40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 503 21. The statue is broken, and the dead are resurrected (VI)

The Night Soul is a very typical Retribution-class battleship. It does not have good maneuverability, but it has thick armor and firepower that is almost incomprehensible.

The designer responsible for this model probably has a huge fear of insufficient firepower, so he wants to fill the sides of the ship with a huge number of weapon arrays, and madly arranges the macro cannon and torpedo array as machine gun positions.

He completely ignores how much burden this will cause to the crew responsible for loading ammunition. Not only that, this person also installed a "smaller" number of light spears on the ridge of the ship, and a nova cannon hidden under the figurehead.

It is completely insufficient to simply use the word "excessive firepower" to describe the Retribution-class, but it does have its advantages - the firepower of the Retribution-class gives it a special deterrent.

As long as you find an opportunity to aim, most of the enemies within the range will be directly smashed into pieces by a round of salvos. They didn't even have a chance to open fire, and the void shield was useless under this level of firepower.

There was no doubt that the Night Soul was a warship that was enough to scare the enemy. But the problem was that the enemy she was facing now did not exist in the cold vacuum.

It was on the deck of the Night Soul. No matter how powerful her firepower was, facing an enemy that could not be hit, it was just useless paper data.

"Shen!" Samus roared and called. "It's time!"

No one answered, only the deep darkness surged on the deck. The ancient warship seemed to be extremely angry about its arrival. Thick fog swept in, followed by strong winds, turning the cold fog into countless cold knives that were thirsty for blood.

They hovered around the demon, creating countless wounds on its body, and sticky blood gushed out of the wounds. Before it had time to emit heat and create blasphemy, it was inserted into it by the knives and turned into ice chips and thrown away and shattered.

Samus suddenly laughed, exhaling two streams of hot air from his wet nose, not caring about his injuries.

Its face, which looked like neither beast nor human, was filled with pure excitement, as if it had waited hundreds of lives for this day

--and the fact was indeed so, it had indeed been expelled hundreds of times by the Shadow Knights.

This entanglement can be traced back to Calth ten thousand years ago, and during these ten thousand years, the battlefield of hatred has expanded to the entire galaxy.

It once appeared in the Fortress Wall in the solar system with the magic tide, attacking the defense line, intending to enter the broken Terra. It also secretly entered the home world of the Shadow Knights, Weilain, and set off a bloody storm in it.

It's not that no one has tried to exile it with the flames of anger, so as to solve the problem once and for all. However, this beast is extremely cunning. If it senses the breath of the flames of anger, it will never appear.

Except this time.

This time, it is the only exception. Because Shen did not hide his arrival, nor did he hide the changes in his body. Samus did not flee, and even stopped where he was, watching Shen strolling from the end of the darkness.

The already weak light was completely devoured, and the flames burned fiercely in the darkness. The composite steel that made up the deck was twisted and deformed, and burned into crystal clear hot molten iron by the angry flames, and silently climbed onto Shen's armor.

At the top of the corridor, the pipes responsible for transporting energy and maintaining temperature spontaneously bent down, as if the battleship itself was bowing to Shen, and then broke in unison, as if saying goodbye. From the broken place, steam gushed out continuously, covering up Shen's existence.

Only the burning eyes were still clear.

"How long have we waited for this day?" The demon asked with a sigh.

It put its left paw on its chest, and it looked polite. Shen did not answer, so it stared at Shen with its wet animal eyes without blinking, full of expectation, wanting to get his answer.

But Shen did not answer.

He never answered.

A burst of fire flashed across the porthole, completely illuminating their faces. The deck rumbled, and the ripples of the void shield showed a psychedelic purple in the firelight. Not far away, Litatra was still burning, and the collapse of the Raging Abyss never stopped.

Those fragments were like burning comets traveling around the galaxy, crossing the distance of thousands of worlds, just to come to this world to rain fire, hit the ground, force the continental plates to shift, destroy the hive, and civilians died one by one with screams

"Is it beautiful?" Samus asked.

Shen shook his head gently, and the demon stretched out his right claw and tapped the porthole indifferently. It could have easily torn the porthole as if it were a piece of white paper, but it didn't do so. Instead, it began to explain its ideas to Shen very seriously.

"In my opinion, most mortals don't deserve to live."

"They don't understand how many people's efforts are behind the innate gift of life. They don't know that their right to survive is something that countless people like you fought desperately across the galaxy to get back."

"They haven't seen you rolling in the mud, falling one after another in death, biting the enemy like wild dogs. They have no gratitude or respect for you. Instead, they regard you as disasters, just because you only appear in the most dangerous places."

Shen looked at him indifferently, and the molten iron and steam began to twist, as if they had life, and embedded one by one into the melted gaps on his charred armor.

Seeing this scene, Samus laughed unknowingly. He turned his ears and began to listen to Shen's heartbeat that gradually became stronger and thunderous, and his smile gradually widened.

It sighed with emotion.

"As I said last time, Shen. In my opinion, they are just wasting their lives. But it's different now. Now, these numb people have a chance to turn back."

"Ah, by the way, I must admit one thing to you. In fact, I don't like Erebus. Even for an inanimate person like me, he is really disgusting."

"In my opinion, he is just a bastard who pretends to be noble. However, even for such a bastard, he did one thing right - he brought enlightenment to your world and people."

Samus sincerely closed his paws and straightened his rickety waist like a human. There was a desire that only humans had on the beast's head.

"After today, will those mediocre mortals continue to sink?"

Samus's eyes widened and he spoke a soft question between his tiny fangs. Then, there were more words that didn’t look like they should come from the mouth of a demon. Every sentence is laced with philosophy, and every word is filled with bloody expectations.

In the darkness, Shen's heartbeat sounded like thunder.

"No, they never will again," Samus said softly. "After today, they will cherish every minute and every second of their lives."

"As long as they can survive until the next day, then the morning sun will become the brightest and warmest light in their lives. But this has a prerequisite."

Samus released his paws, letting them hang naturally next to the refractory sheep's hooves.

The demon roared.

"The premise is that there must be a hero to save them!"

Shen stared at it indifferently.

In the darkness, his nonexistent shadow began to burn.

Then the steam burst, the fog dissipated, and the dark armor and chains turned into pale ashes under the boiling molten iron and fell completely. What is exposed underneath is not a bare chest, but another kind of armor.

A kind of armor between flesh and steel, as ferocious as the sacrificial ceremonial armor unearthed in ancient times.

Once upon a time, priests wore similar things, smeared their entire faces with blood, took over the authority of their gods, and recited ancient prayers in living sacrifices.

But now Shen didn't say anything. The dark flames slowly enveloped his face and began to burn his flesh and blood, turning everything into ashes in the rising black smoke.

In the end, only a white but ferocious bone surface remained in place. The black smoke that had not completely dissipated accompanied the burning of the flames. Escape.

The mark of the eight-pointed star of chaos quietly appeared at his feet. One corner was extremely bright, beating endlessly in the bright red. Every time it jumped, there was a thunderous sound.

It was as if a heart buried under the ground had just been taken out from the enemy's chest, still bleeding freshly, waiting for a sharp blade to pierce it.

What was once Shen began to growl in the darkness.

——

Sevatar slowly put on his helmet.

He had a private armaments room, and although he himself did not want such a thing, after generations of Chapter brothers persuaded him, Sevatar still set up such a place for himself.

He still doesn't like it here.

In his opinion, this room served no purpose other than to demonstrate unnecessary authority and special status. He did not have enough weapons to require a private armament room for separate storage.

After all, over the past ten thousand years, he had deposited all the weapons he had captured and been rewarded into the Chapter's arsenal. Recruits with excellent training performance can receive them, veterans can receive them, and the elites of the combat company are required to have a sophisticated weapon.

Furthermore, Sevatar did not make the warband in need.

With Nostramo on their back and numerous connections within the empire, they simply could not afford to be poor. Although the fine gold ore produced from Nostramo can no longer be traded or given away, there is no problem in internal digestion.

So, what is the use of this private weapons room?

Sevatar glanced down at the servitor who was holding the chain halberd and looking at him, and stretched out his right hand. The servitor lowered his head respectfully, followed the set procedure, raised his hands, and held his weapon reverently. Handed over.

The servo skull began to play prayers and triumphal hymns from within the Ecclesiastical Church, and in the holy murmur, Sevatar held his weapon. Then, there was a bright golden light falling from his head.

These are the remains of devout believers who voluntarily donated their remains after death.

Savita suppressed his urge to run away immediately and allowed the golden ashes to fall on him before leaving the armament room.

The war is no longer what he was familiar with. The power of faith is prevalent in it. Although he has refused the National Church to send military chaplains to the Nightfall, he cannot stop them from sending these pious remains again and again.

They're useful against demons, and not just demons. With this in mind, the Night Blades are perhaps the Chapter that needs them the most in the entire galaxy.

Thinking of this, Sevata chuckled without a smile, full of sarcasm. He suppressed this emotion and went to the boarding deck quietly.

In the dark hangar, the eight great companies of Nightblade were waiting silently, with eight flags fluttering gently above their heads. These flags have experienced thousands of years of wind and frost, and have long become tattered and covered with blood, but they are still hung here without repair.

Sevata looked up at them and said nothing, just threw the chain saw halberd out. An old soldier in the first company immediately reached out to take it, as if he had long been accustomed to it.

Then, the iconic hoarse voice of Yago Sevatarion echoed in this huge hangar.

"Ten thousand years."

He said, and then slowly took off his helmet, with only calmness on his pale face, without any frivolous indulgence in the past.

"I often stare at my face in the mirror, but I don't find any signs of aging. I am still the same as I was ten thousand years ago, and I don't even have one more scar." "Time is too generous to me. My body functions have not weakened in these long years, and my strength and speed have never slowed down. The only problem is that time has not changed my soul." "My perspective on the world is still the same as it was ten thousand years ago. I am still used to treating the world in the way I used to. So I remember each of you. Every dead person in these ten thousand years, their tombstones and epitaphs were carved by me personally." "I watched your predecessors pass the selection, enter the battle group, undergo surgery, and finally wear armor to become a Night Blade. Then, I watched them die, in various ways." "The post-war data reports cannot reflect the disappearance of fresh lives. They were submitted to the Military Affairs Department in exchange for many awards and honors, but who remembers those who died?" Sevatar smiled. "Only I remember." He said softly. "I remember them, and then it was your turn. Over and over again. I watched you go through the selection, receive training, survive the transformation surgery, and finally stand here, ready to step into hell."

His smile began to gradually expand, a smile that the Night Blades had never seen before. In their impression, Yago Sevitarion seemed to have never smiled. At least not such a genuine, heartfelt smile.

"But no matter what the final result is, I will remember you."

He raised his right hand and hammered his chest: "Yes, Yago Sevitarion will remember all of you. And if we win and he comes back, I will introduce you to him one by one. He will also know you, and he will remember you, just like me."

No one spoke, only a neat light emanating from the scarlet eyepiece.

Sevitar raised his hands and put on his helmet again.

"Now, get ready. We are going to hell."