Corax looked in the direction Swain's sword tip pointed, only to see a small room filled with various cold weapons. Longswords, short-handled axes, short spears, long spears, long-handled hammers—the diverse array of weapons was extremely well-maintained. Even the dim lighting couldn't hide the cold gleam shimmering from their sharpened edges.
"This one will do." Corax also chose a narrow, elongated combat knife, and, as if by instinct, he executed a "sword flourish" identical to Swain's.
"A combat knife? I thought you'd go for claws or a whip?" Swain asked, looking at Corax's performed sword flourish with a puzzled expression.
"I can understand claws, after all, they're effective in the narrow confines of a mine, and while not power claws, they offer more forgiveness than a short knife.
But a long whip, Swain, how did you even think of such an unsuitable weapon?" Corax was a bit confused. After all, a long whip is difficult to use effectively in confined spaces, and its lethality is also insufficient.
"Oh, nothing, just a simple question." Swain didn't explain. He couldn't very well complain to Corax now about how his future father would casually give him a power whip when he came to pick him up, could he? This was one of Swain's biggest gripes; the Emperor's actions were too crude.
He knew Corax's combat style was primarily stealth and infiltration, yet the weapon he was given didn't fit at all. Even if he didn't give him divine artifacts like the Spear of Dionysus or the Emperor's Claws, he could at least have Vulkan forge a weapon more suitable for Corax. But what in the world was a power whip?
As for power claws, that was naturally a stereotype stemming from Corax's background stories and the Primarch lore found online.
"Weapons chosen, let's go!" Swain led Corax out of the weapon storage room. The Shadow Assassin unit had already assembled. Nekser had dispatched 20 men to keep watch, while the dozens of other Shadow Assassin members gathered, clad in black cloaks, were now ready, awaiting Swain's command.
Under the cover of night, the group left the camp through a secret passage, advancing towards the mission objective's location.
West of The Tower
West of The Tower, this area was originally a normal mining camp. It was only later, when a ruler of Kiavahr from an unknown era suddenly had a flash of inspiration and threw the most heinous criminals in to work as miners, that things slowly began to change.
The western area was the earliest developed region on Lycaeus, filled with mines, and the abandoned mines were the largest in scale. With the migration of many camps, this place slowly became a haven for these later criminals.
The intricate network of tunnels and the extensive mining areas allowed these scourges of Lycaeus to freely plunder resources, ore, and even people—anything of value—from other camps. Even when encountering patrolling overseers, the criminals would eye them like prey, assessing whether they could take them on.
In this barren place, even armed overseers dared not be careless when patrolling; in fact, overseers in this area were equipped with laser guns, not stun guns. Therefore, this area was also a headache for those overseers; these vicious criminals didn't care about exchange ratios or anything. They didn't engage in production; everything they had came from plunder. Of course, The Tower didn't care about this; only the overseers had headaches.
Within a dim and eerie mining tunnel in the western area, a series of low, hoarse "caw-caw-caw" sounds suddenly echoed. This distinctive cawing was the sound of the vultures kept by Broken Skull.
The vultures gathered on the mountain of corpses, their sharp beaks pecking into the bleached bone seams like chisels, making crisp "clack, clack" sounds. They tore at tendons, crushed joints, and even fought each other over a segment of a leg bone rich with marrow. The largest vulture suddenly flapped its wings, its wingspan of over a meter creating a foul-smelling whirlwind. Scattered bones were caught by the airflow, tumbling like dead leaves and falling onto the pile of corpses.
"Thud—"
A skull hit the ground heavily, its empty eye sockets seemingly frozen in its final fear. It rolled through a pool of blood, finally stopping at the side of a bare foot covered in whip marks.
Deep within the pile of corpses, a few bodies that hadn't yet died twitched slightly, emitting faint groans. Their fingers clawed into the dirt, attempting to crawl away from this hell, but could only watch helplessly as a vulture hopped onto their chest, its beak slowly pressing down towards an eyeball.
The scent of putrid flesh, blood, and the stench of excrement fermented in the air. Amidst the vultures' revelry, the clinking of chains could faintly be heard—those were the miners chained to the rock wall, their cracked lips opening and closing, but even the strength to scream had been exhausted.
Broken Skull's minions had long departed, leaving only these scavenging messengers, whose gluttonous feast proclaimed an iron law: In this mine, after losing value, you are merely breathing fodder.
"Swain, the vultures tonight seem to be cawing with extra glee, could it be that the corpses we snatched from that large camp two days ago were too delicious?" In a spacious underground cavern within a deep mining tunnel, a shifty-looking dwarf said obsequiously to a tall figure deeper inside the cavern.
"Hahahahaha, that's natural. That camp was one of the larger ones around; their mining income was naturally much higher than those small camps with only a few hundred struggling people. They ate well, and with long periods of high-intensity labor, their muscles were naturally tough. Left for a few days, the vultures love that taste the most." Heuster, the leader of Broken Skull, took a gulp of liquor and said with a hearty laugh.
These vultures were their treasures. Through unique taming methods, the vultures could accurately locate teams going to exchange supplies during the day, or even the layouts within some camps, and they even dared to attack armed overseers.
"Swain, but that camp is quite large, shouldn't we hide for a bit?" the shifty and short criminal suggested to Heuster.
"Nonsense! That camp is enormous, with thousands of people. We should find an opportunity to hit them again! No matter how fierce a wolf pack is, it's no match for a lion," a burly man with a scarred face said disdainfully to the short man.
"Let the vultures find the location of that large camp during the day, then we'll scout it out first," Heuster decided.
The miners on Lycaeus were not truly weak; people always unleash unprecedented potential when facing life-or-death crises. Even these criminals who lived by plundering mostly chose to invade camps they were confident of taking down at dawn, when people were most mentally relaxed. More often, they still chose to ambush teams going to exchange supplies. Such is the ecology on Lycaeus.