Chapter 64: Exterminate the Orks
Hundreds of thousands of air troops took advantage of the massive casualties among the Ork army to conduct global bombing campaigns, while long-range missiles targeted and destroyed Ork strongholds across the world.
Time passed slowly.
Numerous Ork strongholds and hundreds of attacking Ork forces suffered continuous casualties from the bombardment.
In just one month, Omega reduced the global Ork army to approximately 15 million.
The Ork army, having journeyed from afar over a long and arduous campaign, now fielded only a little over five million at the human military fortress.
On the planet's surface, an army of over five million Orks charged forward from hundreds of kilometers away, braving countless artillery shells and missiles from the sky.
Despite the Orks' extensive experience with anti-aircraft warfare and their development of various technologies, their quantity of anti-aircraft weapons remained too limited.
The sky itself had become a killing ground.
As the two sides drew closer, the Ork army was decimated by large quantities of artillery shells and medium- and short-range missiles.
When they drew close enough, they faced devastating long-range artillery bombardment from the Imperial Army's tank formations, resulting in enormous Ork casualties from the massive barrage.
Finally, the two armies clashed in direct combat. The Titan Legion and Space Marines led the charge, and millions of Imperial heavy mechanized assault troops joined the battle.
Fully armed Ork Boys and massive Ork war machines formed a formidable offensive force. On the human side were Space Marines in full power armor, vast numbers of Titan legions standing tens of meters tall, and millions of tanks that looked like insects compared to the Titans' enormous size.
The clash between the two sides was a collision of machinery and steel, a meeting of mech armies on an epic scale.
Countless shells exploded. Ion beams, lasers, and missile detonations turned the entire area spanning more than 300 kilometers into a single vast battlefield. No part of the land escaped the ravages of war. The fighting transformed the whole topography.
Mountain peaks hundreds of meters high were flattened directly by explosions, leaving behind massive craters and impact sites hundreds of meters across. The landscape lost all ecological character and was savagely scarred by countless battles.
Amidst the endless explosions and smoke, the massive body of the Ork leader piloting a 30-meter-tall Great Gagant mech could be glimpsed through the chaos, a green-skinned warrior of terrible power, muscles thick as ancient trees, moving with lethal grace despite the war machine's bulk.
The mech's power, equivalent to a warlord-level Titan, was maximized in his capable hands.
Omega and the Ork leader were unstoppable on the battlefield, constantly driving toward each other while Space Marines and Ork chieftains clashed in their own mechs nearby.
In the midst of this fierce battle, Omega slayed countless enemies and finally faced the planet's supreme Ork leader, a green-skinned monster possessed of astonishing intellect.
He had risen to dominance through countless brutal challenges among his own kind, each victory hardening his instincts, each wound teaching him survival.
His combat skills were superb, and his application of the massive war machines was ingeniously masterful.
He possessed immense power, near-immortal vitality, and formidable Ork psychic energy, combined with the assistance of his over thirty-meter-tall warlord-class Great Gagant mech. He was the true overlord of this battlefield.
The Ork leader had recognized Omega's power early and rushed forward, unleashing a barrage of cannons and ion weapons that saturated the area before him.
He raised a massive power claw high and charged forward, trying to seize the opportunity to crush Omega's body.
Despite being clad in power armor, Omega moved with the agility of a striking hawk, anticipating incoming fire with mere eye movements. As Omega dodged the barrage and charged toward the Ork leader, a massive power claw blocked his path. The two locked in a tense standoff, and the Ork leader, excited by finally facing a formidable opponent, unleashed a tremendous burst of power to attack.
Power sword clashed against power claw, sparks erupting everywhere. The metal covering the Ork leader's body was unexpectedly hard, with powerful defensive capabilities and layered force-field defenses.
The two engaged in a fierce duel on the battlefield, a 2.5-meter-tall Omega fighting an over 30-meter-tall Ork mech, as if a human fought a giant, with the sword striking massive machinery again and again. Their battle became the center of the entire battlefield. They were the kings of their respective sides.
Boom!
In another clash between sword and power claw, Omega used the momentum to leap forward, stepping directly onto the giant power claw and charging toward the mech's head.
A large number of cannons and ion weapons fired at close range, but Omega evaded them all with practiced precision.
As the Ork leader swept his left hand down, Omega seized the opportunity to leap onto the giant mechanical hand, reaching mid-air before the Ork could react. After more than ten minutes of intense close combat, Omega, skilled in prediction and keen observation, discovered an opening in the Ork leader's defenses.
Like a lightning-fast sword flash, it descended. With a loud bang, the fully charged blade pierced straight into the Ork leader's eye.
Amidst the chaos as the power claw came crashing down, Omega powerfully swept his hand, wounding the opponent's head, then leaped to stand atop the Ork leader's head, evading the retaliatory strike.
With his head injured, the Ork leader's bloodlust surged, immediately creating openings in his attack pattern. In Omega's eyes, who excelled at finding weaknesses, the Ork leader's defensive gaps were becoming increasingly numerous. Another power sword pierced the Ork leader's neck, tearing open a massive wound.
Before long, one fatal wound after another was opened by the power sword. Despite the Great Gagant's excellent defensive capabilities, the extent of the Ork leader's injuries remained profound.
Despite being struck in vital spots, the Ork leader's terrifying vitality and physical resilience allowed him to continue fighting.
Omega therefore slashed at the thirty-meter-high Great Gagant countless times, leaving the Ork leader's mech covered in wounds that wept fluids and exposed mechanisms, each strike methodical, purposeful, wearing down the warlord through accumulated damage rather than a single killing blow.
After an indeterminate period of intense combat, the warlord-class mech of the Ork leader, which had engaged in frenzied slaughter, gradually slowed in its movements.
Finally, it came to a heavy stop and crashed to the ground, sending up an enormous cloud of dust.
The death of the Ork leader greatly boosted the morale of the surrounding Space Marines and Imperial troops, unleashing tremendous fighting power and battle enthusiasm.
Omega, not daring to relax his guard, only breathed a sigh of relief after severing the opponent's head.
He looked at the enormous size of the Ork leader within with something approaching disbelief, marveling at how incredibly thick-skinned and resilient it was, its massive mech armor making it a tank upon a tank upon a tank.
The killing of the Ork leader created a morale crisis among the entire Ork army on the battlefield, because the war against the WAAAGH! was clearly failing. Yet the remaining Orks did not feel negative or frustrated.
Instead, they loved the epic battle they had fought. They genuinely admired the towering Titans and power armor, and were overjoyed to have found such worthy opponents to charge into battle and fight to the death.
The Orks unleashed their carnage, fighting with passion and excitement until the last warrior fell.
The earth became littered with mountains of Ork corpses and wrecked machines, burning with flames and smoke. So many bodies piled up that they covered the battlefield beneath one's feet. In the core combat zone, the corpses of both sides had gradually formed a mountain peak over a hundred meters high.
Everywhere was filled with the smoke of war and the flames of battle. There was no place of peace. Even many of the divine mechanical Titans could be seen destroyed, scattered across the battlefield.
Omega stood in the center of the battlefield, quietly contemplating as he looked at the enormous Ork leader before him, a warrior who had finally encountered a truly formidable opponent.
"Your strength is more than enough to save your own life, but unfortunately, you have run into me."
For more than sixty years, Omega had intentionally trained himself to anticipate and evade attacks.
He had never believed his strength was so great that he could be fearless, nor that he was strong enough to despise nuclear bombs or ion cannons.
He didn't think his exceptional observational skills would always work; at least they had failed him once with Erda.
Once a vulnerability is exposed and cannot be concealed, it becomes easily exploited and targeted by powerful adversaries. How could he possibly leave such a flaw unexplored?
Therefore, he never believed his innate abilities were invincible. Instead, he treated them as auxiliary tools. He had always strived to develop his ability to anticipate attacks and his mastery of the sword, cultivating an incomparably powerful spirit to sharpen his perception and prediction continuously.
Sixty years of continuous mental training had brought his mental perception to an incredible level. Any skill would become great if sustained for sixty years, let alone one possessed by a demigod-like Primarch who also had a natural talent for observation.
He had honed his perception based on his innate talent, and he believed few among the Primarchs could rival him in this discipline.
Omega couldn't defeat this Ork leader in a direct head-on confrontation in a short timeframe, but once the Ork showed weakness, his death was imminent and inescapable.
The fierce battle ended. With this war as a turning point, the Alpha Legion gained complete dominance across the entire planet Veredian. The whole legion was divided into seventy units to clear out and expand their territory continuously.
The previous concentration of 20 million Orks had depleted Ork forces across a vast region, so the legion easily occupied most of the planet.
However, the Alpha Legion no longer focused on building fortresses for defense. Instead, it continuously compressed the remaining Ork army's territory. The Ork strongholds scattered across the planet could not withstand the Legion's attacks and fell one after another.
Finally, a fierce final battle erupted between the two sides on another continent, and the Ork army, having lost its leader, was annihilated.
On the planet's surface, the army began burning Ork corpses to prevent them from transforming into spores and spreading throughout the world. Otherwise, come spring, spores would sprout from the earth and whole colonies of Gretchin, Squigs, and Snotlings would emerge from the soil, beginning the Ork life cycle anew.
It took half a year from entering the Veredian system to the conclusion of the war.
On the space bridge, Omega reflected on the mathematics of conquest. A single company with millions of Imperial soldiers could usually conquer a planet in a month.
In other star sectors, he could easily dispatch numerous company commanders to conquer various worlds, only needing to report to high command which planets had fallen.
Now, bringing his entire legion here, it had taken him half a year to conquer an Ork planet, expending countless amounts of ammunition.
More than 50 million missiles alone had been consumed. The Orks destroyed many Titans and tanks. The benefit of spending such enormous quantities of ammunition was that Alpha Legion casualties remained within acceptable parameters over the six-month campaign.
Omega, relieved that the war was finally over, was drinking coffee when he noticed Magos Albert beside him and asked with a slight smile.
"Has your Mechanicus developed a method to eliminate nuclear contamination?" Albert replied with respectful formality.
"Yes, though only suitable for small-scale applications. Even the headquarters of the Martian Mechanicus has only a small group of members capable of performing nuclear radiation cleanup. I have a general understanding of this technology, but it is too sophisticated for large-scale deployment."
After listening, Omega understood that nuclear radiation cleanup within the Mechanicus was a matter of individual capability. One person's ability was far too limited. It would require considerable time to clean up the nuclear radiation caused by atomic bomb explosions.
There existed a concept of the completeness of a nuclear weapon's detonation. The more completely the atomic fuel is released, the less residual contamination remains.
If a hydrogen bomb detonation was sufficiently robust, the radiation dispersed into the surrounding environment, though spread across a wide area, would gradually dilute over time to levels tolerable for human habitation.
This process took decades. Nuclear contamination from atomic bombs might require hundreds of years to dissipate entirely.
This was also why human imperial armies generally did not employ nuclear weapons on a large scale.
A conquered planet held value only if it remained habitable. It would be far too unwise to win a war and lose an entire world.
[End of Chapter]
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