Though New Kato had been firmly established and most of its citizens had found their place, one truth remained unchanged—
The Underhive would never be free of bounty hunters.
Through their service in the war, the bounty hunter guilds had earned Qin Mo’s favor. He had granted them a privilege rare among the Imperium:
They could continue to operate as free agents, roaming the labyrinthine ruins and forgotten transit networks as they always had, so long as any recovered spoils were surrendered to the proper authorities.
In exchange, their findings were converted into Throne Gelt, allowing them to purchase food, weapons, and better equipment.
For them, it was a fair trade.
For Qin Mo, it was a calculated investment.
A seven-man bounty hunter squad fought in the choking gloom of a ruined transit corridor, the echoes of their gunfire swallowed by the oppressive dark.
Each muzzle flash illuminated grotesque figures swarming from the depths of the Underhive.
The bounty hunters huddled behind a shimmering energy shield, trading fire with an unrelenting wave of heretic mutants that slithered and crawled out of the darkness.
A rogue psyker skulked in the darkness beyond, its presence twisting reality at the edges of perception, the air shimmering with warp-born malignancy.
“Is the bolt cannon warmed up yet?!”
“She’s not called bolt cannon. She’s called Reina.”
“Fine, fine! Is Reina warmed up yet?”
A bounty hunter lugged forward a massive, multi-barreled heavy weapon, its size nearly absurd in the tight confines of the tunnel.
With a hiss of hydraulic servos, the weapon’s automatic stabilizers locked onto the pitted ferrocrete floor, and its barrels began their inexorable mechanical spin, their whine rising as momentum built.
A torrent of high-explosive shells ripped into the oncoming swarm. Warp-tainted heretics were blown apart mid-charge, their grotesque, chitinous mutations rupturing in showers of bone and black ichor.
The tunnel became a charnel house, the shrieks of the heretics swallowed by the deafening thunder of the cannon’s wrath.
Limb and sinew were shredded. Flesh sloughed away. Skulls burst apart like overripe fruit.
The air filled with the screams of the damned.
Occasionally, shattered bone fragments and ragged flesh whizzed toward them, but the energy shield held firm, disintegrating any stray projectiles upon impact.
Yet even as they fell, the enemy kept coming in tides.
Not because of strength—but because they were already dead.
The mutants crawling toward them weren’t healthy.
Bulbous tumors swelled beneath their hardened carapaces.
Grotesque cysts pulsed and oozed, leaking thick streams of necrotic sludge.
Some could barely walk, staggering forward in twisted parody of human motion.
They reeked of stagnation, of flesh far past the decay of the grave.
They were rotting from the inside out.
The bounty hunters weren’t killing them.
They were merely accelerating the inevitable.
A voice that should not be heard by mortal ears.
"D̵̡̥̜̹̿̏͛̅͘į̸̞͙̼̈͂͋̄̚͠e̸̛̦͖̘̰̿̈́̈… d̷̘͈̒́̈́̕į̵͍̞̜̹̖̓̑̊̏͝͠ĕ̴̜̖̦̂̚̚…"
The heretic psyker shambled forward, its body riddled with necrotic boils and warp-burned scars. Its blistered fingers clawed at the air, weaving something unseen—
Something that should not exist.
“Yoan!” the team leader bellowed.
A lean, ragged-looking young man at the back rushed forward without hesitation.
No orders were needed.
The others covered him, their lasrifles burning holes into the advancing writhing tide.
As Yoan closed the distance, the psyker’s warp energy stuttered, its channeling faltering.
Its arms burst open, spewing black ichor.
Its entire body imploded, collapsing into a liquefied mass of unnatural flesh.
The moment the psyker perished, the mutants screamed—
And crumbled into bubbling sludge.
“MOVE! WE’VE WASTED ENOUGH TIME FIGHTING THESE FILTH!”
No one stopped to loot the dead.
No one stopped to rest.
As if something far worse lurked behind them.
"Don’t fething turn around!"
The captain’s roar was filled with both rage and terror.
Yoan’s eyes locked onto the horror behind them.
A grotesquely swollen, chitinous monstrosity, towering over ten meters tall, its body covered in iron-hard bristles, wedged between the corridor walls—yet still moving at terrifying speed.
His body refused to move.
Because in the Underhive—
The heretics weren’t the true enemy.
The mutants born from millennia of toxic pollution—they were.
“Leave him! Keep running! MOVE!”
The squad leader pushed forward, leading the team toward the exit.
They could see light.
The light was swallowed.
Snuffed out as though a door had slammed shut.
But what was revealed was not the "outside world".
A vast, sickly glowing green eye, rippling with malevolent sentience. It blinked once, its stare suffused with unfathomable hatred.
The bounty hunters froze, paralyzed by sheer terror.
Something far larger than the spider loomed outside the corridor.
A beam of searing energy tore through the tunnel, scorching the ferrocrete red-hot.
Through the smoldering wound, two figures emerged.
Both were clad in Thunderborn-pattern power armor.
As they strode forward, their built-in las-shotguns fired as they moved, obliterating any obstructions—whether teeth, flesh, or bone alike.
As they strode forward, their boots struck metal.
Some of the bounty hunters had fought in the war.
And the moment they saw the insignias on the armor—
They knew who these two were.
With no hesitation, the bounty hunters scrambled toward Grey, hiding behind his armor like frightened children.
Grey remained impassive, walking right past the petrified Yoan.
Then, ten meters ahead, he activated his gravity shield.
The mutant spider imploded into paste.
As the gravitational field faded, Grey turned to the others.
"Why the feth are there spiders that big in the Underhive?"
"W-we don’t know!" one of the bounty hunters stammered.
"The ruins… the old tech… it’s all twisted! There was even… even a female mutant xeno!"
The bounty hunters were on the verge of breaking down, their voices trembling.
"Grey." Anruida smirked. "Welcome to the Underhive."
Grey nodded, recalling the bounty hunter legends he had heard as a child.
The Underhive wasn’t just a place of danger.
It was a graveyard of forgotten technology, forbidden relics, and horrors beyond reason.
Now, seeing it firsthand, he finally understood—
Why people loved bounty hunter stories.
And why so few survived to become part of them.
“Don’t come back next time.”
Grey warned them, then turned to pull Yoan to his feet.
But the moment he touched him, he recoiled.
The man stank of death, of rot and sweat baked into his rags.
Disgusted, Grey reluctantly pinched his nose and yanked him up.
"Are you angels sent by the Emperor?" Yoan asked in awe.
"No. Your wife sent us." Grey shoved him forward. "Go home. Buy her something nice. If she hadn’t reported this, you’d be dead."
"It doesn’t matter." Yoan’s voice was reverent. "To me, you’re still divine messengers."
As he boarded the waiting transport, he cast one final glance at the colossal spider’s liquefied remains, wondering—
How much waste had this thing eaten to get that big?
Below, Yoan stood at the tunnel’s entrance, gazing up at the departing ship—
Eyes filled with awe.