With a crackling hiss, the beast ca charging—bio-plasma orbs forming and sparking around it.
The Planetary Defence Force troopers who couldn't dodge in ti didn't get scorched into charcoal by stray arcs of light.
They were simply hit.
Slamd by raw, savage montum until their bodies were crushed into sothing like wet pulp.
Then, a battle tank—its bulk not much smaller than the beast itself—tried to block its path.
The creature, having already fired its bio-plasma orb, lifted its claws as it surged forward. Those claws punched through the tank's heavy armor as if it were paper, then yanked outward—
—and the tank was torn cleanly in half and flung aside.
Bang—!
A lta round struck one of the tank halves.
It had been aid at Kain.
Bang bang—!
More rounds hamred into the beast—the Screar-Killer—but didn't slow its charge at all.
It sacrificed two scythe-like foreclaws to block the lta shot's destructive force from reaching its body.
In the blink of an eye, it was so close Kain could almost feel it with his fingertips.
At the sa ti, it unleashed that piercing shriek again. Its maw was charging—rings of light gathering, swelling into a concentrated orb.
And in that shriek, Kain could almost hear mockery.
As if it had already decided he was dead.
Because right now, Kain's situation was this:
He'd jumped to avoid the bio-plasma orb that had just been lobbed at him, and he was still airborne.
The Screar-Killer's charging speed was enough to hit him before he could touch the ground again—turning him into a splatter, like a mosquito slapped mid-flight.
Unless those two lta rounds had killed it.
But they hadn't.
It had forced the shots onto its foreclaws and tanked them.
And at this distance, if his lta rounds landed cleanly—especially on the bio-plasma mass it was charging—he could kill it. He might even survive the impact, since the beast wouldn't physically slam into him.
However…
If it didn't smash into him, and his lta round hit its charging bio-plasma core—
the result would be an explosion.
A bigger, denser bio-plasma orb detonating right on top of him.
He'd be erased without a trace.
In other words, he was dead either way.
Crushed.
Or turned to ash.
"Sorry."
He said it suddenly.
Saying those two syllables cost him one second.
One second was enough for the Screar-Killer to reach him—
—and yet Kain landed calmly on the ground.
Then a heat wave rolled over him, so hot his skin felt like it might start sizzling.
The Screar-Killer—about to hit him—was swallowed by a massive flash erupting from the ground beneath it.
It was instantly vaporized.
A lta mine.
A lta mine he'd planted there.
He'd gotten it during that brief mont of breathing room earlier—teleported over from A2.
The design was essentially fifty lta charges wired in parallel. When it detonated, it burst like cluster munitions, overlapping subatomic shear-fields.
The effective kill zone was wide enough to completely engulf a Screar-Killer's massive fra.
Besides mines, there were grenade variants too—cluster-style lta grenades.
Each one hit with roughly ten tis the power of the lta grenades he'd originally brought to A2's world.
…Hm?
Kain frowned.
The ammo A2 could teleport into his personal space was almost depleted again.
Of course, he could have A2 send more.
And as for the energy coins—those were supplied by Kain.
Right now, his account still had 13 left.
Yes. Since returning and starting the stream again, he'd earned 14 in total.
Which ant he could still purchase thirteen more ammo deliveries.
But this assault was consuming supplies far too quickly. At this rate, he'd burn through every coin in less than an hour.
Of course, he could trigger Cross-World Invitation again and accelerate it—go live again.
But it wouldn't help.
All that would do was give him another hundred hours of rest.
When he ca back, it would still be the sa ti, the sa position, the sa encirclent.
Unless, within those hundred hours, he could obtain equipnt strong enough to break this deadlock.
And among the dinsional group, only A2's world could supply weapons. But even if they rushed for a hundred hours, producing another set of that transformable powered armor—plus upgrades—wouldn't make it absurdly stronger overnight.
Still… it might be enough to change things.
Escaping the battlefield was probably impossible.
But reaching the location of his ship?
That might be doable.
And on a battlefield like this, how had his ship not been discovered?
This was Tyranid territory—how could they not see it?
…Unless they truly couldn't see it.
Couldn't touch it.
After all, it was an advanced vessel from humanity's Golden Age.
But for now, Kain wasn't planning to have A2 teleport another powered armor set over.
Because he'd realized the Astartes' current route overlapped perfectly with his own destination.
So that brought him back to the sa problem:
He was using lta mines and lta grenades way too often.
Wasn't that suspicious?
Wouldn't anyone wonder where it all ca from?
But right now, the Astartes weren't in the mood to argue about where he'd "coincidentally found" these things.
He could claim they'd been buried here, or left behind in a previous battle and hidden by accident, and he'd stumbled on them.
They knew he was lying.
He knew they knew he was lying.
But this wasn't the ti to pursue it.
As long as he could keep "accidentally finding" munitions, boosting the squad's firepower, they would temporarily look the other way.
"Lawrence—found another box of lta grenades here."
As he handed it over, several beams tore through the nearby darkness and speared two claws into the box seam.
The attack ca from the Dreadnought's laser cannon. The barrel looked like it hadn't rested at all—glowing red to an almost unnatural degree, as if it could overload and detonate at any mont.
"…"
Lawrence—ordered by the squad leader to keep a bit of an eye on this kid—could only stare in wordless disbelief.
This one looked so new it didn't even pretend to have been buried.
Couldn't he at least make the "camouflage" a little more convincing?
Still…
He had to admit these were better than the lta grenades they'd brought.
Honestly, it was lucky Kain had run into them—the Salamanders.
If it had been another Chapter, his "weirdness" would've gotten him into serious trouble.
He also felt it was strange. For so reason, he felt an inexplicable sense of closeness to Kain—like Kain was one of the Salamanders, too.
Almost as if he carried Salamanders gene-seed.
Thinking of their mission, Lawrence began to consider another possibility:
Could Kain be the "recipient" they were supposed to deliver to?
They hadn't co to this planet as part of a sector-wide relief deploynt.
They'd co on a delivery mission.
They'd just happened to arrive in the middle of this planetary crisis.
Once they reached the destination and completed the drop, they were supposed to rendezvous with another Astartes force and assault the nest together.
Suddenly, the squad channel crackled with the captain's voice—and Lawrence's face changed.
"Exterminatus? The Imperium's going to abandon this planet?"
And when Kain heard Lawrence's shocked question, his own expression hardened.
No…
The worst-case scenario was still coming.
(End of Chapter)
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