40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 599 117. Dark Expedition (38, Death of Calistarius)

"Where is this?" Calistarius asked.

"Cemetery," said Konrad Curze.

His tone was very ordinary, as if the word referred to just an ordinary cemetery. Calistarius tried to stay calm, while clearing his mind and focusing on the current problem.

It was really not easy to do this. He had at least hundreds of questions to ask, but the young think tank knew that knowing the answers to these questions would be of no use to him at the moment.

There was only one thing that he really cared about, and he had to care about it.

"How do I leave?"

Curze stopped, and the tall, thin, and radiantly glowing Night King turned his face with a smile and repeated the key point in Calistarius' words.

"Leave?"

He turned his head and raised his right hand naturally, making a gesture as exaggerated but elegant as an actor in an opera. Calistarius followed the hand closely, and found that it finally settled into a clever fist.

No, not a fist, but a sword

A flickering flame surged out of thin air in the next second, forming a flaming sword in his hand. The Night King clenched it, weighed it, and then made a sword flower, and pointed the tip of the sword lightly at Calistarius.

In front of the horrified eyes of the Blood Angel, he turned around and quickly stabbed the sword into his chest.

The Blood Angel almost roared: "You——!"

He stopped abruptly.

No pain

Being pierced through the chest, even as an Astartes, he should feel a considerable degree of pain. But he felt nothing at the moment, as if the sword still in his chest did not exist at all, but was just an illusion.

He looked down at himself in confusion and tried to draw the sword, but he never thought that he easily "took" it out, and his chest still had no sense of reality. Then, the sword suddenly shattered and turned into nothingness.

He looked up at the Night King, who looked normal, with the crown on his head still shining, as if nothing had happened.

He leaned forward slightly, grinned, and then said something that made Calistarius purse his lips tightly.

"Did you see it? I'm sorry, child."

"But I... I still have things to do, sir."

The Night King shook his head slowly and forcefully.

"Who doesn't?"

He said with a sigh, then raised his hands, and suddenly there was a heavy vibration in the darkness, like a curtain that was about to fall and fell heavily on the wooden floor in the hands of a third-rate stage manager.

Calistarius suddenly felt cold in his heart, and he instinctively looked at the darkness behind the 8th Legion Primarch, but he didn't see anything.

"You'd better not peek into the darkness rashly, there may be anything hidden in it." Curze kindly reminded, but his voice was gloomy.

The young think tank took a deep breath and firmly put forward his request again: "I must leave, my lord. I can't remember, but I do have something to do, very important things."

Koz smiled, as if he knew he would say this. He turned around and strode to the other end of the cemetery - at least from Calistarius's point of view, it was indeed the other end.

He felt that he had been here for a while, but he still couldn't tell the specific direction. He could only use vague intuition to judge which side he was walking.

This situation is very dangerous. If he didn't get help from Konrad Koz, he would most likely get lost here.

But why is Konrad Koz here?

The Blood Angel frowned again, drove this question out of his mind, and quickly followed the Night King who had no footsteps at all.

The texture of his long black robe was unclear, like silk, or pure darkness. The corners and hem of the mop had natural wear and tear marks, and the sharp or rough edges were jumping like burning flames.

It was unknown how long it took, and they walked in front of a sarcophagus. The inside was empty, even the coffin lid was gone. The Night King turned around and sat calmly on the rough edge of the coffin, as if he had done this thousands of times.

Calistarius looked at him in confusion, not knowing what this meant, but he was good at waiting. He knew that Konrad Curze must have something to say.

It was indeed the case.

"Leaving is a special concept, kid." Curze looked at him gently and spoke slowly. "At least it's special here, because no one who comes here wants to leave."

"This cemetery belongs only to those who have done everything, or those who have no more obsessions."

"No matter what their identities and achievements were in their lifetime, they are all welcomed here equally. No matter how much suffering they suffered when they were alive, and how cruelly they were oppressed, there will be a place for them here."

"No suffering, no blood, no fighting, only silent sleep and this quiet evening breeze."

He smiled again, raised his right hand, spread his five fingers, and felt the wind blowing past.

"So, there are no tombstones here, because they no longer need an identity or a name, they just need to rest in peace, that's all"

The young think tank looked at him in disbelief.

"But I-but, I. This is impossible, my lord, I."

Curze interrupted his incoherence with a smile, and then patted the side of the sarcophagus. The force was gentle, but the dust fell slowly. It took Callistarius a while to realize that this was an invitation - an invitation to sit together.

He took another deep breath with unspeakable pain and had no choice but to sit on the edge of the sarcophagus.

For a moment, no one spoke here, only silence and the faint sound of wind. Listening to it, Think Tank's restless heart slowly calmed down, and an indescribable power flowed along with it, entering his blood vessels with his breathing.

The sound of the wind is still there, but Calistarius has returned to calm.

After a few minutes, he spoke in a low voice.

"Am I already dead?"

"Not yet." Kurtz said without looking back, his voice still very soft. "Your body is still some time away from death, but it's in really bad shape."

"Multiple organs throughout your body were damaged, and you lost too much blood. Your life is about to be in danger. Moreover, due to an error in the psychic ritual, your soul also left the body. Spirit and body complement each other and are indispensable. Your complete departure makes The brain loses its active response."

"As early as four Terra hours ago, your apothecary announced that you would become a living dead. The three think tanks who presided over the ceremony with you were willing to be punished for this, but they did not wait for the punishment to come, and they had to step out. into a war.”

"War?" Callistarius repeated his words with a blank mind.

"Yes, War. Do you remember that mysterious psychic signal, kid?"

"Did it cause the war?"

Curze finally lowered his head, looked into Callistarius's dark blue eyes, which were almost identical to his father's, and nodded seriously.

"That spiritual energy came from a monster. It devoured too many creatures and gained a huge matrix. Coupled with its inherently evil nature, its power exceeded the caution of you think tanks."

"You think it is a signal, but it is not. It is a beacon, used to release power. In the first second after the ceremony begins, it tears off the disguise, drives away your soul, and seizes the dominant position. , rushed into subspace."

"And the ritual materials you used are too precious. A drop of Sanguinius's blood can evoke indescribable ghosts in the subspace. Eight hours after the ritual started, several channels were opened with this power. The door is quietly born in your fleet."

Callistarius looked at him with a pale face. After a while, he grasped a life-saving straw while feeling dizzy and close to drowning.

"We have the Primarch here."

"And they are endless."

The think tank went silent, and his hands that were originally placed on his knees began to tremble. From his fingertips to his wrists, every inch of his muscles was suffering from spasm-like torture, which quickly spread throughout his body. But he still didn't give up thinking, and just like that, he grasped a new straw.

"grown ups!"

"Um?"

"You know these things." Callistarius breathed deeply, his face dripping with sweat for no apparent reason. "You, you all know, does this mean-"

"—I'm dead, kid."

Callistarius was stunned.

"I'm dead," Curze whispered, then patted him on the back. "The dead will never touch the world of the living rashly, even if it is just a prophecy. Do you think I used my talent to learn these things?"

"No, I see everything from your impending death. For every soul that comes here, I can see their past and cause of death, even the parts they don't know."

"Those who still have hatred can wait for the opportunity to avenge their hatred. Those who have no nostalgia will return to the cemetery and sleep peacefully in the coffin. Therefore, I regret that I cannot warn your father in advance to avoid this incident. disaster."

"Actually, if I had done this, you wouldn't be meeting me today and this conversation wouldn't be happening at all."

Callistarius could no longer say anything. Countless terrible thoughts roared in his mind, followed by countless complicated emotions.

Guilt, regret, anger, sadness - he was almost going crazy, how could such a thing happen? The psychic signal has obviously been thoroughly checked, and three experienced think tank directors have been invited to assist in the ceremony.

"No matter how much preparation you do, they're always going to find a way."

Callistarius raised his head drowsily and looked at the speaker. He thought he would see the face of the Night King, but he was wrong. He saw a beam of gentle moonlight and a scene projected from it.

In a ruins surrounded by flames, a man with his eyes closed and covered in blood lay in it, not knowing whether he was alive or dead.

His face felt very familiar to Callistarius, and it took him a few seconds to realize who this face belonged to.

"You're dying."

A hand was placed on his shoulder, feeling extremely cold. Conrad Curze's voice rang out from above him, causing ripples in the moonlight.

"You have the last five minutes of your life, Callistarius. Five minutes in the material world, a moment or an eternity here will pass, and you will die."

The hand grabbed him, forcing his eyes away from the moonlight and toward a pale face.

"Do you want to die?" Conrad Coates asked.

The Blood Angel didn't answer, as if he was sluggish.

"If you don't want to, try to reject it, Callistarius, throw away your old ideas and try to embrace this new one: refuse to die. You must do this or you will die."

Callistarius finally roared.

"How am I going to do this?!" he shouted in anger, almost aggrieved.

"Willpower," Coates said.

At this moment, his tone was extremely ruthless. The same was true for his face, handsome and cruel together occupying a position on that pale canvas, inexplicably adding a terrifying persuasiveness to what he said next.

"My brother Roger Dorn once had a theory. He believed that as long as a person has enough willpower, he can do anything. This theory was confirmed to be true in the thirteenth year after his birth. On top of that, we have proven its authenticity with our lives.”

"But this has a premise. The premise is that you must be in subspace, or a place that is disordered enough to be briefly called subspace."

"And you, Callistarius, as a think tank, you should know the most basic principle: there is no logic in subspace, it is an idealistic world."

He put down his hand, took two steps back, grabbed the sarcophagus, and put it down heavily. Pale ashes splashed high, and an empty sarcophagus stood in front of Callistarius.

"This is the last chance I can give you, child. Refuse to die, or refuse to let go of the past. Choose one."

He patted the sarcophagus, turned and left. In just a blink of an eye, there was no trace again.

The moonlight faded, but darkness remained. The young think tank, Blood Angel Callistarius, who was deemed to have great potential and could become the director of the think tank, clenched his fists silently.

Until this moment, he didn't understand why things suddenly turned out like this.

He was filled with anger and hatred for the culprit. He didn't dare to think about how many brothers died for this, nor did he dare to speculate on the safety of the original body. At this moment, only the voice of Konrad Curze echoed in his mind.

"Willpower," he said. "Refuse to die."

Callistarius strode into the sarcophagus.

——

Robert Guilliman smiled, picked up a piece of meat with a knife, and put it into his mouth. He was sitting at the head of a long table, with misty light cast all around through the pure gold chandelier.

A governor's palace on orbit would have such a luxurious banquet hall, wouldn't it? He looked down at the head on the plate, played with the bright red lips with his fingers, and then smiled again.

"You taste good," he said. "But it's still not as good as them."

them? who is it? Is it the group of mortals who are in fear at the end of the banquet hall filled with blood and corpses, or is it the group of Astartes who have mostly lost their limbs, but still stand in front of the mortals and become their shields?

Robert Guilliman looked up at one of them who had lost his left hand, and then shook his finger.

"My son." He said with a smile amid their roars. "come over."

Half a minute later, he pressed a still-warm corpse on the table and ate it. Unnaturally, a black bird landed on his shoulder, and then began to utter human words.

"The plan is successful and it's time to set off."

Roboute Guilliman ignored it, simply shrugging his shoulders and letting it go. There was blood on his face, hands and clothes, and pieces of meat and bones were stuck in the gaps between his teeth. After about ten minutes, he sat back on the chair with satisfaction.

"Delicious food," he said. "As expected of one of my company commanders."

Then, he looked at the black bird circling overhead with a very intriguing look.