Warhammer: In the Name of Ashes

The war began when Calvin entered his room.

The demon that felt the person coming above him couldn't wait to send upwards the maximum power allowed by the seal, and then waited for the reward and reaction, which was the only thing it could do.

Failure is normal in the eyes of this servant of Salish. Since being sent here in the 27th millennium, it has learned how to entertain itself in lonely and boring time.

During the long period of sealing, this disgusting thing, which was essentially the same as its creator, composed of pure twisted desires, became patient.

It understands its mission, its own essence, and its origin from the moment it is born. Therefore, it is full of malicious contempt for the captivity of humans.

"How long can you imprison me? Or can you really pose even the slightest threat to an existence like me? What a sad and ridiculous mortal being..." It also sighed like this .

After four long millennia of waiting, the Gray Knights arrived on Titan at the Emperor's behest.

It was not surprised but overjoyed, and it had been so long that it almost forgot its own way of existence. It cannot be played with and corrupted in mortal time, making it full of dissatisfaction with its own life.

The arrival of these Gray Knights, who seemed to have restrained the demon, did not pose any crisis at all to it, which knew its origins and was no longer threatened by death.

Whether it succeeds or fails, its power is destined to become more powerful over time, and for the same reason, it is full of evil scrutiny of these short-lived species.

As long as there is a chance to try, it never refuses everyone the opportunity to appear within its power.

Although previous attempts at corrupting the Gray Knights' recruits have never been successful.

But when the Gray Knights didn't understand it at first, it caused a little trouble with the help of a few mortal slaves who were mistakenly put underground. This was also the only topic it could talk about to comfort itself in the next few thousand years.

Calvin was also busy. The training with the Guardian Shapers during the day was not able to consume his spiritual energy storage, so when he returned to his residence and took off his power armor with the help of auxiliary machinery, he began to practice on himself. .

Calvin sat down in the quiet room, ignoring the noise of the demon fragments that began to appear spontaneously around him, and concentrated on examining his body.

Calvin's current efforts are mainly focused on the development of his own body. Regarding the inside of his body, the underlying cell iteration is still continuing.

During long-term observations, Calvin slowly discovered some interesting phenomena: in those initial cell samples from the holy blood, the amount of information carried by the runes was not consistent.

In the runes on some key nodes, Calvin parsed out information equivalent to ten times that of the initial runes, and correspondingly, the ability of such runes to carry spiritual energy consumption and will is also ten times that of the basic runes. Initial rune.

The further back you go, the more frequently such runes with high information content appear. When you zoom in to the entire cell, these tiny runes themselves form a more complex, dynamic, three-dimensional rune. .

And the information contained in almost every "text" composed of such a collection of runes can be compared to a slightly thin book.

And the word order in which they express things is also different from the traditional arrangement of front and back order in languages ​​used by humans.

They are more about describing the essence of a thing in retrospect from the perspective of time and space. So when you can understand it, you can directly understand its meaning from the perspective of time and space.

In a sense, one character is enough for a person's life, if expressed in this way.

"Is this the Warhammer version of file compression?" Calvin muttered alone.

From his mental perspective, he was observing such a "word", and its meaning and pronunciation were roughly understood after a few minutes under Calvin's concentrated interpretation of the whole painting.

As this complex information finally took shape in Calvin's mind, he subconsciously tried to pronounce the character: "ri (ma) sa (si)..." The complex multiple simultaneous sounds seemed to indicate this Language was not designed for human vocal organs, and even Calvin's unusual voice and tongue could only complete less than a third of it.

But the character seems to have a life and power of its own.

When Calvin completed all the correct steps in the initial pronunciation, his consciousness seemed to be awakened, and a force in the void began to instinctively extract his spiritual energy to simulate the sound he failed to make.

Fortunately, with Calvin's vast reserves of psychic energy, completing this process did not place too much burden on him.

If Calvin here and now is replaced by a mortal psyker or an ordinary psionic master, then the final result of this ritual-like behavior that cannot be stopped once started is most likely to be in psionic energy. After declaring exhaustion, continue to extract the user's life until this ritual-like pronunciation is completed.

The cost goes far beyond that.

After the pronunciation of the psychic energy was almost at the same frequency as the voice in Calvin's mouth, Calvin clearly felt an unprecedented and strange sense of fatigue originating from the side of his soul.

For his soul that has now permanently crossed the boundary between mortals and gods, there has never been a use of spiritual energy that would make him feel tired. Even if all the spiritual energy is exhausted, it is nothing more to him. Just a slight discomfort.

The stability of the divine soul is different from that of mortals, and this difference is reflected in the details of every aspect of Calvin's life. "What is preserved in gold and stone remains the same throughout the ages" is the most appropriate way to describe the solidity of his soul.

And his soul felt a slight burden after completing this pronunciation, but what about the soul of a mortal?

I'm afraid a direct collapse is possible. What if it's a more complicated "text"? It is estimated that the only outcome waiting for this arrogant mortal is the disappearance of his soul.

"This is really a luxurious language." Calvin thought silently in his heart. And with the completion of his pronunciation:

"Buzz!" A strange force finally took shape around Calvin. It seemed to be of no use. It just emitted a powerful and pure light in a short period of time, sweeping away all the demon fragments in the physical universe around him. .

When these fragments come into contact with this light, they melt instantly like snow covered by the sun.

This effect is completely different from the demons that Calvin has seen in the past, whose souls escaped back to the subspace after their entities were shattered.

And there seems to be something in the void. After obtaining the power represented by these demons, it gave immediate feedback to Calvin's progress:

Such feedback was finally implemented on the cell that he had been observing with concentration.

This cell finally began to emit its own light, unlike the poor imitations made by Calvin before.

It began to replicate itself with Calvin's support and spread around. After a few minutes, it stopped for some unknown reason.

At the same time, Calvin's process of imitating these holy blood cells had just passed the 10% point.

Calvin was very satisfied with this, and after a long period of accumulation, he finally had visible rewards.

But what he had not noticed was that the feedback from the void was far more than that.

After the cell completed the work of replicating and spreading, the broken runes on the side of Calvin's divine soul finally appeared, after a long period of repair, with the first golden flash symbolizing power. .

The machine soul is causing chaos! The author's layout is completely out of control!