Shipping goods from the game to the World of Warhammer

Chapter 105 A Familiar Scene

Liriel crouched at the opening of a ventilation shaft that was covered with mycelium. Looking down through the grille, she saw hordes of mutated combatants pouring into the outer area of ​​the middle nest from various passages in the lower nest area, like a gray-green flood overflowing a dam.

She took a deep breath, then coughed because of the smell in the air.

To be honest, when Lillier first saw those Protoss warriors with their blue glowing armor and metal shells on the Christina, she was already mentally prepared. Her boss was definitely not some ordinary traveling merchant.

But the current situation still exceeded her expectations to some extent.

Reinfecting humans already infected by monsters, those giant creatures with mushroom-like structures on their backs, and those serpentine creatures covered in thorns that can shoot from a distance—her boss has way too many trump cards up her sleeve.

However, Lillie wasn't too alarmed. She climbed down from the ventilation shaft and retraced her steps. As she rounded a corner covered in mycelium, she saw a familiar figure.

It was the worker who lent her that work jacket before.

The dark-skinned worker was huddled behind her stall, her legs bent, her hands tightly wrapped around her knees, looking like a frightened quail. Sweat beaded on her forehead, her eyes fixed on a group of mutated combatants passing by in the distance, barely daring to breathe.

But the mutated creatures simply walked past her stall without even glancing in her direction. The gray-green colonies covering the walls near the stall also obediently avoided the area, as if there were an invisible barrier there.

Liriel paused for a moment, then realized what was going on.

1.

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Her boss was consciously controlling the attack range of these things. (The text abruptly shifts to a seemingly unrelated topic: "Ping 1n, who was not infected by the Genestealer cult.")

People who don't get in the way are not considered targets of attack.

With Rhodes' seemingly indifferent attitude, he appeared to be the unifying commander of this chaotic bunch of aliens and monsters, and even the mutated beings created by the virus were acting according to some kind of unified will.

Forget it, it's none of her business.

Lillie shrugged, pulled up the collar of her work jacket, and continued walking towards Rhodes. She didn't believe in the Emperor, nor did she care about any aliens. If Rhodes really had any intention of harming humanity, the thousands of people on the Christina would have been dead long ago, and she herself wouldn't be alive today.

As she passed the worker's stall, she glanced at him again. He looked up and saw her too, their eyes meeting in mid-air. The worker opened his mouth as if to say something, but Lillie simply gestured for him to step aside and walked away without looking back.

The battle in the Zhongchao area was one-sided in the first few hours.

The Genestealer Cult's defenses contracted from the entrance to the lower nest all the way to the heart of the middle nest. They built temporary fortifications at every major passage and intersection, but the advance of the mutated combatants did not stop.

The Hydralisk's supersonic backstab can suppress enemy firepower points from 500 meters away, and each volley can cripple a position.

The swarms of locusts released by the swarm host continuously harassed the defenders' vision and weapon operation. Those densely packed little things were like a persistent nightmare, plastering every firing port and observation window.

Under the cover of these two forces, a large number of mutants steadily advanced. Every time they broke through a roadblock, more mutants would immediately pour in and firmly occupy the reclaimed area.

The infected worms weren't idle either. As soon as they conquered a new area, they would begin spreading creep on the surfaces of the new buildings. The grayish-green mycelium spread across the walls, covering pipes, walls, and ceilings at a visible speed, incorporating the buildings in the central hive into the hive's territory one by one. The areas covered by the creep quickly became warm and humid, gradually being integrated into the hive's organic network, producing more mutated combatants.

The sect's defenses were being breached one by one, and the battle lines were continuously shrinking towards the hive. The mixed-race defenders who were originally holding their positions were unable to maintain effective firepower under the long-range suppression of the Hydralisks and the close-range harassment of the Locust swarms, and were eventually forced to abandon their positions and retreat.

But surprises always happen when things are going best.

Inside a large chemical plant in Zhongchao District.

This factory occupies an entire city block and is one of the main chemical production facilities in Zhongchao District, responsible for supplying various industrial chemical raw materials to Chaodu.

From the outside, the factory looks like a gray box with no windows, only a few thick industrial roller shutters and a dense array of warning signs on the walls. Inside, pipes crisscross the interior, and dozens of giant gas tanks are arranged in the core area of ​​the factory. Each tank is marked with a conspicuous skull and crossbones symbol and a long string of chemical numbers, indicating that the contents stored inside are obviously deadly.

A purebred gene stealer was forced into this factory.

It is one of the few purebloods still fighting after the collapse of the Middle Nest defenses. Judging from its appearance, this pureblood is in a very bad condition. Its carapace is cracked in several places, the most serious one being on its left chest, revealing dark purple muscle tissue and slightly pulsating blood vessels underneath.

Purple blood seeped from its wounds, leaving a broken trail on the ground. One of its four arms was no longer able to move normally; a spiked snake's back had pierced its elbow joint, the spike broken off inside. The venom had rendered that arm completely numb, leaving it limp and hanging down at its side.

It was forced in. Countless mutated combatants chased it in from the passageway outside the factory, trapping it in the narrow passage between the gas tanks.

Seven or eight mutated creatures formed a semi-encirclement, their bony appendages and tentacles wriggling under the dim emergency lights of the factory, their hollow orange eyes fixed on their prey.

The pureblood roared and swung its remaining three claws. Its right claw swept across, cleaving the nearest mutant in two at the waist. The upper half of the body flew out and crashed into a pipe next to it, while the lower half stood for a second before collapsing.

But more mutants surged up from both sides. One mutant's tentacle wrapped around the pureblood's left leg, while another tried to pierce the gap in its carapace with its bony appendage.

The pureblood used its lower left claw to rip off the tentacles wrapped around its leg, then kicked the mutated creature away, but this action shifted its center of gravity slightly backward.

His back hit a gas tank behind him.

The tank emitted a dull metallic clang; the impact was considerable, and the long-neglected weld line on the tank's surface...

A crack appeared, and pale yellow gas hissed out from the crack, carrying a pungent chemical smell.

The pureblood was stunned for a moment, its body reflexively leaving the can, but then its four purple eyes glanced down at the label on the can: HX-7 industrial reagent.

It could feel that the leaking gas had a negligible effect on it, with only a faint stinging sensation on its skin. However, the reactions of the mutated creatures in front of it were completely different.

The two mutated beings closest to the rift showed a noticeable slowing of their movements. Their tentacles twitched, and their steps became unsteady, swaying back and forth as if they were drunk.

A crazed light burst forth from their four eyes.

Ignoring the injuries on its back, the pureblood turned around, raised its three intact claws, and slashed at the gas tank several times.

The first claw tore open the outer steel plate of the tank. The second claw widened the tear to about half an arm's width. The third claw pierced directly into the inside of the tank, pulling it outward along with the inner lining, tearing the opening into a huge gap half a meter long.

A large amount of pale yellow gas gushed out instantly, forming a rapidly spreading toxic fog within the factory. The hissing sound of the leaking gas echoed through the empty factory, like a giant snake flicking its tongue.

The toxic fog spread extremely quickly, covering the entire area of ​​the factory almost instantly within its enclosed environment. The factory's ventilation system had long since ceased functioning due to the invasion of mycelium from the lower nesting zone. The pale yellow gas had nowhere to dissipate, accumulating and becoming increasingly concentrated, rising from the ground and quickly filling the entire space.

The first to fall were the mutated combat beings closest to the gas storage tank.

Their movements froze the moment they came into contact with the poisonous fog, as if a pause button had been pressed. Their tentacles and bony appendages twitched wildly for a few seconds, making crackling sounds—the sound of bone structures breaking under the strain of muscle spasms. Then, as if all their strength had been drained, they collapsed limply to the ground.

Neurotoxins are destroying the control circuits in their bodies that were modified from the human nervous system. The swarm virus can rewrite the brain's instructions and make human muscles grow bone spurs and tentacles, but it cannot change the fragility of human nerve fibers.

The toxic fog spread from the factory's pipes to the streets outside, and wherever it passed, the mutated combatants collapsed in droves like puppets with their strings cut. Some lay on the ground still twitching, their bone spikes and tentacles scratching the ground unconsciously, leaving grating marks on the steel plates.

The pureblood gene stealer stood in the center of the poisonous fog, surrounded by the scattered remains of mutated creatures, and let out a piercing, triumphant screech.

Its resistance to this nerve agent far surpasses that of humans and mutated combatants. The purebloods' physiological structure has undergone generations of genetic optimization, resulting in fundamentally different neurotransmitters and synaptic structures compared to humans. The HX-7 agent is essentially ineffective against it; the slight stinging sensation on its skin is less painful than the backstab that pierced its elbow joint.

The news quickly reached the ears of other purebloods and high-ranking members of the cult. Although the Genestealer Cult's psionic network was fragmented by the psychic noise of the Zerg swarm, this discovery acted like a shot in the arm for the retreating cult forces.

The remaining pureblood and hybrid elites began to move purposefully towards various chemical storage facilities in the Central Nest District.

Almost simultaneously, Rhodes sensed the anomaly at the front lines through the Ohmu's psionic relay.

In the psionic landscape, nodes on the third layer of the Middle Nest are going out on a large scale.

The mutated combatants are dying in large numbers, and there are no obvious hostile targets.

poison gas.

Rhodes frowned, then obtained more detailed information from the Ohmu's senses.

The area near the Zhongchao Chemical Plant was completely shrouded in a pale yellow toxic fog, and the enemy had destroyed more than one gas storage tank. Through the thermal perception of the Ohmu floating high above, Rhodes could see that several different chemical storage sites were simultaneously releasing toxic gas.

The remaining pure-blooded and hybrid elites were systematically destroying all chemical storage facilities along the way, while the mutated combatants were completely defenseless. They didn't even have time to make any evasive maneuvers; their nervous systems collapsed the moment the toxic fog touched their skin.

Hmm, this plot seems familiar.

The mutated combat units in the game share the same weakness. Constrained by the infected human bodies, their resistance to this neurotoxin is practically zero. In that version of the campaign, a certain purple swarm leader seemed to have encountered something similar; the Möbius Foundation's space station also used toxins to eliminate infected populations, operating on the exact same principle.

History always repeats itself, except that this leader possessed off-the-charts psionic combat power and later dismantled all the poison gas facilities.

The.

Rhodes doesn't have that ability. The pirated psionic energy the system gave him is only good for maintaining the Zerg hive's command network. Asking him to conjure up a psionic burst is less useful than letting him lie down and take a nap.

Another ten minutes or so passed, and the situation worsened further.

The enemy was not only releasing poison gas, but also began burning buildings covered in mycelium. Several engineering teams in the Central Nest District, protected by pureblood and hybrid elites, were using industrial-grade flamethrowers to intensify the burning of the infected areas. The grayish-green mycelial carpet rapidly carbonized under the high temperature, curled up, turned black, and then turned to ash. A pungent, acrid smell filled the air, mixing with the chemical toxic gas to form a propulsion line in the Central Nest District's passageways, possessing both chemical and physical destructive power.

The engineering teams worked together seamlessly. The pure-blooded gene stealers in front were responsible for destroying the gas tanks to release the poison gas. After the poisonous fog cleared away the mutated creatures in front, the engineering teams behind immediately followed up, using flamethrowers to burn off the mycelium on the walls and pipes.

After the fire subsided, the infantry units of the mixed-race descendants occupied the cleared area and re-established defenses.

The three-hit combo was executed much faster than Rod had anticipated.

They pushed forward while burning, and the battle line was being pushed back at a visible speed.

Of the several passages that had been painstakingly cleared, one had already been recaptured by the enemy. The fungal carpet within had been burned away, revealing a metal floor corroded by bio-acid, covered only by a layer of black charcoal. In another passage, the enemy had even begun redeploying their firing positions, with the barrels of heavy automatic cannons pointed directly at the passage.

What's more troublesome is that the remaining passages are also being filled with yellow poisonous fog from the outside. If left unchecked, all the passages leading to the central nest will be sealed off by the poisonous gas in another hour or two.

If these cunning bastards were to push the battle line back to the lower lair and trap him there, he would truly be a sitting duck. If they released all the toxic gas reserves from the chemical plants and sealed off every entrance and exit to the lower lair, all his mutated combat entities would be doomed inside, not even the Hydralisks and the Zerg hosts could escape.

Although they were not modified by humans and were not as sensitive to the high concentration of neurotransmitters in enclosed spaces, without their mutated combat units, these troops were clearly unable to fight against such a large army of gene-stealers.

No.

Rhodes shook his head and got up from the abandoned platform. He had to figure something out now.