The Emperor’s Angel of Death

In the maddening silence, the two tiptoed through the bloody slaughter, following the direction that would lead them through one more assembly square to their designated pick-up point.

But the surrounding piles of corpses made Mattening extremely uneasy, as their numbers grew and grew, splattered blood covering the alley walls, congealed pools of blood submerging the cobblestone streets, and the stench of death and entrails growing stronger.

This gloomy stench gradually developed into an unbearable, suffocating miasma as the two approached.

When the couple finally reached the cult's square where the assembly had been held, they witnessed true horror.

This place, once crowded with fanatical devotees, was now a silent slaughterhouse, its scale so vast that Mattening could hardly accept it, because just over half an hour ago, he had stood here, listening to the bishop's sermon. The square, over five hundred meters long, had once gathered thousands of believers to participate in the church's sacred rituals, but now it was covered in traces of slaughter. The massacre was so cruel that even Mattening's resolve was almost shaken.

At the far left of the square once stood the statue of the Holy Lord, a marble statue of a false god meticulously carved by believers over several years, erected here after the oppressors abandoned the city as a memorial to the Holy Lord's merits.

But now that snow-white statue had become a monster draped in flayed flesh and blood, the heads of the bishop and his entourage hung on it, their eyes still wide with horror.

Yet the real horror paled in comparison to this; the horrors were scattered across the open flagstone ground of the square.

From the street corner where the two stood, extending to the roads several kilometers away, a terrifying, foul-smelling red "fabric" covered the entire square like some kind of self-proliferating moss.

The couple stood there, dumbfounded, staring at the horrific scene before them, shocked by the scale of the appalling atrocities. Even though they also slaughtered the oppressors' lackeys, they could not achieve such a shocking scale.

Besides the corpses, the slaughterhouse was not without living things. Some beings draped in flesh and blood wandered around the square, picking through the dead, dragging corpses around. Their actions seemed random, but within their erratic movements lay intention and purpose. Rows of corpses were piled up into walls, and entrails were dug out, as if the entire landscape of the massacre was being carved into a specific shape or ritual.

Mattening blinked, erasing the growing image from his mind, not only for his own sanity, but also because he lacked the courage to further analyze the scene.

"How do we get through?"

Just as Mattening's wife tremulously asked this question, a unique sound attracted their attention.

From the gloomy clouds, spores wrapped in chitinous shells, with fluttering tentacles at the tail, like tadpoles, pierced through the clouds, falling to the ground like rain with the flames generated by friction with the atmosphere. The sky seemed to rain fire.

Accompanying the fire rain were some huge winged figures. They resembled mythical evil dragons, emitting chilling shrieks. These creatures were covered in thick chitinous armor from head to their slender tails. They didn't have limbs in the normal sense, only two huge bladed claws located at the rear of their abdomens. Their average wingspan was about thirty meters, and when they flew, they blotted out the sky. As they descended, countless smaller creatures detached from their abdomens, forming a swarm-like black mist.

Mattening watched all this and muttered to himself:

"Are these the messengers of the Star Emperor?"

"Angels! The angels are here!"

A shout rang out, and many people suddenly rushed out from all over the square. Mattening then realized that there were more survivors than he had thought.

He even saw the Warlord. He was standing on top of an armored truck, holding the cult's flag in one hand and a gun in the other. His left leg was missing from the knee down, and he could only stand steady with the help of the flag. Many large cuts could be seen on his armor.

But even so, the Warlord was still full of fighting spirit.

"Charge, in the name of the Holy Lord, my brothers and sisters, cast aside all fear! Throw your flesh and blood into ascension!"

Hundreds of believers roared, shooting at the flesh and blood monsters with the weapons in their hands. The truck's heavy machine gun also roared, shooting at the metal monsters that stood up from the piles of flesh and corpses.

Many of them were Mattening's comrades. He immediately handed the child to his wife and gripped his pistol.

"You go first! I'm staying here to fight with my brothers and sisters!"

"But—"

Before his wife could finish speaking, a scream attracted their attention. The clawed monsters ignored the bullets fired at them, pouncing on the cult's resisters like ghosts, stripping the skin off dozens of people in an instant.

In that instant, the shouts disappeared, and the suicidal frenzy turned into silent despair about what was about to happen.

"Mattening, what are you still doing here!"

At this moment, the Warlord suddenly came over. He struggled to get off the truck, then pointed to the truck's carriage and said:

"Get in! Now!"

"Sir!"

"That's an order! Get in!"

The truck's carriage opened, and Mattening found that it was already full of people who had been summoned earlier. Everyone's expressions were very frightened. Helpless, he could only climb in with his wife.

"Go!"

After roaring, the Warlord turned around and shot at the approaching metal monsters. His bullets hit the opponent's head, shattering the Pureblood Angel's face, revealing the rusty metal skull inside. Before the carriage door closed, Mattening saw the Warlord detonate all his grenades before three skinning monsters dragged him into the blood pool.

In the dim carriage, he looked at the others. Among these people, there were many battle-hardened warriors, but they had also been defeated by everything they had experienced today. Then he looked at his wife. At this time, her eyes were blank, and there was no hope in her eyes, only the trauma and fear that burned her soul.

"Am I angry because I am taking your food?"

Standing on the highest mountain on the planet, Sorkhash, in blood-red armor, spread his arms. His right hand was still carrying the head of the Genestealer patriarch, with a contemptuous smile on his face, looking up at the huge tentacles and countless spore sacs extending from the clouds.

Accompanying his loud mockery, a roar similar to thunder rolling came from the deeper depths of the clouds. The powerful psychic energy projected by the Hive Mind began to turn the sky into a dirty black-purple, which also made Sorkhash feel a psychic pulse, or rather an order, or even a thought.