Warhammer: Empire Reboot

Evelyn shook her head.

“Take me with you. If it really is a fragment of that thing, you might wake it up with just bombs and heavy artillery.”

Guilliman nodded emphatically.

"Board the ship."

……

Novamagno, Northern Hemisphere, Ninth Defense Zone Forward Command Post.

Boom! Boom! Boom!

Rows of Foundations, clad in Xuanwu-style all-domain power armor, emerged from the teleportation array, and the swarm took over the information of the entire war zone the moment they landed.

Immediately afterwards, Wolverine entered the city, while Sabretooth advanced in large numbers.

Titus stood outside the temporary command post, watching the imperial army surge past him like a black and gold tide.

A nearby Ultra Warrior whispered, "It's still the Marker's combat sequence after all. It's much easier than when we went in last time."

Titus didn't relax; he frowned as he stared at the tactical map: "It's easy to advance because the enemy hasn't left their main force on the ground."

That's the biggest problem.

If Ammental is truly the destroyer, what is the most important thing it should do?

Titus pulled up all the battlefield data he had collected over the past few days.

Thirty-eight large-scale firefights.

Twenty-six of these occurred near underground entrances.

There are also nine other sites where the Sotek dynasty's engineering units proactively carved out new passages from the tombs.

Titus gradually began to understand something, and he immediately gave the order: "Overlap these positions."

The staff officer immediately complied.

All coordinates coincide on the 3D stratigraphic map.

The result is clear.

Anmental is advancing into the depths of the Nova Magno strata from different directions.

"It's looking for something."

Titus finally confirmed his judgment.

Just then, footsteps came from behind the command post, and all the Ultra Warriors turned around at the same time.

Guilliman arrived, with Evelyn beside him.

He didn't even hold any kind of battlefield ceremony; after entering the command post, he directly took the stratigraphic map that Titus had just compiled.

"Seventy-two percent of the main areas have been recaptured. At the current rate, control of the major cities and rail ports can be restored within six hours."

"Ammental did not contest the surface. Upon discovering the large-scale landing of the battle formation, they immediately abandoned the outer positions, including several heavy firepower nodes that had already been deployed."

Guilliman stared at the map and also felt that something was wrong.

An enemy that wants to seize Nova Magno wouldn't fight like this.

Titus continued, "We have confirmed that it is using corrupted Sotek necromancy to open up ancient underground areas, many of which are inaccessible even to those with normal access to the local burial sites."

Evelyn spotted the dark areas immediately; they were even more prominent than those she had seen in Macurag.

"The closer I get to here, the more uncomfortable I feel."

"Titus's guess is correct; there is something underground on this planet."

Guilliman already understood the seriousness of the problem.

A typical tomb war, the objective is to destroy the undead.

Now it's different; Ammental doesn't care about the surface at all, or even about this tomb world itself.

It came to Nova Magno, polluting the entire Sotek dynasty, just to find something buried deep within.

What the empire needs to do now is not simply to push forward slowly.

"Surface clearing is to be handed over to the combat sequence; the fleet will seal off the Novamagno orbit and all possible phase escape routes."

"Titus".

"exist."

"Your men continue to analyze the internal structure of the Umbula site and find the fastest route down."

"Everene is in charge of identifying abnormal areas."

He reached out and marked all the black areas as the highest strategic priority.

"We need to find what it's looking for before Ammental does."

Less than an hour after the order was given, the situation on the surface of Novamagno was reversed.

The last few large undead positions were forcibly eliminated by the battle order. Wolverine chased the retreating Destroyers along the city ruins, while the Sabretooth mechs directly sealed off several major geological fissures.

The contraction of the antagonist was unusually crisp.

Deep within the Umbrah ruins, tens of thousands of Destroyer units are retreating into the tomb, and the gates that were originally part of the Sotek Dynasty's outer defense system are closing one after another.

After the battle formation entered the Uzshemyk crypt, Ammental's original plan to use the complex underground terrain to delay the Imperial army quickly proved to be largely meaningless.

For ordinary soldiers, a fully awakened necropolis is indeed a nightmare.

Phase gates can open at any time in the narrow passages. A necromancer warrior that has just been destroyed can be dragged away by a recycling protocol and stand up again in the next minute. The walls themselves can move, the ground can suddenly disappear, and even the road that was there a second ago can be sealed off under the control of the tomb's main brain.

But the combat sequence doesn't talk about traditional underground warfare at all.

The swarm detected a necromantic energy node ahead, instantly pinpointing its location, while heavy weapons behind calculated their firing range even through several layers of walls.

When encountering movable tomb structures, the Wolverine armored vehicle used heavy cutting weapons to force its way through; for thicker black stone gates, the Sabretooth armored vehicle and new focusing weapons blasted them open directly.

When Ammental closes one passage, they simply dig a new one from the side.

The defensive system left by the Sotek dynasty was indeed ancient and powerful, but it no longer faced the kind of imperial army that required layer-by-layer assaults.

Large areas surrounding the tomb began to fall, and the imperial army, like a steel nail driven deeper into the earth, advanced all the way down the Umbula ruins.

The Destroyer that Ammentar relied on had been invincible in past wars.

Even when facing Space Marines, they can still gain the upper hand with Gauss weapons, living metal, self-repair, and phase technology.

A single Destroyer squad can often inflict heavy losses on Astartes simply by occupying a narrow enough tomb passage.

This time, however, they encountered a combat sequence.

The first batch of over three hundred Destroyers cut in from the phase node at the top of the tomb, preparing to tear the Imperial army through the middle section in the way they were most familiar with.

As soon as the ghastly green Gaussian beam struck, the dozen or so combatants at the front simultaneously turned to the side.

The next second, dozens of heavy bomb guns opened fire simultaneously.

The living metal on the Destroyer's body began to flow back into the wound as soon as it was shattered, but before the gap could close, the second round of armor-piercing rounds had already penetrated into the interior along the crack created by the first round.

The third round directly shattered the core.

More and more destroyers fell.

Their technological advantage, which allowed them to crush ordinary Imperial forces, was reduced to almost nothing in the face of the battle order.

After death, the resurrection protocol failed, and the living metal was recycled.

Phase Strike, the Destroyer's signature move, has also become meaningless.

They had just emerged from behind the wall, and the swarm had already synchronized their coordinates with the entire battlefront.

A ninth-generation Wolverine sped past the tomb's dome, its anti-gravity thrusters forcibly completing a ninety-degree turn within the narrow passage, its heavy-duty cutting blade sweeping down from its right arm.

The three Destroyers, along with the black stone wall behind them, were sliced ​​in half.

Ammental attempted to establish crossfire in the 27th circular burial chamber using a squadron of three Destroyers.

It lasted for a maximum of four minutes.

Before the three squadrons could even complete their phase shift, the Saber-toothed Tiger's area-of-effect fire had already turned the entire tomb into a burning metal wasteland.

Necromantic weapons remain advanced.

The Destroyer remains ferocious.

However, once the technological gap between the two sides was reduced to almost the same level, the only factors that truly determined the outcome of the battle were reaction speed, coordination efficiency, numbers, and direct combat capabilities.

In all of these aspects, the Destroyer gained no advantage.

In the past, they could use their technological advantage to slaughter their enemies.

Now, it's their turn to be slaughtered.

Waves of destroyers poured out from the depths of the tomb.

Batch after batch of living metal remains were smashed and scattered all over the ground, and the living metal was continuously recycled.

The phase gate keeps retreating.

One by one, the defense nodes went out.

Ammental originally intended to use the Destroyer Crusade to hold back the Empire's main force, buying himself time to break through the deepest seal.

But the reality on the battlefield quickly provided the answer: it couldn't be delayed.

The Imperial army advanced almost stepping over the remains of the Destroyer.

When the last large phase defense line in the 43rd section of the tomb was breached head-on by the saber-toothed tiger, Anmental had no choice but to issue another retreat order.

The Destroyer Crusaders began to retreat.

However, Tetus did not consistently follow the main force.

After capturing the thirty-eighth underground node, he led a squad of Ultramarines to change course, and Evelynn followed.

This area is close to the oldest part of the tomb.

Unlike the outer chambers filled with mechanical structures and energy pipelines, the deeper you go, the quieter it becomes, and the more ancient the architectural style becomes.

In many places, there isn't even the green energy pattern commonly seen in modern necromancers.