Angron reached up and pressed a palm against the metal ceiling overhead.
“Who said anything about taking the stairs?” Karrus looked toward the blast door ahead.
Behind it came a chorus of weapons racking into battery.
Layer upon layer of locked doors, defenders, and automated turrets.
The High Riders loved playing this game.
They built their towers tall and thick, lined door after door, trapped people inside, and waited for others to climb up the exact paths they had laid out.
In his past life, Angron had seen far too much of this foolishness.
You needed to reach the top floor, yet you were forced to fight through stage by stage.
Lifts locked, stairwells barricaded, security guards and traps waiting every step of the way.
In game terms, it was called linear progression.
In real life, it was called marching to your death.
Outside, the red dots representing the three slave sectors were still winking out.
He had no time to play along with the High Riders’ game.
Angron drove his five fingers into a seam in the ceiling.
The metal crumpled under his grip.
A flurry of panicked footsteps echoed from above.
Someone realized the floor was warping.
Someone started shouting.
The next instant, Angron dropped his stance, engaged his core, and tore the entire section of ceiling down, along with all its conduit and wiring.
BOOM!
Dust and twisted iron crashed down into the subterranean maintenance layer.
Before the guards on the floor above could even look down, a massive dark-green hand thrust up through the hole in the floor.
Angron gripped the rim of the breach and launched his entire body upward into the next floor.
The floor exploded.
Two guards were thrown off their feet, crashing into the wall and going silent.
This floor was a coolant pump room.
Pipes crisscrossed the space, spraying blue-white coolant from ruptured valves.
Four High Rider guards raised their guns, trained squarely on the original stairwell entrance.
Their muzzles were still pointed the wrong way.
Angron came up from beneath their feet.
The first guard had barely turned around before Angron smashed his chestplate deep into the wall with a single fist.
The second tried to sound the alarm, but Karrus vaulted up through the hole, skewering the guard’s wrist with his shock spear before sweeping it across to shatter his knees.
The remaining two were tackled by the veteran gladiators.
Short blades slid into the gaps in their armor.
Not a sound wasted.
The tech-slave and a few maintenance slaves climbed up after them.
The moment their feet touched the floor, they scrambled toward the junction box on the wall.
“This connects to the Urban Relay Tower’s auxiliary line!” The tech-slave panted, his fingers tearing open the casing at blinding speed.
“Can you stall the execution program?” Angron asked.
The tech-slave stared at the wiring for two seconds, his face turning pale.
“I can only slow it down for one sector!” “Which one is dying fastest?” The tech-slave glanced at the terminal.
“The Transport Shaft!” “Delay that one.” The tech-slave didn’t ask why.
He twisted two sparking cables together, his glove catching fire immediately.
Gritting his teeth, he refused to let go and jammed the wires forcibly into the port.
The cluster of red dots on the terminal slowed its blinking.
Only a little.
Enough to buy those people a few more minutes.
Angron saw it, but the tension in his chest didn’t lessen.
A few minutes.
In his past life, when working late over spreadsheets, a few minutes was barely enough time to make instant noodles.
Now, a few minutes meant the lives of an entire slave sector.
“Keep moving.” He looked up toward the floors above.
Above the coolant pump room’s ceiling lay the next level.
The path below had been sealed tight by the High Riders.
The ceiling hadn’t been.
Angron reached out once more.
This time, gunfire rained down first from above.
Bullets whizzed through the cracks in the ceiling, striking his shoulders and back.
Slugs buried themselves in his flesh.
His bones shuddered.
The remaining fragments of the Butcher’s Nails in his brain flared up in response, sending waves of agony churning along his nerves.
Angron closed his eyes for a fraction of a second.
The pain only sharpened his clarity.
Every blinking red dot felt like a thorn lodged in his skull.
He had no time to be angry.
He had to be faster.
Angron grabbed a snapped coolant pipe and shoved it upward.
The metal pipe impaled the ceiling.
Screams erupted from above.
He wrapped both hands around the pipe and yanked down with all his power.
The entire ceiling section collapsed.
Angron charged straight up through the shower of debris.
The next floor was an armed security deck.
The High Rider guards had finally reacted, arranging heavy shields in a semicircle with their muzzles trained on the breach.
The moment Angron’s head emerged, the front rank opened fire in unison.
Muzzle flashes exploded right in his face.
Angron ducked his head and barreled straight through.
The shield wall skidded backward under the impact.
One guard was pinned behind a shield, his chestplate caving directly into his body.
Two others tried to flank him and pierce the back of his knees.
Karrus leapt up from the hole, sweeping his shock spear to force them back.
“Don’t get bogged down!” Angron’s voice echoed through the flashes of fire.
Karrus backed away instantly.
Angron seized two heavy shields with his bare hands.
He pried them apart.
The shield wall tore open.
He stepped inside.
His fist slammed down.
The floor quaked.
The High Rider guards’ semicircle formation was shattered down the middle.
The survivors tried to fall back toward the stairwell.
Angron didn’t chase them.
He grabbed a dead guard and hurled the corpse like a missile, caving in the blast door at the stairwell alongside the bodies trapped against it.
“Up.” He looked toward the ceiling.
The veteran gladiators were already used to this.
They stopped asking for directions and stopped checking doors.
They simply waited for Angron to smash open the next hole above their heads.
The tech-slave pressed himself against a wall console on this deck, his voice raspy with panic.
“The execution program is speeding up again!” “Where?” “The Outer Sector Dormitories!” “Delay it.” “I can only delay one!” Angron paused for a fraction of a second.
Two clusters of red dots were blinking erratically on the screen.
The Transport Shaft.
The Outer Sector Dormitories.
He had saved the Outer Labor Sector.
There were elderly people, children, and workers who knew how to drive maintenance vehicles.
There were people in the Transport Shaft, too.
So many people.
He didn’t know them.
But not knowing them didn’t mean he could just let them die.
Angron stared at the screen, a copper taste of blood filling his throat.
The High Riders had thrown this cruel dilemma right in his face.
Save this side, and the other dies.
Save that side, and this side dies.
He had seen smaller-scale versions of this sickening tactic in his previous life.
Everyone claimed resources were limited.
Everyone insisted you could only choose one side.
And in the end, someone was always reduced to a line item at the bottom of a spreadsheet.
He hated spreadsheets.
He hated stuffing living human beings into spreadsheets even more.
“Which one can you hold off longer?” The tech-slave’s fingers trembled as he calculated at top speed.
“The Outer Sector Dormitories!
The lines are closer!” “Delay that one.” The tech-slave got to work instantly.
Angron turned and grabbed the overhead armor plate.
People were still dying in the Transport Shaft.
He knew it.
The fire in his chest burned hotter, heavier.
He couldn’t stand here grinding his teeth.
He had to go up.
Faster.
When he broke through the third floor, the defenders weren’t standing at the breach.
They had grown smart.
This deck was completely empty except for a single automated turret in the center, its barrels lowered.
The floor was unnaturally clean.
The moment Angron landed, the gravity beneath his feet shifted.
It was subtle.
Like an invisible hand pressing down on his shoulder.
He immediately snapped his gaze upward.
“Back off!” Karrus had just stuck his head up before pulling back instantly.
Blue light rings sprouted from the four corners of the floor.
It wasn’t a full gravity field.
Just a stasis snare.
Angron took a step forward, and the floor beneath pinned his foot firmly in place.
The automated turret swung up.
Its barrels locked onto the hole.
It wasn’t targeting Angron.
It was targeting the people below.
A flash of green glinted deep in Angron’s eyes.
He didn’t pull his foot free.
He wrenched the locked section of flooring straight out of the ground.
The slab ripped up along with its emitter node.
Just as the turret lit up, he hurled the entire chunk of floor right at it.
BOOM!
The turret was crushed into scrap metal.
The blue light died.
“Get up here.” Angron tossed the ruined floor slab aside.
When Karrus climbed up, he glanced at the shredded floor panel.
“They’re setting traps now.” “Means we’re getting close.” Angron walked over to the marker on the wall.
[Urban Relay Tower – Maintenance Level 19] There were still many levels left before the main control core.
He looked up.
“Keep going.” The next few floors grew increasingly chaotic.
The High Rider guards constantly sealed doors.
Angron didn’t use doors.
They set up gun positions at stairwells.
Angron burst through the ceilings.
They laid mines on the floor above.
Angron smashed through side walls, using entire wall panels to plow straight through the minefields.
They flooded corridors with high-voltage electricity.
Angron grabbed the heavy cables, ripped the entire power line out of the wall, and whipped it back into the guards’ rank and file.
With every floor climbed, another batch of red dots vanished from the terminals.
With every floor climbed, the followers spoke fewer words.
No one urged him to hurry anymore.
Urging was pointless.
Angron was already tearing upward at absolute maximum speed.
Faster.
Just a little faster.
He could feel his body continuing to grow stronger.
Pain, residual nerve damage from poison gas, bullets, explosions—it all transformed into a burning heat surging through his veins.
Yet he could also feel time leaking away.
Like sand slipping through a clenched fist.
Which floor was this?
Twenty-seven?
Thirty?
He had lost count.
A punch.
Another punch.
Floors shattered.
Conduits snapped.
Guards screamed.
Dust settled.
They pushed ever upward.
When Angron breached a floor packed with communications equipment, he finally saw a massive holographic display wall.
Projected on it was a partial map of Desh’ea’s lower levels.
Three slave sectors were highlighted in red.
Half the red dots in the Transport Shaft had gone dark.
The Outer Sector Dormitories were still blinking.
Another area, the Workshop Sector, was starting to darken as well.
The tech-slave stared at the screen, his face ash-gray.
“They’ve decentralized execution authority!” “Until we take the main control deck, I can only tamper with peripheral lines!” “Bottom line.” The tech-slave grit his teeth.
“If we’re even a little bit slower, at least half of them die!” Angron raised his head.
A heavy mechanical rumble reverberated from far above.
Decades of stories overhead, something massive was powering up.
He could hear a low hum.
Like a colossal beast awakening at the peak of the tower.
Karrus heard it too.
“What the hell is that?” The tech-slave stared at the main schematic.
“The tower’s elevator core!” “They’re raising the main control deck!” Angron’s gaze darkened.
The High Riders were hauling the command room straight to the top of the tower.
Still buying time.
Stalling until everyone below was dead.
Angron looked around.
At the center of the floor ran a vast hollow shaft extending all the way from the tower’s base to its summit.
Under normal operation, the elevator core moved along this very shaft.
Right now, it had already ascended into the upper reaches.
Separating them were thick armored bulkheads and support beams.
Pursue along the shaft?
Too slow.
Angron stepped to the edge of the shaft and looked up.
It was pitch black inside.
Only distant red lights flickered above.
“Stay on this floor.” Karrus frowned immediately.
“You’re going up alone?” “You can’t keep up.” No one could refute that.
Angron reached out and gripped a maintenance ladder mounted on the shaft wall.
The ladder couldn’t bear his weight.
The top rung snapped instantly.
Instead, he jammed his fingers directly into the solid wall, clinging to the vertical shaft and climbing upward.
After a few strides, he felt it was still too slow.
Angron looked down and spotted a thick elevator cable hanging nearby.
He seized the cable and yanked down hard.
The cable snapped taut.
A metallic crack resounded from above.
Using the recoil, he launched himself upward.
His massive frame shot up into the dark depths of the shaft like a dark-green artillery shell.
The first armored bulkhead blocked the way ahead.
Angron slammed both fists into it.
The metal bulged violently upward.
A second punch.
Fissures spread across the plate.
A third punch.
The bulkhead blasted apart.
He surged higher.
The tower’s sirens grew shrill and deafening.
Automated turrets deployed continuously above, pouring fire down into the shaft.
Lines of fire swept down along the walls.
Angron climbed straight into the storm of fire.
Rounds bit into his shoulders and back.
Some were squeezed back out by his rapidly regenerating muscle.
Others remained embedded in his bones.
He didn’t stop.
His hands gouged deep rungs of ruined masonry and metal into the shaft walls.
Halfway up, a massive section of elevator platform wreckage suddenly plunged down from above.
The High Riders had dropped the discarded platform whole, intending to crush him back down to the tower’s base.
Angron looked up at the looming shadow crushing down toward him.
There was nowhere to dodge.
Nor had he intended to.
He slammed his feet deep into the wall.
He raised both hands skyward.
BOOM!
The wreckage struck his palms.
His arms buckled under the titanic force.
His bones emitted a dull groan.
He was pushed downward dozens of meters.
His feet plowed twin gouges into the shaft wall.
With a low roar, Angron forced his arms straight once more.
Then he shoved the entire platform segment sideways.
The platform wedged tight against the walls of the shaft.
Tremors rumbled all the way down to the bottom.
Far below, Karrus stood looking up.
All he could see were dust and fire.
And that massive silhouette still forcing its way upward.
“Damn,” Karrus swore softly under his breath.
“Now *that’s* how you travel.” Angron didn’t hear him.
He was finally approaching the top of the tower.
The crimson warning lights grew brighter and brighter.
The underside of the main control deck was now in sight.
Thick armor plating encased the entire core.
Like a heart wrapped in an iron shell.
And that heart was still ascending.
Angron grabbed the last remaining cable and pulled his entire body back.
He glared at the armor plate.
Only one thought remained in his mind.
Punch through it.
He let go.
Riding the snap-back, his body hurled itself against the underside of the main control deck.
The first punch connected.
The armor caved in.
The second punch.
Cracks fractured the surface.
The third punch.
Red light leaked through the fissures.
The fourth punch.
The entire armor plate blew wide open.
Angron breached the main control deck.
His feet touched down on smooth black flooring.
The moment he found his footing, he realized how quiet it was.
There was no control console.
No tech-officers.
No walls of messy wiring.
Only a vast, empty circular hall.
Around the hall, silver-white pillars ignited one after another.
Rings flared onto the floor.
The air suddenly grew heavy.
Angron’s knees dipped downward.
Gravity slammed down upon him.
Far stronger than the stasis snare on the lower floor.
A stranger’s voice amplified through the surrounding loudspeakers.
“Welcome, Angron.” “The main control deck is still above this.” “This floor was prepared with something else in mind for you.” Angron raised his head.
Above the circular hall, the ceiling slowly slid open.
A man in white-and-gold power armor hovered in midair, anti-gravity wings flared behind him, clutching a slender melta sword.
Carved into his helmet was the eagle-beast crest of House Talq.
The Captain of the Guard.
He looked down at Angron, who was pinned under the immense gravity.
“You are fast.” “Pity you’re still not fast enough.” Angron pressed against his knees and slowly forced himself upright.
The gravity field hummed violently against his frame.
Far below, another row of red dots in one of the slave sectors flickered out.
Angron locked eyes with the man floating in midair.
The green flare in the depths of his eyes ignited.
“Then I’ll just have to be faster.”