How can a retired savior be considered retired if his price drops to 40,000?

Chapter 413: Meaningless (Part )
After the aftermath of the explosion completely dissipated, Lot woke up in the endless dust in the desert.

He was in pain all over - about a quarter of the parts of this power armor that he had picked up from everywhere and pieced together had actually stopped working, and it had no practical function, it was just for show. For example, the shock absorption function that should have existed in it did not work in time just now, but fortunately, the protective ability of the ceramic steel itself was still solid.

Although in an explosion like the one just now, this would be of no use, he thought.

Lotte didn't really understand the whole thing, but he could deduce that the blue lights exploded after they fell into his position, and then almost immediately, the fuel tank or ammunition box exploded. In short, everything that could explode on the artillery position he was responsible for suddenly exploded at that moment, and the shock wave and scattered "shrapnel" even knocked him unconscious even though he was dozens of meters away.

To reiterate, his whole body was in pain from the violent vibrations of the explosion, and he should have been hit on the head very accurately. There are two pieces of evidence to prove this: first, when Lot got up from the ground and shook off the dust on his power armor as much as possible, he felt a splitting headache and dizziness, and therefore wondered if he had a concussion; second, his helmet's machine spirit was very unhappy, and none of the readings displayed on the eyepiece made sense. It was obvious that it had taken a collision on Lot's head that would have directly split his head.

With his vision blocked, Lot had no choice but to tear off this old friend who had accompanied him in four battles from his neck. He got this helmet from the corpse of a Night Lord. It was a pity but also fortunate that it was not in a very good condition at that time, so the Iron Warriors who were cleaning the battlefield looked down on it and it finally became a bargain for Lot. He still remembered how he used his meager knowledge to inspect and maintain it, and how happy he was when he removed the Night Lord-style decorations on its outer surface and replaced it with the Iron Warriors' paint, but now, it was obviously coming to an end.

There was a rather horrible dent on the top of the MK5 helmet, probably from being hit hard by something like a piece of iron, but the weapon itself was not embedded in the ceramic steel. Its eyepiece lens was also broken, revealing the auspicious structure inside, which was shaking irregularly and operating chaotically under the strong vibration. Perhaps a true technical sergeant could restore the power armor helmet that suffered such damage, but unfortunately, this was something Lot could not do no matter what. In this case, he would most likely have to scrap it with regret.

He didn't feel regretful because he had developed extra feelings for the helmet. Lott's regret was entirely due to practical needs: he had to use the communication beads built into the helmet to complete battlefield communications.

After a brief thought, even though he had no hope, Lotte reluctantly put the helmet back on. The world he saw through the broken eyepiece was also broken beyond recognition; the old LCD timer in the corner showed 88:88:88, and the damage was classic and obvious, so he couldn't tell how long he had been unconscious; the communication bead seemed to be still usable - for a moment, Lotte seemed to hear a little noise of electricity coming from it, but whether he called his captain's channel or tried to contact the artillery position that had just cooperated with him in firing, he didn't get any response other than silence. This made him really unsure whether the communication bead was broken due to the impact, or the only two contact targets that he could directly contact with his position were broken for some unknown reason.

This was indeed a problem, but it was ultimately a problem that was far away from Lot, so he decided to put it aside for a while and first deal with another problem that was closer to him: what was the current situation of the artillery position he was responsible for.

This was a problem that was even less worthy of hope than a problem that was far away, because it was too close to him, only a few dozen meters away that he could see through at a glance. First of all, there was no doubt that all the mortal slaves who had been diligently (forced) to do all the physical labor on his position had died. Their weak bodies and almost non-existent protective means made it impossible for them to survive such a severe explosion; secondly, after experiencing such a round of explosions, there was really nothing left on the position.

Without thinking too much, all the combustibles were naturally at least charred, and the non-combustible ones, such as the earth and stone fortifications or the machines made of ceramic steel and refined gold, inevitably changed to varying degrees. For some reason, two or three connected pits appeared on the ground, but with Lotte's limited experience, he didn't want to admit that these things that looked like craters were caused by the thin blue light that fell from the sky, even though he knew from the impression left by the glimpse at that time that the location of these pits was roughly the same as the landing point of the blue light.

The gun closest to these "craters" was completely scrapped. Probably when the mortal slaves were busy changing the shells, the blue light of the falling ground caused the shells to explode, thus turning a delicate and beautiful war machine into a pile of slightly melted and twisted scrap metal. Another gun a little further away was overturned on the spot by the blast. The chassis was full of messy shrapnel or garbage, the axle was obviously broken, and the fuel tank had obviously produced another small-scale explosion, which was probably scrapped, but the tilted gun might still be usable.

Lot didn't think much about it, and walked over to check it out. Without slaves, he had to straighten the cannon that had fallen to the ground. Lot was among the charred corpses of mortals, doing this work that should have been done by dozens of slaves carrying traction ropes. He thought it would be a bit tricky, but as an Astartes with physical strength far beyond that of ordinary people, after actually doing it, he found that this job was much easier than he imagined.

Perhaps, there was still some luck that allowed him to continue to live. He was probably unconscious for a while, at least long enough for everything that was supposed to explode in this position that was still abnormally high in temperature to have exploded. At least he did not suffer any unexpected damage while straightening and checking the gun. This gun was indeed good. In addition, what was even more unexpected and pleasantly surprising to him was that the gun farthest from the center of the explosion was almost unscathed. Apart from the dust raised by the explosion, which required some cleaning, it could even be driven directly on its chassis.

These discoveries gave Lotte, who didn't know what to do next, at least some immediate goals. He immediately found a way to drag the intact cannon to a far place, farther away from the remaining high temperature and flames, and rescued two boxes of eight shells that had not exploded near it, and temporarily placed them in a different location. Then, he found a way to drag out the cannon with a broken chassis as well - at least its wheels could still turn, so he could still take it away.

But where should they be taken? After Lot spent about half an hour doing all the damage control work, this question he had to face once again came back to his mind. He didn't know whether his fellow Iron Warriors who were assigned to this area were still alive; nor did he know if he would be considered as deserting his post if he dragged the remaining artillery and spare ammunition to find the main force. At the moment when the communication system could not contact others, the first problem was obviously unsolvable, but perhaps he could think about the second problem.

So, he ran back to the edge of the open area with a good view, carefully hid behind the bunker, and tried to observe the position of his original target with his naked eyes. The logic behind this was that if he had indeed blown up the bombing target in the previous round of shooting, then he would have an excuse of "losing contact with the superior after completing the mission, so evacuating." But unfortunately, his little hope was dashed: a distance of two kilometers is not that far for mortals with a clear vision. Without the auspicious instrument, Lot could clearly see that the little white ship was not only still intact in the same place, but also a hemispherical force field with a hazy golden light rose around it, probably some kind of psychic thing.

This discovery disappointed him for a moment, but then he started to think again: I don't know how strong this force field is, whether he can challenge it with his remaining two guns and eight shells. However, before he could put this idea into practice, his target position had a new change. On the side of the damaged boat, a small door that was almost tightly fitted with the bulkhead opened, but the gangway was not lowered, perhaps because of a malfunction - in short, several people jumped down from the boat one after another and landed on the ground:

The first was a huge beast walking on all fours. Not only did it seem quite heavy when it landed from a great height, it also puzzled Lotte for a moment: because its size seemed to be significantly larger than the hatch above, he could not understand how it had come out of that small door.

This thing just revealed its existence, which made Lot feel bad, even though it was two kilometers away from Lot and did not find the Iron Warrior hiding behind the fortifications made of debris. Lot had to spend a few seconds to clear these distracting thoughts in his mind, and then he could barely move his attention away from the warp monster itself and notice that there was a small mortal wearing armor with questionable defensive power on its back.

That mortal might be a Chaos Tamer. Lot had never seen this, so he couldn't be sure, but he had seen a lot of similar things in the Eye of Terror. He knew that Chaos wizards sometimes drove some unliving beings or warp beasts to fight for them, so he guessed that this combination was probably similar.

After he finally diverted his attention from this pitch-black four-legged monster that seemed to have made the originally sunny environment around it dark, Lot noticed that two more Sons of the Emperor had jumped out of the hatch.

These two Emperor's Children were different from those Lotor had seen before: their armor was not the more enchanting pink-purple favored by Slaanesh, but a rather orthodox imperial purple. This noble purple was not covered with decorations that symbolized blasphemous pleasures, but only large patches of luxurious golden reliefs, reflecting the sunlight that the sun always hung high above the temple generously sprinkled down, making Lotor's injured eyes a little painful, and unable to see more details. These two Emperor's Children wore helmets to hide their faces, so in appearance, they seemed to be different from those more corrupted brothers, but Lotor did not think they were essentially different.

He had not seen it himself, but he had heard that there might or might not still be a handful of the Emperor's Children who still retained the style of Power Armour they had adopted during the Great Crusade, or when the Legion was still loyal to the Imperium, and even to a certain extent retained the noble manners and codes of those days. These Emperor's Children thought this was a perfect irony - after all, what could be more exciting than wearing the symbols of the Master of Mankind, shouting the slogan "For the Emperor", and trampling on everything under the Throne?

Before today, Lot had no idea whether such an Emperor's Child really existed. However, after seeing the two in front of him, he thought that the rumor must be true. The two people were too dazzling in the dazzling sunlight, and Lot couldn't really see the details of them, but with a preconceived idea, the more he looked, the more he felt that his guess was correct: although he couldn't see anything from the standard-sized Emperor's Child, looking at the person he took the initiative to follow - the "Primaris Space Marines" who had recently appeared on the Imperial side might not be as tall as him, isn't this an obvious sign of receiving the blessing of Chaos?

The more Lot thought about it, the more reasonable it seemed. Therefore, when the last person in the team jumped out of the hatch to the ground, a man wearing Terminator armor... uh... Lot was not very good at learning the imperial emblem, and could not identify what number the regiment emblem on the man's shoulder armor belonged to, but he felt that this man was definitely not a so-called "good man" loyal to the false emperor.

The scenes and people he saw made him wonder: Aren't we following the Primarch to attack Macragge, the home planet of the Ultramarines? Why is the "enemy" that appears in front of him not a team full of Ultramarines, but a team that looks very chaotic?
The Iron Warriors have to fight the Chaos Warband in the Eye of Terror, and they have to continue fighting the Chaos Warband in the real universe. Wouldn't it be a waste of time for them to come here?

This slightly absurd thought flashed through Lotte's mind, and then disappeared without leaving a trace. As a soldier at the bottom of the legion, he had a clear understanding of himself: who to attack, or how to attack, these questions were meaningless to him. He was just a tool used by his superiors to carry out the mission, and he did not need to have his own thoughts. The only thing Lotte needed to do was to try his best to execute the plan perfectly after his superiors told him what means to use and where to attack.

But this doesn't mean that Lot really doesn't have his own thoughts - he's not a mindless servitor, so of course it's like that. During the time he witnessed all this, he had been hiding behind the bunker, using his own logic to sort out all the events that happened before and after, and using this to make plans for the next step.

Although Lot didn't like the bossy "Tolamino" who got angry for no reason, he was still Lot's commander after all. After thinking of a reason to retreat that would probably not get him dragged away and shot on the spot, Lot still had to go back to him and report to him.

He lay behind the cover and watched for a while, and after confirming that the small team that jumped off the boat was not heading in his direction, he chose to ignore them.

In fact, Lotte had considered sneaking onto the ship and exploring after these people left; he had also thought about just sneaking to the location where the Legion had placed the aircraft alone - if he was lucky, he would hide until the retreat, if he was unlucky, he would just rob a transport plane and fly away alone. But in his calculations, the feasibility of these two plans was not very high, or in other words, he would probably die in these two missions. So in the end, Lotte, who was used to keeping a low profile, chose the most reliable return plan, even though he felt that this plan was even more boring than the boring mission issued by his superiors.

So he quietly returned to his position, began to organize his equipment, and planned his route. Lot began to make these plans with the expectation that his good luck would continue. But unfortunately, he didn't know what he would encounter in the next journey.

(End of this chapter)