Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 486 Black Swan Hongso (4K6)
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Just as Hong Suo said, this was a duel that all the spectators present would never forget.

Even many years later, Honsou's name was still used in some whispers as a traditional slang term for the Greater Maelstrom region.

The phrase "Victory of Honsou" is used by local residents to refer to an extremely unpredictable and unusual event, which usually causes a large number of chain reactions and even exaggerates common sense.
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The skull harvest feast that had begun four days earlier on New Badab began with the heart of a captured Astartes of the Red Scorpions being ripped from his chest by Huron himself and thrown onto the sand of the Arena of Thorns.

The bright red oxygen-rich arterial blood of the loyalists spurted out like a fountain, dyeing large areas of sand red, as if rolling out a bright red carpet for the Chaos warriors entering the arena.

The battles before this were quite exciting and swift. The leaders of various warlords either sent out their champions or fought in person. As long as they could kill the opponent's leader or force him to surrender by killing enough champions, they would be able to obtain all the property and leadership of the team. Apart from that, they would not ask about their background or past, and would not collect any taxes.

Carrying the Power Axe he had modified and blessed in Medlengard, Kadaras Grendel led the Iron Warriors out, and in the following rounds of combat he personally chopped off the heads of eight respective champions from different tribes, warbands and clans, earning him the title of "The Crown Taker".

His blood-soaked axe also earned Honsou's warband some twenty-five hundred warriors, including Kroot, mortal pirates, several warbands of varying sizes, a dozen armored units, and several voidships.

According to reliable sources, Pushtok Uluwinte, the Blood God's favorite, was very fond of the Iron Warrior champion's outstanding performance in the arena, and had sent messengers several times to try to contact and win over the champion executioner who seemed to be quite like-minded with him, but Grendel always told the other party that he already had someone to be loyal to and had no intention of changing sides.

Adalic Vannus made full use of his killing skills as the captain of the 4th Company of the Raven Guard and the Shadow Master of the Raven Tower - maybe there was a little bit of other blessings? In short, after he was thrown into the Thorn Arena, every time he swung his claws to kill, he had a kind of precision and efficiency like a sniper rifle. Their eyes and equipment could not accurately capture him, and the bodies of the dead were divided silkily and lightly like works of art. After the black figure passed by, it took a second or even several seconds to run forward two steps, and blood splashed from the thin lines on the body, leaving a ground of torn pieces of meat. His eye-catching lightning claws had a brilliant record this time, which even included a demon engine modified by the Chaos Cult that was captured by the dreadnought.

When it was Wannas' turn to appear in the killing match, the arena would always attract the most onlookers and cheers from the Dark Eldar pirates and Blade Dancers. His precise throat-cutting and cutting skills also resulted in the six teams and their equipment and vehicles being signed with Hongsuo's name at the final settlement.

In the end, only the Blood God's darling Uluventa's Blood Skeleton Warband, the Dark Prince's darling Atasiya's Blade Dancers, and Honso's simple Iron Warriors contingent were left.

These three teams will fight to the death in the final arena, and the winner will take all. The heads of the losers will be presented to the Blackheart King to become the latest layer of skull decoration at the bottom of the throne - which is now filled with many fresh heads. Some seriously injured warriors will even present their heads to the tyrant's throne as a final memorial of their death with some kind of honor.

Although Honso had not personally participated in the entire battle, everyone had noticed why he was able to win almost the same spoils as the other two warriors' large teams with only two champions, and some too young people even had a little expectation to become his subordinates: the abnormal speed of treatment and recovery level for the wounded.

For example, Grendel had actually been ambushed by the cunning mercenary leader when he was fighting a huge Kroot chieftain. Although he finally hacked him to death and recruited his two hundred men into Honsou's army, everyone saw that one of Grendel's legs had been hit by the opponent's spear and completely shattered into pieces. Even if the stump was sawed off overnight and a mechanical biochemical prosthesis was installed, it was of no avail - as everyone expected, their match that afternoon was played by Vannus - until they were stunned to see that the next morning, Grendel re-entered the field with all his limbs intact, and seemed to have no sequelae of any injuries at all. He successfully chopped off the two heads of an ogre wizard with his axe and won all the monsters in his tribe.

For example, when Wannus was backstabbing a cunning Dark Eldar cabal leader, he failed to hit him because the opponent was wearing an unexpected protective ornament, causing the poisoned blade to pierce his abdomen. Although the former Raven Guard endured the pain of his muscles and bones being melted alive and threw out the Lightning Claw, he swung the final blow at his opponent, and the decomposition point of the claw tip swept across the neck guard and cut off half of the neck of the Dark Eldar who was smiling triumphantly. Honso's team won this battle, but everyone thought that Adalic Wannus's name would be crossed out from the list of participants. After all, when he was carried in front of his employer, people saw that his pale skin and flesh were rolled up with scarlet lines, and his abdomen had been dissolved to the point that the thick spine unique to the Space Marines could be seen. Some people have already begun to make a move and challenge Honso.

But this time, even half a day passed before the purple-eyed shadow master of the Iron Warriors appeared in the arena again, and began to stroll in the shadows, harvesting heads for his warband.

The two guys who issued the challenge, a pirate captain used his head, ship and a large number of crew members to add to the warband's void combat power, while the other reptilian alien who was extremely good at stealth hunting had a stealth duel with the Shadow Master after reluctantly performing tribal witchcraft divination - well, obviously, the only thing that appeared in the light in the end was Adalic Vannus's smiling face, a heart and a severed head.

From then on, everyone could not help but notice the ability of the Iron Warriors warband leader. After all, not to mention how rare it is to have a doctor with normal techniques and normal surgical results in places like the Maelstrom or the Eye of Terror where crazy doctors, perverted pharmacists or Black Mechanicus genetic sorcerers are everywhere; even in the corrupt territory ruled by the false emperor, it is rare to find a pharmacist who can heal the seriously injured so quickly and seemingly without any sequelae or malignant mutations.

Regardless of which side of the curtain they are on, both sides clearly prefer to use machines or prosthetic implants to repair the injuries of their soldiers rather than carefully repairing the wounded's original bodies. You could say that this is a subtle influence of the Omnissiah sect over thousands of years, or perhaps it's just because of some cruel efficiency requirement that mechanical replacements and implants are cheaper, require less surgery, and can get the injured back to the tragic battlefield to continue fighting more quickly.

In short, although some people only saw the surface phenomenon and believed that someone like Hong Suo who possessed both superb medical ability and blacksmithing skills would be an extremely outstanding technical warlord, some people have seen the deeper meaning: he may have incredible bioengineering technology and can achieve pollution-free high-speed limb cloning and surgical recovery under such simple conditions - that is to say, he may have the ability of a true Astartes pharmacist and have found the possibility of fighting against Chaos pollution everywhere in this subspace.

Although the Tyrant Badab sat high on his throne of thorns, stepping on a fresh skull pierced by black iron, and did not express any opinion on the matter, after Vannas recovered on the fourth day, in addition to his psychic witchcraft advisors, there were two figures who rarely appeared in such occasions besides the Blackheart King: Valserx, the master of the Red Corsair Forge and the master of alchemy, and Gareon, the master of the Red Corsair Corpse and the master of the pharmacist. These two officers, who were crucial to the continuation of the warband and Huron's own life, also did not express any opinions after their appearance, but whenever Hunsou appeared, they would be there and would carefully observe how the war blacksmith treated his subordinates' injuries.

Now, they dismissed the attendants around them, leaving only space for the three of them to talk on the viewing stand.

"Very...pure." Garen narrowed his eyes as he spoke. This pharmacist who helped Valserx save Huron's life and is still saving his life now has a pair of extremely dark eyes with almost invisible black pupils, an extremely thin face and an extremely tall skeleton. If it weren't for the genetic surgery that made his skeleton stretch in a wide direction, he would definitely look like a huge and straight antenna. His face is full of the kind of expression that only a true genius would have, but the madness in it always shows the terrible cruelty caused by his incomparable desire for taboo knowledge.

"Clean? What do you mean?" Valserks asked this question on behalf of his master, "He may not be one of us? A lackey of the false emperor? The Iron Warrior is just his disguise? So, catch him or kill him?" "No, no." The Lord of the Corpse shook his head, his long straw-like hair was scattered messily outside his neck guard, mixed with strands of gray and silver, indicating the owner of the hair's exhaustion and old age. "It would be unwise to kill him before figuring out the source of his skills and knowledge... After all, if the wizards have not been able to spy on his thoughts well until now, then killing him and then reading his brain may still cause us to suffer unbearable knowledge losses-"

"So you plan to dissect him yourself?"

"No, no." The pharmacist grinned, his teeth exuding a unique smell of the dissection room. "I mean, clean, in every aspect. Not only is his surgery not affected by the energy of the subspace, but his surgical posture and movements are also very good. Very good, yes."

"In my opinion, his technique is still quite immature. He may not have even cut open a hundred people with a scalpel. Not to mention you, even your useless apprentice's skinning technique is not as good as yours."

"Ah, little Valer, we will catch him sooner or later. I will take his steady hands and brain and make them into my operating room assistant servitor. But there is no need to mention him now, Valserks. I mean, a talent." Galeon's dark eyes flashed with a crazy excitement. "Talent, Valserks, skills can be honed, but talent is hard to come by. This man is really wasting his deft hands and his intuition as a war blacksmith... He definitely has the talent of an apothecary. I was not very happy when His Majesty summoned me! Praise the Blackheart King! Otherwise, I would have missed such an excellent apprentice."

"What? I thought you didn't plan to accept any apprentices after Valier's defection."

"How can I save our chapter's gene-seed mutations with my own efforts? Here, even the looted seeds cannot be preserved for too long. Unless they are used immediately, the chance of mutation can be slightly reduced. Otherwise, even if we have only been here for a few decades or hundreds of years, the degree of mutation of our gene-seeds will be almost the same as those of the Black Legion that has been here for tens of thousands of years. - My Lord, we have very little of our own Star Claw gene-seed left, and now half of our reinforcements must be supplemented by the prisoners we have captured."

"Then use their seeds to replenish it first." Huron finally spoke. His voice was between mechanical and fleshy, because under the pale, stretched and sewn skin of his larynx, most of his breathing, swallowing and other movements were actually completed by bionic devices. Now he had just been repaired by Gareon and was in good condition. "If you plan to take him as your apprentice, Gareon, I'm afraid it won't be completely as you wish, because I promised him that as long as he wins the last game, he will work for me as a pharmacist in my court."

The Master Apothecary had an unfathomable look on his face. "That means a new colleague, Your Majesty."

"Yes." The Blackheart King's throat piston made a gurgling sigh sound. He raised his huge metal power claw and patted the loyal pharmacist's hand soothingly. "First, let's wait and see this duel. Atasia's swordsmanship is fancy and sharp. He is also the champion of the Dark Prince, but his blessing and determination are far inferior to Uluwinte. The rules of this game are that the captains of the three teams fight alone. If Honso can defeat Uluwinte, he can say that he has a 50% chance of winning--"

There was an overwhelming cry of surprise from the venue.

The people on the viewing platform looked in the direction of the sound.

The Warsmith was seen lifting his legs from the Blade Dancer who was falling gracefully and beautifully with his hands on his heart - from this distance, it seemed that the Slaanesh Champion's sternum might have collapsed, and the large amount of blood-pink foam spurting out of his mouth and nose also indicated that his lungs were probably pierced by a large amount of broken bones.

"How could it be--? Is Atasya so vulnerable? Didn't they just reach the engagement distance a few seconds ago..." Valserx said in surprise.

The Blood God's champion roared and charged at Honsou, his blessed brass bloodsucking sword screaming with joy (?) as it drank its opponent's blood, and then -

Hong Suo's right hand grasped the blessed magic sword.

The supernatural power of the blade neutralized the protective stance on his power armor. Uluwinter's face was twisted into a hideous grin, and the reinforced muscle bundles and servos emitted an overloaded roar. The thickness of the ceramic steel gauntlet was only a little bit, and when the stance was neutralized, the Blood God's champion was ready to shake off the severed palm on the blade and launch the final blow to the enemy in front of him.

But when he raised the sword, he found that the blade of his sword broke silently, and the demon living in the sword also lost its voice. Although as an experienced warrior, his astonishment lasted only a short moment, but his hurried muscles and combat reflexes allowed him to swing the sword before Hong Suo's other hand grabbed his neck - but his sword had been broken, and its length and sharpness were gone.

Then an unexpected voice rang in his ears, a voice that he had often heard on the battlefield when he, as a son of the fallen 12th Legion, had fought for the Empire and honor ten thousand years ago.

"Then... accept the 'Emperor's Mercy'*." He heard a slightly sarcastic voice say so.

The apothecary's special drill bored precisely and almost painlessly into a special spot in the Astarte's skull.

(End of this chapter)