Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 518 is the Thinker. I put in the Thinker!
The courtiers, guards and servants of the Palace of Thorns had all been dismissed.

There were only a few people in the palace owner's huge, magnificent but cold and rigid bedroom.

On the outskirts of New Badab, the Red Pirates' fleet was making intensive preparations for departure under the orders of the Blackheart King.

Abaddon, who claims to be the Warmaster, has set out to launch his 13th Dark Crusade. As one of his allies that still exists in name only, Huron's fleet is just as he said when he recruited "Mercuris". Its desire for outstanding champion warriors and commanders will never decrease with the passage of time and the unfolding of the battle, but will only become stronger.

In addition to skulls, the Red Corsairs had many other urgent things to harvest.

At this time, the health of the Pirate King, who is the supreme commander, and whether he can maintain a certain level of health on the way forward are indeed very important, so Hong Suo got this opportunity to sign a life and death guarantee for his own diagnosis and treatment measures before he could come and do it himself.

Apparently, his two potential colleagues thought that, given that Huron had mentioned to them more than once in private his "curiosity" about Mercury's talent and the indomitable Indomitable, it was clear that just a little optimization would not be able to save Honsou's life unless he could make a dramatic and visible improvement to the tyrant's body.

and so.

Luft Huron, wearing his huge life-support mechanical armor and sitting in a specially constructed wide steel seat, was receiving his first examination and treatment from his new pharmacist.

This is a special chair that allows the person sitting on it to change from a sitting position to a lying position without moving. Therefore, it has often served as a temporary resting place for the Pirate King recently. This is also the first gift that Hong Suo presented to the Blackheart King before he began to treat him. To be honest, it is not valuable or precious, but it is indeed a very good idea. It seems to have played a role in relieving Huron's body, which was always in eternal pain and torture.

The New Badab Tyrant, who was cursed by the Warp and was between life and death because he was unwilling to give up his last bit of will - although this will only contained revenge on the Empire and no higher ambitions - did not say anything about it, but the people he trusted most around him could see that he was still very satisfied with it, because the means used when he was rescued were limited by the conditions and materials during his escape. To be honest, they were very simple to the point of being crudely patchwork. They were able to work correctly and maintain Huron's life for so many years, largely due to the extraordinary talents, hard work and other things of Amenus Valthex and Gareon.

despite this--

"Look at the inside of this armor... Oh my goddamn eyes! How could this wiring be so crudely welded directly onto a nerve?! I'm going crazy... Although looking at this I can imagine how urgent the situation was, they did incredible life-sustaining surgery and mechanical engineering to get it up and running, a miracle, my lord, and I have every respect for the genius of the two masters, but I still have to say, these materials and connections are really crude, my lord. This is going to hurt very, very much."

Gareon, who was watching the whole process, sneered. Valthex patted the hand of the zombie lord, signaling his companions to be patient. Of course, the alchemist's own nebula array never relaxed its surveillance of Hongsuo's movements. So far, the performance of this ignorant novice boy was perfect except for his tongue that made people want to cut it off.

"We need to sort out the wires and make some temporary bypasses at some of the severe adhesions between the cables and the nerves in order to proceed with the first phase of re-welding and repair surgery." Hong Suo muttered, while taking the sterilized fiber block prepared by Mercurius and wiping his hands. "Turn on the shadowless sterilizing lamp, keep the angle, and hand me my laser knife, the one with garnet."

Apparently, a newly-minted local Khorne Berserker Champion was brought in again this time as a medical operation assistant and subspace monitor, which made the Corpse Lord, who always had a fake smile on his face, twitch his facial muscles several times when he witnessed this weird scene. The Master of Alchemy looked at Hong Suo's "work" with more academic interest, and secretly thought in his heart that maybe he could also find a suitable experimental subject and transform him into an assistant that suits his taste... ?
“Ugh…hiss…mmmmmm…ahhhh…”

The Pirate King's mouth was half open, the injured side of his face was completely stiff and crooked, a trace of silvery saliva was flowing out from one corner of his dry and cracked mouth, dripping onto his undulating gray skin which had been stripped of blood vessels and most of the nerves for "maintenance", forming a small pool of accumulated liquid between the mechanical clavicle and the piston muscle on the side of his neck.

"Oh, sorry, my lord. In order to convey your will, I have to repair a temporary synaptic pathway for you first..." The master pharmacist stopped the exploratory surgery in his hand and began to study the tyrant's skull. His strange pet Hamadrya, who always jumped behind the tyrant's head or on his shoulders, had already hidden behind the curtain of the subspace and disappeared without a trace.

Valserx moved, as if he was a little worried about his master, and wanted to step forward to give Hong Suo an off-field tip - the head is too important to let a novice mess around with it. If he doesn't know how to carefully open the Blackheart King's skull, he may suffer additional damage -

"Oh! Yes! I think it's here..." As the sealing bolts were unfastened one by one by the screwdriver carried on the medical arm, an unpleasant smell and a hissing sound of pressure relief emanated from the right half of Huron's head, and it was exposed to Hongsuo and Mercurys along with his opened right half of his chest.

The Iron Warriors' master potion-master's eyes lit up, and Mercurys gasped.

More than a third of Luft Huron's body was melted alive in the molten attack he suffered before his final escape. Literally, his skin and flesh deformed, flowed, and cooled like lit candle wax, completely merging with the metal armor shell and interior that was melted at the same time.

The same was true of the bones inside half of his body. Mercury couldn't help but notice that they had turned gray and charred, as if no one had cleaned or moved them since they were last burned. They were hung on the bionic mechanical device that occupied more space inside his body, along with pale internal organs that had lost too much blood, were almost cold, and were wrapped in discolored human fat and fascia.

Though the tyrant Badab had appeared whole and human before his people and his villainous minions, now that he sat here, fully cut open under the pale surgical lights, they could see just how badly he had been burned—Honso was right, he should have died from these injuries, either from the burns and disfigurements themselves or from the excruciating pain of these huge open surgical wounds—but Luft Huron had survived, and had built his present business again in a wild place.

Mercury was horrified to find that he actually had a little admiration for Huron's will to survive and his tenacity to endure pain in this matter. Then he calmly thought that he did not really admire this traitor himself, the more he learned about his deeds, the more he was impressed by him, but his fair and rational mind had a limit of respect for this achievement that could not be achieved by humans.

After figuring this out, he turned his attention back to the operation in front of him.

Hong Suo asked him to move the light carefully closer to Huron's skull. He saw that the pupil of the traitor pirate king shrank to the size of a needle tip under the white light, and now it was trembling unconsciously but regularly: the Iron Warrior Potion Master extended a small mechanical tentacle from the medical arm armor to the fingertips, and carefully probed into the brain that was also unnatural grayish white and dotted with many small welding points along the direction of the metal muscle fiber bundles, piston joints, and conductive biological cable bundles covered with light yellow lubricant and black grease.

"Hmm... I think it's here... The fucking eye of fear! This brain area looks fine on the outside, but how come the inside is so badly burned... Okay... I have to be careful and try not to cause more wounds... Let me see... Okay, right here, please try to say a word, sir."

"Ah... Ah... Ahem! That's enough, Ga... Honso, that's enough." Just as if someone had pushed a switch back to its correct position, the dead muscles on the tyrant's crooked face reconnected to the nerve signals from the brain, and his face regained coordination. Mercury saw that the Pirate King subconsciously and skillfully sucked the dripping saliva back into his mouth, indicating that he had suffered this mortal stroke-like attack more than once.

Then the Pirate King raised the brow bone muscle on one side in surprise, "This feeling..."

"How does it feel, my lord?"

"Very good." Huron's words no longer sounded like a growl or a roar. It was obvious that the connection between the brain synapses and nerves had been corrected very well. "Very smooth." However, he glanced at Mercurys and changed his praise into a threat. "But this is not enough, Honso, you promised me more."

"Of course, sir. But today is just the first round of examinations and preliminary surgery. I know you'll be very busy next." The Master of Pharmacy even smiled. "How about I debug the neural connection and self-cleaning function of the ventilator for you, and at the same time correct the balance of your hip joints and find a more reasonable distribution of output? - But I admit that my talent in mechanics is not as good as Master Valserks. Perhaps we can work together for a short time?" "You can't change the sophisticated computing configuration there casually," the Master Alchemist and the Lord of the Forge walked over and said, "The reaction speed of the left and right sides requires a lot of debugging, and the ventilator can suck out the sputum and pus inside through the suction tube installed behind the side of the chest cavity."

"Ah, your point is quite correct, Master. But perhaps... you see, this is a conclusion that I just calculated based on Lord Huron's actual physical monitoring data," Hong Suo stretched out his hand to Mercury who looked at him in disbelief and warning, but nodded immediately and said in a pretentious tone, "The calculation is complete." Then he reported a series of data to them.

Valserx looked at Honso's "work" with admiration, "You also integrated the Thinker into his body? What a genius idea! This is so convenient! The perfect lab assistant!"

"Yes." Hong Suo shrugged nonchalantly, but everyone could see his nervous thoughts. Huron and Valserx's eyes met: the Iron Warrior pharmacist seemed to be really obsessed with his research and technology, so much so that it was reassuring that he concealed his emotions.

"I integrated two additional Meditators into his body, so he can still control his emotions... Isn't it great?"

Even Gareon couldn't refuse this topic, although the look in his eyes now looked like he wanted to cut Mercury open and study him.

Thus, in a seemingly harmonious (? ) new workplace atmosphere, Hong Suo's first diagnosis and treatment of Huron came to a perfect end.

------------

"What are you thinking about?" Hong Suo asked.

"Nothing." Mercury came back to his senses and answered. The treatment had been successfully completed. They were still in the Palace of Thorns, walking towards the helipad where the colorful thunder eagles and storm birds were parked.

A Thunderhawk from the Indomitable's hangar had already landed on the berth, waiting to take them back to the fortress.

It had not yet changed the beautiful blue paint on its fuselage to the red or other colors commonly seen here, and no one in the strictly managed Indomitable hangar dared to graffiti the seal of the Dark God on its fuselage. However, the Imperial eagle emblem and the eye-catching white U-shaped emblem on its sides and front had been scraped off by Vannas after he had considerately asked the Primarch for permission before the red cross indicating the Red Corsairs' ally or mercenary relationship was marked.

Before they walked in along the ramp, Mercury glanced at the cockpit. The pilot inside was wearing an old gun-steel Mark III power armor with black and yellow stripes on the shoulder armor. The style was obviously the same as that of the Inflexible - a simpler style that was more "horizontal and vertical" than the other Chaos Warriors here. He felt a little relieved and stepped into the ramp formed by the lowering of the hatch.

The hatch closed, and Mercury turned and walked along the rear cabin that had been modified to carry a dreadnought, then sat down on the steel bench.

“Has this place been renovated?”

"Yes." The Master Potion Master nodded, also revealing a slightly exhausted look. "I told them to leave space for future dreadnoughts or mechas. Since we are Iron Warriors, no one would be suspicious. By the way, I asked Grendel to make sure there were no eavesdroppers here."

"very good."

“Luft Huron.” A trace of hesitation appeared on the face tattooed with runes and magic circles. The demigod with a devilish appearance spoke, “In his condition… he shouldn’t be alive.”

"That's true." The master potion master replied unceremoniously, "But he survived."

"Can he still be considered alive in that state? He obviously made a deal with evil things, those Chaos things, those powers of the Warp, those..." Robouti Guilliman hesitated and chose a word, "those demons, he made a deal with the devil."

A sarcastic smile appeared on Hong Suo's lips.

"That's obviously the case, my lord. But in my opinion, at least the material basis that keeps his body alive is not a big problem. There are many samples of his level in the underground secret rooms of some institutions in the corrupt empire, not to mention those mechanical scavengers and some barbaric undertakers I met in Kalan before... In other words, I can indeed repair him, and even let him get rid of some of the warp curse to some extent... I mean, physical pain and the like."

"His entire body has been burned and more than half of it has been removed. How could you still provide follow-up treatment? After all, this is a fragment of our dream..."

Hong Suo curled the corners of his mouth, and the Iron Warrior's voice was gentle and seductive.

"But... you are a Primarch, my father's holy brother. If you require me to keep him in this agony as punishment for his betrayal and crimes... I will gladly serve you."

For a moment, the red-armored warrior sitting opposite him seemed to show a look of approval and satisfaction of revenge, but then he pursed his lips.

"I am eager for revenge... but courage and honor must not be lost." Guilliman said his sacred will with a devilish face. "If we do not uphold our own moral principles, how are we different from them?"

"Excuse me, it's not just them, but most of the armies and organizations in the empire today have methods that are far from 'moral', my dear uncle."

"I know." The amber eyes looked at Hong Suo again, "But you actually have - or at least my brother, your father taught you to have morals, right? Don't test me. Although I can do whatever I want in this dream where the subspace overlaps with reality, I don't intend to indulge myself to the point of losing control. I won't lose control either. Don't worry, put away your tone and save it for others."

"…As you wish, Your Highness."

(End of this chapter)