At the end of the eighty-third year of the Lord of Humanity's great expedition, a vast fleet of eagles sailed into the far eastern frontier of the galaxy for the first time.

This means that yet another chaotic field will fall from the despair and chaos of the Age of Strife to the authority of Holy Terra, and become part of the greatest and craziest war machine in human history, which will make them infamous and go down in history.

This brought about the vast mission of the Gospel of Holy Terra, consisting of an entire army of Dawnbreakers, millions of mortal auxiliaries, cathars from the two worlds of Reza and Tigrus, and the best of the gods in the Titan Legion of the Belligerent and the Titan of the Sun. Gladstone and even Otrama sailed out, following the invisible trail left by the expeditionary fleet as it sailed to the Far Eastern frontier.

The female tyrant of Avalon, the lord of the Grand Federation, the lord of the Second Legion, is the unquestioned ruler of all this power and wealth, and although she does not often appear in public, she maintains the mystery of holding authority just right, while her black minions have been officially organized, standing in the light and shadow of Avalon, coldly observing the submission of mortals to the Lord of Dawn.

The families and bigwigs who are rebellious, disgruntled, procrastinating, corrupt, or quietly putting their worship of the Emperor before the Spider Empress will lose their authority before they know it, while the more stubborn ones will evaporate after a slightly noisy night, and no one will remember them again.

The observation and purge in the shadows was swift and bloody, it was nothing more than a drop of black water in the gloomy lake of the Lord of the Second Legion, the deadly malice she radiated towards those who resisted, the most mundane report put on the silver table by the Ministry of Internal Affairs, but enough to make tens of thousands of lives and families disappear overnight.

But beyond that, if there is no interest in complex politics and higher ambitions, then more mortals are actually willing to be ruled by the Spider Empress, and the wealth of the bloody purges of the vested interests of the past can easily feed their bellies with only a slight leak, and when a safer and more stable society stands proudly under the double-headed eagle banner of the Empire, the solid class and patriarchal rule of the Age of Strife is abolished and replaced by the cold logic of the Lord of the Second Legion.

By the way, Gou Chang.

More work, more rewards.

As long as you are willing to bow your head, be loyal to Morgan's rule, and contribute to the needs of the Lord of the Second Legion, you will receive a reward that is commensurate with your efforts, without arrears: the more you give, the more you get, and everything is like a cold trading machine, free from corruption and connivance.

Although Morgan has no interest in creating a fairyland on earth where all mortals can be happy, she is indeed not a faint king who takes pleasure in the suffering of her people, her rule is very cold, efficient and rational, and what she pursues is not to extract as much as possible from the bottom, but to mobilize the power of everyone, with the attitude of an efficient paramilitary society, to gain more benefits in the waves of the Great Expedition, and to replace the contradictions of distribution with the growth of bloody wealth, so as to achieve the satisfaction of all individuals, collectives and classes. At that time, naturally no one will care about the Spider Queen's request for everyone.

In the short term, this model may not be as profitable as the Tyra government's simple and crude eleven tax, but the knowledge recorded in the mind of the Lord of the Second Legion clearly tells her that such an exploitative rule will only lead to the collapse of the entire regime in a centrifugal manner, and it will be effective in the shortest possible time, and it will cause endless disasters after a while.

What Morgan needs is a longer rule, a kingdom that will unite more than a century later, and remain highly loyal to her: unlike the Lord of Humanity, the current Spider Queen does not have a huge need for supplies, which is one of her strengths, and she will certainly use it well.

Of course, this is not a process that can be achieved overnight, and in Morgan's plan, it will take a generation or more for her to complete her transformation of the Avalon Federation.

In terms of normal political science, this is a very deformed and erroneous policy, a castle in the air that will collapse sooner or later, but in the frenzied wave of the Great Expedition, but in this cold and crazy galaxy, it is an extremely appropriate move, a lucky person who happens to stand on the cusp of the times, a hard-won and relatively normal military regime for more people.

Perhaps this is the sadness and ridiculousness that the human empire has to face: in this galaxy, even a rule based on greed and exploitation, aimed at expansion and plunder, as long as it is slightly in line with the cognition of normal human society, and arbitrarily promulgates a few of the most ordinary fairness, it is enough to be called benevolent and merciful.

Like in some enslaved worlds liberated by the Dawnbreakers, Morgan's statue was erected in the name of the Savior and Liberator, and the Nest of the Empire was used to celebrate the replacement of the alien whip.

The Lord of the Second Legion was unwavering in her verbal gratitude, and she was more concerned about how much wealth these worlds would bring her, how much of it would make her kingdom stronger, and how much of that power would be converted into power in her hands: this last point was the only thing Morgan cared about, and the only reason why she was willing to bear the burden of domination.

With this desire, with this thought, and with a firm belief in the tried and tested model of rule in the Avalon Star Sector, Morgan's ambition accompanied the Dawnbreaker's military front to break through the edge of the Empire's known world and sail to the rich land known as the Far Eastern Frontier.

Her fleet departed from the growing starport of the Avalon system, obtained the new Forge Worlds and Titan Legion in Tigrus, and then made its way north, passing through three very small Forge Worlds, turning them into a logistics supply base for the Second Legion in this Frontier March.

About two Terra Standard Months later, the Empire of Humanity's fleet arrived at the first galaxy in the Far Eastern Frontier: Aegis, which is the bread basket of the entire Frontier and holds a great value to be remembered.

The rich agricultural world abounds in this calm star area, and the twin worlds Manrok and Herdo are their masters and crowns, with their advantageous geographical location and excessive food output, even in the chaos of the era of strife, the Aegis Star Region has not been harassed more, and the unwilling Hurdo is even building a fleet, eager to establish his own proud hegemony, while his brother Manrok on the side is a staunch isolationist, But it is also inhabited by ancient clans who are unwilling to submit to visitors from outside the world.

It is conceivable that when the wings of the double-headed eagles extend into the territory they have ruled for thousands of years, these pocket-sized pocket kingdoms will naturally only give one answer.

——————

Herdo and Manlok rejected the imperial envoys' persuasion in a haughty and humble tone, respectively, and these diplomats under Morgan's command did not have much sincerity in negotiation, and their greatest task was to examine the actual situation in these worlds so that their sovereigns could make a proper decision: not every world was worthy of Morgan's rule.

The Queen's ruling was indisputable: a few Terra standard hours after the departure of the last Imperial envoy, the first Imperial ship had jumped to the edge of the Herdor system, and a cold offensive ensued.

The fleet of the Imperial Navy and the mechanical warships of Reza were the main forces in the First Void Naval War, and when the airspace near Mandeville Point was completely controlled by the Human Empire, the battle barges full of Astarte warriors rushed in, and they happened to catch Herdo's main fleet full of cannonballs and torpedoes, killing with great momentum, and the landing torpedoes filled with Emperor Angels gave these counterattackers a surprise blow, and the chaos and wails in the public channel resounded through the three Terra standards, It ended in the silence of the Dawnbreaker.

Lacking strong warriors, Heldor swallowed the bitter fruit in an abrupt but natural way, even the oldest and most powerful capital ships, after landing a company of Astarte warriors, their only end was to become the trophy and new force of the Dawnbreaker Legion, the only resistance was to make the deck and corridors of the battleship more dirty, in front of the power swords and deflagration guns of the Morgan Sons, Heldor slowly realized what kind of opponent they had come.

But they understood too late: eight hours after the outbreak of the war, all of the Herdor ships had either been reduced to burning scrap metal or become part of the Imperial Navy, and while the strong defenses surrounding its low-Earth orbit frustrated the Second Legion for a while, the sages of Reza had little effort to input deadly electronic scrap codes into the activation procedures of each fortress, and these ancient creations with interesting tricks became the reward for the mechanical priests' trip.

All outside resistance to the world collapsed, and under the cover of continuous orbital bombardment, drop silos and storm birds loaded with Astarte warriors began to roll up waves of metal on the planet's surface, with the goal of sweeping through the vital agricultural areas, and then trapping the nest capital where the elite were located, for a selective slaughter and purge in the name of war.

Twenty companies of the Daybreakers were committed as the main force of the attack, and the combination of 10,000 Terra veterans and Avalon recruits was enough to tear apart any opponent, and the newborn Titan Legion of the Sun followed in their footsteps with extraordinary courage, while more War Engine and Mortal Auxiliaries easily tread through the centuries of silence following the gaps opened by the vanguard.

The Second Legion's war machine runs like a delicate cog, and the Daybreaker and their auxiliaries experiment with new tactics in the fertile volcanic soil of Herdona: a parody of the Iron Hand, a rudimentary study of the most efficient torrent of steel.

All firepower and indiscriminate attacks were allowed long before the war began, as the Spider Empress didn't need anything from it except the fertile soil of this world, and the only thing the Second Legion had to remember was to avoid the almost perpetual awakening of the volcanoes of Herdo, and avoid the dramatic distractions of the Scourge.

Efficient and ruthless in the battle of annihilation on fertile soil: Morgan's sons set foot on this world when the sun was high, and before the night was fully over, the entire planet of Herdor was left with only permanent fortresses in the deepest parts of the nest, still in the hands of the world's former rulers, who held a guard of a small number of reformers and fierce warriors such as Ogelin, desperately fighting against the coming of the apocalypse.

——————

"If they had thrown these guys into battle two hours earlier, we would have suffered even more casualties, at least a few dozen men."

Rana breathed the searing-hot air unique to the agricultural world, and spat disdainfully at the foot of a behemoth he had slain himself: the mutants named Oglin had all undergone brutal transformations into unimaginably furious freaks, their bodies even taller than the Old Guard himself in Hades-type Terminator armor, and their twisted muscles contained formidable power.

The casualties caused by such a force had been thrown into the previous siege battles would have been unimaginable, because the brute force of these mutants could even fanflap the heads and helmets of the Astarte warriors together, but fortunately, the Heldo magnates who wielded this monster had long since degenerated into a pleasure-hungry, withdrawn, pot-bellied human breed that refused to let these forces out of their sight until the dawnbreaker's front approached the depths of the labyrinthine hive city. Only then were more than thirty Ou Greens released in the panic of the magnates, and rushed towards the vanguard of the empire with a roar.

The Old Guard were the first Dawnbreakers to encounter these monsters, for they were the first to be the first to breach the Hive, and the monsters that rushed out of the palatial statues and paintings did stunned Morgan's guards for a moment, but only for a moment.

In the face of the rapidly assembled formation and uniform firepower, even a monster as powerful as Oglim could only race to the ground in a brainless wail, and the power of the collective order was a powerful factor that was seriously underestimated most of the time.

In front of the old guard, which had been forcibly integrated by Lana's iron-blooded methods, only three of them had made it to the melee phase, and two of them had only taken a minute to become Rana's latest victory.

The chief guard then examined his warriors, and was pleased to see only two or three men with a slight scratch in their armor: it took him a long time to establish order among the egotists, and beat them to the ground one by one in the arena, before finally the hopeless men were barely crumpled into a rope.

The Old Guard had lost eleven soldiers in the last three years of fighting, and each of them was irreplaceable, but Rana insisted on pulling the team to the front as much as possible.

Although he and his occasionally wayward Gene Mother don't have exactly the same understanding in many ways, there is one thing that the two of them agree on a high degree: that being the original guard is definitely not a reason for the old guard to be out of battle for a long time.

Even if the battle isn't so urgent that it will require the Primitives to appear: just now, for example, Rana will still take his warriors to the front lines to fight with the Originals, as long as he retains enough strength to protect them, and maintain a familiarity with the blood.

In his heart, the taciturn veteran of Terra has never forgotten the true mission of the Old Guard: one day, they will follow the original body into an impossible and desperate situation, and all the trials now are for the charge and victory of that moment, and this is his duty.

The scorching air once again poured into Lana's chest, making him a little overly annoyed, and he knew that it was a manifestation of the simultaneous activity of several volcanoes, and that the fertile volcanic soil from the frequent eruptions on Herdo was the unique trick that made this world the largest granary of the Far Eastern Frontier.

"Are we going to go on the offensive again?"

The subordinate's whispered inquiry rang in Lana's ears, and he just shook his head and pointed to the gray building in the distance, a thick spire hidden beneath a mud maze and a giant void shield, and the shadowy jungle of guns and cannons could be seen all around it, and those fleeting figures meant a large number of flesh and blood reformers.

"This is already the depths of the nest capital, it is difficult for armored troops to enter, and their void shield can also block several days of bombardment, as for this fortress itself, although it is less than a square kilometer in size, it can condescendingly block all offensive routes, we may need to pay dozens or hundreds of lives, or even more combat brothers, to barely touch the wall."

"So what do we do? Waiting for artillery support from the follow-up troops? ”

"It's hard for artillery fire to hit the target here, and there's a high chance that a massive bombardment will fundamentally destroy the fabric of this nest capital: I have to say that the founders of this world possess a very high level of intelligence, and their creations are still holding us back after thousands of years, and if it weren't for the fact that their descendants are so comfortable and decadent, we would not have been able to advance here so easily."

"No matter how great wisdom is, it can't stop the fall brought about by the passage of time."

Lana's emotional self-talk didn't soothe the frown of his subordinates, who were still struggling over their next move.

"Well, we ......"

"Wait."

"Wait?"

"Yes, wait."

Rana smiled, a smile that was both confident and sarcastic.

"Wait for the group of archaeologists to come."

"They've always had all sorts of weird and dangerous things, and they're best suited for this situation."

——————

Although Rana called for reinforcements as soon as he saw the fortress, he did not expect that Cortez, the former leader of the Second Fleet, would come in person.

Look at his battle, what something terrible he brought with him.

The Chief Old Guard's eyes were focused on the box beside Cortez, and for some reason, he felt a sense of extreme danger from the box that was not large and had a mediocre appearance.

"What is this?"

After complying with Cortez's orders and dismissing all the fighters to the rear, Lana watched as the commander of the fifth company began to unlock the passwords and fingerprint locks outside the box little by little with a pious attitude, layer after layer, adding up to more than twenty.

Cortés was not in a hurry, he quietly solved all the codes in the pious gesture of a believer serving the gods, and then carefully opened the side of the box, revealing the semi-solidified matter that resembled mercury and exuded metallic colors, which were transparent, like water droplets suspended in mid-air, showing a coexistence of movement and stability.

And in the face of the old guard's inquiries, Cortés did not hide his secrets.

"This is Dana mercury, an ancient metal that repairs itself, and we discovered it forty years ago when we were exploring a human colony."

"It can contain objects inside, and it will remain in an absolute stability: that is, no matter how turbulent or damaged the vehicle loaded with this metal is, or how it flips and changes direction, the contents of it will always be frozen in absolute stillness the moment it is placed inside."

"So, we'll use it to stock up on some dangerous items."

“…… For example? ”

"For example, some gadgets in the [Secret Vault], although Dana Mercury is also a part of the Secret Vault, it is not enough compared to those dangerous elements."

Lana didn't ask immediately, for he could see what was sleeping in the Dana mercury that Cortés held in the palm of his hand: a model of a small animal he didn't recognize, but it gave him creeps.

"It's ...... What? ”

"A souvenir of the trip to Katachan, but now it's a nuisance."

"Well, we can solve this problem now."

Cortés' smile almost brought the insidiousness to the surface, and he placed the ball of mercury among the small cannons he had brought with him: Ranner had never seen a gun of a similar model, but his instinct told him that it was the product of the same place as the Dana mercury.

"Depending on the distance and wind direction, it needs to be delayed by three seconds......

The warrior behind Cortez muttered some incomprehensible fragments and quickly turned on the cannon, and when the glittering ball of flowing metal was fired out with everyone's uneasiness, Lana was already standing by Cortez's side.

"Alright, Cortez, I think you should elaborate on that now."

Hearing this, the savage face that belonged to the conqueror alone revealed a slight nostalgia for the madness of the past, as well as endless fear.

"Okay, Lana."

"You know...... Is Katachan a barking toad? ”

“…… I don't know. ”

"It's okay not to know: it's a liquid bomb developed by our Second Fleet before the return of the genoplasm, it can sputter a poison slurry taken from the Katachan barking toad, it is not volatile, but it is probably ...... the former."

"Triple as much."

Before the words fell, a creepy sound sounded in the distant fortress with the hit of the bomb, and the strange wind and waves out of thin air brought a rustling sound, as if thousands of lifeless long snakes were suddenly released into the world, filled with corrosive pungent sounds that could be heard from miles away, followed by the heavy roar of a huge transformed body crashing to the ground: everything was like the god of corrosion was summoned to the galaxy, It was devouring the entire fortress with its deadly mouth.

There was no wailing, no screaming, no death cry, only a quieter silence brought by the lonely wind, until the pale green liquid came out of the cracks in the walls with a visible posture and began to swallow the entire fortress into their corrosive stomachs, the hard masonry and the guns and the flowing liquid consuming each other in a soft, harsh rubbing, and every now and then a few stumps and severed arms were dripping and devouring before they hit the ground.

Rana was just a few kilometers away, and he could see everything clearly: the sturdy fortress that hung in the air had ceased to exist in the blink of an eye, and Cortés' slurry bomb consumed each other, devouring all the lives, weapons, and even the fortress itself, without harming even the slightest other object, and there was no unsettling pungent smell in the air.

A few seconds later, all that was once a fortress was the rugged wreckage on either side, proving the existence of an uncollapsed fortress in the blink of an eye, and on the other side of Lana, Cortés' relaxed humming could be heard.

The Chief Old Guard's gaze became a little wandering.

"Your ...... Secret vault, is it all like this?"

"Ah, not really."

The respondent shook his head.

"How so...... This thing is actually a failure, and it belongs to the very low-cost class in the vault, so I just said that I will use it at the opportunity, because its stability is too low, and it is essentially just an immature product that we developed when we first came into contact with the dead world of Katachan. ”

“…… What else have you developed? ”

"Of course, Katachan is a great place for a brilliant person, and we have more than a dozen studies around it, and some of the more terrifying things are kept in the depths of the vault, and several of them come from Katachan."

The Old Guard sniffled, and as he motioned for his troops to return to their posts, he looked at Cortés with an inevitably jealous gaze.

"There's such a thing, so why didn't your Second Fleet open up before we met the Mother of Genes? Both in terms of numbers and strength, there has even been a regression. ”

He was answered with a bitter smile.

"Do you know why this bomb was finally discontinued?"

"Not safe?"

"That's the first reason, and the second reason is that its research team has been wiped out in a major research accident, as have all the equipment and documents."

“……”

"You'll never know, Lana, how much power we lost for our thirst before Mother halted most of our experiments, and that number was even much higher than the war."

"No one knows the dangers of the vault better than we do."

"Because of every danger, we're the first to experience it."

——————

The Old Guard continued their advance after Cortés left, waiting for reinforcements from their brothers, tearing through the last few fragile obstacles in the depths of the labyrinth with unstoppable momentum, hordes of frantic transformations crumbling in the face of their crossfire, and ambushes in the shadows could not penetrate the heavy armor of the Hades Terminators.

The low-ranking magnates hiding in the outermost layers were the first to leave, and the Dawnbreakers found the panicked waste in the ornate ruins, killing every life mercilessly, throwing flames at the more stubborn strongholds, and destroying centuries-old families in the midst of screams.

Massacres like these lasted less than a Terra standard, shattering the last shred of the arrogance of the Herdo magnates, and when the advance of the troops came to an unexpected halt in Lana's expectations, he felt the front of him, only to see a few figures with their hands raised raised and shouting words of surrender and surrender from the rubble.

I have to say that their Gothic language is not bad, and they know a lot about the Human Empire, when these Heldo magnates fluently spit out the human Empire's script attitude towards various worlds, and loudly promised that they will definitely take the will of the Lord of the Second Legion as their primary goal, although everyone has not given up their vigilance, most of the muzzles of their guns no longer exude killing intent: this has happened too many times, and they know that this reconquest is over.

Except for Lana.

Because he knows better.

The Chief Old Guard watched coldly at the surrenderers, and after observing that they were indeed in a dead end, the Morgan's loyal heir raised his gun and pulled the trigger without anyone expecting it, including himself.

Shots rang out and bodies fell.

"Destroy them, and leave no one behind."

Lana's words caused all the Dawnbreakers to fall into a momentary confusion, but they acted in the next moment, and the monstrous flames, accompanied by the last call of the Lordor magnates, soon engulfed the entire labyrinth deep in the nest and the entire history of the world.

"Is this a mother's order?"

As Rana watched silently as everything burned, his warriors gathered around him, feeling the last shred of humanity tremble over those shrill cries in the flames.

"Yes."

Lana nodded.

"Unlike before, this time there was no negotiation or compromise, and my mother told me long before she started that she only needed Herdo's land, and the population on it was ......"

"The less the merrier."

"It's not the same as it used to be, Lana, are you misinterpreting your mother?"

A typical Old Guard-style question.

Rana thought so, a sarcastic smile crossed his mind.

"You know what? Do you know how this hybrid of the fertile agricultural world and the nest world worked before we arrived here? ”

“…… I don't know. ”

"Slaves."

Lana laughed.

"The flail-clad and scrawny people we see outside the hive are all human slaves that Herdo bought from other galaxies, and those powerful people let the slaves work in volcanic ash and heat to grow food, and their high mortality rate is terrifying, but it is the second biggest reason why Herdo can become the breadbasket of the East."

"Moreover, in his negotiations with the Imperial envoys, Herdo insisted that they would still need slaves to sustain their agriculture after they had submitted to the Empire: ha, what a ridiculous inefficiency, but what is even more ridiculous, referring to the other cases of the Great Expedition, if it were not for a legion like ours that followed the model of Otlama, their demands would most likely be met."

"But it is us, but the world belongs to our mother, so everything will not be as they wish: the mother of genes does not care about the magnates and slaves of this world, they disappear as cleanly as possible as a product of inefficiency, and before long the land here will be full of professionals and instruments, as well as huge instruments to control volcanic eruptions and maintain the fertility of the soil, these things do not need the Pildo that once were."

"So...... Mother is going to abolish slavery. ”

"The entire Far Eastern Frontier must abolish this thing that should not exist."

"Because of justice?"

"Nope."

A smile crept up the corner of Lana's lips.

"Because it's efficient."

(End of chapter)