Chapter 141 Abnormal Greenskin Technology

"Mad Dok Ayala! It’s awake!"

The grot Ruben pointed at the greenskin boy on the operating table, shouting excitedly at Mad Dok Ayala.

"Of course it is! I bloody knew it’d wake up. I’m the best bleedin' doc among all the greenskins."

Mad Dok Ayala bellowed with excitement as it strode toward the operating table.

"Where am I? Where’s the golden-skinned git?"

Dakla blinked awake, feeling as though it had just had a dream. In the dream, Gork and Mork had appeared, laughing uproariously as they shoved it back into the material universe.

"You’re in my ’ospital. I cured ya."

Mad Dok Ayala lumbered up to the greenskin boy, puffing out its chest with immense pride.

"Mad Dok Ayala?"

Dakla instantly recognized the massive walking fungus before it. After all, Ayala was quite a notable figure among the local greenskins—though that notoriety leaned heavily toward the negative side.

Back when Ayala was just a regular boy, it never quite fit in with the others. While every other boy spent their days brawling with the local 'umie runts, Ayala stood out by obsessively performing surgeries and studying medical science.

Instead of fighting, Ayala would hole up in a cave day in and day out, dabbling in operations and textbooks. Worse yet, whenever a WAAAGH! ended, it would don a pair of lab coats so blindingly white they hurt the other boys' eyes, taking its pet grot into battle to scavenge the corpses of 'umie doctors for surgical tools and human medical tomes.

"I reckon I was right in the middle of a duel with that 'umie Warboss! How’d I end up with you?"

Hearing Mad Dok Ayala's voice, Dakla remained thoroughly bewildered. How had it been cured? Wasn't it just squaring off against the 'umie Warboss in single combat?

"You got blowed up real good by an 'umie boss with a big shoota. I had my grot Ruben drag ya back and performed a proper, 'regulated' surgery to patch ya right up."

Mad Dok Ayala gazed at the confused giant fungus, briefly recounting the scene they had witnessed at the edge of the battlefield.

"I reckon I didn't die, though. Just took a wee nap. Come to think of it, I had a dream about Gork and Mork. They laughed their ’eds off and shoved me away, and then I woke up."

Hearing the Doc's account, Dakla blinked again, still utterly perplexed.

"You gotta be Gork and Mork’s chosen, Boss Dakla! You’re definitely their chosen one, I'm tellin' ya! You're gonna be a proper Warboss for sure!"

Mad Dok Ayala grew even more ecstatic at Dakla's words. As expected, a greenskin boy capable of going toe-to-toe with an 'umie Warboss was bound to earn the favor of Gork and Mork.

"I reckon so too! I saw Gork and Mork with my own eyes, so I must be their joint chosen one!" Dakla nodded in eager agreement with Mad Dok Ayala. It figured that since it had beheld Gork and Mork, it was undoubtedly their shared champion, destined to become a great Warboss and lead the greenskins in a monumental WAAAGH!

Despite having proven Dakla's special status, the three large fungi were still unable to leave and kick off their grand plan. The island remained swarming with countless 'umie bosses, 'umie runts, and a hostile 'umie Warboss holding down the territory.

"Captain! Where are you? I’m lost! This bloody blizzard is wreaking havoc, and my locator’s busted!"

Out on the battlefield in the outskirts of "Blizzard," the capital city of planet Kothar IV—specifically on the largest island of the world—Wu Xuan was slaughtering his way through hordes of greenskin boys. The power swords mounted on the arms of his Combat Iron Man chassis continually cleaved greenskin heads from their shoulders, while the plasma shoulder cannon fired in a steady rhythm and the twin laser cannons were cranked to full power, sweeping across greenskin bodies like continuous laser cutters.

"Hello, hello... Wu... Wu Xuan... Where are you? We... we’re currently... currently by the east gate of Blizzard City. Where the hell are you?"

The comms channel crackled with broken, static-heavy transmissions reaching Wu Xuan's ears. Due to the eerie interference from the blizzard, signal transmission across all comms units was suffering severe degradation.

"The east gate? Then where the hell am I? There are greenskins all around me! My locator got fried by a weirdboy!"

Upon hearing Hu Jin's voice, Wu Xuan vaporized a greenskin's head with a burst from his laser cannon while shouting back into his communicator. His positioning beacon had been short-circuited during the melee by a rampaging weirdboy channeling warp energy.

"Uh... let me... let me check. Tracking your signal through the comms relay now... You're in the eastern suburbs. Hold on, just keep heading straight to your right, and you'll run right into us."

Hu Jin checked Wu Xuan's triangulated coordinates on his display and relayed the instructions. Since Wu Xuan's beacon was fried, Hu Jin gave him a general vector and told him to push through.

"Got it, I'll do my best to punch through."

Wu Xuan glanced at the sea of surrounding greenskins and their bizarre, cobbled-together armored vehicles, firing back a confirmation. As long as he had a general heading, the rest was just a matter of hacking and slashing a path forward.

Wu Xuan first used his plasma shoulder cannon to turn a dense cluster of greenskins into ash, then swept his twin power swords in a rapid flurry, reducing the hulking green bodies to mangled chunks of fungus.

"Come on! Bring it on! If you scrap-heap relics from the Golden Age can actually manage to kill me, I'll eat my armor!"

Wu Xuan thought to himself as he surveyed the encroaching green tide. He held absolute confidence in his metallic chassis. As long as psychic attacks weren't involved, he was practically an invincible juggernaut on a conventional battlefield. Whether it was the greenskins' massive choppas or crude shootas, to Wu Xuan they felt nothing more than sponge bats and water pistols; none of that gear could even scratch his armor's protective coating.

"WAAAAAGH!!!"

Just as Wu Xuan was carving his path toward the east gate of Blizzard City, a greenskin boy brandishing a power choppa freshly looted from a giant mek lunged from behind, attempting to shatter Wu Xuan's armor with the crackling energy blade.

However, the back of a Combat Iron Man is never a safe place to loiter; an automated laser shoulder turret was permanently programmed to watch its master's six. Of course, that particular greenskin boy happened to be unusually clever.

While applying the word "clever" to a greenskin felt inherently wrong, that specific boy certainly earned the description. Every time the laser turret cycled to fire, it would deftly duck behind another boy, using the unfortunate victim's body as a meat shield against the beam.

*Zzzzt...*

The greenskin successfully closed the distance to Wu Xuan's rear and swung its power-field-crackling choppa downward with gleeful abandon. Yet the blow stopped halfway through its arc, halted dead by the Combat Iron Man's deflector field.

The defense field flickered violently under the stress of the disintegration field, and the suit's tactical systems instantly flashed a rear-attack warning to Wu Xuan.

*Clang, clang, clang...*

Realizing its choppa was blocked by some invisible wall, the greenskin withdrew the weapon and began hammering away at the shimmering shield with frantic, successive strikes.

In greenskin logic, if one swing didn't work, you just needed to hit it a few more times. Keep hacking away, and it was bound to break eventually.

"Dark Age of Technology, you little git."

Wu Xuan pivoted smoothly on his heel and delivered a backhanded sweep, instantly decapitating the persistent greenskin.

"What's this?"

Having dispatched the attacker, Wu Xuan's optical sensors suddenly caught the flickering disintegration field of the dropped iron cleaver. He promptly bent down and retrieved the greenskin's crude power weapon.

"A power weapon? When did the greenskins here get this dangerous?"

Wu Xuan stared in astonishment at the blade in his hand. Though the craftsmanship was crude and utilitarian, it was undeniably a genuine power weapon.

Curious, he tested it on a nearby greenskin charging into his defensive perimeter. Just like his own standard-issue power gear, the disintegration field sliced through armor and flesh with effortless ease.

"This is definitely not good news..."

Examining the weapon in his hand and casually executing a few more greenskins with it, Wu Xuan flipped the power switch off, then hacked the blade into several pieces with his own power sword, reducing it to useless scrap.

"Something's seriously wrong with the greenskins around here. A random grunt is running around with a power weapon—is power gear becoming standard issue now?"

As he fought his way toward the main force, Wu Xuan rapidly processed the tactical data. Giving a power weapon to an ordinary boy was deeply abnormal; normally, such high-output gear was reserved exclusively for bosses or Warbosses. Yet here was a common boy wielding one with ease.

This anomaly pointed to one of two conclusions. Either the greenskins had managed to scavenge a massive cache of Imperial power weapons—which was virtually impossible, given how expensive such gear was to manufacture in the Imperium, and the weapon clearly showed signs of greenskin manufacture anyway—or...

The greenskins had figured out how to manufacture power weapons themselves, and they were on the verge of mass production.

"These aren't your run-of-the-mill greenskins. We need to hit 'em hard and fast."

Gazing at the surrounding green horde, Wu Xuan vividly imagined them flooding Imperial lines tomorrow wielding exotic power tech and advanced weaponry. If they could manufacture power weapons today, they'd be building starships tomorrow. This threat required an overwhelming, decisive response.

"Where the hell is Wu Xuan?"

First Company Commander of the Second Regiment, Ye Fan, asked Hu Jin as he continuously fired bolt rounds into the endless waves of greenskins surging outside the barricades.

"He got lost out in the suburbs, currently conducting some 'high-level cultural exchanges' with the greenskins. Come to think of it, how did you manage to lose him in the first place? I thought he was operating right alongside your squad?"

Hu Jin glanced at the First Company Commander with a helpless sigh. Wu Xuan had gone missing during the march when a sudden blizzard struck, compounded by a surprise greenskin ambush. That was when Wu Xuan vanished into the whiteout.

"Don't look at me like that. Given the situation back then—greenskins crawling everywhere like a green tide—there wasn't much I could do. Besides, I reckoned a Combat Iron Man could easily carve its way through a greenskin mob, so I didn't pay too much attention to him."

Ye Fan scratched his helmeted head and offered Hu Jin an apologetic shrug.

"Sure, sure... But you know dreadnoughts and iron men always get instantly vaporized the second they run into a psyker. If he bumped into a weirdboy and got zeroed, and the greenskins managed to loot his tech..."

Hu Jin trailed off with a shudder. He suddenly recalled the War of the Beast, where high-tech greenskins waged a relentless WAAAGH! all the way to Holy Terra. He shuddered to think what would happen if the greenskins acquired humanity's Dark Age combat iron man technology.

"Well... true enough. But with us here, even if they get their hands on that tech, they won't be making any waves worth mentioning."

Ye Fan pondered Hu Jin's words for a moment, nodded in agreement, and then analyzed the transhumans' overall strategic position.

"Fair enough..."

Hu Jin looked out over the defensive line dotted with fellow transhumans and auxiliary troops, muttering to himself. Ye Fan was right; with immortal transhumans on the ground and the *Imperial Truth* alongside a light fleet in orbit, no amount of greenskin WAAAGH! energy could overturn the strategic balance.

At worst, the transhumans and auxiliaries would just engage in a protracted mutual WAAAGH! with the greenskins to see whose momentum broke first.

Having finished comparing notes with Hu Jin, Ye Fan immediately plunged back into the fray. The defense of Blizzard City was anchored by two primary bastions: the East Gate, defended by the Second Regiment's First Company alongside mortal auxiliaries, and the West Gate, held by the Second Regiment's Second Company, Judith's contingent of Battle Sisters, and a detachment of MacBane's personal guards.

"Commander! Wu Xuan's back! Look!"

In the East Gate command post, Ye Fan burst in so abruptly that Hu Jin jumped out of his skin, sending his data-slate flying across the room.

"He's back?"

Hu Jin swiftly snatched the data-slate out of the air and whipped his head around to face Ye Fan.

"Damn right, Commander! When Wu Xuan showed up, he literally carved straight through the greenskin battleline and walked right back out of the middle of the horde."

Without waiting for a reply, Ye Fan grabbed Hu Jin by the arm and dragged him out toward the ramparts.

Upon reaching the frontline trenches, Hu Jin instantly spotted Wu Xuan. He was impossible to miss; his metallic chassis was plastered from head to toe in coagulated green blood and biological matter—a testament to the fact that low-velocity impacts couldn't pierce his personal shielding.

"Ye Fan, you bastard! The moment I turned my head, you lot had vanished into thin air, and my locator got fried by a weirdboy!"

Spotting Ye Fan, Wu Xuan shouted indignantly. He had been swarmed by a mob of greenskins, and just as he cleared them out and received the retreat order, he turned around to find not a single transhuman—nor even an auxiliary—left in sight.

"Uh... well, you see, things looked a bit dicey, so we pulled back to ensure the auxiliaries' safety. Besides, we broadcasted the retreat signal over the comms!"

Ye Fan looked back at Wu Xuan with an expression of pure, innocent grievance. He couldn't take all the blame; protecting the auxiliary personnel necessitated an immediate withdrawal.

"You bloody idiot, by the time that retreat order went out, you lot were already ghosting!"

Glowering at the seemingly innocent officer, Wu Xuan reached down and hurled an object onto the ground with enough force to kick up a small cloud of dust, venting his lingering frustration.

"What's that?"

Hu Jin and Ye Fan peered down at the object lying in the dirt. It was a crude, greenskin-style cleaver, identical in outward appearance to the weapons the greenskins had been wielding all week, save for visible traces of jury-rigged wiring and circuitry embedded along the spine—elements entirely absent from standard slug choppas.

"A greenskin power weapon. I found it on a greenskin boy out there. These greenskins have started mass-producing power weapons."

Wu Xuan pointed down at the discarded power blade, addressing the two officers. This had been the second power weapon Wu Xuan recovered from a common boy, which practically confirmed that mass production was already underway among the greenskins.