Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

After repeatedly confirming the collective direction and frequency of the new round of alien attacks, Perturabo obtained a piece of information that was difficult to evaluate, but only needed to be shared.

"Horus Luperkar, there is a new round of attacks on our defense line. They are all centripetal attacks. The target is the Silver Angel base planet. Preliminary judgment is that the planet has generated a psychic wide-area signal source. Please reply when you receive it. ”

The voice of Horus came quickly, and the Wolf Shepherd sounded quite energetic. In the rounds of wars and sacrifices, the war commander no longer easily had too many emotional ups and downs. They are too busy, just too busy.

Perhaps Lorgar Aurelion's encouragement and intercession should also be added. This set may not be effective for others, but having someone praising the Emperor in Horus's ears can indeed make the Returned Son feel good at this time. Up some.

"Then our defenses have a clearer countermeasure." said the Wolf God. "Do you need any assistance, Perturabo?"

"Soldiers from Fortress Nos. 40 to 46 and 21 to 25 will join the defense line nearby."

"The authority is in your hands." Horus quickly replied.

"receive."

Perturabo waited for three seconds and realized that Horus's communication was still hung amidst the rustling busy tone of electricity and the noisy discussion in the messenger room in the background. Horus put his hand on the sound array button on the side of the control panel, but did not end the conversation for a long time.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

"I was wondering... if the signal source is erased, can the Randan alien be successfully disoriented?" Horus replied, this time his voice was ethereal, mixed with the noise in the background, like the bass part of a tune. , sinking to the bottom.

Perturabo remained unmoved and hesitated even a moment. "This is not your method, Horus Luperkar. Extermination is the method of Leon El'Jonson."

"But we all serve the Emperor," Horus said, lowering his voice.

"That's enough," said the Iron Lord. "Go and rest for five minutes, Wolf Shepherd. There is no need to give up. We will fight to the end."

——

"What can I do now?" Leon El'Jonson asked calmly.

"Refresh yourself, reconstruct your mental barrier, and wait for your warriors to come to the rescue."

"No, No. 2." He said, feeling drops of blood drip down the bone chain and softly hitting the center of his outstretched palm. "How do I launch an attack?"

"...You can't be serious."

A week, a day, or even an hour ago, he could not have imagined that he would reach the temporary peace he now had with an Imperial life that had become an alien, but he did.

This should have been the path that those led by Horus Luperkar, who spoke of brotherhood, were more inclined to choose, rather than the choice of a lion who was only loyal to the Emperor. After scolding others for their weakness, Leon El'Jonson realized that being trapped by emotions would one day be his fate.

He can explain to himself that this is the rational choice at the moment, it is the distinction between enemy and friend, and it is also the time for a qualified hunter to sniff out the turning point after analyzing the flow of the wind and the whirling of the forest leaves in the hunting ground. .

No, these are all just excuses brought about by language that floats on the surface, like the waves caused by a school of swimming fish underwater toward the surface.

The real answer traveled through the water: His sword was no longer willing to swing.

But now, he happened to have a better target to divert all his anger and annoyance.

"You can't kill it."

"No need. I will stop it, hurt it, and make it unable to escape."

"Then what?"

"Let the truly powerful destroy it."

Duncan seemed to flinch. "No...Leon..."

"I never tell a dull joke. Give me access to the guns of the Queen of Glory, Second Primarch."

Duncan thought for a long time, then shook his head. "never mind."

The sound of the bone chain floated crisply and faded away in the dark hall. In the blink of an eye, Duncan was down to earth again, put on the dark brown robe of a traveler, and stood beside the lion.

"Let's go together," he said. "Until the one you're waiting for comes."

"Okay." Leon said coldly.

Duncan nodded slightly. Even though his spiritual body seemed to have left the chain platform that held him, the two bone chains were still connected to his hands, and the ends were blocked by his sleeves and could not be seen clearly.

He continued: "But you must know that for every subsequent naval gun, the fuel will be your own spiritual will. You will become weak, and your body in the real universe is best not to be affected to any extent. damage. Otherwise..."

He pursed his lips.

"Otherwise, this world of collective consciousness will be the only place where you can continue to exist in the future."

——

Just like on an ocean planet, the majestic ocean tides are pulled by the tides. Kroger thought.

These alien shapes are wrapped in a layer of translucent gel, and their interiors are filled with disgusting deep purple and deep pink colors, as well as weird pus-yellow and mold-like dark green, flowing like a tide from the plain below the Bone Mountain. They come.

Every time they are penetrated by a bolt, a stream of viscous corrosive substances will fly out from the holes in their honeycomb bodies, forming an acid rain, splashing on the outer armor of the Space Marines, eroding their respective paint pigments. It is completely gone, leaving only the pure color of ceramic steel underneath, and even the composite steel core structure that is broken internally.

"Damn it..." someone cursed in a low roar. He roared hoarsely with all his strength, but when the roar was drowned in the rain of bullets, it was just a small noise and no one noticed it.

"Blow them up!" Someone else shouted, becoming a loud accompaniment in the rain of machine gun fire, like a percussionist beating the drum frantically, intending to blow all the enemies in front of him into carbonized colloid, broken stratum corneum, dark sticky pus and blood that was burned dry, and corpses and bloodstains twitching under heavy grenade guns.

Kroger opened fire not only out of reason, but also out of anger. The flames of war nurtured the burning anger in his heart bit by bit.

As new spiked aliens pounced on them, as worm-like hooks shot out from the aliens' hands and tails, as those crudely made but extremely sharp bone knives cut the Space Marines in half, his cold anger creaked in his mind and swirled wildly.

Acid splashed, bombs screamed in the air, and fire burned on the top of the spilled grease. Guns were tightly grasped by dying warriors, and chainsaw swords continued to buzz until the wielders died.

Two limping gray-armored warriors stood back to back, waving their giant hammers, shouting the prayers engraved on their armor, and when the power hammers made contact with the alien's body, through the transparent gelatin, you can see the wrinkled and coiled internal organs being shattered in the enemy's body.

Then, a claw swung down, piercing the gap on the warrior's arm armor that was eroded and melted by strong acid, and then stabbed into the warrior's body along the arm until the whole section of muscle was torn apart.

Kroger looked at the overall situation, like a traditional blacksmith in Olympia, using his own heavy hammer to forge the incoming enemy waves on the battlefield. He never thought that one day he would become the commander of an entire battlefield. He was a warrior who devoted himself to blood and fire, not letters and documents. But he--

He locked a beast that pounced on it with a power sword, then tore the opponent's limbs with a bolt bomb, then pierced the inside of the opponent's wrinkled head from the neck up, and then pulled it off his body.

"Cliff, take your team to the west," he roared, sending an order.

But he had taken on this responsibility.

His decision was to lead the entire force, based on the bone mountain under his feet, to conduct defensive operations, and at the same time contact the space command to carry out high-altitude range bombing in the area where all the space marines had evacuated.

No aliens escaped from this mountain of bones, and the waves of psychic energy seemed to fade away without notice, no longer harming the Astartes who rushed here. In addition, the mountain undoubtedly hides one of the most critical secrets of Randan, and this conclusion can be drawn with simple reasoning.

In any case, a team has been sent to investigate inside, and Kroger ordered them not to touch anything except for investigation.

"No!" Several Space Marines shouted, and their voices were cut off by a loud explosion. Where they were before, a handful of blazing green flames based on some unknown biochemical material suddenly spurted out from the body of a dead alien, igniting the oil mist and fuel debris in the blink of an eye, causing a small explosion. This means that Kroger's team has been reduced again.

Even though there are still warriors coming from all directions and joining his command tacitly, Kroger's warriors are still losing, and the number of Randan aliens seems to be endless. The land of flesh and blood provides them with a constant supply of biomass. As long as there is still spiritual power injected, the reborn creatures will not disappear.

He could already vaguely sense a huge black shadow, wandering in the magnificent dark space, like the savagely surging debris in the tar lake, casting the huge blood coral eye around this lonely planet... squirming and wandering in a filthy way, forming an infinite spider web, wrapping the entire outside of the collapsing world...

"This is not good." Kroger heard a voice saying with a wry smile near him, followed by a familiar Kosonia curse. "What do you think?"

Kroger said nothing. He had never known that he still had a problem with hallucinations.

The black shadow rolled and stirred in Kroger's brain, and the clicky whispers gnawed at the edge of everyone's will.

"Pay attention to long-range killing of phosphorescent green aliens, be careful of explosions after death." Kroger sent a reminder to the new Astartes.

He opened the skull covering of a beast in front of him, and a yellow-green blood fountain spurted upwards, like stretched glass, savagely exploding into gorgeous colorful flowers.

As he did so, the giant beast in the dark slowly moved its sight towards him. A strange life lurked in the giant beast's huge bloodshot eyeball, rumbling at the end of the world... The individual's will was swallowed up in that giant eye, dried up, curled up, and fell into the primitive furnace of life, or the boiling infinite ocean...

The explosion roared in front of him.

A giant cannon that seemed to be there but not there, a beam of extremely bright light that never illuminated anything, a burst of iron flowers that exploded fiercely but did not burn anyone's shoulders and neck... and, trembling in the darkness, the blood-red giant eye that closed briefly in blinking...

Countless small Randan aliens fell into a deathly stagnation at this moment, and Astartes would not miss such an obvious opportunity. A large number of enemies were killed because of the stagnation at this moment, and the urgent situation was relieved in an instant.

"Captain Krog," the team he sent to investigate inside Bone Mountain finally reached the target, "we found the remains of a Luna Wolf and the first Primarch who is still alive, the latter is in a coma. Over."

"Received. Don't touch anything, protect them!"

Then, there was a roar of a lion, and a strange sigh that accompanied the roar. It echoed in the void, layer by layer, and layer by layer, until it penetrated the end of the darkness.

Then, the light suddenly lit up in the non-material spirit, first shrinking inward into a penetrating cluster, and then rapidly expanding outward, just like a spear of light fired by a battle barge.

Non-existent torpedoes and multi-tube plasma began to fire alternately at the same time, and power supply pipelines and weapon systems were activated in large numbers. The scorching smell brought by the burning immediately filled the air, covering the blood of the real universe, burning the hydrogen sulfide stench, the lingering turbid clouds and the blasphemous alien noises in the air in the most fiery and destructive way.

The shadows in the black cloud trembled constantly, and the furious hearts screamed in chaos. The Randan aliens on the ground began to revive quickly, and launched a more frantic attack on the warriors guarding the Bone Mountain, trying to break into the interior of the mountain at all costs.

Humans were dying, torn apart by the angry consciousness of the Supreme Overlord.

Immediately afterwards, they heard him.

The Lord of the First Army. The Lion. The Emperor's eldest son. The head of the Dark Angels. Lion El'Jonson.

"Guard my body and fight with me." The lion said, and his words were amplified in some way, coming from the void and disappearing into the depths of nothingness. In this brief gap of existence, the warriors on every planet heard his words.

Some soldiers became nervous, while others were even more excited. A broken body of an alien twitched wildly on the ground, and its head was crushed by a combat boot... The soldiers roared, screamed, swung their swords, shattered their ribs, broke their leg armor, killed the enemy, and then died...

The artillery fire sounded in both the real and spiritual space, fighting against the huge shadow in the void. Some silver light occasionally reflected at the edge of the shadow, as if fulfilling some auxiliary duties.

Kroger immediately sent the information to the command center in orbit, describing all the anomalies that he saw that might not be detected by the machine, to ensure that their gene father knew this important news.

Unexpectedly, Perturabo responded to him personally.

"Keep fighting, my warriors." Perturabo ordered. "You did a good job."

Kroger took a deep breath and shouted in the channel: "Keep fighting, soldiers! You did a good job!"

The blood swelled between his teeth. In the battle, he no longer remembered anything. Commanding and shooting were integrated into instinct. If he had the opportunity to review the battle at this time in the future, he would be amazed that this impeccable battle and command could be completed by him alone.

He leaned over and fired. A bullet was fired and disappeared in the burning. Some flesh and blood were torn into pieces. The gelatinous layer bloomed like glass silk flowers, and blood clots fell. Time was far away from the world. The prey was rolling, broken, and ruthlessly destroyed. The artillery fire rumbled and echoed, and angry shouts broke out from the depths of the world... He swung the sword, gave orders, attacked, slashed, one blow, and then the next blow, endlessly, until eternity, the eternity of fighting-

Until the end of the time he had.

Time returned to him, with a sense of exhaustion and emptiness, and a sense of damage and imperfection... His chest was broken, perhaps by a puncture, perhaps by many bone bullets...

Something killed him, perhaps a specific existence, perhaps the universe itself, the fate that comes with identity. To die in battle - that was the last gift they had chosen for themselves since they became space marines.

No pain, no frustration, even, no extra glory, only the only true ending that the entire universe can give to warriors...

He fought to the end, and then he fell.

He fell, knowing that the next person would quickly take over his command responsibilities - no matter who it was.

He fell in the eternal battle and found himself laughing.