Chapter 126: Breaking Through the Demon Storm to Reach Hell's Gate ①

Throwing a thermite bomb into a water pool to release energy, boiling the pool and creating large amounts of water vapor.

For someone seeing thermite used this way for the first time, this scene was indeed somewhat shocking.

Especially if the environment was under night sky, with the pool also glowing from the thermite bomb, it would feel somewhat fantastical.

However, what she was witnessing now was an oceanic lake occupying about seven percent of the planet's surface, with a single warhead almost illuminating the entire lake surface, continuously glowing and evaporating seawater.

This produced massive amounts of water vapor spreading in all directions.

This scene, viewed from the planet's geosynchronous orbit, was truly unprecedentedly spectacular.

Those not fully informed might even find this scene somewhat beautiful, like drifting immortal mist.

However, when the specific ground situation was magnified and seen clearly, it was hell.

A team nearest to this dead sea that was just about to depart, consisting of about three hundred people, had their bodies cooked by this terrible water vapor.

Cooked until they were like mud, their bodies collapsed and became soft and rotten like mud figures soaked in water.

This scene of being cooked to mush gave Tessa strong physiological discomfort.

It was even more horrifying than watching the previous slaughter with the bugs, where soldiers were chewed up by the creatures.

Then, as the ship reframed to another location, it showed the nearest steel forest-like city.

This was smaller than the city where Mr. Gold had been before, about one-third the size.

The death mist was also rolling toward here like a giant wave.

From the looks of it, it would probably arrive in less than a minute.

However, the people living in this city seemed not to have anticipated this crisis yet. Instead, they seemed to still be preparing to provide war supplies for the front lines.

This scene made Tessa anxious—quickly notify them, prepare defenses!

The next second, she saw this city seemingly sound alarms, finally understanding the problem.

However, she saw this city that also looked like a steel anthill from a distance was emitting smoke from its bottom.

Smoke?

No, not smoke—ultra-high temperature water vapor was also seeping up from the surface here.

Then the city began showing fire and explosions, obviously this unimaginably high-temperature water vapor had affected some facilities and caused them to explode.

Tessa also saw some huge pipes deforming and expanding, then cracking and spewing gases—steam, probably.

But this gas suddenly ignited due to a flash of fire, shooting out amazing columns of flame. As if this gas was natural gas extracted from underground.

This phenomenon wasn't limited to one place—it seemed to be everywhere.

Especially seeing the water pipes people used for water had become terrifying flamethrowers.

It seemed some combustible gas might have leaked.

Wait!!!

Tessa suddenly thought of a possibility.

When water was boiled, evaporated, vaporized, and reached a certain critical value, water vapor would decompose into hydrogen and oxygen—extremely flammable gases.

Currently, this sudden combustible gas was very likely the decomposed hydrogen and oxygen mixed in, ignited just like that.

Suddenly, the ship's screen pulled back the camera, showing a large area of land rising with mist and sporadic fires that quickly disappeared.

Here, Tessa had also heard exactly what was happening.

The Imperial force called the Deathwatch had issued Exterminatus, launching cyclonic torpedoes to destroy surface life on this planet.

The cyclonic torpedo's function was to boil the planet's water sources, continuously heating them, covering the entire planet with ultra-high temperature water vapor to cook the life forms on it.

The planetary core was also affected, causing the water vapor to be pressurized and elevated to a critical value where it would decompose into combustible gas.

Then, these gases would be further ignited to incinerate the cooked world.

The current sporadic fires were from the initial cyclonic torpedo's high-energy release, directly decomposing the nearest water into combustible gas, which mixed into the water vapor formed by boiling water and spread out.

These weren't numerous at present and would burn out quickly, not causing major fires.

But eventually, the water vapor would be continuously heated. Especially after the second cyclonic torpedo fell and accelerated the process, the planet would be rapidly cooked, and combustible gas would fill the entire planet—a single spark could easily ignite the whole planet.

This was the Empire's Exterminatus on this planet!

Currently, there were about twenty billion Imperial citizens and soldiers on this planet.

They would be painfully boiled alive, watching their own flesh be cooked and fall off in chunks, literally cooked to death.

Finally, they would be incinerated like garbage.

This heinous extermination order made Tessa's body tremble.

The person who issued this order was a butcher, a demon, a devil!!!

She couldn't accept it, but after hearing the inside story, she roughly understood the severity of the situation and could only remain silent.

The daemons were trying to tear the hell rift open wider. If it couldn't be dealt with quickly, once their goal was achieved, that rift would at least tear apart this star system.

The Empire already had precedent for such warp rifts—the great rift that had nearly torn the galaxy apart, splitting it in two.

So for the entire Empire, for the safety of the entire galaxy, destroying one planet and sacrificing twenty billion people to preserve the Empire's millions of inhabited planets was completely worthwhile.

This was the classic trolley problem—having to choose one, they could only sacrifice the few to save the many.

So the person who issued this order shouldn't be described with such malicious terms.

Because issuing this order was also torture for him.

Even though this was to maintain the Empire's safety, the fact remained that he had personally killed billions of lives—this fact couldn't be erased.

He would live his entire life in guilt, in nightmares.

So when the second cyclonic torpedo was about to be fired, Tessa felt pain in her lips.

Obviously she had bitten her lips too hard, even breaking them, tasting blood.

Just as it was about to be fired, a turning point came!

The main purpose of using this Exterminatus was to clear the daemon army, allowing the Deathwatch team to quickly slaughter their way to the core area of the hell rift.

If there were other ways to let the Deathwatch team reach the rift's center without so much trouble, stopping the Exterminatus wasn't impossible.

This method wasn't having his ship pick up the Deathwatch team and use that ghost-like ability to go directly to the destination.

There was this problem: his ship couldn't hold that many people.

Correction—it could hold the people, but the Deathwatch team also had considerable equipment that was difficult to fit inside.

As for opening a wide-range ghosting ability to provide cover, according to him, affected by warp energy, it was difficult to expand and could only maintain the ship itself.

However, he also had a way to clear the path for the Deathwatch.

That was using his untouchable characteristics to clear the way for them!

Untouchable?

She didn't quite understand—it wasn't explained very clearly, but this type of personnel could suppress psykers and was the nemesis of psychic powers.

He had also demonstrated it, making all the Salamanders members except himself particularly uncomfortable, while most of the mortals fainted.

This scene still left Tessa not quite understanding what effect it had on daemons.

Until the moment of contact with daemons began, Tessa somewhat understood what kind of nemesis this was.

Daemons with physical bodies stopped functioning and fell like drones suddenly jammed.

Ghost-like daemons that seemed somewhat transparent suddenly dissolved and disappeared like dissipating mist.

Thus, hell's gate—the rift—was right before them!

...

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