumbled chaotically onto the floor like bundles of branches and roots.

"Victory or death!"

The Necron shoved aside a hovering sleeve blocking its path and charged toward Soshyan, stepping on the shattered dregs and wreckage scattered all over the ground.

The Astartes struggled to stand up.

Dark, sickly flashes of energy leapt between the collapsed sections of the mausoleum hall like crossed neurons. Explosions of varicolored flames twisted as they crashed into the tranquil silver surfaces of the undamaged walls.

A bizarre harmony of murmurs, resembling the convergence of millions of voices, filled the entire hall.

The Necron Lord had already charged right in front of Soshyan.

The Astartes maintained his composure. In this moment, time abruptly became extremely slow, and the opponent's movements did as well.

Thousands of thoughts flashed through his brain. Subsequently, Soshyan raised his arm. The Chainsword traced a path before his eyes, cleaving apart an optical lens unit, and slashed a downward trail across the opponent's abdomen and hip.

In the blink of an eye, the swaying Necron swung its halberd, nearly striking Soshyan's head.

But the Angel of Death's counterattack forced the Xenos to retreat step by step, trampling the shards on the ground into fine powder.

Soshyan's next strike slashed open the enemy's thigh. Something silver, akin to liquid water, trickled out with a whimpering sound.

Under this extremely disadvantageous situation, the Necron Lord abruptly swung its upper torso utilizing its spine as the axis. Its halberd forcefully swatted Soshyan's Chainsword away, while the butt of the halberd simultaneously smashed fiercely into his face.

Soshyan instantly collapsed to the ground, the force of the impact leaving his brain buzzing inside his skull, his mouth and nasal cavity filled with blood.

Lying face down in a bought of dizziness, he reached out a hand to blindly fumble for the sword he had just lost his grip on, but found nothing at all.

"Sir!"

He rolled over and looked up, wanting to know why the enemy hadn't finished him off yet.

It turned out he found squad member Vilinus engaged in a sword duel with the Necron Lord, with Fiks stationed not far behind.

The massive booms emitted by weapon fire continuously transmitted from the entrance, indicating that other squads had already entered the core region of the mausoleum. There was nothing more inspiring than the arrival of reinforcements.

But what happened next left Soshyan with deep hatred and resentment.

Vilinus had sustained injuries on his way carving a path into the hall, leaving his movements somewhat sluggish.

His arrival and interception saved Soshyan, but it also spelled his own doom.

The Necron Lord was far too formidable an opponent. Before the dizzy, bloody-nosed Soshyan could stand up, that Xenos leader had already delivered a lethal strike, cleaving Vilinus open from his left shoulder to his right hip.

With merely one strike, it cleaved him in half diagonally.

The shattered corpse of the squad member collapsed heavily to the ground, spraying blood and internal organs all over.

Roaring in fury, Fiks lunged fiercely toward the Necron, but the opponent blasted him into another row of sarcophagi with a single punch.

This gave Soshyan an opportunity. He found his sword, despite its jagged teeth already being jagged and incomplete.

"Die!!"

He thrust his sword from behind into the Necron Lord's spine, the tip of the sword piercing out from the middle of the emblem on the Xenos's breastplate.

That beast first dropped to one knee, then collapsed face first.

Soshyan pressed his knee against its back and cleaved open its skull. The Necron Lord's pale face turned to the side, its cheek pressed against the floor, the silver metal clinging to droplets of dark red blood.

As Soshyan annihilated everything within its skull, the eerie green glow in its eye sockets also gradually dimmed.

(End of Chapter)