"Nope."

"Not at all."

"There's nothing here."

“……”

"I regret it, Dantioc: I shouldn't have listened to you."

Kyle Valen, the new war blacksmith of the Seventy-seventh Battalion of the Iron Warriors, tore at the words of grumbling, his eyes averting from the gray-white orniths and his rough hands rubbing his dry eyelids.

Thirteen days ago, when the Kraken Expedition had just begun, Kyle had been promoted to the rank of the highest commander of the 77th Battalion, which was nothing more than a bit of sad luck for this one-eyed warrior to rise to prominence.

Luck from Perturabo.

From the very beginning, the Kraken expedition did not go as smoothly as the Lord of Steel expected, although the opponent of the two legions was nothing more than a small pocket empire willing to merge with the alien, but the latter was a force that could survive the madness of the age of strife, and there were a few hole cards to play.

The recovering of the fallen Imperial world and the uprooting of the outermost raiding strongholds went well, but when the expeditionary force reached the outer line of defense of the Pocket Empire, the setback came: the two battalions that led the way failed to complete the task of establishing the beachhead as scheduled, and instead lost all the armor used to attack them, and even the two war blacksmiths themselves were killed on the spot.

But Kyle knew very well that even if the two war blacksmiths did not die in battle, they would not end well: he had heard that although these two were also Olympian warriors, they did not have a lot of combat experience, not so much because they were promoted by military merit, but because their immediate superiors were either defeated or acted unfavorably, so they either died or were swept to the end by the genetic prototype, which made them the commanders of the battalion.

It is said that these two war blacksmiths were thrown into the war by the Father of Genes before they even had time to recognize the rank and file commanders under their command: what desperate news.

This was never possible in the early days of the Great Expedition, but when the Fourth Legion fought in the galaxy under the command of Perturabo for sixty or seventy years, as the officers who were originally familiar with them gradually withered, more and more young people like this climbed into the position of commander, and their rotation was also amazingly fast, often a single defeat could leave them with no place to bury.

Like these two war blacksmiths who died on the battlefield, they numbly and rigidly carried out the orders of the genetic prototypes, gnawing down fortress after fortress with pure iron and blood, until every company under their command collapsed in this high-intensity battle, and they themselves died in the way of leading the charge.

In the process, the Iron Blood stayed in the low-earth orbit of this fortress world, and Perturabo witnessed the whole process of defeat with a cloudy face, the Spider Empress standing beside him, and the next circle stood the silent tridents.

Perhaps unable to stand the oppressive atmosphere, the Lord of Avalon tentatively suggested that the Dawnbreaker Legion and the Avalon auxiliaries, who had never fought in the expedition, come to their aid, but only to be met with a slow but firm refusal from the Lord of Steel: Morgan couldn't wait to shut up, and never mentioned a word about it again.

And the rest was a matter of course: in front of his blood relatives and his most trusted heirs, Perturabo vowed to take the fortress world they had expected to spend three weeks besieging within ten Terra standard hours.

The Iron Lord selected five large battalions in his legion sequence and personally led them to the front line, charging forward, and the uninterrupted artillery fire covered the Astarte charge, which was like a pianist's hands, under the command of the tyrant of Olympia, intertwined and harmonious, allowing the battle line to advance at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Perturabo deliberately chose the ancient, brutal, and effective [Xu Jin Barrage] tactic: let the cannonballs rain forward like a wall steadily, and the Iron Warriors need to stay behind the wall, taking the land ravaged by iron and fire before the defenders can react from the shelling.

This tactic requires every minute of finesse and an unimaginably large amount of calculations, both of which the tyrant of Olympia clearly possesses, and he wants to save face in front of his blood relatives with this bloody extravaganza.

In near-earth orbit, the Lord of Avalon witnessed with almost amazement how Perturabo had used this crazy tactic to destroy the fortress world and his five battalions in ten hours: the Lord of Steel even frantically let the shells fall thirty meters in front of his infantry array, and the companies of Iron Warriors who walked in front of them would fall in rows under the fire of their own men at the slightest mistake in carrying out their orders.

But this tactic was very effective: the defenders of the fortress were so smashed by the endless barrage of steel barrage that they couldn't lift their heads, and the poor creatures couldn't react to the Iron Warriors who charged from thirty meters away after the shelling stopped, and the permanent fortress communities planted the Imperial flag one after another in the face of the soaring casualty figures of the Iron Warriors.

Seeing this, even the Lord of Avalon had to sigh in his heart: in this brutal strangulation battle, the Fourth Legion was indeed one of the few strong soldiers in the entire empire, and the importance of Perturabo and his sons in some areas was irreplaceable.

The Spider Empress knew very well that if she didn't fight herself, even if she staked her Dawnbreaker Legion and the most elite Legion of the Empress's Guards, she would not be able to take the world in nine hours: it wasn't that the Dawnbreaker Legion couldn't use this kind of Advance Barrage tactic, but Morgan couldn't tolerate the terrible casualties under such a strong attack anyway.

After all, in less than nine hours, Perturabo was in front of her, expressionlessly the equivalent of one-tenth of the Dawnbreaker Legion, and it would take Morgan at least a dozen years to replenish them.

You must know that in the more than ten years since the Nukeria incident, the strength of the Dawnbreaker Legion has only increased from more than 46,000 to more than 52,000, but the number of the empress's personal guards has increased a lot, all of which are unfortunate to lose the election.

But despite this, Morgan still strictly demanded the quality of the Dawnbreaker recruits, and pathologically continued to strengthen her absolute mastery of this legion, until even the most qualified Terra veterans gradually stopped discussing the story of the Emperor and Terra, until the entire Dawnbreaker Legion has gradually begun to merge with the Far Eastern Frontier: the Dawnbreaker is the Far Eastern Frontier, and the Far Eastern Frontier is the Dawnbreaker, such remarks are fueled by the Spider Empress, among Astarte and mortals, are gradually occupying the mainstream position.

Morgan estimated that by the second hundred years of the Great Expedition, her legion would be around 120,000 to 150,000, a medium-to-large legion: for now, this force would be sufficient.

Merely......

The Spider Empress glanced at the mountains of corpses on the planet's surface.

No matter how many people the strength of the Second Legion will eventually reach under Morgan's hamster-like accumulation, the Dawnbreaker Legion is still empty in its bones, and it only needs a real fiasco, even if it is a scale of more than 100,000 people, it will be beaten back to its original shape, and Morgan doesn't think that there will be another hundred years for him to [riot] as uninterrupted as he is now.

After all, in a sense, the Spider Empress can be said to be the first person in the entire empire to start preparing for the inevitable [super war] in the future: whether it is a civil war set off by careerists or a purge launched by the emperor, they can be the reason for Morgan to silently expand his forces.

At the same time, they are constantly reminding Morgan to never squander his forces like Perturabo is now: thinking of this, the Lord of Avalon once again swept his gaze across the gloomy clouds on the surface.

She wasn't sure how many corpses the Fourth Legion had left here, four thousand? Or 5,000? The respect for these victims kept the Spider Queen from watching their souls.

But there is one thing that Morgan is still very sure of: that is, the seven battalions that the Iron Warriors invested in this offensive battle must not be able to exert their original combat effectiveness in a short period of time.

Soldiers can be replenished at any time, but experienced non-commissioned officers and officers take a long time to cultivate, and without these grassroots backbones, then even the most exquisite tactics cannot be executed, and the overall combat effectiveness of the army will have a sad decline: even for the Astarte soldiers, this is still an unbreakable truth in war.

But there was no doubt that this tactic, which few commanders and armies were able to do, was very effective: it took the Fourth Army less than nine hours to wipe out all the resistance in the fortress world, and the collapse of the five battalions that participated in the battle was ensued.

Unfortunately, Kyle Wallen's Seventy-Seventh Battalion is one of the five camps, even the one closest to the barrage of steel.

Luckily, Kyle survived the battle, and his 77th Battalion had the lowest casualty rate in the battle: it was just the loss of the original war blacksmith, all the company commanders except Kyle, and the 47% casualty rate.

As for the two battalions with the most serious losses, it may take several years for their formations to be established again, but the war blacksmiths and company commanders who have all died in battle obviously have no need to worry about these things.

And Perturabo is even less likely to care about these trivial matters, the Lord of Steel cares: he has managed to save some dignity in front of his blood relatives, and the fall of this fortress world has also paved the way for the Empire's army to march into the Kraken Deep.

As for the loss of a few thousand men, this was not enough to make the Iron Lord feel heartache, and he was complacent that the five battalions he personally led had maintained an attitude of fighting to the death in the face of high casualty rates: in Perturabo's view, this was the tenacity of the Iron Warriors.

The original agreed to Kyle's promotion in the most casual manner, without even a formal written paper: because when the surviving one-eyed warrior came to his genetic father to report the damage, the tyrant of Olympia was excitedly thinking that his blood relatives were explaining the superiority of Xu Jin's barrage tactics.

Perturabo came up with a myriad of data deductions that convinced everyone present: although the loss in nine hours was heart-wrenching, if the siege of the fortress lasted for several weeks according to the regular tactics of the Iron Warriors, the number of casualties would only be greater, and the adverse impact on the situation of the battle would be unpredictable.

In a word.

Perturabo, that's right!

Morgan, of course, did not refute this.

The Lord of Avalon absentmindedly swept over Kyle Wallen's iconic one-eyed face, and taking advantage of the Iron Lord's joy, Morgan casually suggested that Kyle lead his 77th Battalion to join the 14th Battalion led by Dantiok, and then lead some of Avalon's auxiliaries to carry out the mission together, in this unique way, to enhance the tacit understanding between the Far Eastern Frontier and the Iron Warriors.

The Lord of Steel naturally had no reason to refuse such a good intention, and he even gave priority to replenishing the 77th Battalion, and all this also made Kyle standing next to him feel clear: no wonder Dantiok patted his chest in front of him and said that as long as Kyle nodded, he had a [way] for Kyle to fight side by side with him.

The door in Dantiok's mouth is another genetic protologist, right?

When did this guy become so capable?

But no matter how much the new war blacksmith of the Seventy-seventh Battalion complained in his heart about the hands and eyes of his battle brothers, the Iron Lord's order was something he could not refute: in this way, Dantiok's forces merged with Kylvaren's, and Morgan sent her Second Legion, nicknamed the Pale Riders, to help, and this task force was caught between the Daybreaker and the Iron Warriors.

To their left, the tyrants of Olympia, with their own heirs, stormed into the heart of the Kraken Abyss with fanaticism, taking all the vast battlefields into their arms, advancing in untold iron and blood: the blood of their enemies and, of course, their own.

To their right, Morgan leads her Dawnbreakers, absentmindedly sweeping the frannies of the expedition with the aim of returning the crumbling small human colonies to the arms of the Two-Headed Eagle.

The rear of the Dawnbreaker fleet was even followed by a large number of civilian transports, as most of the colonies would choose to abandon their barren and dangerous homelands and board the Dawnbreaker ships as migrants pouring into the Far Eastern frontiers: the empty lands under Avalon would always need these new labor forces, all of whom were promised private land and security.

Caught between the two legions, he watched the Fourth Legion's fleet dwindle in size with brutal naval battles and sieges, and the oppressive atmosphere in the fleet grew day by day, and he watched the Dawnbreaker fleet on the other side gradually overcrowded with countless immigrants, and his ears were filled with laughter and laughter for the rest of his life.

The Iron Warrior only felt that a certain stubborn stone in his heart seemed to be being inadvertently being pried, and he had approached Dantiok and asked him bluntly why he had pulled himself into this position, and his battle brother only smiled and patted him on the shoulder, telling him to continue looking, listening, and feeling.

But Kyle is keenly aware that maybe Dantiok doesn't know the answer to his question either.

Otherwise, this guy is not an obscure character: Dantioc has always been straightforward, and he can even speak out to Perturabo: this is what the Lord of Steel admires most about him, provided that he can win victory after victory.

And since he can't understand it......

So......

Kyle was lost in thought, feeling as if he had caught some signs and sensed something, but he couldn't figure out what they were: and the galaxy they were fighting for didn't seem to be going to give them more time.

……

The Iron Lord's order was given without anyone expecting it, and it was obviously tinged with a hint of anger: the progress of the Genoplasma fleet's siege of the core of the Kraken Abyss was far from smooth, it could only be said that it was progressing little by little, and the news that the enemy was pulling more alien allies to the end had already spread all over the world.

In this case, a company of Iron Warriors suddenly loses contact with the sentry world they are stationed in, and it becomes very sensitive: Dantiok and Kyle Wallen's task force is ordered to resolve the matter and investigate the cause of the company's negligence.

Is it dead, or what's going on?

The original didn't care, he only cared about his plans that had been affected by this.

In this way, the Iron Warriors' fleet remained in this pristine barren world where only moss and fungal plants grew, and they could see their fighting brothers in low-earth orbit building fortresses in this world, but their countless calls for communication were slow to receive even the slightest response.

"Something doesn't look right."

Dantiok frowned, observing the surface pictures that had been taken.

"Look at these places, Kyle, these steel and stone walls show signs of decay, and based on how long the previous company has been in this world, they haven't been long enough to show signs of decay."

"And they don't reply."

Kyle-Valen nodded, equally aware that something was wrong.

"What do you think we should do?"

“……”

Dantiok was silent for a moment, and finally only let out a long sigh.

"I have a bad feeling, Kyle."

"In any case, we must go down and find out the cause of the situation: if we go back like this, we will face more trouble than the world."

"So, do we need to call those mortals of Avalon?"

"Of course."

Dantiok nodded.

"They're the Empress's guards."

"Trust me, Kyle: you're going to be blown away by them."

"So, who are you going to keep in low earth orbit to command the fleet, Dantiok?"

“…… Gilbert, that's it. ”

“…… He? ”

Kyle laughed dumbly.

"How long has he been officially an Iron Warrior? Twenty years? Or thirty years? ”

"In between."

Dantiok snorted softly, a hint of bitterness evident in his voice.

"But for the Iron Warriors, that's a veteran, isn't it?"

“……”

"Indeed."

(End of chapter)