Seth Knight looked down at the black-market dealer sprawled in a pool of blood.
“Viper.”
Hearing his name, Viper scrambled up, slamming his forehead violently against the floor, not daring to lift his head.
Seth Knight tilted his head slightly.
Beside him, Yulia immediately stepped forward in her high heels.
Countess Spencer was now acting like the most dutiful attendant maid.
Carrying a heavy black-steel briefcase in both hands, she walked up to Viper.
“BANG!”
The case slammed heavily into the blood pool mixed with flesh bits, and the hidden latch popped open.
A blinding glow of eerie blue light lit up the passage.
Inside was a full briefcase neatly stacked with Terra Credits, plus over a dozen vials of life-support serums reserved exclusively for Spire nobility.
Picking any single one out would be enough to buy an entire Underhive black market street.
The merchants squatting in the corner nearly had their eyes fly out.
What made their scalps tingle even more was Yulia’s attitude.
That was the ruler of the Spencer family!
Now willingly carrying cases and acting as muscle for a Commodore?
The unbreakable class barrier of the Hive was broken right before this black-haired youth.
Viper’s head buzzed.
Fear dissipated, replaced by extreme greed and fanatical madness overpowering his reason.
Ignoring his blood-covered hands, he hugged the edge of the case tightly, kowtowing frantically.
“My Lord! My worthless life is yours from now on! Point where you want, and Viper will bite!”
Seth Knight exhaled a cloud of blue smoke, his voice indifferent.
“Save the loyalty speech. Take the money and keep buying up stock relentlessly. High-purity palladium across this entire planet—I want all of it.”
The moment he finished speaking, Viper’s face, flushed red with wild joy, turned pale in an instant.
He trembled as he let go of the case and swallowed hard.
“My Lord… there really is no more stock.”
“Hmm?” Seth Knight raised an eyebrow slightly.
Terrified, Viper hastily explained, “Although Talos is a heavy industrial mining planet, the palladium you want is extremely rare even here.”
Pointing at the metal crates behind him, his voice went dry.
“Those crates Karl intercepted just now were stolen from the Spire military depot using every connection I had. Right now, on this entire planet, you can’t squeeze out another ounce of palladium!”
Hearing this, the surrounding air pressure plunged.
“If Talos doesn’t have it, smuggler ships from other star systems will. Take the money and spread the intelligence network. Whenever a merchant ship carrying palladium passes through, report to me immediately.”
Seth Knight turned, the hem of his black trench coat whipping up a gust of wind as he stepped onto the ramp of the Chimera Armored Transport.
“Everyone aboard. Head to our new turf.”
…
The Chimera Armored Transport roared out of the Great Elevator passage, plunging straight into the sky-blotting toxic wasteland haze of the Mid-hive outer perimeter.
After hours of jolting, its treads crushing thick industrial slag, it finally halted.
“Clack.” The rear ramp lowered.
Yulia, following behind, took one look and couldn’t help pulling out a silk handkerchief to tightly cover her nose and mouth.
This wasn’t a defense sector at all—it was an open-air graveyard.
What should have been Sub-hive 17’s military stronghold was now nothing more than a massive, stench-emitting skeleton of steel.
The thirty-meter-high reinforced steel perimeter wall had been violently cut open into dozens of massive gaps tens of meters wide, leaking air on all sides like a sieve.
“Sir…” the bald adjutant’s voice quavered, his hands holding the gun shaking violently, “This… this fucking place was completely sacked by the rebels!”
More than sacked.
It was like a swarm of locusts had passed.
Seth Knight stepped off the transport, his gaze sweeping over the surroundings.
As far as the eye could see, every light and heavy armaments factory was an empty shell.
Dammit.
Even the metal pipes of the underground water purification converters had been uprooted.
Even the geothermal energy station that maintained heating for the Underhive was torn apart, leaving only a crater leaking black sludge.
The ground was covered in rusted metal debris, scrapped armor plating, and mountains of mechanical junk.
Clearly, they had been played by the Minister of Military Affairs.
Scattered among these piles of junk were dense crowds of human figures lying everywhere.
Thousands of remnant PDF troops completely abandoned by the Departmento Munitorum.
Emaciated, lacking even the strength to raise a hand to shoo away carrion flies.
Tattered military uniforms hung off skin-and-bone frames, pairs of green-glowing eyes like hungry wolves in the dark staring fixedly at the newly arrived Chimera Armored Transport.
No faith, no discipline.
Only the most primal craving for carbohydrates.
Yulia shrank behind Seth Knight’s back; she knew all too well what that look meant.
Starving people would chew up and swallow noble bones whole.
Despair instantly washed over the eight veteran bodyguards.
The bald adjutant finally understood the Minister’s venomous smile.
What Major General promotion?
What absolute power?
It was all bullshit!
Throwing them into a death trap with no factories, no supplies, and not even a defense wall.
No need for heretics to act; within two days, these thousands of starving ghosts would riot.
A few dozen guns couldn’t stop the teeth of thousands!
The bald adjutant said, “Lord Commodore… let’s fall back!”
“Before these military thugs have the strength to surround us, let’s hurry back to the Main Hive!”
Seth Knight ignored him.
He walked straight toward the highest abandoned firepower tower in the center of the camp.
At the edge of the twenty-meter-high tower top, howling winds whipped his black hair.
He looked down at the endless ruins below.
To others, this was a man-eating junkyard, a dead end with no way back.
But to Seth Knight…
The endless mountains of metal debris were the richest Minerals in StarCraft!
Those geothermal craters leaking black sludge were prime Vespene Geysers!
Seth Knight’s lips curled into a wildly arrogant arc. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
He raised his right arm abruptly, and a ball of blinding golden psionic flame exploded in his palm with a roar!
“BOOM!”
The Emperor’s divine golden light, bearing absolute divine pressure, pierced through the dense toxic haze of Sector 17 like a mini sun.
Below, thousands of hungry remnant soldiers who were about to move felt this holy power slam directly onto their souls, suffocating them.
They raised their heads in unison, the bloodlust in their eyes turning into utter terror.
Seth Knight’s cold and domineering voice, echoing with psionic resonance, resounded across the ruins:
“Listen up, every last one of you!”
“From today on, this turf belongs to me!”
“Anyone who bares their teeth at me here—I’ll burn you and your bones straight to ash!”
…
At the same time.
Outside Hive 17, several kilometers away in the sandstorm.
Three figures draped in tattered optical camouflage were crouching on the carcass of a scrapped tank.
Holding crudely modified tactical binoculars, they stared intently at the brand-new Chimera Armored Transport in the distance and at Seth Knight standing on the tower top, radiating golden light.
“A big fish has arrived.”
A scout with a cheap bionic eye in his socket licked his dry lips, extreme greed shining in his eye.
“Those imperial fat pigs actually dared to send a high-ranking general to take over these ruins? They even brought two Spire noble chicks!”
The person beside him sneered, tapping the encrypted radio in his hands.
“Notify the leaders at headquarters. These fat sheep definitely have high-purity military rations and high-energy batteries on them.”
“As soon as night falls, we charge in and slaughter them all!”
Hidden intent to kill spread rapidly in the toxic haze.
…
High upon the tower.
Seth Knight naturally detected those messy, hostile glares peering from the outer wasteland.
Rebels?
Insurgents?
Come at me.
The more, the better—just right for Marines to practice target shooting.
Seth Knight extinguished the golden light in his palm, pulled a rolled cigarette from his tactical pocket, and lit it.
At that exact moment…
On his retina, an eerie blue system panel popped up, lines of dark-golden glowing alerts flashing rapidly across the screen:
[Environmental scan complete!
No high-risk Warp entity fluctuations.] [Topographical survey confirmed!
Massive scattered metal mineral veins and geothermal energy detected.] [StarCraft · Terran Command Center STC Template…
Airdrop coordinates locked!] [Execute orbital airdrop deployment immediately?]
Seth Knight took a deep drag of the low-grade tobacco, crushing the spark against the cold metal railing.
“Execute.”