After thoroughly purifying the commander of the Death Guard battleship, Sigismund did not delay for a moment.
He contacted the nearest Imperial Navy patrol fleet in that star system via an encrypted channel, issuing absolute orders in the name of Primarch Dorn: all these contaminated warships were to be towed to the star's orbital path, plunged into the stellar core for complete incineration, allowing no blasphemous remnants to remain in existence.
After completing all this, the Black Templars fleet used the brief lull to urgently repair the most severe damage.
The battleship hulls were covered with traces of corrosion and gunfire, and some compartments were still under quarantine, but the core systems and thrusters had regained basic functionality.
The massive body of the eternal crusade once again adjusted its direction, and with the roar of its engines, the fleet re-entered the Warp, continuing its journey towards the Death World.
Meanwhile, the battle on the Death World was escalating.
The defensive line Osiris initially established, though stable, saw a significant change in the Ork offensive.
These beasts were no longer just charging with brute force and crude weapons; their equipment had visibly "improved."
Crude but powerful artillery was set up, bombarding the Adeptus Ministorum Troops' positions; the previously haphazard armored vehicles became more threatening, and even clumsy tank-like creations appeared.
Even more alarming, exceptionally large Ork Bosses, clad in heavy, patched-up armor, began appearing on the battlefield, wielding massive power klaws or roaring chain axes, bellowing commands to the Ork hordes, their combat intelligence and ferocity far surpassing that of ordinary Ork Boyz.
Osiris calmly analyzed the battlefield situation.
Orks indeed possess a peculiar "stronger with every fight" ecology, constantly evolving through warfare, but this usually requires a relatively lengthy process and a sufficiently large population base.
According to Imperial historical records, after the large-scale purges of Ork empires during the time of the Emperor and Horus, most surviving Ork tribes degenerated, making it difficult for them to spontaneously evolve such scale and level of combat power in a short period.
"This rate of evolution is abnormal," Osiris' synthetic voice resonated in the command center, carrying a definite judgment.
"There are external factors catalyzing them, accelerating their war-driven evolution process.
The mastermind behind this not only threw them here but is also 'feeding' them."
He directed the frigates in orbit to intensify bombardment of suspected command nodes and weapon stockpiles behind the Ork lines, while also ordering frontline troops to adopt more flexible defensive tactics, focusing on eliminating Ork Mekboyz and Bosses who appeared to be "inventing" or "commanding," attempting to disrupt this abnormal escalation chain.
The base's defenses remained solid, but pressure was continuously mounting.
Faced with the suddenly escalating battlefield pressure, Osiris' computational core was not solely occupied by simple defensive logic.
A peculiar premonition, based on massive battlefield data and past experience, was forming—he could not be led by the nose by this unknown enemy.
If he merely resisted the Orks' increasingly powerful waves of attacks step by step, the ultimate outcome would likely be exhaustion in a war of attrition, and by then, it probably wouldn't just be Orks appearing.
He had to break this cycle, disrupting their deployment in a way that exceeded their expectations.
He ceased giving orders to send reinforcements to the defensive line, his massive dark red mechanical body turned, and a mechanical hand reached into a hidden interface on his chest armor, retrieving a smooth, unmarked black cube.
This was a dimensional storage device, containing ancient technological artifacts he had collected, some not yet fully analyzed or cautiously sealed due to their risks.
After a series of rapid and precise operations, a faint glow appeared on the cube's surface, and a storage slot silently slid open.
Osiris took an object from it—it was only fist-sized, completely black, with a surface so smooth it seemed to absorb all light, devoid of any energy fluctuations, interfaces, or patterns; its material and principle were entirely alien to the current Adeptus Mechanicus tech-tree.
Osiris did not hesitate, performing an operation on this black sphere that outsiders could not comprehend, seemingly activating some built-in trigger mechanism.
Then, he summoned an absolutely loyal Adeptus Ministorum Troops soldier.
"Deploy it to the center of the most densely populated Ork area," Osiris handed the black sphere to the soldier, his instructions clear and cold, "Ensure accurate delivery, then immediately withdraw."
The order was executed without fail.
A shuttle quickly ascended, avoiding sparse anti-air fire, and sped towards the core area behind the Ork tide.
Below, the Ork Legion surged and roared like a green ocean, vast in number and menacing in their momentum.
Upon reaching the target point overhead, the hatch opened, and the inconspicuous black sphere was dropped vertically, falling towards the noisy green center.
There was no deafening explosion, no soaring flames, and no ripples of energy impact.
The moment the sphere touched the ground, there was only an extremely brief "black flash," as if it could swallow even light, that flickered by.
Immediately following, a suffocating scene unfolded.
Centered on the impact point, a perfect spherical area with a five-kilometer radius, along with the densely packed green Orks within it, their crude weapons, vehicles, and even all the rocks and soil of the surface, instantly vanished without a trace.
There were no fragments, no dust, as if wiped away from thin air by an invisible giant hand, or as if completely excised from this universe's coordinates by some force.
Only an incredibly smooth, perfectly hemispherical giant crater remained on the spot.
The surviving Orks were clearly shocked by this strike, which was beyond their comprehension.
The perfect spherical crater brought not only physical destruction but also a cognitive impact.
The previously surging green tide instantly lost its unified command and its fanatical momentum, becoming chaotic and hesitant.
Perhaps the black sphere had precisely erased the war leaders of this Ork force along with their bodyguards from the world, or perhaps the instantaneous loss of a large number of their kind and equipment exceeded the threshold this tribe could bear, causing a cliff-edge collapse in the Ork war system, which was sustained by the will of "Gork and Mork" and collective Waaagh!!! energy.
Although the remaining Ork Boyz still instinctively roared and fired sporadically, they could no longer organize an effective offensive.
They began to shove each other, and even started infighting over leadership.
The battlefield situation took a sharp turn for the worse.
Osiris did not miss this opportunity.
He calmly ordered the Adeptus Ministorum Troops and the Astoria Squad to launch an offensive, clearing out the remaining Orks.
The heavy footsteps of the knight mecha and the roar of Adeptus Ministorum Troops' weapons once again became the main theme of the battlefield, but this time, it was a one-sided crushing and clearing operation.
However, Osiris' troubles were not limited to these.