Chapter 993, The Bronze Bull of Khorne and the Great Unclean One
Chapter 993, The Bronze Bull of Khorne and the Great Unclean One
The tactics used by the human side are actually not complicated.
It's not complicated.
In the fight against the Chaos Army, killing the enemy's leader is a very effective tactic that can gain a huge advantage.
Human armies are much better in this respect. They are much more organized and usually rely on the entire system rather than individual officers/generals.
If the commander-in-chief is killed, there are deputies, chiefs of staff, deputy chiefs of staff, and so on, who can be successively promoted to fill the vacancy. Even if all of them are killed, they can be replaced by lower-ranking officers.
Human armies have a comprehensive system of ranks and positions that can solve this problem.
There are similar groups within the Chaos Army, but they are not as systematic as those of the human side.
The fundamental reason is that the organizational system of the Chaos Army is inherently disordered. It relies more on the personal strength and prestige of its leaders and chiefs to build its army.
Individual leaders formed an army; the highest-ranking leader led the army and also had his own subordinate troops; many high-ranking leaders were under the leadership of the most prestigious person...
Regardless of the chaotic forces involved, they all exhibit similar trends.
That's the nature of chaos. They need a powerful individual, a representative of high prestige, to oppress and suppress their subordinates through fear and authority. Otherwise, they naturally tend to become a disorganized mob.
Even the Tzeentch faction, known for its meticulous organizational structure, was no exception. After the death of their leader, Galardore, the Tzeentch were ousted. Although a large number of Tzeentch cultists remained within Terra's orbital system and among the Solar Fleet's naval members, they could no longer be united into a cohesive and functioning force.
A similar situation exists with this Nurgle army.
Their leader is the former prime minister of the empire, now confirmed to have ascended to demonhood—the demon prince, Qibodu.
Unlike the cunning Gallardo.
Galardo's method of protecting himself was to hide himself and prevent anyone from finding him. If Gu Jing hadn't followed the clues and directly located him, then according to the Allied forces' intelligence, they would have known neither that Galardo was the leader of the Tzeentch Cult nor his exact location. The success of this operation had an element of luck involved.
However, things are different for Qi Bodu.
That guy made absolutely no attempt to hide himself.
When the siege of Terra began, Qibodu had already appeared. Still holding the title of Prime Minister of the Empire, he declared himself the rightful heir and commanded the Nurgle army in military operations.
Why not carry out a decapitation strike against him?
That's because it can't be done.
Qi Bodu certainly had his own means of protecting himself.
His throne has always been located at the very heart of Nurgle's army. He is constantly protected by a large army. He never advances rashly, nor does he leave the protection of his army. His largest and most elite army is not easily deployed; any attempt to lure the enemy away from their stronghold is utterly ineffective.
There aren't many options left.
The only viable option is to engage in a direct confrontation, defeat Nurgle's army, and overthrow Qibodu's corrupt throne.
The current operation is precisely for this purpose.
Robert led the Imperial Guard and the main force of the Allied forces out of the palace and toward the Cauldron of Corruption, launching a frontal assault; Martins led the elite Allied forces to first set up an advance party, and then, when the frontal assault began, launched a rapid and fierce attack from the flank.
Nothing special, it's basically about using force to overcome force, nothing fancy.
So far, progress has been relatively smooth.
Martins' side was indeed on the enemy's flank. Although the enemy was numerous in terms of numbers, it was far fewer than the frontal battlefield, and their elite troops were also far inferior. They simply could not withstand the assault of five thousand of the best Space Marines.
Besides them, the Holy Lily Battle Sisters, the Glory Guard, and the Alliance National Knights, who had been on the orbital aircraft carrier ready to participate in combat at any time, also came down.
Under the ground cover of the Space Marines, they strode out of the landing craft with great pride and arrogance.
As Martins and his men advanced, the various troops that joined them along the way quickly brought their total number of men to over 100,000.
The Battle Sisters and the warriors of the Glory Guard, as the main infantry force, were responsible for occupying and clearing positions; the National Knights' more than a thousand Titans, including eighty-nine Warmaster-class Titans, were an absolutely formidable armored force.
With its fierce advance, it was utterly devastating.
Meanwhile, the fighting on the other side of the main battlefield was also quite good.
Although there weren't as many Titans as there were, unlike the team led by Martins, which was smaller but comprised of elite troops, making their assaults more effective.
However, they also have top-notch assault troops over there—the Imperial Guard's 10,000-man regiment!
Not all the Imperial Guards were deployed; a considerable number remained as a backup within the inner palace. Even deploying only around five thousand men was a decisive force.
In particular, they also brought out many of their most prized skills. From the secret chambers beneath the palace, they retrieved many things that would never normally be taken out. Some of these secret weapons were top secrets passed down for millennia, inherited from the glorious era when the emperor was still alive, or even earlier, from the golden age before humanity's decline.
Some of them are cutting-edge technological products captured from countless alien races and other species that the empire destroyed and conquered during its founding period of expeditions.
These things all had a very good effect on the battlefield.
With the addition of over 15,000 Space Marines and the landing Allied forces, the human side, though far outnumbered the enemy in this decisive battle against the Nurgle army, made remarkable progress thanks to their superior individual soldier quality and decisive frontal assault tactics.
Despite the heavy casualty reports, the journey is getting closer and closer to the target, the "cauldron of corruption."
Furthermore, as elite main assault forces, they are all in good condition.
The human forces, attacking from two directions, appear to be about to meet up victoriously.
But just as the intense battlefield pressure reached its peak, a completely different, yet more primal and violent, terrifying energy, like a red-hot battle axe, slashed into the battlefield!
The earth began to tremble with a terrifying, utterly physics-defying frequency, even the crumbling ruins of thousand-meter-tall buildings in the ruins of the nest city seemed to groan. Then, a metallic roar, more violent than thunder, chilling to the very soul, shook the heavens and earth!
Crimson, colossal figures surged forth from the dust and smoke at the edge of the battlefield, like an out-of-control torrent of lava, engulfing everything in their path! They were not the slow, bloated creations of Nurgle, but rather the burning, enraged bronze bulls, the mounts bestowed upon Khorne's most ravenous followers!
Each bronze bull was covered in layers of massive armor engraved with blasphemous blood runes, its size comparable to a small Titan, and its crimson compound eyes gushed with a tangible thirst for slaughter.
On its back rode a Khorne champion knight clad in scarlet heavy armor, his battle axe so large it could split mountains!
How could a grand battlefield be complete without Khorne's presence?
As the war progressed to this point, the Khorne followers' persistent day and night summoning finally succeeded, drawing this terrifying army capable of destroying the world from Khorne's demonic realm into the real world!
This berserk cavalry formation was targeting the chaotic battlefield itself—whether it was the slow-moving Plague Legion phalanx or the elite armored group of the Allied vanguard that was bravely breaking through, they were all indiscriminately swept up, devoured, and trampled into a mixture of flesh and metal under this devastating charge!
It's hard to say which side these bronze bull riders caused more damage to.
More likely, they simply don't care.
The Khorne Champions, who finally had the chance to come to the real universe and run wild, didn't care who their opponents were. They just wanted to unleash their bloodlust and destroy everything in their sight!
They thirst for human blood, and they also hate the rotten zombies of the Nuggets, so they cut them down indiscriminately!
Although the Bronze Bull Knights were not entirely targeting human forces, their appearance undoubtedly disrupted the progress of the human frontal assault.
However, this operation came at a considerable cost, and they wouldn't have given up so easily if there hadn't been absolutely no hope.
Caught in the tide of Nurgle and then swept away by the Khorne Knights, it will be difficult for the army to retreat.
There's no way to give up halfway; if you don't want to lose, the only way is to win.
The troops led by Mattins, initially a detachment, became the decisive factor in the outcome of the battle.
……
"The time has come!" Martins' voice, transmitted through the legion-level communication channel, pierced the minds of all the soldiers like a cold steel blade, instantly freezing and crushing the chaos and fear within the channel.
The devastating chaos unleashed by the Bronze Bull Knight is sweeping across the front lines of the Cauldron of Corruption. The Nurgle garrison is plunged into deeper chaos amidst the crushing storm of flesh and brass, and the thick, yellowish-green fog in that area is being torn apart by the raging, bloody whirlwinds, leaving huge gaping holes.
"Khorne's folly tore apart Nurgle's rotten walls and temporarily paralyzed Zeppelin's blasphemous will!"
On the holographic tactical map, a golden-red arrow, sharper and more decisive than the previous main attack direction, ignored the quagmire of the head-on confrontation. Like a precisely thrown armor-piercing dagger, it pointed directly at the only constantly rotating, huge yellow-green energy vortex at the core of the thick fog—the coordinates of Qi Bodu's throne!
"Phoenix, become the empire's blazing spearhead! Blood Angel, protect our flanks with flames! Saints—" His gaze seemed to pierce through helmet and space, landing on Dante, "You will be the rearguard, blocking all pursuers and harassment! Our destination is only one place—the head of Zeppelin!"
Commands are laws.
The formation of five thousand warriors transformed in an instant, like a sophisticated war machine. The roar of their engines suddenly increased to its limit, leaving no room for concealment. The silent molten flow suddenly erupted into a dazzling golden rainbow that tore through the sky, piercing the core of the Cauldron of Corruption with the speed of a group assault!
Wherever it went, the sparse Nurgle army had no way to stop it!
The main battlefield, a three-way battle, attracted the majority of attention. Martins' side wasn't unmanaged, but it was simply impossible to control.
As they pierced through the outer layers of chaotic and weak defenses at an astonishing speed, they crashed like arrows into the final core area, where the solidified, yellowish-green poisonous miasma exuded ultimate despair!
At this moment, even the most battle-hardened Space Marines could not help but have their built-in life monitoring devices in their power armor emit piercing overload alarms.
They were prepared for the Nurgle poison; each warrior was equipped with a corresponding blessing item sufficient to resist its corrosive effects.
But this putrid toxin was far more terrifying than expected, as if it were the manifestation of the evil power of Nurgle in this material universe.
Their vision was swallowed by a viscous, living poisonous fog; sounds became blurred and distorted; metal groaned and corroded. Behind this ultimate veil of death stood a scene that made them truly understand the meaning of blasphemy—seventy-seven colossal, hill-like, slowly pulsating, ultimate decaying creations!
Seventy-seven great unclean beings!
They are the highest-ranking demonic entities of the Nurgle army, the favored manifestations of the Nurgle Gardens. Each one is so enormous that one must look up to it, its body constructed from countless swollen, bursting, and oozing iridescent pus-filled necrotic tumors. Billions of obese maggots writhe and squirm within their wrinkled, decaying flesh and exposed cavities. Deformed bone spikes pierce festering skin, their tips dangling the melting remains of victims. Foul swamp gas, carrying blasphemous whispers, billows from their drooling maws, each heavy, earth-shattering breath causing the war-torn earth to groan, sink, and ooze deadly putrefaction as if alive.
These seventy-seven blasphemous mountains of flesh do not stand haphazardly, but rather, in a blasphemous geometric array, precisely and layer upon layer, guard the very core—a terrifying throne composed of billions of crawling maggots.
On the throne, a colossal shadow covered with countless plague cysts and flowing with eternal pus slowly raises its single eye, hotter than a furnace and filled with pure malice!
That was the ultimate form of Qi Bodu's corruption and depravity!
"Humble...like a maggot...crawling here..."
That grand, blasphemous voice, filled with the sounds of viscous phlegm and bursting putrid bubbles, echoed directly into the depths of every warrior's soul, carrying a maddening, nauseating despair and malice: "I am the Prime Minister of the Empire... Imperial power should be in my hands... I offer the Empire as a sacrifice to my benevolent Father... You... will ultimately become... new bait for this sea of pus..."
As its whisper, carrying billions of germs, fell, the seventy-seven Great Impure Ones simultaneously unleashed a chaotic roar that dimmed the stars and filled with endless pain!
Their bloated, rotting bodies began to writhe and crush forward, defying the laws of physics, while simultaneously raising the destructive power embedded in their rotting arms, flowing with abyssal darkness—a plague bomb cannon as huge as an ancient turret, a column of corrosive liquid humming with deathly green light, and a blasphemous giant scythe tearing through the viscous air…
The filthy muzzles and spray organs glowed with a deathly light, and the filthy fel energy in the air instantly thickened and solidified like a physical entity. A suffocating feeling gripped every throat, and even time seemed to freeze before this blasphemous array.
Who would have thought that they would be facing such a lineup!
(End of this chapter)
