Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

It's another rainy night. Curze thought. It's also raining in Nostramo.

He lowered his head.

On the watery road, under the dim light of the street lights, he stepped in the middle of the puddle with his spiked armored boots. Circles of ripples rippled out from the soles of the boots and spread to the edge of the puddle.

More transparent raindrops fell and hit the puddles, causing circular ripples of different sizes to intersect with each other.

The night wind blew, and half a piece of waste paper floated toward Coze's gauntlet, which was covered by a black cloak. He caught the waste paper and sniffed the surface of the paper. The unique smell of smoke, ink, grease and benzene series.

It was different from the bloody rain that finally fell on Gemo. It was very different.

There was a hiss in the rain and a soft plop in the puddle. The robot Perturabo also covered his body with a black robe and approached him.

Rainwater fell down the tarpaulin and hit the surface of the metal transmission chain on the sole of his foot. Snapped.

The electricity hissed, the machinery hummed, and Perturabo's neck twisted. Before he spoke, Curz motioned for him to take a step back.

Five seconds later, the hum of the engine grew closer and closer. The blazing white car lights flashed a cross of white light. A dark vehicle sped towards the end of the empty street, stirring up a pool of water; the farthest droplets splashed back to the ground an inch in front of Perturabo.

After a sharp scream, the vehicle stopped suddenly next to several people.

A waiter wearing a black top hat got out of the back of the vehicle, hunched his neck, and rainwater fell from the brim of his hat and poured on his shoulders.

"Dear gentlemen, my family..."

Curze nodded. The bare-handed remains that were more than two meters tall behind him immediately stood in front of Xuhou. Two red metal prosthetic hands pulled at the sides of his neck, and pulled down the black hood that covered his face, revealing the face covered with metal tubular iron. The face is firmly covered.

"My lord would like to know, who are you..." The waiter's words changed slightly as he faced the iron cover that was obviously a torture device.

Another gust of night wind blew by, and a corner of the robe covering the remains of the bare hands was lifted, revealing the pale face hanging from her waist.

The embalmed face is fixed and flattened by a number of wire clips, allowing people to catch a glimpse of the remnants of the gorgeous appearance that the owner of the face once had.

The waiter's body trembled visibly. With excellent professionalism, he followed his master's order in a panic and asked the last half of the sentence: "...Does your body modification technology belong to the Dixon family?"

Coates said nothing. He stood there, breathing calmly. The huge body, which is more than twice the height of an ordinary person, looks slender and thin under the black robe.

In the silence of the heavy rain, a flash of lightning suddenly illuminated the entire block. Then, muffled thunder rolled across the long street.

The thunder subsided. The patter of footsteps sounded again. Several people walked towards the next street light, facing the night wind that rolled up their black robes, and walked step by step.

boom.

The waiter fell backward onto the surface of the dark vehicle, then slid down and fell into a puddle caused by the heavy rain, unable to sit down.

The rain continues to fall.

——

"I didn't do anything while you watched," said Conrad Coates, "just my little remains killed the waiter's master. Going to get out of the rain?"

"Like throwing a pair of iron scissors smoothly?" Perturabo said, looking up at the ancient building with rusty iron bars and even the door sign missing.

Kurtz raised one side of his mouth and showed a cheerful smile.

He was familiar with the road, and with a single kick, he knocked down the entire rusty iron door to the ground.

Then, he took his brother, his remains servant Lilia Ander, and Morse who was shaking his tarpaulin cloak, stepped on the iron gate, walked through the concrete path in the middle of the muddy courtyard, and walked in Inside the abandoned building, sit down on a few benches on the side of the hall.

Specifically, Curze and Perturabo each took up an entire bench. During this process, the remains servant quickly took out a handkerchief and took the initiative to wipe the surface of the bench clean for Coze.

Perturabo accidentally used the weight of his iron frame to break the first bench, which was completely gnawed away by time. He changed to the second one and sat down carefully.

The remains servant sat awkwardly on half of the bench, with nowhere to place the large number of modified prosthetics on her back.

Morse continued to use physical methods to shake off the acidic rainwater on his waterproof cloak.

"Okay, Conrad. What are the Dixons?"

Perturabo continued, taking off the tarp from his body, looking around, but couldn't find a place to put the cloak that didn't collect dust, so he had to put the cloth back on himself.

"I have no idea."

Coates said softly, and even without amplifying the volume, the words still echoed in the empty hall; the heavy rain outside made the room seem more cramped than its original space.

"I'm not curious either. Nostramo's families are all very similar, and there are only two things that can distinguish them."

"Strength?" Perturabo guessed, his electronic eyes and the charging device on his chest glowed faintly green in the darkness.

"That's the first thing."

"How aging is the family?" Morse said.

"That's... that's not the second thing. What I meant was the last name."

Morse let out a low laugh. Coates answered the second call. In desperation, Perturabo also used his mechanically synthesized voice to fill in the third voice.

Kurtz raised his left hand back, touched twice, and found a button.

Many light bulbs on the ceiling of the hall struggled to flash for two seconds.

Finally, a lamp located just above the heads of several people stubbornly insisted on lighting up. In the darkness, from the top to the ground below, it illuminated a bright, light yellow area that looked like a cone when viewed from the side.

"You guys..." Curze stared at his dark blue thin armored fingers and the hooked barbs on the armored wrists, as if he was talking to his own hands. "What do you think of Nostramo?"

"Public security has completely defeated Gemo." Morse said, "On the long road of Youdu developing into a well-known civilized city in the universe, Nostramo is the first heavyweight opponent it needs to defeat."

"Oh, no," Curze muttered, "I meant what I asked."

"It needs a complete transformation." Perturabo replied, tapping his mechanical face, letting the acidic rain dripping into the gaps in the machine's eye sockets flow out from under his chin. "I simply can't imagine what it would be like if you fell into Nostramo, what will happen next, unless there is some particularly unexpected and strange encounter..."

He shook his head.

"A bat eating rats on top of a sewer?" Cozz pulled down his hood, exposing his pale skin to the pale yellow light.

In a single light source, his deeply chiseled face was illuminated only by the area outlined by his browbones, cheekbones, bridge of nose, and a hint of jawline.

"A person who is obsessed with prophecies? No, I have no intention of accusing you." Perturabo said, a person who had not thought of him for decades suddenly flashed through his mind.

The Mad Prince of Olympia. He suddenly thought of him, and felt a little empty in his heart.

"Who knows, my brother," said Curze, "but don't blame my prophecy too much. It has brought us an empty building suitable for shelter from the rain."

"It's true." Morse knocked on the wall, and the dust fell to the ground along with a piece of the wall. Within the wall, some rustling sounds quickly receded. "Even though the pipes here are full of rats' nests."

Curze jumped up from the bench and stared angrily at the wall behind him. Then he pulled out the nails that were nailed to the bench, moved it away from the wall, and sat down again.

"Hmm...did you predict that sitting in the middle of the light would make you look like a prisoner being interrogated?" Morse asked, holding his chin.

"Oh, Morse." Perturabo pressed the sides of his nose and smoothed his eyebrows that would theoretically be wrinkled out of habit.

Curze grinned. He probably just couldn't learn how to smile like a normal person, instead of some kind of pathologically mentally ill skin-flaying maniac.

"It's okay, it's funny," Curze said unfazed. "I appreciate jokes... when we get away from the Eldar storytelling style."

His eyes moved to the foyer, where they had just entered.

The heavy rain outside is falling more violently, and acidic raindrops containing a variety of industrial compounds are mercilessly eroding this dark land. Behind the rain curtain, the overlapping buildings towered into the depths of the clouds, filling up all the visually breathable parts. It was like the entire world was blocked in a solid city by this heavy rain.

"Golmor is in turmoil," Morse said, looking outside with Coze. "During a special period when the Eldar are experiencing transitions and great changes, if you are not careful, the capital of Youdu will be turned upside down. But Nostramo …”

"In twenty years, her night has never changed." Coates said coldly, "The same bloody vendetta, the same crushing power, the same drama with just changing actors, I have watched it for twenty years. Everything. All of this... seems to be fixed in an existing destiny process."

He stood up from his bench anyway, walked to the edge of the circular aperture, and approached the door where the heavy rain continued. The waterproof cloak behind him tipped over the chair.

"Here, the entire society has been frozen for hundreds of years... or even thousands of years. The fate of Nostramo has been artificially fixed for so long in the thousands of years of social operation that people think that their fate is Woven by this wordless eternal night, and finalized at the moment of being born into this night, it seems that all resistance will fall into the same fate of decline.”

"Destiny, mission, lifeline. These words have been too vague since their birth, causing people to dispute their definitions every day, just like discussing whether resisting fate is also included in fate has any meaning." Morse snorted. He said, "Okay, if this continues, the word 'meaning' should be shoved into the trash can of 'this bunch of things need to be defined'."

"Well, anyway, Curze, what do you want to do now?" Perturabo timely interrupted this debate that people would have when they became too idle on a rainy day.

If he were decades younger, he would still be happy to participate in fierce verbal debates; his quick thinking makes him invincible in all kinds of debates, especially rapid verbal exchanges.

But now, he thinks it is better to use this time to develop two new anti-aircraft guns, or design a new automatic dispatching system for dual-use aerial and space vehicles, both military and civilian.

Curze crossed his fingers and moved his wrists, then spread his arms and tilted his head back to make his neck more flexible.

"Wait here until the rain subsides," he said. "Maybe in twenty minutes. Then we'll go eat."

——

When Conrad Coates said he was going to eat, what he really meant was that he was going to eat.

However, in this dark world that does not distinguish between day and night, after the heavy rain gradually subsided, there were still two Terra hours before the meal time.

So before eating, Konrad Coze diligently became a local tour guide in Nostramo - even though it was his first time here in his life, he led three creatures to wander around the planet.

"Here," he said enthusiastically, raising his hand and pointing to the gray ancient city in front of him, "the birthplace of Talos Valcolan and Charles. Talos will be an interesting pharmacist. He is really He believed that fear was the origin of justice, and he also had the gift of prophecy. He said, 'I will let the cry of the empire reach the sacred Terra, and these cries of pain will cause the decay on the golden throne. ...'"

Perturabo looked at Curze in shock: "What did he say?"

"I thought you had long known that Konrad's Legion had a deep grudge against the Emperor."

"Pseudo-Emperor," Perturabo said quickly, as if the word burned his teeth, "I understand."

He thought for a while and added: "It seems that the Emperor failed to handle the conflicts in the Legion."

"Don't excuse my future legions," Curze said in a playful tone, "I know what they are."

They returned to the vehicle, literally, on top of the vehicle - the remains of Lilia Ander reluctantly huddled in the driver's seat inside the vehicle, pulling down the joystick; Morse sat next to the remains and fell asleep; The overly tall Primarch sat on the top of the vehicle, letting the drizzle and night wind beat on their backs.

"Next, let me think about it..." Coze's gauntlet slapped his leg, "Shen! Yes, let's go see where that little guy who smells like an Ultramarine was born."

He laughed cheerfully and typed a series of secret signals rhythmically on the roof of the vehicle. Lilia Ander turned the lever, and the vehicle turned onto a fork in the road.

"Have you invented a new language code for these aphasic people?" asked Perturabo.

"No, I didn't cut out their tongues." Coz said, "They don't want to speak. It's not my problem. In addition, I did make a new code - oh, the twins across the river. The tower is one of the many prisons in Nostramo, and there are a lot of innocent people imprisoned in it. After all, there are a lot of innocent people in Gemodu."

He snorted and let the night wind roll up his cloak, extending from both sides of his body toward the darkness ahead.

A few minutes later, he suddenly shook his head and said, "You guys continue shopping, I'll get a dinner and come back."

Afterwards, Konrad Coates jumped off the high-speed vehicle lightly, wearing a black robe and blending into the night in an instant.

Morse opened the top window of the vehicle, stuck his head out, and looked at Coze's disappearing figure.

Not long after, an explosion went off, and the manor burned fiercely in the wind and rain. Sparks shot up into the sky like thunder, illuminating half of the city in an instant.

Konrad Coates jumped all the way on the roof of the building, caught up with the vehicle, landed lightly back on the top of the vehicle, and sat down. The black robe unfolded beside him and hung down in large areas along the edge of the vehicle.

He hummed happily, opened a waterproof bag, took out several plates of exquisite delicacies without any spillage inside, and even two antique candlesticks used to decorate the dining table, and placed them on the surface one after another.

"I got it before they used the knives and forks," Cozzi's voice rose at the end of his words. "It's not contaminated, it's very clean."

"...Which family's table did you bring this from?" Perturabo asked.

"Skolywok," Cozzi said, "don't worry, they'll never come back to recover this dinner."