Chapter 470: The Battle of the Guards
The shuriken shattered, and the howling sonic wave immediately followed. Like the weeping of ghosts and the howling of daemons, it enveloped the Legion warriors beneath its acoustic tide.
These screams were emitted by the Howling Banshees, then amplified by the psychic devices within their masks. Ordinary men hearing it would be deafened and their minds shattered.
The elite among the Banshees could strip the flesh, skin, and blood from a mortal warrior with a single shriek, leaving behind nothing but a skeleton clinging with remnants of meat.
Unfortunately, this normally infallible, piercing wail encountered unshakeable, mighty warriors.
A massive hand thrust through the soundwaves. Under the horrified gaze of the Howling Banshee, it clamped inescapably over her mask. As the pressure warning blared, the howling mask was crushed raw!
Beneath the mask, the Eldar female's face was delicate, her slender ears twitching in terror, the depths of her eyes filled with disbelief.
"We are the most resolute of warriors!" The Howling Banshee heard only this single sentence before she felt her skull compressed by a colossal force. Her consciousness plunged into darkness, and her soul drifted toward the Dark God with boundless terror.
Crushing the Eldar's skull raw, Asterlan shook the blood and brain matter from his gauntlet and turned his gaze to the other battlefields.
The Banshee's scream was exceptionally terrifying to mortals, but he was a Doom Slayer—a resilient warrior who had triumphed through the trials of the soul.
A terrifying howl laced with psychic energy was nothing more than a gentle breeze across his face.
Before the Eldar corpse could even fall, a violent clash erupted again as the Doom Slayers and the Overlord Guards slammed brutally into one another.
The combat unfolded too rapidly; the sonic booms lagged behind the flashes of blades and swords. In the staging bay, one could only see silhouettes shifting at blurring speeds and the residual light trails left behind by clashing weapons.
Black and greenish-gray crossed paths as weapons tore through space.
The air hummed. The dragonfly-like Guards possessed extraordinary maneuverability—shifting laterally, pulling diagonally, and retreating in a manner that completely defied the laws of physics.
As apex predators, the Overlord Guards possessed a 360-degree field of vision with zero blind spots. The four wings on their backs provided supreme agility, allowing their light bodies to assault the Doom Slayers from every conceivable angle, clashing hundreds of times in a single second!
The Legion warriors fought back valiantly, countering every strike of the xenos with unwavering posture.
In a clash of this speed, shoulder cannons fell silent because their mounting brackets could not keep pace with the velocity of either combatant, making it impossible to lock onto the enemy.
Both sides were thoroughly astonished. The moment they traded blows, they knew their opponent was anything but simple.
The Overlord Guards pressed a razor-sharp offensive. Even though they had committed the intelligence on high-tier human warriors to heart, facing them head-on now made them realize that their expectations for human combatants still required constant upward adjustment.
The black-armored warriors possessed immense strength that the Guards could not withstand; they could only use their speed to maneuver around them, searching for a fatal opening amidst the entanglement.
"Slay the formidable enemy!" the xenos commander roared, ordering its warriors to press forward and surround them for the kill, no longer caring for duels or honor at this point.
The human warriors were altogether too powerful. Their strength was so great that a single swing of a spear shaft could casually swat away a warrior of their own race. Had they not relied on their speed advantage to keep them tied down, heavy casualties would have likely already occurred.
Xenos warriors joined the fray one after another. The Legion warriors spun their spears so densely that not even air could leak through, making it impossible for the Overlord Guards to close in for a time.
The Primarch's Guard, though not the most powerful group within the Legion, were absolute in being the most hardworking warriors.
Because they yearned to fight alongside the Primarch, their daily training was far more rigorous, and their study of combat techniques was the most profound.
The instant they made contact with the Overlord Guards, they discerned that these xenos warriors were among the apex combatants.
Their strength was considerable, comparable to the Custodian Guard, yet their speed was phantom-like and erratic, far exceeding the movement speed of Custodian Wardens.
Had they not experienced the baptism of the Daemon War on Planet Requiem, they might have been decapitated under the xenos onslaught, bringing shame upon the honor of the Legion.
More xenos warriors continuously joined the battlefield, encircling the Doom Slayers in a pincer movement to slaughter them.
Having inherited the blood of Blazkowicz, the Doom Slayers showed no signs of faltering whatsoever. Instead, they grew braver as the encirclement tightened, finding their proper rhythm in the combat.
Parrying an enemy in front of him once more, a sudden warning flare erupted at the back of Asterlan's mind. Through the psychic link, a brother was alerting him that a xenos was lunging from behind.
He analyzed the situation in an instant. The brothers of the Guard were facing encirclement, with each man having to confront three xenos; they had to find a breakthrough point.
His nanosecond-level reaction was incredibly fast. As a legendary warrior, Asterlan quickly formulated a tactical plan.
"Report the xenos's posture to me," he commanded his brother through the psychic link. He shifted laterally by a step as a plasma blade slid past his shoulder guard, shearing away a piece of shining gold.
Simultaneously, guidance flooded through the psychic link, allowing him to precisely simulate the xenos's posture.
Immediately after, a dimensional light blade snapped out from his forearm gauntlet. Thermal claws wrapped in force-field lightning swept backward in a blind reverse-hook!
The thin chitin armor could offer no resistance. Three blades of light tore through the body, spraying pale-green fluid that pumped its life force, and an Overlord Guard died on the spot.
Having succeeded in one strike, his left arm sliced through the empty air horizontally once more. The light claws tore through space, slamming brutally against a force-field buckler so quickly it produced an afterimage.
So razor-sharp were the dimensional light claws that the force-field shield sustained nearly a hundred impacts within half a second, overloading on the spot. Before the light blades, the adamantium shield was no different from paper.
Crash!
With the force-field buckler destroyed, the Overlord Guard attempted to discard the shield and flee. However, the dimensional light claws pierced through the shattered shield, skewering its abdomen as three radiant blades erupted from its spine.
The offensive did not conclude there. Before the blood spraying from the first xenos could even hit the ground, Asterlan lunged forward with a spear held in one hand, sweeping aside a downward-slashing plasma spear blade, thrusting toward the oncoming xenos like a blue dragon breaking from the sea.
The wings of the xenos Guard twitched slightly, instantly translating its position to evade the thrusting spear blade. Its body flipped in mid-air, and as the lightning whip at its waist was drawn, it raised its hand, intending to lash out.
But Astarlean would give it no such opportunity!
As a former Champion Swordsman, his grasp of tactical openings was incredibly potent. The muscles in his arm tightened, and his "Self-Restraint" technique erupted!
The spear blade shifted ninety degrees horizontally, thrusting from an inconceivable angle straight into the xenos warrior's jaw and piercing out through the top of its skull.
The dimensional claws deactivated. Gripping the spear with both hands, he brought it down with a powerful cleave, splitting the corpse in two as viscera and pale-green blood cascaded down from the air.
Before it could even land, Asterlan's silhouette shot forward explosively, his spear claiming yet another life.
"Human!"
The nearly frozen battlefield advanced a fraction of a step forward. The Guard Commander ignited its plasma spear and, with all four wings vibrating in unison, left a succession of afterimages in its wake as it charged toward the human powerhouse.
"Foolish." Asterlan's tone was ice-cold, his contempt for the xenos commander blatant.
His gaze was entirely frozen; though immersed in fierce combat, there was not a single ripple of emotion within him, as if he were an unfeeling engine of war.
He had been a Champion Swordsman, and this had always been his style of combat—starkly contrasting with Harlan Ogilvy, occupying two entirely different extremes.
The plasma blade swung down, its scorching edge cleaving the air. The xenos commander felt a surge of panic; it wanted to achieve victory in a single strike, finishing the individual before it so it could return to direct the Guards.
Its intervention was born of absolute necessity. If it could not halt the person before it, the tide of battle would completely overturn.
Soldier against soldier, commander against commander.
Less than five seconds into the engagement, the commanders of both sides had clashed.
With no other distractions around him, Asterlan was able to concentrate entirely, capturing every single movement of the xenos leader and making the corresponding decisions.
As the plasma blade descended, he neither dodged nor parried. Instead, he abruptly raised his hand, seized the chassis of the plasma weapon, and pulled backward with immense force!
Disarm!
Countless times in the past, Asterlan had ripped weapons from the hands of his enemies, only to execute his defenseless opponents immediately after.
Relying on this peerless disarming technique, he had earned the title of Champion Swordsman, winning countless duels for Nurn.
Chitin barbs ground against the weapon shaft with a harsh, scraping screech. Sparks continuously erupted from his palm, yet the commander could no longer retain its grip on the shaft under the dragging force of that titanic strength.
The commander's four wings beat frantically, instantly taking to the air to escape the enemy's striking range.
Suddenly!
Its blind-spot-free vision flared with a warning, but it was too late to react. A tearing sensation ripped through its torso, and it lowered its gaze in disbelief to see its flank impaled by a spear.
Focusing its omnidirectional sight toward that direction, it saw another corner of the battlefield where a human warrior stood bathed in the blood of its kin, the corpse at his feet still twitching. The warrior was recovering from a throwing posture; with a flex of his hands, he ignited his gauntlet light blades and plunged into the next skirmish.
"Foolish." The mocking voice echoed once more as Asterlan spoke to the falling xenos: "I have never fought alone."
"The moment you grew anxious to strike at me, your kin had already fallen into a disadvantage."
He strode forward, ripped the spear from the plunging body, hurled it back to a Legion brother, and stepped over the corpse of the xenos commander.
The scales of victory tilted. The warriors of the Primarch's Guard were drenched in blood, their power armor marred by numerous ruptures, having successfully executed the Rangdan Overlord Guards through arduous combat.
The warriors performed brief status checks, awakened the Iron Men machines, and deployed the cyber-mastiffs forward once more to scout ahead.
Asterlan detached a teleportation beacon from his waist, ignited it, and planted it into the open ground to receive the arrival of the King of Nowyk.
The beacon flashed with white lightning, and the temperature of the scorching air plummeted instantly. As the white radiance erupted, a towering silhouette materialized within the staging bay.
Clad in Praetor Armor, holding a buzzsaw shield in one hand and a super shotgun in the other, the Slayer teleported in from the Blackstone Fortress, prepared to apprehend the Rangdan Overlord.
He swept his gaze left and right, taking in the corpses that littered the floor, and nodded to the Legion warriors: "Let us go and meet one of these Rangdan Overlords."