Warhammer 40k: Shattered Steel Soul

"You have repeatedly warned people through their parents, their friends, their enemies, and everything that happened around them. Only those who move away from you dare to shamelessly complain that you are silent, because they never want to hear your voice." - "The Book of Lorgar"

The way Hammer killed his first enemy today was not with a grenade launcher, but with the power sword in his hand.

Something crawled out of the sand underground, bringing a rustling sound like a worm sliding. The sound itself was hidden in the howling wind at night, but the warrior quickly stabbed the sword into the sand, piercing through some hard chitin structure, and lifted the swimming life out of the sand. It was a fish-like creature with spider legs, and dark yellow juice dripped from its body, accompanied by a strong pungent smell.

He then tore it in two with a sword, and the monster's particularly obvious nerve structure hung out of the body. It twitched violently and suddenly stopped moving.

This brief encounter ended quickly. Although the Randan alien branches they had seen so far were of various shapes and forms, they also had a common feature - damage to their limbs would directly affect their combat thinking. Sometimes, if they were lucky enough, tearing off one of their limbs would be enough to turn the opponent into a pool of rotten meat that didn't know how to move.

Correspondingly, the biological weaknesses under normal circumstances were not obvious in their bodies. No matter where the hit point was, the power of penetrating wounds was almost equal to nothing when luck was insufficient.

Samples were continuously sent to the rear of the legion, and the reports sent to the front line gave a guess: these abnormal nerves played a role equivalent to the biological brain in their bodies.

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"I think if a fight breaks out, the most uncomfortable ones will definitely be the Emperor's children," Jack said, "Compared to cutting the enemy's four or eight limbs, their beautiful swordsmanship of piercing the heart with one blow can be..."

He waved his claws to grab the second crawling fish monster, and the tip of the power claw penetrated from the side of its chitinous head shell, avoiding the hard part, sticking to the gap between the shell and the bones, and went deep into it, pulling the soft material inside to the outside, and then tearing the head shell and the abdominal cavity in half. The fish monster trembled at the tips of his claws, leaving Jack a little time to observe carefully before it died.

"...It's useless," Jack said the first half of the sentence stubbornly, "So what is this thing? I can't see what it relies on to attack."

"It's probably a good thing to be able to kill all the enemies without being attacked." Gerry replied, killing a fish monster as well and shaking off the juice on the sword.

This juice does not even have the strong corrosiveness commonly found in alien bodies, and when its spider legs scratched Gerry's leg armor, the seemingly sharp end barely scraped off even a layer of black paint, which was in stark contrast to the harmful characteristics of the combat constructs they had encountered before.

They killed several more fish monsters, catching them from the sand sea in various ways and then simply destroying them. This was the simplest killing in their recent mission, not even enough to make their combat perception active, and everything ended easily.

The rustling sound faded away underground, just as it was difficult to notice when it came, but it was still noticed by Hammer. He frowned in confusion and told the other members of the team about his discovery.

"They ran away." Hammer said.

"They didn't come for a fight, but were just lost heretic cubs who happened to meet us." Hasem said, trying to wash off the juice on his power hammer with sand on the spot.

"How do you know?" Jack asked curiously, fiddling with a piece of the fish monster's head shell in his hand. He knew that some of his battle brothers had already taken the sharp bone blades of the aliens as their trophies and frequently replaced weapons. Horus Lupercal did not forbid this, but only reminded them to be careful with the sharp weapons in their hands.

Hasem was stunned for a moment by his question, which was unusual for the Word Bearers who could give a long speech anytime and anywhere. He tilted his head slightly under his helmet, thinking silently, recalling his inner thoughts when the words just came out of his mouth. When he sensed that invisible touch, a trace of regretful fear rose in his heart.

"I need to correct myself," he said irritably, trying to put aside his anger, "I actually experienced the emotions of the pagans... I almost defiled the grace I received, and my weak will was disturbed without knowing it, 'He lifts up those who fall; He raises up those who are depressed'..."

"You can tell me what happened before you confess," Krog said. Considering that the Word Bearers have always performed well in the team, he politely added a word, "Please."

Hassem took back his unfinished words and said bitterly: "The emotions of the Randan alien entered my perception range, and it interfered with me!"

"Oh, psyker." Gerry nodded.

"What does that feel like, Hasem?"

Hassem stared at the Moon Wolf who asked the question through his helmet. Without him saying anything more, the Moon Wolf consciously tapped the breathing grid of his helmet, indicating that he would shut up.

"No feeling," Hashem paused, then began to describe, though guilt and reluctance were evident in every syllable, "it just appears."

"Okay, we'll help you pay attention to what you say," Gerry said, "and I want you to pay attention to mine. I feel the same emotion, very vague and hard to identify. Also, the psychic environment index on the scanner is rising."

Jack looked at the two battle brothers in confusion, and then quickly turned to the two Iron Warriors: "Don't you feel that emotion too?"

"Yes," Hammer said, and Kroger shook his head.

"It's broken...why am I as insensitive as Kroger..." Luna Wolf muttered in frustration, "I thought I was quite emotionally sensitive-"

Kroger gave Jack a friendly pat on the shoulder armor. "You really aren't sharp enough, now, move on."

They had been advancing in the sandy plain for a long time, and the sky was getting darker little by little. The bloody horizontal line on the edge was like a black and red centipede climbing at the angle between the skyline and the sandy plain. Judging from the instruments, they had already traveled a distance of well over three miles, but the distant signal source still stayed at a fixed point on the scanner, which made the team begin to doubt the authenticity of the towering shadow.

But the shape of the shadow is indeed becoming clearer, as if it is constantly being refined by a paintbrush. From the dark color block, subtle light and dark evolution gradually appears, and some translucent substances are like a dim and dying storm, shrouding the shadow. of the upper level. It is those changes that can be detected by the naked eye that support the team to continue moving forward and cross this vast open space.

Hashem was the first to notice the unsettling sound of water. It lurked at the edge of consciousness, making a distant sound like an eternal falling water, sometimes swirling rapidly, sometimes rushing away with great force.

"Did you hear it?" He asked in a low voice, his voice cold, "There are some sounds."

"Hear that," Gerry said, scanning the surrounding desert for anything that could make the sound of water flowing. He found nothing.

"Be prepared," Krog said calmly, raising his gun, alertly prepared for any shot, and listening to the Word Bearers' interpretation of their perceived environment.

"There's a natural smell of vegetation," the Word Bearer whispered, "but there's still the smell of blood, raw, and ancient."

"Some creatures...four-hoofed beasts, covered in fur instead of flesh and blood, walk along the river." Gerry said, taking over the words of the Word Bearer, "I see another color gradually covering this place. A piece of sand... dark yellow, no, green, showing some undulations, grass? Yes, grass..."

"A river," said Hammer, who could still give people a unique sense of silence even when he spoke, "is in front of us. The water is deep, bloodshot, very cold, but very peaceful. Next to it, the ground is It becomes uneven, the grass and the rocks on the river beach are connected to each other, transitioning from dark blue to gray black, the color evolution is gentle and slow.”

Kroger frowned. In his field of vision, the sand was still unfolding unobstructedly in his eyes. In the dim sky, it looked like black snow falling to the ground.

He didn't know whether it was an hallucination caused by the scene described by his companion. He perceived some restless moving sounds sliding on the sand, but they were so distant that they resembled some vague memories recalled by narratives at the edge of consciousness, rather than A realistic voice. After a few seconds, he suddenly raised his gun and fired at the ground: "Here we come!"

The loud bang caused by the weapon in his hand instantly broke through the false perceptions of the three Astartes behind him. Hashem was very grateful that the Emperor had brought them a reliable Iron Warrior, so that they could escape from the infidels. It is easy to wake up under the influence.

In the hallucinations he saw, an endless and unusual peace lingered over all the atmosphere. It was joyful when immersed in it, but it instantly turned into endless nausea and distortion after leaving it.

The fire in his hand roared and roared with anger: the information they obtained at the beginning was correct. The fish monster was indeed the cub of the fighting creature in front of him, or these monsters on the ground were like The long-tailed, four-legged crustacean creature that travels like waves is an evolutionary direction of fish monsters. It is covered with a dark and shiny hard carapace, and the teeth in its mouth are sharp and reflect cold light. Every shot of the bolt can cause some shiny metallic fragments to fly from the creature's body. Fortunately, his power hammer is enough to smash the carapace inwards.

The limbs of the fish monsters are far stronger than their cubs, and the claws are enough to shatter one side of Kroger's knee armor in one blow. The Iron Warrior roared and stuck the bolt gun into the opponent's huge mouth full of fangs. , fired one after another, blasting through every layer of the diaphragm inside its carapace, shattering it from the inside to the outside, and then throwing its body, about two meters long, heavily into the pile of corpses composed of its companions. middle.

They chased forward in the sand, and the shadows in the distance seemed to tremble in the violently shaking perspective, twisting in the shadow caused by the black-shelled monster rising from the ground, even though it itself did not change.

This round of fighting ended in about ten minutes. One of Jack's power claws was broken. He cursed and kicked the limb of the fallen large fish monster, then crouched down and broke one of the alien's claws with some wildness. The beast's claw, roughly digging his hand into the beast's claw, wearing it like a large glove.

"Black carapace," Jack growled, "What is it this time? Those amphibians from the ocean world? I'd rather see your black carapace a second time, Gerry."

"Don't look around," Gerry replied, checking his robotic arm. The parameters of the scanner had not changed. He began to believe that there was some kind of electromagnetic interference nearby that the human body could not detect. "Your eyes are not polite enough. You must learn to treat the knight Be respectful."

When they looked up from the fragments of limbs and carapace, the shape of the shadow was already clear, and the concrete image of the giant thing created some unexpected shock in the hearts of the Astartes.

After several months of fighting, everyone was familiar with Randan's flesh-and-blood style to the point of immunity. The twisted giant face, blood-stained and dried skin, and stiff bone-white shell were tiresome. The rejection of these abnormal flesh-and-blood structures had long been transformed into a burning will to fight against the enemy; the soldiers who came down from a surprise battle could even change their clothes and walk into the cafeteria to enjoy all kinds of meat - if there was really meat in the supplies they received.

But this giant statue was different.

Its huge body stretched horizontally for several kilometers. The outer metal that wrapped it here and made it a living warship of Randan had already peeled off with the weathering and erosion of time, and piled up like dry gray embers under its bony body, and soaked into the gravel together with the red blood, silently stretching into a long-no longer flowing crimson spring.

The flesh and blood had long disappeared over the years, either rotted or eaten, leaving only a crystal-clear, pure large skeleton like a fallen giant tree of life. The tail of the trunk had many thinner white bones, with smooth lines, like tail feathers spreading out. On both sides of the trunk were two twisted giant bones, hanging weakly on the ground; every connection and turn of the white marble-like joints was exquisite and flawless, more exquisite than any specimen that humans could make.

A layer of translucent jellyfish-like jelly covered the magnificent skeleton, like a mourning veil hanging from the sky, quietly wrapping the colossus's dead skeleton and freezing it in time. When they got closer, they saw that it seemed not to be a whole piece of jelly, but two pieces that also grew outward from the middle giant bone, and finally hung down like wings against the two wings.

It was almost beautiful, if the race it belonged to had never been an enemy of humans.

"Grassland..." The Word Bearer whispered, "It landed here, when it was still a grassland, with rivers, trees, and other creatures - its flesh and blood split into cubs and sank into the soil. The earth dried up, the climate changed, and the split cubs re-evolved in another direction, with black shells appearing, or degenerated into mountains of flesh and blood... There are many more, under this land... It waited, waited, reassembled, and waited for new blood and flesh..."

"Under the land?" Kroger asked vigilantly, "Where?"

Hammer suddenly shouted: "Trap!"

In an instant, the sand surface under Gerry-Gris's feet suddenly collapsed, causing the warrior to temporarily lose balance. A cavity suddenly appeared in the quicksand, and expanded into a hole with a diameter of several meters in an instant. The bone teeth formed a ring and faintly flashed cold light at the edge of the hole.

The cavity moved upward, and the black shell on the outside of the beast protruded from the sand surface. Then, more than ten blood-stained sharp bone spurs pierced upward from the inside of the cavity, which was actually a huge mouth. Like swords intertwined, they pierced through every weak and non-weak point of the Deathwing armor. Half of them broke on the surface of the armor, and the other half penetrated into the dangerous gap, piercing the flesh and blood of the warrior, piercing the Dark Angel high up and lifting it into the air. The blood of the Space Marines splashed along the bone spurs.

The mouth of the beast quickly closed and sank back under the sand surface. Without a scream, the pierced Dark Angel disappeared into the darkness.

"Run!" Krog roared.