Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

Chapter 491 Tower of Babel (Part 2)

"Wait a minute, priest, is the man you are talking about the same person as the child before?" Alena asked curiously, standing up and walking to Narek, glancing at the nearly finished sketch.

The unfinished tower was completed by thunder and lightning, like a long pillar of light connecting the sky and the earth.

"I am just a narrator," Narek said, "I will not make mistakes in interpretation, or I will try not to."

--

The man wearing the crown turned his head in the hall of the tower, his face blurred in the convection of the air, some tiny scars left on the surface of his dark skin, like cinnabar, rolling on his robe with the ash of the smoke. His face was very strange, perhaps because of the distortion of the flames, the indifferent and determined expression was no longer unshakable.

"Is it over?" The new man said, his face full of sweat, and his armor was full of traces of the battle. "It's time to tear down this tower."

"Not yet," the crowned man pondered, "my friend, these tools have not yet fulfilled their contribution to mankind. Before abandoning and destroying them, we still have a lot to do with them. This is what we have taken from fate, and we can still use it to ask for more."

The new man shuddered for a while, as if the crowned man's words turned into the broken blade of a sword, rushing through his body. Maybe he is a general, or maybe he is just a soldier.

"No," the soldier said in vain, "this is not a power we can have."

"The second vision of looking into the future," said the crowned man, raising his dark palm and then clenching it into a fist, "The strong chains that bind the demigods, the spears that kill the lifeless forces... This is our armor and sharp blade against fate. This powerful text..."

"Why are we here?" The soldier couldn't help but interrupt him, "Isn't it because of the arrogance of the people in this tower? They think they can unify the entire human race and bring us all to a higher realm, so they spread their culture, creed and truth. Are we going to be the next people in the tower?"

The crowned man's eyes fell on the weapon in the soldier's hand, which was used to kill their enemies and protect his life. His eyes flashed with foresight, and even the soldier didn't know the future that the crowned man was seeing from him.

After a moment, he spoke calmly: "Oel, do you see it?"

The soldier looked around the walls in confusion. Apart from those mysterious words and the dead lying on the ground, he didn't know what else the crowned man was referring to.

The crowned man shook his head, smoke rose in the room, and the words swayed in the smoke, as if steaming with the soul of the flame. He stretched out his hand, and the smoke above his palm gradually condensed into a line of ancient, shadowy handwriting - different from the strange words that existed, this line of words was a universal language that they all recognized.

"How many times will the Tower of Babel collapse?" The crowned man murmured, and the fire in his eyes became brighter again, "How many times will mankind repeat the same mistakes?"

The soldier listened to his words blankly, realizing that these were the words floating in the shadows.

The air became hotter, and a cold smile appeared on the crowned man's face, and was vaguely warmed by the temperature in the tower into something close to tolerance.

"I see his language," he continued, "I see him warning us that there is no way back ahead, I see our future coming to us from the end of time... There should be no more self-destructive roads."

His eyes moved downward, "Give me your dagger."

"Why?" The soldier asked, unconsciously handing over the knife in his hand. This doesn't seem to be the fate of this knife, but when he made this choice, he was very happy in his heart.

"I bring you another plan," said the crowned man, "Since I have seen it, I must choose this way. As it says, I will recreate many, many things."

His dark face raised upwards, the wind howled, the lightning flew upwards and twisted into an invisible spiral, forming a golden spire for the tower, and the gloomy thunderclouds suddenly expanded to the surroundings with concentric waves.

——

"I've heard that story." Alyona said, the lines of her lips were stubbornly raised when she was thinking hard, "The story of the Tower of Babel, right, priest?"

"I almost thought you had already cut off all ties with human history." Narek joked.

"How can we be so isolated? We also came from a distant home planet. We miss Earth, but we can't find a lot of history. Just like the story you told, we thought the tower collapsed, but it turned out that it wasn't the case."

"I can't answer, Alena, we haven't seen the truth of history, I don't know more than you."

"But you are a priest."

"What can this decide? I don't even have my own tongue," Narek nodded to the white-haired girl, "Go back, I have only seen this much. Maybe I will see some new stories today, see you in the chapel."

Alyona turned around regretfully, her figure disappeared in the shadow of the trees, the dense and tough long leaves blocked her back, Narek was not sure if she looked back on the way, thinking and looking over.

——

The rigid nerve knots of the Space Marines overlapped their dreams with reality. While Narek's logical mind, which was still alert, was still listening to the sounds of the surrounding environment, the other half of his mind had already fallen into a drowsy state. A war zone.

His feet stepped on the bristle-like secret forest and the crimson storm. The guns and branches around him were like images on a broken data pad, interchanging and appearing and disappearing in confusion. There are some tall steel machines in the distance. They raise their arms equipped with heavy barrels, bring each other into the fire radius, and start shooting without aiming.

He emerged from the shattered clear glass and mud, pried open the molten mesh panel, and gasped softly. When a cannonball whirled and hit the right side of his body, stirring up the soil on half of his body under an environment with multiple gravity constants, his heartbeat was as calm as ever.

The storm gathered in front, and the continuous firepower of heavy logging interrupted the dense forest. The thick red mist hung sickly in the sky. He seemed to be running into a furnace without hesitation. A string of arcane six-pointed stars and small wooden statues were nested haphazardly together and hung from his belt on a leather cord.

Suddenly, he spoke suddenly, and a vague and hard language came out of his mouth. Together with the stench of molten plastic steel, it burned in the jungle.

"Again," he said calmly, the violent exercise had no effect on his breathing, "the first..."

He got some hints about the conversation from the surrounding environment. He raised his hand to wipe the sweat that was about to flow from his face to his eyes, but his hand was blocked by a tan mask. He frowned.

"Don't tell you how many times?" he said. The inorganic solution was splashed on the outside of his combat uniform. Before the high-heat white gas of the acid etching solution burned through his clothes, a cold energy flashed past and decomposed it. Hazardous solvents.

In response, he narrowed his eyes and picked up the gun, breaking some mechanical tentacles simulated in the shape of sea anemones. The ball-wheel weapon expanded and floated upward like a real balloon, and then suddenly exploded.

Through his eyes, Narek saw some blurry and fast-moving shadows, the edges of which reflected an unnatural light on the speeding tree trunks and falling spacecraft gates, as if there was a strange light source somewhere. , shining on a visitor from outside this world.

He tore open the outer wall of a landing cabin, sparks of electric light flew everywhere, the buffer layer inside suddenly ignited under the strange flames, and air spurted out from the cabin.

He squeezed in, and the twelve scouts were blown into a pile of debris in an instant. The bodies slipped and slipped, pistols, hooks and belts burned everywhere, and from time to time, a ball of blood-stained vapor exploded with a quick bang. The thick fog makes the blood-red fog in the surrounding environment even more squeezing.

Suddenly, he spoke again: "Subspace?...Aren't you a product of witchcraft? No..."

He jumped out of the landing cabin, and the entire small space exploded behind him. A ball of soft, viscous juice flew out and drooped on his left shoulder. He hesitated for a moment, and then used his spiritual power to isolate it.

"Be alert..." he said, turning a blind eye to the vaporized volatiles burning nearby. He just raised his head and looked at an extremely distant and tiny black spot on the sky. It was a giant spaceship that had just jumped through subspace to the outer orbit of the planet. The light of debris and metal was scattered in the universe like torn pieces of paper.

He kept looking there, his steps crisscrossing the slippery ground, branches, shrubs, fungi, and vague flesh and blood, as if he were stepping on violent drums and dancing without accompaniment. He stretched his arms upward as if to say hello to the ship.

A few seconds later, the spacecraft exploded in the light of the ion weapon. The unbalanced pressure rolled out all the electronic instruments, mechanical cantilevers, antiques and sculptures preserved for thousands of years, built-in prayer halls and oak dining tables, broken beams and a large number of moments inside the spacecraft. Frozen solidified volatiles... A flag fell from the spaceship. No matter how many future possibilities the heraldry and family symbolized by that flag in this ancient era, it was all under the gentle wave of this warrior. It was reduced to ashes.

"Impossible." The man flatly rejected the shadow that was talking to him. The gun in his hand was instantly re-melted into a short staff, with a ball connected to one end of the staff.

Amidst the sound of tearing metal and the huge sound of burning, the entire environment surrounding him began to emit brutal spiritual light from a very small unit scale. Screams sounded in the distance, layer by layer, and very loud. Disappear quickly. The concentration of blood mist is still rising.

"Humanity still needs unity," he declared, and it seemed difficult to discern in his words any emotion that belonged to one person. His thinking was solemn, silent and rapid.

"Before we use the galaxy as the base empire from which humanity rises, and before the subspace can be replaced, this power can never be abandoned." He said, "This is the second fire that a race can discover, and it will be the first A second impetus for fundamental change in the entire race.”

Blood-colored water began to fall from the sky, bringing solid diamond-like raindrops. Thin streams of water were embedded in the surface of the world, and began to extinguish the fire on the earth.

The ashes of the jungle surrounded the warrior at his feet.

+Besides, for thousands of years, weren’t you the one who advised me to never stop? You should have a name derived from future visitors. +

said the soldier, not in spoken words. The sound of his soul roared like the waves.

+You are not as determined as you were the last time we met. +He came to a conclusion. +Why? What makes you sad? +

The wind blew up in the ashes around him, and the dark ashes were raised into a vague shape, and the invisible words floated softly against the background of the setting sun in the distance.

The warrior listened, and finally, he nodded: +Then, I will be alert. And I will also advise you in my future and your past. You will be ordered to never hesitate, and you will be warned that there is no retreat ahead. "+

On the skyline, the setting sun suddenly accelerated and fell, smashing into the land that was hostile to the warrior. In an instant, the sea surface evaporated, and thousands of square miles of buildings and halls turned into scorched earth.

——

He looked like he was in his sixties, but his real age was difficult to estimate. The gray linen robe wrapped his no longer young but still strong body, and his dark skin was covered with deep ravines. He seemed to be a taciturn person, and his lips like dry soil were closed, and it seemed that he rarely opened them.

When his eyes turned, a burning scrutiny was hidden in the depths of his lowered eyes . The soldier called Or followed him with some disappointment. The woman wrapped in blue gauze beside him didn't care and just smiled at him.

Behind them, there were a few people following far away. The farthest and most idle one was a young man in a light-colored ancient robe, who seemed to have not yet realized what this journey meant.

"This is it," the woman said, looking towards the cave.

The local knight family member who led the way nodded to them and confirmed the woman's opinion: "Be careful, no one in here will come back. It's the demon's arch at the end."

"Warp?" asked the young man at the end of the queue.

"Be careful, the warp is not as dangerous as here." The leader advised.

"Of course I know," said the young man, "then you probably won't let us all wait outside, Neos? Will you do that? "

The old man in the lead nodded, his face like an ancient rock without a smile.

The young man raised his eyebrows and crossed his hands in front of his chest. The old man's dark eyes examined him, like a mechanic examining the usability of a tool. This quickly made the young man frown, until the old man closed his eyes slightly, turned his head, and continued to go deeper. His next order made the young man shrug and smile.

"The others stay. You follow me, Remus. "