Chapter 399: Run
"You warn people repeatedly in their ears through their parents, their friends, their opponents, and everything that happens around them. Only those who move forward far away from you dare to Shamelessly complaining that you are silent, because he has never wanted to listen to your voice." - "The Book of Lorgar"
The way Hammer killed his first enemy today was not with a bolter. Instead, he uses the power sword in his hand.
Something crawled out of the sand underground, bringing with it a rustling sound like a worm sliding. The sound itself was hidden in the howling wind at night, but the warrior quickly thrust his sword into the sand and penetrated it. Some kind of hard chitin structure lifts the swimming life forms out of the sand. It was a fish-shaped creature with spider legs. Dark yellow juice dripped from its body, accompanied by a strong pungent smell.
He then tore it into two pieces with his sword. The particularly obvious neural structure inside the monster 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 they were lucky enough. Well, tearing off one of their limbs is enough to turn the other party into a puddle of rotten flesh that doesn't know how to move.
Correspondingly, the weaknesses of biological creatures under normal circumstances are not obvious in their bodies. No matter where the hit point is, the power of penetrating injuries is approximately equal to nothing when there is insufficient luck.
Samples are sent to the rear of the legion one after another, and reports sent to the front line give speculation that these abnormal nerves play the same role as biological brains in their bodies.
“I think if a fight breaks out, the Emperor’s Children will definitely suffer the most pain,” Jack said. “Instead of slicing off the enemy’s limbs or eight limbs, their beautiful swordsmanship can penetrate the heart with one blow. Here you can..."
He grabbed the second crawling fish monster with his claws. The tips of his power claws penetrated the side of its chitinous head shell, avoiding the hard part and sticking to the carapace. The gap between the bones and bones penetrates deep into it, pulling the soft material on the inside to the outside, and then tearing the head shell and abdominal cavity in half. The fish monster trembled at the tips of his hands, leaving Jack a little time to observe carefully before it died.
"...It's not useful," Jack said persistently, "So what is this thing? I can't see what kind of attack it relies on."
"It can survive without being attacked. It's probably a good thing to kill all the enemies," Gerry replied, also killing a fish monster and shaking off the juice on his sword.
This kind of juice does not even have the powerful corrosiveness that is commonly seen in alien bodies, but when its spider legs passed through Gerry's leg armor, the seemingly sharp ends were not even covered with a layer of black paint. It was almost impossible to scrape it off, which was completely opposite to the harmful characteristics of the combat structures encountered before.
They killed a few more fish monsters, caught them out of the sand sea in various ways, and then simply destroyed them. This was the simplest kill in their recent missions. It was not even enough to activate their combat senses, and everything ended easily.
The rustling sounds disappeared underground, as hard to notice as they came, but they were still noticed by Hammer. He frowned in confusion and told the rest of the team what he had discovered.
"They ran away," Hammer said.
“They did not come for the battle, but were just lost heretic cubs who met us by chance.” Hashem said, using sand to try to wash away the juice on his power hammer. .
"How do you know?" Jack asked strangely, fidgeting with a piece of the fish monster's head shell in his hand. He knew that some battle brothers had picked up the alien sharp bone blade stumps as their trophies and frequently replaced weapons. Horus Luperkar did not forbid this, but merely reminded them to be careful with the weapons in their hands.
Hashem was stunned for a moment by his question, which was unusual for a Word Bearer who could launch into a eloquent speech at any time. He tilted his head slightly under his helmet, thinking silently, reviewing his inner thoughts when the words came out of his mouth just now. When he noticed that invisible touch, a trace of panic filled with regret rose in his heart.
“I need to correct myself,” he said anxiously, reluctantly putting aside the anger in his heart. “I have experienced the emotions of heathens...I almost taint the grace I have received and my weak will. They are being harassed without realizing it, 'He upholds all who fall, and lifts up all who are pressed down'..."
"You can tell the specifics of what happened before you confess," Kroger said, and considering that the Word Bearers had always behaved well in the team, he politely added, "Please."
Ha Sam retracted his unfinished words and said bitterly: "Randan's alien emotions entered my perception range, and it interfered with me!"
"Oh, psyker." Gerry nodded. .
“What does that feel like, Hassem?”
Hassem glared at the Luna Wolf who asked the question through his helmet. He didn’t need to say anything more, Luna Wolf He consciously tapped the breathing grid on his helmet to indicate that he would shut up.
"There's no feeling," Hashem paused, then continued to describe, although every syllable he spoke was filled with guilt and reluctance, "it just appears."
"Okay, we'll help you. Pay attention to what you say," Gerry said. "I hope you pay attention to me. I feel the same emotion, very vague and difficult to identify. Also, the psychic environment index is rising on the scanner." br>
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 Kroger and 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 are indeed not sharp enough. Now, keep moving forward."
They have been moving forward in the sand plain for a long time, and the sky is getting darker little by little, and the bloody horizontal lines on the edge are like black and red centipedes climbing on the skyline and At the corner of 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 evolutions gradually appear, and some translucent substances are like dim and decaying storms. , shrouded in the upper layer of that shadow. 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 with great force. Galloping away. "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 shots, and listening to the Word Bearers' account of their perceived environment.
"There is a natural smell of vegetation," whispered the Word Bearer, "but there is still the smell of blood, primitive, and ancient."
"Some creatures... four-hoofed beasts , wearing a shell of fur instead of flesh, walking by the river," Gerry said, taking over the words of the Word Bearer, "I saw another color gradually covering the sand... dark yellow, no. Green, showing some undulations, grass? Yes, grass..."
"A river," Hammer said, even if he spoke, he could still give people a unique sense of silence, "in front of us. The river is deep, bloodshot, very cold, but very peaceful. Next to it, the ground is becoming uneven, and the grass and river beach stones are connected to each other, and the color changes from dark blue to gray-black, and the color changes peacefully and slowly. ”
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.
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 far away that it was like some kind of edge of consciousness was recalled by the narrative. A vague recollection rather than a sound based on reality. A few seconds later, he suddenly raised his gun and unleashed fire on the ground: "Here we come!"
The loud noise caused by the weapon in his hand instantly broke the immersion of the three Astartes behind him. Misperceiving, Hashem was grateful that the Emperor had brought them a reliable Iron Warrior so that they could easily awaken from the influence of the heretics.
In the hallucination 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 flames in his hand let out a roar of anger caused by this: the information they obtained at the beginning was correct, the fish monster was indeed the cub of the fighting creature in front of them, Or these long-tailed, four-legged crustacean creatures that travel like waves on the ground are an evolutionary direction of fish monsters. They are covered with a dark and shiny hard carapace, and the teeth in their mouths 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 shadow 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 held some kind of Wild broke off one of the alien claws, roughly dug his hand into the claw, and put it on like a large glove.
"Black armor," Jack growled, "What is it this time? Those amphibians from the ocean world? I'd rather see your black armor twice more, 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 specific image of the giant thing created some unexpected shock in the hearts of the Astartes.
After several months of fighting, everyone is familiar with Ran Dan’s flesh-and-blood style to the point of immunity. The twisted giant face, blood-stained dried skin and stiff bone-white carapace are tiresome, and they are tired of these abnormalities. The rejection of flesh and blood structures has long been transformed into a burning fighting spirit in the face of the enemy; soldiers who came down from a surprise battle can even change their clothes and walk into the canteen, feasting on all kinds of meat - if they receive the supplies There's really meat in it.
But this colossus is different.
Its huge body stretches horizontally for several kilometers, wrapping it here. The outer metal that makes it a living battleship of Ran Dan has already peeled off over time, like a dry Gray embers piled under its bony body, soaked into the gravel together with the red color of blood, silently stretching into a bright red spring that no longer flows.
The flesh and blood has long since disappeared over the years, whether it was rotten or eaten, and what remains is only a large, crystal-clear white skeleton, as pure as a fallen giant tree of life, with many parts at the end of the trunk. There are thin white bones with smooth lines, like tail feathers spread out. On both sides of the torso are two huge twisted bones, hanging weakly on the ground; the links and turns of each white marble-like joint are as delicate as any other human being. The specimens that can be made are more refined.
A translucent jellyfish gauze-like colloid layer covers the magnificent skeleton, like a mourning gauze hanging from the sky, quietly wrapping the lost skeleton of the colossus and freezing it in time. When they got closer, they saw clearly that it didn't seem to be a single piece of gelatin, but two pieces that also grew outward from near the giant bone in the middle, and finally hung down from the giant bones on the two wings like wings.
It would almost be beautiful, if the race to which it belonged had not been enemies of mankind.
"Prairie..." the Word Bearer whispered, "it landed here, when this was still prairie, with rivers, trees, and other creatures - its flesh split into younglings and dived into the earth. . The land dries up, the climate changes, the split cubs re-evolve in another direction, black carapace appears, or mountains degenerate into flesh and blood... There are many more, under this land... It waits, waits, to re-evolve. Gathering, waiting for new blood and flesh..."
"Under the land?" Kroger asked warily, "Where?"
Hammer suddenly shouted: "Trap? ! ”
In an instant, the sand beneath Gri-Gris suddenly collapsed, causing the warrior to temporarily lose his balance. A cavity suddenly appeared in the quicksand, and instantly expanded into a hole several meters in diameter. A ring of bone sharp teeth shone coldly at the edge of the hole.
The cavity moves upward, and the black carapace on the outside of the giant beast protrudes from the sand surface, followed by more than ten blood-stained sharp bone spurs thrust upward from the inside of the cavity that is actually a huge mouth, such as sharp knives. The swords intertwined, piercing through every weak point and non-weak point of the Deathwing armor, half breaking on the surface of the armor, and half going deep into dangerous gaps, piercing the flesh and blood of the warrior, piercing the Dark Angel high and lifting Into the air. Space Marine blood splattered along the bone spurs.
The beast's mouth quickly closed and sank back under the sand. Without a scream, the impaled Dark Angel disappeared into the darkness.
"Run!" Kroger roared.
(End of this chapter)