Chapter 146: Wang Ming, the Aggro Magnet

Where the spear of light ray passed, everything was incinerated. A massive scar of the light-beam strike extended all the way from the ground, melting the accumulated snow and vitrifying the earth in its wake.

The attack trace of this single light spear could even be observed from outer space; a pitch-black gash ran straight across the entire valley, piercing through several surrounding mountain peaks along the way.

"Lads, follow me! That 'umie boss isn't wearing any armor, chop 'em up!"

Just as Wang Ming was pondering how to put on his armor, a sudden greenskin roar echoed out.

Although the surrounding greenskins could not understand why Wang Ming was still alive after being struck by the light spear, they knew that the 'umie boss was unarmored and must be extremely easy prey.

"Uh... when did these greenskins learn to take advantage of someone's misfortune?"

Wang Ming looked at the surrounding greenskins, then glanced down at the steaming golden greatsword and infinite-ammo bolter on the ground. He thought to himself that the material of these things was truly overpowered—even the light spear ray had failed to melt them.

"Are these things custom-made by the Emperor Himself?"

Gazing at the weapons on the ground, Wang Ming silently opened the system store. After all, getting dressed was a priority; standing stark naked on a battlefield as a four-and-a-half-meter giant was far too embarrassing.

"Um... brothers, cover me. I'm going to... put on some clothes..."

Wang Ming awkwardly said to the surrounding resurrected Transcendent Legion members, his tone as awkward as it could possibly be.

"Don't worry, Boss! We will definitely protect you while you... put on your clothes. Besides, the brothers are still in a state of rage."

A Transcendent standing near Wang Ming replied with his back turned to him. As for why he turned his back, there was no other reason—Wang Ming's current state was simply too blinding to look at.

"Er..."

Wang Ming looked extremely awkwardly at the backs of the Transcendent soldiers and hurriedly retrieved a set of ceremonial armor from the store, rapidly strapping it onto his body.

"Waaagh!!!"

The greenskins once again launched a frenzied charge against the defensive lines of the Transcendent soldiers, attempting to break through and hack down Wang Ming, the 'umie boss.

The boyz were extremely excited; they had never fought such a proper "Waaagh!" before. The enemies seemed endless, multiplying the more they fought, which thrilled the greenskin boyz to no end. This was the endless war that greenskin boyz lived for.

"Boss! Are you done putting it on yet? I think I saw that red light again!"

Suddenly, a Transcendent shouted to Wang Ming, having just caught a glimpse of the greenskin light-spear's charging glow.

"Done! Run, brothers!"

Hearing the Transcendent's warning, Wang Ming vanished from his original position in a flash.

Wang Ming's speed was blistering. After he bolted, the Transcendent soldiers were still sluggishly moving aside—the speed of Ironclad Terminators was simply too slow.

"What the hell! Boss! You ran so fast, what are we supposed to do?! Are you really just going to abandon us now that you have infinite respawns?!"

The Transcendent soldiers stared in astonishment as Wang Ming disappeared almost like a teleportation, thinking helplessly in their hearts.

"Bzzzt! Pop!!"

Watching the charging glow of the greenskin light spear and bracing themselves to die once more, the Transcendent soldiers saw the greenskin light-spear matrix flicker with red light a few times before suddenly exploding. The blast instantly turned all the surrounding greenskin boyz and grots into fresh, crispy roasted giant mushrooms.

"The quality of these greenskin contraptions is truly Schrödinger's engineering."

Wang Ming remarked with a sigh as he looked at the massive expanding fireball. The light-spear matrix was purely cobbled together from all sorts of bizarre garbage; who knew how the greenskins managed to resolve its structural integrity and operating principles? Being able to fire even a single shot was entirely a miracle brought forth by the Waaagh! field.

"Now, let's start over! Slaughter these xenos!"

Gazing at the explosive glare, Wang Ming swiftly grabbed the head of a greenskin charging toward him, applied a bit of force, and instantly turned the greenskin into a headless corpse.

"Come on! Kill me, xenos! Bring out that coward of a boss of yours!"

Wang Ming hurled the headless corpse into the midst of the greenskin horde. Just as before, the kinetic impact caused the greenskin's body to explode violently.

"'Umie! Who you calling a coward?!"

Just as Wang Ming roared and prepared to plunge back into the greenskin horde to slaughter them, a tremendous bellow suddenly echoed from deep within the mob.

"The Warboss!"

Hearing the roar, which practically drowned out the gunfire of the battlefield, Wang Ming thought to himself that with such presence and retort, it could only be the greenskin tribal Warboss.

"It's you! You coward! You only hide behind the boyz! You fight like an 'umie sissy!"

Wang Ming roared toward the source of the voice, knowing he had successfully provoked the beast and now only needed to fan the flames a little more.

"You 'umie!"

The Warboss was successfully enraged. It began charging frantically toward Wang Ming, knocking away every greenskin boy that stood in its path.

"Oh ho, quite tall indeed."

As the greenskin Warboss drew closer, Wang Ming took in its height. It stood well over five meters tall, towering a whole head above Wang Ming himself.

"Uh... no weapon... oh well, whatever!"

Wang Ming checked his equipment and suddenly realized he had forgotten to grab a new set of weapons. His previous gear was still radiating intense heat; he couldn't possibly pick them up unless he wanted his palms roasted well-done.

"Come on, you absolute buffoon! You're nothing more than a walking pile of garbage! You're just an oversized greenskin mushroom!"

Wang Ming charged toward the greenskin Warboss as well, hurling a stream of classic terrestrial insults at the top of his lungs.

"Wham!"

The moment Wang Ming and the greenskin Warboss collided, Wang Ming delivered a fierce uppercut straight to the Warboss's jaw, snapping its head violently backward.

However, this did not stop the brute from retaliating. Wielding a massive power cleaver, it slashed swiftly toward Wang Ming's arm. The beast's speed was in no way inferior to Wang Ming's; though Wang Ming pulled his arm back rapidly, he still failed to evade the blade completely.

The disruption field swept across Wang Ming's wrist, severing his hand clean off in an instant. Yet, feeling no pain, Wang Ming kicked the greenskin Warboss away and quickly widened the distance between them.

Wang Ming looked down at his hand lying on the ground, growing more irritated by the second. He had never suffered such an injury even when fighting Angron. Instantly, Wang Ming's wound stopped bleeding and began to heal at a visible rate—a trait of being a Perpetual, one of the characteristics of Wang Ming's "deathless and indestructible" ability. Wang Ming's immortality was very similar to that of a true Perpetual, yet it possessed subtle differences, though what those differences precisely were, even Wang Ming could not quite explain.

"Damn it all!"

The more he thought about it, the angrier Wang Ming became. With a roar, he charged at the greenskin Warboss once more. Using his remaining hand, Wang Ming lunged forward, grabbed the arm holding the power cleaver, and yanked with all his might, forcefully dragging the greenskin Warboss crashing to the ground.

"Thud!"

Watching the fallen greenskin Warboss, Wang Ming raised a booted foot and stomped down viciously, snapping the arm that held the power cleaver in half.

"You seem to really like this big chopper!"

Wang Ming picked up the power cleaver, intending to sever the head of the downed greenskin Warboss. But a greenskin Warboss capable of rising to its position was no ordinary creature.

Glares burning with bloodshot fury, it stared up at the descending blade, slammed its foot down hard to propel itself backward, and narrowly dodged the lethal strike. Scrambling swiftly to its feet, the Warboss fixed Wang Ming with a wary gaze. The pain it had just endured had shocked the beast back to sobriety; the intelligence of a greenskin Warboss was rarely low.

"Heh, now we're even."

Looking at the beast before him, Wang Ming held the power cleaver horizontally across his chest and pointed it at the greenskin Warboss. Now, both the Warboss and Wang Ming were missing a hand, but the weapon was in Wang Ming's possession.

"You... you're the 'umie boss. I 'spect you shouldn't be dis strong. You must be dat 'umie ting called 'Da Emperor'!"

The greenskin Warboss stared at Wang Ming, its bloodshot eyes rolling around in their sockets before it spoke. As a devoted follower of Gork and Mork, it had received the favor of Mork and was exceptionally cunning and fierce. After all, it had seized the position of Warboss through various greenskin "tricks." Of course, its raw personal strength was also formidable, or it would have long since been beaten to death by other bosses.

"Trying to distract me."

Wang Ming looked at the greenskin before him, thinking to himself that he could read the Warboss's intentions instantly—mostly because its hand sneaking toward its trouser pocket was far too obvious.

"Swish!"

Wang Ming lunged forward in an instant, slicing off the Warboss's remaining hand with a single sweep of the blade. The Warboss stared at Wang Ming in utter bewilderment, its tiny blood-red eyes filled with disbelief. How could this "trick," which had fooled countless rival bosses, fail to work on this 'umie boss?

"Well... you're just too stupid."

Glaring at the Warboss before him, Wang Ming severed its head with one clean stroke. Without the slightest resistance, the disruption field slid smoothly across its neck, sending its heavy skull tumbling to the hard earth.

"Thud!"

Wang Ming crushed the hideous greenskin skull beneath his heel, then kicked the headless corpse of the Warboss over. Seizing the jagged, severed neck-stump of the Warboss, Wang Ming dragged the headless body right to the edge of the greenskin horde.

"Your Warboss is dead!!"

Wang Ming tossed the headless corpse forward, and it landed heavily right in front of the countless greenskin boyz. The greenskin boyz stared blankly at the headless body, looking at one another as if trying to figure out what to do.

"Waaagh!!! Whoever hacks him to bits is the new Warboss!!"

Suddenly, a greenskin that was obviously a boss leaped out from the mob, roared at the surrounding greenskin boyz, and charged straight at Wang Ming. Seeing their boss charge, the rest of the boyz surged forward as well, everyone eager to claim the title of Warboss.

"Uh... do you think the Boss is trying to tell us something by doing this?"

A Transcendent soldier witnessed the entire process of Wang Ming's duel with the Warboss. Watching Wang Ming get swarmed by greenskins all over again, he turned to ask his companion.

"Well... the Boss definitely has a profound plan in mind... probably?"

His companion thought for a moment before replying, though his tone carried an immense amount of uncertainty.

"What do you mean by 'probably'?"

The Transcendent asked curiously, noting how ambiguous his companion's final word had been.

"Er... nothing much, I'm just a bit unsure what the Boss is actually trying to accomplish. Is he planning to solo an entire greenskin tribe all by himself?"

The companion replied, watching the steady stream of greenskin corpses flying out from Wang Ming's direction.

"That's true..."

The Transcendent looked toward Wang Ming, wondering if they should go and lend a hand—though come to think of it, the Boss should be able to handle it himself, right?

"Damn it! This is totally different from before! In the past, whenever a Warboss died, the greenskins would immediately rout. What is wrong with these greenskins? Why are they getting even more excited?!"

Wang Ming continuously slaughtered the surrounding greenskins. The greenskin power cleaver was certainly formidable; despite the sheer number of foes, mowing down greenskins was like child's play for him, the disruption field instantly slicing through their bodies as if they were made of tofu.

"Bang, bang, bang..."

While Wang Ming was locked in fierce combat, the other Transcendent soldiers were also battling the remaining greenskins. To their surprise, the death of the Warboss had not caused the greenskins' command structure to collapse. After a brief period of chaos, the greenskins had reorganized under various subordinate bosses and resumed fighting the Transcendents.

"Dammit, these greenskins really aren't normal!"

Wang Ming fought his way out of the dense throng of greenskins, retrieved his sword and bolter from where he had dropped them earlier, and charged off in the exact opposite direction of the civilian evacuation zone. He knew the greenskins' attention was now fully focused on him, making it the perfect opportunity to draw all of them away.

Taking advantage of the window where Wang Ming was drawing away the greenskins, let us shift our perspective back to the island.

On the island, the Transcendent soldiers and mortal auxiliary troops had cleared out all remaining greenskins—though none of them knew that two greenskins and a grot were still hiding in a certain cave.

The First Engineering Company had arrived at the island from the "Truth of the Imperium." Various STC templates were being deployed by them into every city on the planet of Castr Four. The industrialization plan for Castr Four was being carried out concurrently with the war; other Transcendent units were responsible for fighting, while the First Engineering Company was responsible for building.

In a newly developing industrial zone outside a city, Xu Zheng stood amidst the howling wind and swirling snow. Beside him, Transcendent soldiers and clusters of tech-priests bustled about busily as STC fabricators continuously manufactured various architectural panels.

"Praise be to the Omnissiah, the power of the Machine God shall manifest upon this world."

Omm Garladton gazed at the STC template before him, so excited he was practically leaking holy oils. These STC templates had always been managed directly by the First Engineering Company, making them utterly untouchable to ordinary tech-priests. Naturally, the tech-priests would never willingly accept such an arrangement; in their belief, all sacred STC templates were the property of the Machine God, and as the mortal representatives of the Machine God, these holy STC templates ought rightfully to be kept in the custody of His pious servants.

Because of this matter, the tech-priests had once boldly marched up to protest before Wang Ming, only to fall completely silent after hearing a single question from him.

"Can you maintain these STCs?"

At the time, Wang Ming had looked at the aggressive group of tech-priests and calmly uttered those words, instantly leaving them utterly speechless. Indeed, they could not.

This singular fact made these tech-priests extraordinarily eager to participate in operations alongside the First Engineering Company. After all, this was their only chance to get close to the sacred STC templates. Even if all they were allowed to do was perform minor rituals to soothe the machine spirits, they were more than content just being in the presence of the holy STCs.