Seraphs of the Emperor’s Judgment

Chapter 19: Fall

This impact was incomparable; it even made Soshyan feel as if he were positioned inside a Macrocannon firing tube.

Mingled within the tremor were wave after wave of energy. Even the hard rock of the ground disintegrated and shattered beneath the impact.

Soshyan felt the world vanish amidst blazing fire and the shrill shrieks of shrapnel. The servos of his Power Armor were hissing, and damage warnings flashed frantically within his cracked occulari.

He could taste his own skin's thirst to burn. He could feel the death of metal, and the ringing of circuitry.

He was burning, drowned in steel, until—the impact came suddenly, and vanished just as suddenly. Right when Soshyan felt he was about to be boiled alive, everything returned to a dead silence once again.

He took a few heavy gasps, and suddenly realized there was actually a heavy object pressing down on him... "Axel."

Realizing what had happened, Soshyan immediately grabbed the other party's pauldron—however, the moment his Gauntlets made contact with the other party's pauldron, a wisp of white smoke rose from the point of contact.

Even from inside his Power Armor, Soshyan felt he could smell the scent of charred flesh and blood.

"Axel!

Axel!Can you hear my voice?"

Soshyan shook the other party, but unexpectedly, Axel actually pushed him away with his hand and wobbled to his feet on his own.

"Fight... I... still can..."

His words across the comms channel approximated some sort of slurred grumble. Moreover, from the moment he stood up, he swayed incessantly, just like a drunkard. Soshyan wanted to support him in worry, but was immediately interrupted by a disintegrator beam.

Soshyan turned his head to look, discovering a bizarre Necron vehicle had appeared five hundred meters away. Its main body was a massive, semi-circular metallic frame. Beneath it was a hovering platform, operated by a Necron Warrior.

The main weapon of this vehicle was gradually darkening; evidently, that strike just now had been fired by it.

The green beam grazed Axel's leg armor and struck the ground, immediately provoking a fierce reaction from the Space Marine.

"Enemy... Enemy..."

Axel suddenly seemed as if he had gone mad, beginning to sprint toward that vehicle.

"Axel."

Seeing this, Soshyan immediately chased after him.

However, at this moment, Axel seemed to have pumped all his adrenaline into his body. His speed was astonishingly fast, arriving right in front of the Necron ranks in a flash.

In order to protect that vehicle, a large contingent of Necron Warriors lay horizontally before Axel.

"Enemy... Enemy."

Axel was still muttering to himself. Gripping his Chainsword tightly, he swept into the Necron ranks like a whirlwind. Wherever he went, gleaming fragments and liquid metal flew haphazardly in all directions.

All of this ended with the Necron vehicle's second shot.

"No."

Amidst Soshyan's furious roar, the green beam directly took out Axel's lower half. The Space Marine, who had gone mad with slaughter, immediately planted into the ground like a felled tree, his ruptured internal organs instantly cascading out like a waterfall.

A foul, bloody stench drifted in the air. Unbeknownst to Soshyan, his cheeks once again became entirely covered in a network of gray veins.

"Ah!

Ah."

Amidst a roars akin to a wounded beast, Soshyan charged forward like a fired bolt.

But the Necrons clearly didn't intend to let him have his way. After abandoning their first target, the Necrons shifted their targets toward Soshyan.

Gauss beams spewed forth from weapon barrels, but Soshyan's speed was simply too fast, vanishing from their flank in almost the blink of an eye.

Under the volley of disintegrator beams, rock, dust, and wreckage scattered one after another into roaring clouds.

Casings poured out from the Stormlord, falling upon its hull like raindrops.

Even while sprinting, Soshyan could judge the path of the next second's shot simply by observing the opponent's muzzle movements. He had never possessed this sort of experience or ability before, but he complied with his instinct for slaughter, beginning to sprint toward that Xenos vehicle.

At the core of the World Engine, that thunderous roar transmitted once again. It shook the earth and drilled into Soshyan's skull, like the furious roar of a giant steel dragon.

But Soshyan's heart was devoid of any distractions. After closing in on his target, he raised his Bolter and opened fire.

From the edge of his vision, he saw that vehicle was moving, attempting to run out of that storm of firepower churning through their ranks. But it would not succeed.

The bolts fired by Soshyan were effortlessly dismembering the remaining Necron Warriors.

With every shot, a Xenos would fall.

He slaughtered with an unprecedented efficiency.

Seeing the situation taking a turn for the worse, the Necron vehicle began to turn backward, its anti-gravitic instruments shrieking as they pulverized the stones below.

At the same time, the thermal-cutting beams on both sides also rotated to point toward Soshyan.

He was still continuing to fire—"Ugh."

A force smashed into his chest, and flames swallowed his vision.

Soshyan stumbled, and his charge bogged down as well.

The impact passed right through his body, and blood seeped into the Black Carapace wrapping him.

Subsequently, more beams struck home. The sharp humming made his world seem to fall into another kind of silence. A part of him—that part honed and trained for war—perceived everything, recording it all completely unmoved.

The Necron vehicle's main gun had not fired at him. If it had been that, he would have been dead long ago.

Those were two lower-power thermal-cutting beams, typically used for clearing barricades. Although they came with aggressive momentum, they were not enough to directly penetrate Soshyan's armor.

However, they were still capable of knocking him backward onto his knees, shattering his joints to turn him into a cripple.

They were not meant to kill him; their firepower was meant to suppress him until the main gun could be brought around to blast him into fragments and blood paste.

And that moment was currently arriving.

With every second of his pause, the unavoidable reality was descending upon him.

Clenching his jaw tightly, Soshyan began to get up, raising his fists high and using the armor on his forearms as cover.

His sensors were a blurry mess, completely filled with threat icons and damage readings.

But suddenly, the firing ceased.

Soshyan took a step forward, and his vision became clear.

The Necron vehicle was swiveling its glowing crimson cutting beam emitters, dragging a trail of sparks as it came toward him. It seemed to have lost a great deal of energy, and even maintaining its hover had become difficult.

This also meant it was unable to use its main gun to fire at Soshyan.

Soshyan took a step, the damaged servos wailing as he began to raise his weapon.

He ignored all of this and began running, feeling the damage to his organism growing increasingly severe.

This action was foolish, less than ideal, and did not conform to reason.

But Soshyan no longer viewed the world through these lenses. Within his heart lay only boundless fury and hatred, and what he could feel was more than ever before.

He was now but a weapon, and a weapon only lived for slaughter.

In the blink of an eye, he collided head-on with the Necron vehicle. Subsequently, the very instant they collided, he leapt onto the slanted hull at the front, raising his iron fist.

Amidst his roar, the iron fist forcefully smashed onto the main gun, and a glob of molten metal subsequently spattered in all directions.

Following that, his fist smashed into that wounded hull, grabbing the struggling head of the Necron upon the vehicle, and forcefully ripped it off along with its metallic spine.

The vehicle, which was still barely hovering, immediately wailed and planted into the ground, violently throwing Soshyan more than ten meters away.

(End of Chapter)