Chapter 498 - 498: Post-Battle Results

Some deaths are lighter than a feather, some are weightier than Mount Tai, and some people get sat on by a Titan, which is a whole other weight class.

Kian had let his glutes do the thinking and pulled that stunt, and it came with serious consequences.

The first consequence: the Titan electrocuted him to death on the spot, starting a six-hour respawn countdown.

Before Kian's consciousness faded, he could feel the Titan cussing out his mother, which is to say Old Feng. It swore that it would rather rust, rot in a warehouse, and crumble into iron flakes than ever let Kian into its cockpit again.

As for the second consequence...

At the scene, a tech-priest scratched his head as he looked at the Reaver Titan sitting on the ground with its legs splayed. He turned to a Magos beside him and asked:

"Lord Magos, isn't it somewhat undignified for the Titan to be sitting on the ground like that?"

The Magos gave him a round of applause.

"Wow, you're a genius. Why don't you go help it up then, genius?"

The tech-priest hunched down and shut up. But the question took root in the minds of the several thousand tech-priests present. How were they supposed to get the Titan back on its feet?

This steel construct weighed thousands of tons. Unless it stood up on its own, or another Titan of about the same size came along, who could possibly lift a thing that big?

And so the Titan stayed sitting there on the ground for more than ten years.

It sat there until, more than a decade later, a Titan Legion fleet arrived at Forge World 496a to reclaim the Reaver.

When the Legion's commander saw that the Reaver Titan had been sitting on the ground for ten years, he suffered a brain bleed on the spot and cancelled Primo-496a's application to become a Titan world.

Of course, that was a long, long time in the future, and it no longer concerned Kian.

Meanwhile, there was something Kian didn't know: the little Gretchin had taken part in the entire battle!

The main Gretchin army had swarmed along behind Blackiron's host, scavenging junk. Wherever Blackiron fought, they scavenged.

Blackiron and the boyz had been so caught up in the killing that they never thought to deal with the rebel Gretchin at all.

That let Reform Old Fart's Great Gretchin-ism bloc gorge itself and rake in a vast haul of resources!

Reform Old Fart's forces trailed Blackiron's army at a distance, hoovering up every loot drop in sight.

They'd planned to wait until Blackiron had wiped out the Forge Temple and then go in to scavenge. They never imagined Blackiron would actually lose!

What's more, the Gretchin had watched through telescopes from far away as Old Fart Kian turned into a Titan and killed the invincible Blackiron with his adamantium booty. The psychological shock to the Gretchin was tremendous!

Out of that extreme panic, a number of Gretchin thinkers emerged, and they put forward two axioms.

The First Axiom: Grot Marjack is the best Gretchin.

The Second Axiom: Old Fart Kian's adamantium booty cannot be defeated!

Given that Blackiron was now dead, the psychic shock of his death had sent Orks all across the planet into a slump.

The human shrimp were about to launch a full counteroffensive, and the Orks had no room left to survive on this world. As a result, Exodus-ism swept through the Gretchin masses!

Under Reform Old Fart's leadership, Gretchin across the planet launched the Great Shipbuilding Program. One after another, huge rockets rose upright from the scrapyards.

These rockets and spacecraft, of every size, launched successfully. Each one blasted thousands or even tens of thousands of Gretchin into deep space, where they vanished.

The Gretchin poured all their resources into building ships to get away from this planet. They were determined to find a world without Old Fart Kian and start over!

They believed that with Grot Marjack and Reform Old Fart leading them, they would surely realize the grand vision of Great Gretchin-ism!

And someday, somewhere in the vast and glorious cosmos, they would find a material capable of piercing Old Fart Kian's glutes!

With that noble aspiration in their hearts, rocket after rocket shot into the sky, and the Gretchin began their own cosmic Age of Exploration!

Meanwhile, Kian respawned. He woke up in bed in his Sanctum, sat up, and immediately felt that something was off.

"Weird. Why does this feel wrong?"

He scratched his butt. Something felt strange, but he couldn't say exactly what.

Kian mulled it over for a bit, then decided not to worry about it and went to see how the planet was doing.

He went to Inquisitor Trasolh's flagship and got the current situation on the planet from Trasolh himself.

On the whole, Kian really had saved the world.

Killing the Gargant had been the equivalent of destroying the planet-wide terminal for the Orks' WAAAGH-field.

And almost every Mekboy on the planet had died along with the Gargant!

With that many Mekboyz dead in one stroke, Ork technology had been knocked straight back to the Stone Age.

Earlier, preparing for a last stand, the hive had armed nearly five billion people. Led by several hundred million Astra Militarum, those five billion militia had marched out of the hives and fanned out across the open land to purge the Orks.

Right now, every ten square kilometres of the planet had a ten-man militia squad with lasrifles on patrol.

The moment they found mushrooms growing on the surface, they burned them with flamers.

If some mushrooms grew underground where no one could see them, and Gretchin, squigs, or Orks crawled up out of the earth, the patrols could kill them on the spot.

In short, this time the greenskins were well and truly dead. The whole planet was expected to be retaken within three months.

Inquisitor Trasolh smiled as he said:

"This has been a remarkably successful case of retaking a world from the greenskins.

"A planet infested to this degree is usually beyond saving. That we recovered it at all is no small achievement!"

Kian grinned. "So do we get some kind of reward?"

Inquisitor Trasolh said, "Loyalty is the greatest reward for any subject of the Emperor!

"But I know what you're after. Go ask the planetary authorities.

"You saved their world. You must have earned a good many value points with them. Perhaps enough to buy quite a lot of what you want!"

Kian's eyes lit up. He took a shuttle straight down to the surface.

He went to the Titan Temple first to check how many credits he had there.

But the moment his shuttle touched down at the Titan Temple, he saw who had come to greet him and froze.

"Tech-priest Boothe! You're alive!"

That's right. Tech-priest Boothe was alive, although his appearance had changed dramatically!

Now all that remained of Boothe's human head was one organic eye, a nose, and a patch of human skin about half the size of a palm.

The rest of his head and his entire body had been replaced with machinery!

Boothe spoke to Kian in a rather cheerful tone:

"Ha ha, my lord, Magos Ferrocore tore off my head and a section of my spine, but a short-term life-support unit had been installed in my brain, which kept it alive for a little while.

"Afterward my colleagues came and recovered my head. So yes, my lord, I survived."

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