40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 201 26. The Return Journey (End)

"His vital signs are all normal." said the pharmacist Sailey Donio. "Except that he was scared half to death, there is nothing wrong."

The metal floor burned continuously, and the air was filled with the pungent smell of burning corpses.

Ashes floated in the air, and the indicator lights in the corridor flickered slowly due to insufficient power, switching back and forth between bright and dim. The bodies of the orcs crackled, and their steel armor and the bodies that were being burned mercilessly by the promethium flames.

Van Cleef stood side by side with his pharmacist. The captain had taken off his helmet, his face expressionless, and holding a brass diary in his hand.

The flickering light and shadow projected from the porthole cut his face into irregular pieces. That was the effect caused by the Nightfall destroying the orcs' rusty ship not far away.

"This diary is very interesting." Van Cleef said. "It's the skin of the Kager beast, which grew up eating iron and stone. Its skin is so hard that it can even resist chainsaw swords for a short time."

"And it has been extinct for decades." The pharmacist took over. "At least that's the case after the Empire determined that it had no breeding value."

"It really has no breeding value." Van Cleef raised his right hand and handed the diary to another giant in the dark, shaking his head.

"It takes at least ten years from a cub to an adult. Even if it eats iron and stone every day, the final skin can only slightly resist chainsaw swords. Besides, their meat is not delicious."

"Have you eaten it, Van Cleef?" the man in the dark asked.

"It's very hard and very tough." The captain said. "It's so hard that I would rather eat stones, at least stones can be chewed into pieces."

Khalil nodded, lowered his head and opened the diary. The movement was very gentle, but the diary itself seemed to have other ideas.

It made a slight crackling sound when it was opened, and then the brass cover immediately began to brighten violently.

The next moment, the flames rose from the spine of the book, trying to burn. But a hand gently brushed past and took the flames from the spine. They began to burn on this hand, illuminating the darkness.

Khalil's pale face was clearly revealed under the influence of the flames, and a slightly interesting expression was slowly blooming on it.

"Self-destruction mechanism."

He rubbed his fingers, extinguished the flames, and continued to flip through the diary.

The first few pages were completely blank, and the paper had long been yellowed. Dust slid from the pages, adding more impurities to the air.

Khalil continued to flip back and saw a line of words at the beginning of the twentieth page. The font was very fancy, and the end of each word even had an incomprehensible upturn. However, leaving aside the font itself, this sentence is still very interesting.

'Money only circulates between mortals, and power cannot oppress certain spines, so we need names. '

Khalil remembered this sentence and turned to the next page. Then, densely packed names filled his sight. He continued to flip back, and all he saw were endless names.

Khalil had never heard of these names, but he recognized the positions behind them. From an ordinary clerk in the Ministry of Political Affairs to a big businessman, from an officer to a major in the Imperial Army

Moreover, there was often a line of small words attached to the positions, describing in detail what these people had sought from the owner of the diary.

It could be money, love, or a fleeting opportunity.

Khalil closed the diary and cast his eyes to his side.

A man was lying on the ground with his eyes closed. He looked very embarrassed, with blood on his collar. His cheeks were tight and his chin was too long, which did not seem firm.

Even in a coma, the whole person had a strange and exaggerated temperament, which could not be cultivated by a liar who had been wandering in the gray area of ​​the law for many years. Moreover, such people are often self-righteous and inferior.

A truly brilliant liar would never want to look like this. They would rather give people a solid and reliable first impression, rather than being exaggerated and frivolous.

At this moment, his eyelids were trembling slightly. He wanted to open them, but he didn't dare to open them.

"What should we do next, sir?" Van Cleef spoke at the right time, his voice became low and his accent changed. At this moment, he sounded like a standard imperial soldier.

"I think we'd better organize our words first and think about how to tell the captain his unfortunate fate."

Khalil moved his shoulders and deliberately put on an elegant and arrogant accent: "After all, not everyone can bear such a huge loss of only one in ten crew members, the engine is paralyzed, and the hull is scrapped to 60%. It's really unfortunate."

After he said this, he fell into silence and began to wait patiently.

A few seconds later, Navarro Del Kunas, who was lying on the ground, slowly opened his eyes and made a confused expression as if he had just woken up, and with it came his half sentence.

"Emperor, where am I--"

He suddenly stopped talking and stopped acting. His expression gradually changed from the confusion he pretended to have to the real confusion.

He sat up and looked up at the three giants standing beside him. After several minutes, he continued to speak. At this time, his voice had changed, becoming hoarse and low.

"——Your Majesty the Emperor, I really didn't expect to meet such a big shot like you."

"We are not big people, Captain Navarro Delkunas," Khalil said gently.

"But let me introduce you. This is Van Cleef, the company commander of the Eighth Legion. This is the pharmacist Celie Donio. I am Khalil Lohars, the current instructor of the Eighth Legion. ”

"No." Navarro's voice began to tremble. "No. 1 what?"

"The Eighth Legion." The pharmacist replied with a cold voice.

Navarro Delkunas gasped.

He immediately tried to pass out, but coughed violently from inhaling too much dust.

His face turned red, not sure whether it was because of his cough or because of the pharmacist's affirmative answer. Half a minute later, he managed to calm down, and the first thing he did was to stand up immediately, straighten his chest, and speak in a loud voice.

"Please allow me to introduce myself, my lords, I am Navarro from the Delkunas family. I am a completely law-abiding rogue. There is no contraband on my ship - well, maybe there is. A few things, but I believe you adults won’t do anything to me for this, right?”

"Unless what you're smuggling is pure gold," Khalil said. "or something else"

"Of course not!" Navarro quickly denied. "I'm just a small rogue trader, how could I smuggle those precious treasures - no, no, I have always abided by the law, and there is no way I would do these things in violation of the rules."

At this point, he realized something was wrong and began to quickly change the subject.

"Ah, you must have saved me from the clutches of the orcs, right?"

He rolled his eyes and observed the three of them carefully. The posture was extremely humble, almost groveling. However, as he looked at it, he began to feel more and more that something was wrong.

——Why is this instructor Khalil Lohars so tall? Wait, and his armor?

"Yes, it's me." Khalil nodded to him. "So, your statement is correct. But I don't think those orcs can survive the raid launched by Your Excellency. Your four naval pistols are rare treasures, and the handles are even engraved with the name of the ship. "

He paused for a moment and smiled suddenly.

"This means that their previous owners were all senior officers in the Imperial fleet, and the Empire explicitly prohibits officers from selling the weapons they received in any form. I want to know how you got them, Na Captain Varro Delkunas?”

Navarro was silent for more than ten seconds. In these ten seconds, he recalled his entire life.

During his unfortunate childhood, his family's power collapsed, and he was chosen to be the keeper of the diary. He took it with him to travel across the stars and could not return to his hometown for the rest of his life.

From a pampered aristocratic boy to a bohemian trader - and then, this is the origin of these four pistols. He won them in a bet with one of his colleagues. But now, his intestines were filled with regret.

Why am I so unlucky? ! Even if I encounter orcs, why is it that the legendary Eighth Legion came to support me?

O Emperor, if you are indeed a god as your son Lorgar Aurelion preaches, I, Navarro Delkunas, pray to you sincerely. Protect me in the hands of your Eighth Legion.

I don’t want to be skinned and cramped and hung from the bow of a ship like the people in those stories!

"me"

"you?"

"I" Navarro Delkunas took a deep breath. "If I said that these four guns are the trophies I won from gambling, would you believe it?"

"Maybe," Khalil said noncommittally. "After all, Rogue Traders are synonymous with great powers, aren't they? Connections and wealth. As long as you hold the trade license for a day, you will not be short of these things. And of course we will not be bored enough to come here to trouble you. ”

Navarro looked at him in confusion, and he keenly smelled some hint from the other person's words.

"You, what do you mean?"

Khalil stretched out his right hand and showed the brass diary to its owner with two fingers.

"My point is simple," Khalil said. "I just want to ask you to explain the contents of this diary to me. Although this matter is not within the scope of our responsibilities, who let us encounter it? Moreover, we just have nothing to do now. "

Navarro Delkunas's expression quickly changed to one of despair.

besides.