Chapter 31: A Dragon-Slayer for a Chicken

With a bloodcurdling roar, the Clan Chief, now missing its lower half, writhed on the ground. 

The beam had severed its legs, leaving a smooth, clean wound. 

"Hit!" Qin Mo cried out in delight, quickening his pace towards the wounded Clan Chief. 

Grey and Grott flanked him on either side, clearing a path through the rebel horde with their laser shotguns, while the other three followed behind, fending off the encircling enemies. 

As they advanced, they noticed that every rebel foot soldier's face was streaked with tears. 

The Clan Chief's agony had rippled through the psychic network. While the others couldn't fully share its pain, they were willing to sacrifice anything to prevent it from suffering further. 

As the rebels crashed against the gravity shield like a torrential wave, the outer troops began to converge around the Clan Chief, forming a wall of bodies to shield it and push it forward. 

The rebels wept, wailed, and even begged. But Qin Mo was only intent on deepening their anguish. 

"A meat shield? Do you think I designed multiple firing modes on my shoulder cannon for nothing?" 

He aimed at the Clan Chief's location and fired again. 

The beam tore a line through the sea of rebels, but just as it was about to strike the shield and the Chief, a psyker suddenly appeared, conjuring a violet barrier. 

The beam ricocheted off, carving another swath through the rebels until its energy was spent. 

This psyker was no ordinary mind-stealer; with ease, she had deflected the beam and stood before the Clan Chief, immovable. 

Qin Mo recognized her—a Bishop. 

Beside her stood six guards clad in purple robes, swords planted firmly in the ground. Qin Mo's suspicion was confirmed—this was indeed a Bishop. 

The Gene-Stealer guard was formidable, capable of killing a target before they even knew death was coming. But Qin Mo wasn't afraid—they couldn't touch him, not while the gravity shield was still in play. 

The Clan Chief reached out a talon, resting it on the Bishop's shoulder. 

She raised her hand, releasing a burst of psychic lightning that gathered and exploded. 

The gravity shields worn by Qin Mo and his comrades abruptly failed. 

The unexpected attack caught Qin Mo off guard—he couldn't decipher how the lightning had disrupted the shields. 

But it didn't matter; pure technology remained dependable. 

As the swarming rebels closed in, the combat systems rebooted the gravity shield with astonishing speed, once again crushing any enemy that dared approach. 

The Bishop's guards, still standing proudly, had no chance to strike, rendered useless by the shield's immediate restoration. 

The Bishop wasn't the only one capable of wielding lightning. 

Still charging, Qin Mo lifted his hand, calling down a bolt of thunder upon the Bishop's position, engulfing all enemies within a hundred meters. 

This lightning wasn't yet as powerful as the shoulder cannon, but it was the force of the material universe's gods. 

The Bishop's psychic barrier shattered, but the Clan Chief shielded her, absorbing the blow. 

Yet, in the monstrous, twisted visage of the Chief, Qin Mo saw confusion. 

Both sides were bewildered—just as the Clan Chief couldn't fathom how someone in the underhive could craft such devastating weapons and track its location, Qin Mo couldn't comprehend how the Bishop had temporarily disabled the shields. 

But none of it mattered now. 

Qin Mo had closed the distance, only two hundred meters away from the Chief—a gap easily crossed with the help of his jetpack. 

The exhaust jets roared, and Qin Mo soared into the air. As he descended, he could see the terror etched on the faces of those below. 

The Bishop was the first to be whisked away by her guards, vanishing from the battlefield in an instant. 

It seemed to be the Chief's command, otherwise, the guards would have prioritized saving the Chief's life. 

Qin Mo landed. 

*Squelch.* 

Without any attack, the enemies within the small radius of his landing zone died, crushed by the gravity shield's relentless force. 

The Clan Chief barely lasted three seconds before its massive form was flattened into a two-dimensional smear on the metallic ground. 

The Chief was dead. 

Mission accomplished. 

The rebel forces crumbled in an instant—some scattered in every direction, some fell to their knees, weeping uncontrollably, while others slit each other's throats in despair. 

In that brief moment of calm, Qin Mo allowed himself to reflect. 

This success wasn't by chance. 

The Gene-Stealers in the Talon Underhive hadn't had the time to grow into a formidable threat. Their uprising had been prompted only because they were discovered and exposed; otherwise, they would have numbered in the hundreds of millions or even billions, not just the mere hundreds of thousands they had now. 

Using the Imperial Guard power armor and the targeting devices had been overkill for these sneaky foes—it was no wonder the strategy worked so efficiently. 

"May whoever first uncovered this brood of mutants be forever safe," Qin Mo muttered as he deactivated the gravity shield and pulled out a tissue extraction device, taking samples from the Chief's corpse. 

The first vial filled. 

Then a second, a third, until all six extraction devices were filled with the Chief's biological tissue—muscle, limbs, exoskeleton, brain matter, and of course, its blood. 

"Energy's running low," Grey remarked, continuing to fire his shoulder cannon. 

From the moment the battle had started, none of their cannons had ceased firing. While Qin Mo focused on the Chief, his comrades had been mowing down rebels, easing the pressure on the front lines. 

"I know," Qin Mo nodded, summoning the transport drone. 

"Want us to scrape the rest into the ship?" Grott asked. 

"No need. We've got enough," Qin Mo replied. 

In the chaos of the shattered rebel ranks, the six of them stood quietly, awaiting the arrival of the transport drone. Once it arrived, they boarded and returned to base. 

"This war isn't over," Grey said, looking down at the fleeing rebels still being chased by their ground forces. "That Bishop is still alive." 

"Of course it's not over," Qin Mo agreed, examining the samples he had collected. "We've barely scratched the surface of their forces." 

"But it will end soon. I guarantee it." 

Qin Mo was confident that these tissue samples would help him develop a gene-weapon capable of exterminating the Gene-Stealers, spreading through the Talon Underhive like an unstoppable plague. 

And one day, when another Clan Chief arrived on this planet to spread its seed, the remnants of the gene-weapon would rise from the very environment and destroy it.