The Emperor’s Angel of Death

Chapter 2655: Rat Express

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For three days, Mendoza and his team had been traversing mountains, climbing from the scorching wastelands to the edges of the potholed mountains.

Here lay the slag mountains, a vast range stretching thousands of kilometers with peaks exceeding six thousand meters above sea level. It wasn't always this grand; millennia of development by the forge world had shaped it—a fact evident from its name.

The slag mountains weren't merely a place to discard 'waste.' After reaching a massive scale, they transformed into a site for the Adeptus Mechanicus to recycle and refine scrap. This seemed to be a unique ecosystem shared by all forge worlds, but its function extended far beyond that. It also served as a massive barrier north of Cinder Furnace City, capable of withstanding the fierce sandstorms that formed in the endless desert, preventing the city near the wasteland from being submerged by the shifting sands.

Even without considering its military role, it was Cinder Furnace City's most important natural barrier.

Precisely because of its vital position, the Black Limb Cult initiated an uprising in the waste recycling zone of the slag mountains at the first sign of the rebellion. They dispatched a large number of their main forces to the slag mountains, quickly driving out the Adeptus Mechanicus forces. Subsequently, they began to establish a three-dimensional defense network within the complex tunnels of the slag mountains, using it as the northern stronghold of their Cinder Furnace City base.

When the Adeptus Ministorum launched their counterattack, they no longer faced a group of Genestealers but countless tunnel fortifications hidden within the slag mountains and elusive guerilla fighters. A bloody and protracted war of attrition ensued.

Undoubtedly, the rugged terrain and confined tunnels severely limited the heavy firepower advantage of the Adeptus Ministorum. Regular guardsmen were not stronger than ordinary Neophyte Genestealers in terms of individual combat strength, and even slightly lacking in tactical flexibility.

However, the stagnant Tech-Priests were not foolish. To deal with the enemies hiding in the tunnels, they mobilized nearly all Sicarian units on the planet.

Large numbers of Ruststalkers and Infiltrators were released into the slag mountains, accompanied by a small number of Vulture-pattern machine-soldiers. Simultaneously, the Tech-Priests devised a tactic of first occupying the high ground in the mountains and then gradually infiltrating from the upper layers to the lower layers. This maximized the aerial advantage of the Adeptus Ministorum. For this reason, the slag mountain war zone concentrated sixty percent of the entire forge world's aerial forces. Various ornithopters and dragon-winged flyers soared in the skies above the mountains, like vultures ready to fight over carrion.

This tactic had some effect. The Adeptus Ministorum quickly occupied the main peaks of the slag mountains and used their commanding position to attack enemy strongholds and tunnels in the ridges and foothills.

The Black Limb Cult suffered a sharp increase in casualties under this offensive. Although they launched several counterattacks, attempting to dislodge a few Adeptus Ministorum mountain peak strongholds at night, the uphill attacks and the enemy's technological advantage completely negated their physical advantages. They not only failed but also lost a large number of valuable Purestrains—their trump card against the Adeptus Mechanicus assassins in the tunnels.

However, the Cult could not abandon this vital barrier, because once the slag mountains were lost, they would completely lose strategic maneuvering space and could only continuously send reinforcements from Cinder Furnace City to fill the widening gaps.

Initially, they moved in large numbers underground, using tunnels to secretly reach hidden strongholds in the slag mountains and then disperse to various positions. But these shallow tunnels were quickly discovered by the Adeptus Mechanicus, who used burrowing bombs to destroy most of them. The deep tunnels were unusable, and to make matters worse, the increasingly scarce ammunition supplies in the slag mountains also needed to be replenished from Cinder Furnace City.

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Under duress, the Cult had to begin sending support troops and supply convoys to the slag mountains in small units, like ants moving house. Because they departed at night and needed to carry out a lot of camouflage, they skulked around like certain rodents, and were nicknamed—Rat Express.

But this process had to constantly face the threat of Adeptus Mechanicus aerial patrols and ground patrols of Vorax-pattern cybernetic robots. The convoys might have some resistance, but small groups of infantry were unlikely to survive.

In fact, tens of thousands of Cult followers had already perished on the countless hidden paths leading to the slag mountains.

Mendoza and his team were such a group of unlucky lucky ones.

Unlucky in that their two-hundred-strong nest group ran into an Adeptus Mechanicus Dragoon patrol shortly after setting out. Although the enemy only numbered twenty, each member of their nest group was carrying heavy supplies, so that when the enemy charged with blades and spears, they did not have time to organize effective resistance.

In just a few tens of seconds, more than fifty Neophytes lay dead in the wilderness. Then, when they finally began to fight back, the enemy withdrew.

But this did not mean safety, but rather the beginning of a nightmare.

After that, this Dragoon force constantly followed them from a distance, launching attacks as soon as they relaxed, or occasionally taking potshots at them.

Under the high level of mental stress and the exhaustion brought by the heavy burden, if it were not for the spirit of dedication that bound their consciousness, this force might have collapsed long ago, but even so, they were eventually dispersed after more Dragoons arrived, and most of them died under the blades of the mechanical slave soldiers.

Mendoza, as a squad leader, could only lead his team to run to a safe place, entering a narrow mountain path, where those demonic cavalry would be blocked by the stones sticking out of the ground that they could not pass through. This was the only thing they could call lucky. Perhaps their squad was the only surviving team.

"Looks like we've shaken them off."

After running continuously for 1 hour, even their blessed bodies were difficult to sustain. The group found a pit sheltered by rocks, unloaded their huge backpacks, and collapsed to the ground one by one, exhausted.

Although they were hungry and thirsty, they dared not light a fire, and could only chew on precious compressed biscuits made of corpse starch from their backpacks.

It was already evening, the mountain wind was as sharp as a blade, and the air had the smell of rust, like blood. The swollen red sun in the distance began its long descent.

Just as everyone was silently resting, or shivering, a low whimper sounded.

"We have to go back, we can't let his body rot there."

Mendoza turned his head and saw that it was Sister Ayla from the nest group. She was talking about her lover, Kether, who was also their original leader. Mendoza was only the deputy leader before.

But that man stayed behind with the others to resist the pursuit of the demonic cavalry. The last image he left Mendoza was of his body being half-cut off by a bloodstained saber.

Ayla's sobbing resonated with the others. They were both comrades and relatives. The trust and dependence on kinship and family was the core of the Cult's existence, and the fundamental driving force for their development under the cruel oppression of the mechanical slave owners, so they could not really ignore death like those mechanical slave owners.