How can a retired savior be considered retired if his price drops to 40,000?

Chapter 25 is to thank Brother Hua for his help across dimensions.

The prophesied time was getting closer, and Konrad Curze just waited in boredom.

The Storm Boundary was on autopilot, its shell covered with some kind of magic camouflage that could even avoid auspicious detection, and it was floating unobtrusively over the First City.

It and the huge city ushered in the setting sun of Jestal and received the blasphemous speech delivered by the Hastings Technician on the radio.The only difference is that no one on this ship actively listens to the evil whispers from the warp, but this does not mean that the Stormbound, also located on Jestal, can be immune.

The contamination of chaos is not just present in the sounds that can be discerned by the human ear, but also hidden in the electrical signals carried by the global broadcast network.The poisons in the subspace are full of tricks and tricks. They cannot infect the system of the Stormbound, nor can they disrupt the unique and unique rules inside the ship. They are not qualified to affect any official crew member on the ship - but the informal ones. That's another matter.

Certain keywords in those whispers seemed to trigger something.As the speech progressed, bursts of wailing came from the small cabins where the eighteen Night Lords were detained.

In fact, this is not difficult to understand.Technician Hastings, or rather, the thing wearing the skin of Technician Hastings, mixed in his speech a spell that could detonate the chaos pollution accumulated in other people's bodies.This was originally a part of the ritual, specially prepared for the residents of Jestal who had survived in the previous generation, but this spell was obviously not very picky when it came to selecting objects.

As members of the renegade warband, the Chaos Astartes have long used the Warp as a cover to deal with the Empire. It is impossible to believe that these Night Lords have not been contaminated by Chaos at all. .

Conrad Coates knew this.Part of this conclusion can be reached through basic logical reasoning combined with facts, and the other part is what he saw in the prophetic vision.The moment he saw his eighteen descendants, he already knew the fate of these people: to be killed by him.Either sooner or later.

They did not die at the scene of their crimes, but were detained. Then they would die where they were detained.Curze was so convinced from the beginning, and his predictions provided support for his reasoning a short time later.As he got closer to that time, the future became clearer: he saw his descendants tortured by the whispers of chaos, and their minds distorted by the pollution of subspace; he saw some of these people turning to the great world because their spirits could not bear it. The enemy succumbed, and the other part turned into a mindless monster due to the severe physical mutation; he saw that he was helpless and could only destroy their lives through death, judge their sins, end their harm, and dissolve their pain.

He did nothing in the prophecy, so he did nothing in reality.

He was waiting for that time, that point when everything became irreversible.After that moment, he will slay all his hopeless offspring on the ship, and then he will descend to the surface and bestow the grace of peaceful death on his favorite, but also desperately ill, The son who has long since died.

In the painful groans of the prisoners in the cabin, the unique sense of disobedience in the Stormbound appeared again, and Curze felt that he was being looked at by something without malice.

When he first boarded the ship half a year ago, he also tried to find the source of this sight, but gave up after dozens of fruitless searches and confirmed that it was harmless.Normally, he would choose to ignore this sense of inconsistency as usual, but now, this little stimulation that teased his sixth sense also made him feel extremely irritated.

About four months later, Coates stood up again and prepared to find the source of this sense of dissonance. But the moment he stood up, another scene from the future gurgled softly in front of his eyes: he saw this on the ship. Eighteen Night Lords survived, wearing patchwork but obviously refurbished power armor and forming a loose array; he saw Yago Severtarion wearing Terminator armor standing in front of everyone, casually He used the chain halberd to support his center of gravity; he saw himself leading this small team, and saw them driving straight into the enemy's core position like an indestructible blade——

——He struggled to get up in the illusion, tried hard to bring his consciousness back to reality, and asked the empty surroundings:

"Who created this stupid illusion?!"

Fujimaru Ritsuka and Somni were still on the Dark Angel's Lion's Mane. At that moment, the only person on the Storm Frontier who could move freely was Curze.Logically speaking, his question would not receive a response.But a few seconds later, a young male voice that sounded frivolous and gave off an unreliable impression sounded out of thin air in the cabin:

"Do you think I want to use such crude and substandard means?" The voice accused him confidently, as if the problem in this matter was not him but Coz, "In the end, it shouldn't have been done in the first place. How can you expect the accuracy of a magic that crosses the barriers of the world and is performed in a completely different operating environment? Even I have worked hard to be able to do this! The most important thing to do at this time is not to criticize the accuracy of the illusion, but to criticize the accuracy of the illusion. It’s a compliment that I’m great! Do you understand?”

Curze glanced around alertly, but neither his normal vision nor his innate omens gave him any enlightenment.The voice was still complaining to itself:

"I had a good plan, but why don't you sleep? I'm really working hard to make all the branches in Ritsuka's story end with a happy ending! I'm really working hard!"
-
"I don't understand." After conducting a series of intelligence collection (or, in other words, a battle of wits with the Dark Angel Fire Wing Master), remote sensing survey, data fitting, and modeling inference, Tatsuka Fujimaru, sitting in front of the table, was frustrated. He covered his face, "Although I understand that talking to Demon Tzeentch about understanding is the first step into the abyss... But I don't understand!"

Ranmarok glanced at the indicators, waveforms and modeling on a large number of holographic light screens projected in front of Somni.Great, he can't understand anything.

"Is there anything wrong with this ritual?"

"There is nothing wrong with the ceremony itself. It can even be said to be simple and clear." Fujimaru Ritsuka raised her head from behind her palm and reached for one of the holographic light screens. The next second, the display screen she wanted appeared on the screen. Under the control of Muni, he floated over, separated and projected in front of them:
That is a simplified diagram of the space-time warp rate around the planet Jestal. It is a technology that has been on the bench for a long time in the empire that mainly relies on subspace for faster-than-light navigation. Even the members of the Mechanicus have few people who are interested in it. This is worrying.In fact, even the relevant monitoring technology is not useless in space navigation, but...

Ranmarok shook these irrelevant thoughts out of his mind and focused on the indications shown by Fujimaru Ritsuka.Perhaps it is somewhat difficult for the Astartes of other legions to understand what this refrigerated technology will show through data, but Lanmarok belongs to the First Legion.

"To put it simply, the main purpose of this ceremony is to make a 'flush toilet'. In the final stage, when the button is pressed, the entire planet will rush into the subspace." Fujimaru Ritsuka pointed out a few on the light screen. The key indication shows the correlation between the subspace energy fluctuations near Jestal and the space-time warp rate, and another model is drawn:
"You see, the distorted space-time around the planet is completely wrapping it - in fact, similar things have already happened in subspace. Theoretically, the resident astropaths on that planet have already It should have been discovered 50 years ago that their astropathic communications could not be transmitted. But I don't think there are any normal astropaths on Jestal. Now as long as the planet is isolated in space and time on this side of the physical world, It undoubtedly forms a space-time singularity that is completely incapable of communicating with the outside world. At this time, external observers will never know what is going on inside, and the 'flush toilet' can quietly 'flush' on its own. .”

"...It is indeed a disaster, but it sounds like it will not be very harmful." Lan Malok said.Abandoning a planet that originally belonged to an alien would not cause any psychological burden on him.

"That's not how it is calculated. This is not a simple matter of sending an extermination order to a planet and completely destroying it in a physical sense - it is swept out of the dimension of the physical universe." Fujimaru Ritsuka thought. For a moment, "For example, a small dot is drawn with a pencil on a piece of white paper. This paper is the physical universe, and the small dot is Jestal. If we want to destroy this planet on the physical level, what will we do? You use an eraser to erase it, but that's not what this ritual does. It takes a knife from somewhere else and just digs out the little dot along with the part of the paper that holds it."

Lan Malok vaguely understood part of it: "This ritual will eventually leave a hole in the physical universe."

"And there will be water flowing through this hole naturally." Li Xiang added, "I can't say what kind of water it is, but anyway, this hole will indeed become bigger and bigger under the washing of water, and then there will be More water continues to tear the physical universe apart...a vicious cycle."

Ranmarok was silent for a while.He has indeed experienced hundreds of battles, faced tangible enemies, and fought invisible monsters, but this is the first time he has faced such a problem. "Subspace invasion tearing apart the physical universe" is still too advanced for an Astartes active in the 30th millennium.

Taking advantage of this moment, Somni seemed to have finally found the opportunity to interject, and immediately reminded: "We have not yet begun to calculate the size of the enemy's existence."

"It makes no sense. The chaotic energy on this planet operates exactly according to the ritual's procedural route, and we can only barely find a few traces of demons. The information is seriously insufficient, and I don't think the person presiding over this ritual is a powerful character."

"Perhaps we can use the scale of the ceremony to perform inverse calculations after eliminating redundant data..."

"That's not how it works." Fujimaru Ritsuka shook his head, "The most fundamental meaning of a ritual is to 'borrow power that does not belong to you through certain agreed-upon steps.' To use a more understandable metaphor, it's like Power sword. Of course, it is more dangerous for a swordsman master to hold a power sword, but if he only wants to complete a simple goal like 'splitting the steel plate', any child who can handle the sword can easily complete it by pressing the switch. We have only seen the 'sword' part now. We can say that it operates accurately and perfectly, and it is indeed a good sword. However, if we judge the level of the 'sword wielder' based on this, it would be a major strategic mistake."

"This... ritual." Lan Malok finally found his voice, "What can be done to stop it? Does it have an important part that can be called its core? If it is destroyed-"

"It has reached this point. Forcibly stopping it may have the opposite effect. Again, the analogy of the power sword. Of course there is a problem if you let it cut down, but if you shoot at its energy supply part and let it blow up, I am afraid it will also be very dangerous. It’s hard to get any good results. Hmph, no matter whether we stop it or not, the opponent will win. From this point of view, it is indeed in line with the work of a servant of the Lord of Change."

Fujimaru Ritsuka glanced at the time, then slowly stood up from the table, slowly untied the cloak wrapped around the Ortenaus exoskeleton, and handed it to Somni along with the Aquila Scepter. , "Let the ceremony continue, wait for the singular point of time and space to be formed - and then interfere directly from inside the singular point, take out the sword at the moment when the opponent cuts it off, and then insert the sword back into the opponent's throat, this is me professional field.”

While everyone was still in a daze, she had already begun to arrange the next task: "Mr. Lanmallock, I hope that the Lion's Mane can intercept the tax fleet sent by the Ministry of Interior of the Empire. In Jestal's Before the Singularity is truly completed, the transport ships loaded with contaminated food must leave first, allowing the influence of Chaos to spread to other galaxies. The Dark Angels do not have to do anything special with the food, as long as they hunt down fugitives, inspect Whether there are stowaways on the ship is an excuse to prevent them from going to Mandeville Point and entering the subspace. The remaining problems will naturally be corrected after the singularity is resolved."

Ranmarok is still fully clothed and wearing a helmet, but even so, anyone can easily read his reluctance under the featureless power armor.Fujimaru Ritsuka did not deal with this problem for the time being, but turned to the golden giant beside him and said: "Somni, I need you to teleport back to the Storm Boundary and reconnect the energy supply to the Triton engine. I may I will need the support of your Noble Phantasm."

Somni hesitated: "This function has not been tested. I am not [-]% sure that it can operate normally."

"It doesn't matter, just follow your feelings. How to release the Noble Phantasm is the instinctive behavior of the heroic spirit, just like humans naturally know how to breathe as soon as they are born, without any rational thinking or calculation."

The golden giant said nothing, but still looked confused.He instinctively hugged the things Fujimaru Ritsuka stuffed in his arms, and then suddenly realized something: "Why don't you teleport back to the ship together?"

"No. We need to consider the possibility that with the formation of the time and space blockade, subspace teleportation will also be affected. Your material form is made of ether. Even if the landing point is stacked into the wall, you will only need to transform into a spiritual body. If you can get out of trouble easily, I will really die."

Fujimaru Ritsuka calmly made a crazy decision:
"I performed an orbital drop directly from the Lion's Mane."

(End of this chapter)