This is the bonus chapter for reaching 300 Powerstones.
--
The servo-motors of Paul's Power Armor ran at maximum capacity. The hydraulic system in his legs compressed to its absolute limit, and then released.
Every stride blasted a crater into the sand. His speed skyrocketed to eighty kilometers per hour in just three seconds!
A thousand meters was a distance that took a mortal three to five minutes to cross. To an Astartes...
"Open fire!!!"
Magnus finally snapped out of his daze and roared hoarsely.
The artillery thundered.
Three modified cannons fired simultaneously. The shells arched through the sky, trailing white smoke.
The figure didn't even attempt to dodge.
The first shell landed ten meters to his front-left, blasting up a geyser of sand and gravel.
The second shell missed by an even wider margin.
The third shell... actually hit.
"Direct hit!" the artillery crew cheered.
But the cheer instantly died in their throats.
Because the figure charged straight out of the explosion's smoke cloud, completely unscathed.
A pale green psychic barrier flickered around him, perfectly dispersing the shockwave of the blast.
"Lasguns! Focus fire!" Magnus roared.
Over a thousand lasguns opened fire from the wall simultaneously.
A torrential downpour of crimson laser beams rained down.
The figure finally stopped.
Standing three hundred meters from the wall, Paul raised his head.
Beneath the helmet's faceplate, his eyes were as calm as a deep pool.
The Wisdom trait operated silently, perceiving the souls of the bandits on the wall. Greed, cruelty, bloodlust... and heavy, profound sin.
He saw it all.
The man called "Bonebreaker" Magnus had personally murdered five hundred and thirty-seven resisting townsfolk, and sold the wives and daughters of seventy-seven families to passing slavers.
"One-Eyed" Jeremy specialized in torturing prisoners with instruments for fun. In his basement, he still kept over a dozen mutilated "toys" locked away.
And there were more.
Torturers, rapists, human traffickers...
During the thirteen years under the Iron Claws' rule, Bordeaux Town had become a living hell.
"Alright then."
Paul muttered softly to himself.
He raised his right hand, gripping the Bolter, and aimed it one-handed without even needing to look down the sights.
BANG!
The first mass-reactive bolt fired.
It struck the wall.
The .75 caliber bolt hit the support structure of a firing bunker on the left side of the wall.
BOOM!
The stone and brick shattered. The entire bunker collapsed, burying the five bandits inside beneath the rubble.
BANG! BANG! BANG!
Three consecutive bolts accurately struck the three heavy stubber emplacements on the wall.
In the explosive flashes, the machine guns were reduced to twisted scrap metal, and the gunners were turned into a mist of blood and meat.
The firepower from the wall instantly faltered.
Paul slung the Bolter back onto his shoulder.
He drew the Chainsword.
His thumb pressed the activation stud.
VRRRMMMM!!!
The roaring of the furiously spinning teeth instantly drowned out all the gunfire, artillery blasts, and screaming.
It sounded like an enraged beast of steel roaring in unison. It carried a pure aesthetic of absolute violence, making the hearts of everyone who heard it vibrate in their chests.
And then, he charged again.
Faster this time.
Three hundred meters in four seconds.
The bandits on the wall didn't even have time to swing their guns around before the three-meter-tall metal giant reached the base of the wall.
Paul bent his knees slightly. The hydraulic system in his legs compressed to the limit.
BOOM!!!
The sand beneath his feet blasted into a two-meter-wide crater.
His entire body launched into the air like an artillery shell!
To him, a five-meter-tall wall was nothing more than a slightly elevated threshold.
"He jumped up here!!!"
Amidst the terrified screams, Paul landed perfectly on the top of the wall.
The stone beneath his boots cracked like a spiderweb.
Paul moved.
A horizontal sweep of the Chainsword.
Three bandits standing side-by-side were bisected at the waist. Supported by the power field, the monomolecular edge sliced effortlessly through flesh and bone.
He spun around. A bandit trying to aim a rocket launcher at point-blank range was cleaved perfectly in half, weapon and all.
A casual forward thrust. The Chainsword pierced straight through a gunner's chest. The spinning teeth pulverized his internal organs into meat paste, carrying a spray of blood with it as the blade erupted from his back.
This wasn't a battle.
It was a slaughter.
The absolute disparity in strength between an Astartes and mortal soldiers was put on full display at this very moment.
Relying solely on the strength, speed, and defense granted by the Power Armor, combined with the violent tearing of the Chainsword, Paul unleashed a massacre right in front of thousands of people.
He deliberately avoided the low-level grunts who bore lesser sins or were forced to join. The Wisdom trait acted like a radar, guiding his blade precisely toward those steeped in the heaviest sins.
Twenty seconds.
From vaulting onto the wall to clearing this fifty-meter stretch, it took exactly three minutes and seven seconds.
Over five hundred and eighty-seven bandits were defeated. Five hundred and sixty-nine died instantly; the rest were severely wounded.
Paul walked to the inner edge of the wall and looked down into the town.
The streets of Bordeaux Town were much more neatly laid out than Red Town or Merida Town. After all, it was an industrial outpost planned during the blaec era.
The central avenue was wide enough for two transport trucks to drive side-by-side. It was lined with two-story stone longhouses—shops on the ground floor, living quarters above.
Right now, the streets were in total chaos. Bandits swarmed out from everywhere, trying to organize a defense.
But Paul didn't give them the chance.
He raised his Bolter and aimed at the watchtower in the center of town.
At the top of the tower, Magnus and Jeremy were trying to shout orders.
BANG!
A bolt struck the support pillar of the watchtower perfectly.
RUMBLE!
The fifteen-meter-tall watchtower began to tilt. Stone and brick crumbled, and amidst screams of terror, it slowly collapsed.
Magnus and Jeremy desperately jumped from the top, landing hard on the roof of a building below, battered and bruised.
Paul vaulted off the wall.
From a height of five meters, the Power Armor's shock absorbers perfectly absorbed the impact. He landed, kicking up nothing more than a ring of dust.
He walked toward the central avenue.
The bandits tried to stop him.
Over thirty men charged out of an alley, spraying solid slugs and laser beams at him.
Paul didn't even break his stride.
A psychic barrier expanded in front of him. The bullets and lasers struck the barrier and instantly bogged down, as if caught in thick mud, their velocity plummeting before they clattered harmlessly to the ground.
He raised his left hand, palm facing forward.
Resolve trait.
Dark red psychic ripples pulsed outward, and the temperature in the air instantly spiked.
A burst of pure thermal radiation erupted.
Within a thirty-meter radius, the bandits screamed and collapsed. Their skin blistered and charred black, and the weapons in their hands grew blistering hot and warped out of shape.
These men were gradually melted into nothingness.
Paul walked past them without a shred of pity.
He kept moving forward.
More bandits surged in from all directions, but upon seeing the fate of the men before them, the vast majority chose to... run.
"Monster! He's a monster!"
"We can't kill him! He's unkillable!"
Panic spread like a plague.
By the time Paul reached the middle of the central avenue, there wasn't a single bandit left on the street who dared to stand in his way.
Only corpses, the wounded, and discarded weapons remained.
And the townsfolk hiding behind doors and windows, watching everything in absolute terror.
Paul stopped.
He raised his head and looked forward.
Magnus and Jeremy had finally managed to organize their last line of defense. Roughly four hundred core members—veterans who had followed them through years of burning, killing, and looting. They were the best-equipped and the most vicious.
These men blocked the end of the road. Right behind them was the entrance to the underground manufactorums.
"Brothers!" Magnus roared, the three claw scars on his face twisting hideously. "We've got no way out! Our entire stash is right behind us! If we let these unknown bastards take it, everything we've saved up over the years is gone!"
He raised his master-crafted lasgun—a prize scavenged from the blaec armory. It was thirty percent more powerful than a standard lasgun, and it was his most prized trophy.
"There are over four hundred of us! Are we scared of one guy?!"
"Fight to the death!"
The bandits' eyes were bloodshot. They knew Magnus was telling the truth.
Hidden in the blaec manufactorums beneath Bordeaux Town was the wealth accumulated from eight years of raiding:
Food, purified water, weapons, luxury goods hijacked from passing caravans, and even a few barely functioning construction mechs.
It was their lifeblood.
Paul looked at the crowd.
The Wisdom trait swept over them. Every single soul was soaked in blood, their sins so heavy they had practically solidified.
He nodded.
This was fine too.
It saved him the trouble of screening them later.
He sheathed his Chainsword.
Not because he was going to hold back, but... because he was going to use a more efficient method.
Paul raised both hands, palms facing each other.
Hope, Compassion, Resolve, Pioneering, Wisdom. For the first time in actual combat, all five major traits activated simultaneously.
A five-colored psychic energy gathered between his palms. It compressed, spinning rapidly, eventually forming an orb of light the size of a basketball, shimmering with five shifting colors.
Inside the orb, it looked as if stars were being born and dying, magma was flowing, and lightning was intertwining.
Magnus's pupils violently contracted.
His feral instincts screamed at him that whatever that thing was, it was incredibly dangerous.
"Open fire!!!"
He roared at the top of his lungs.
Over four hundred lasguns fired simultaneously. The beams converged into a torrential crimson flood.
Paul thrust the orb forward.
The moment the orb left his hands, it began to expand.
It spread outward.
The five-colored psychic energy rippled outward from the orb. Wherever it passed, the very air began to distort.
When the laser beams struck the psychic field, it was like shooting into thick glue. They slowed down more and more until they completely halted in mid-air.
And then, they reversed direction.
"What?!" Jeremy's single eye darted frantically in its socket.
Under the control of the psychic field, over four hundred laser beams executed a perfectly synchronized one-hundred-and-eighty-degree turn.
Aiming right back at their owners.
"No!"
Magnus's scream had barely left his mouth.
The beams fired simultaneously.
HISS! HISS! HISS!
The sound of lasers burning through flesh was as dense as falling rain.
Over four hundred bandits were simultaneously struck by their own weapons.
Chests, stomachs, heads... And the moment the orb's energy washed over their bodies, every single one of them was instantly vaporized.
Magnus stood frozen in place, looking down as his body began to disintegrate into gas.
He opened his mouth, trying to say something but he died, crumbling into ash.
Paul watched the scene calmly, marveling internally. While the five major traits each had their own supportive functions...
When fused together and backed by his Storm-tier psychic power, they possessed utterly apocalyptic destructive force. He had expended less than ten percent of his psychic reserves, and he had completely annihilated over four hundred men.
Paul decided to name this move... the 'Spirit Bomb.'
By the time the convoy carrying the six hundred players rolled into Bordeaux Town, the battle was already over.
The central avenue was piled high with corpses. The stench of blood was so thick it was almost suffocating.
The players hopped out of the trucks, looking at the scene, exchanging blank stares.
"What... exactly are we doing here?"
[I Want to Drive a Baneblade] muttered.
"We're here to watch the show." Another player, [Slaanesh's Chosen Still Not Chosen Today], threw his hands up.
--
TL/N: Well the powerstones event is still running where every 100 Powerstones = 1 Bonus chapter but it will increase next week.
Wanna read ahead?! Join Patreon.com/AHumanMadeMOFO to read 25+ chapters ahead and support me if you wish.