Emperor's Bane

Chapter 817 Mutation
"Eidolon...you bastard..."

The pain in the arm was more intense than ever before. Even the slightest twitch would pull the nerves throughout the body, causing even the toughest warrior to cry out: But this was not the worst.

Worse still was his chest and throat, inside and outside his body. When Torgaton began to breathe heavily, his chest pulled the air like a broken bellows, blood flowed from his forehead, waist and abdomen, and even his vision became fragmented: his optical imaging equipment had been declared scrapped.

"Grass!"

At this moment, even the most optimistic Moon Wolf lost the mood to joke. Torgadon gritted his teeth, used up the last bit of strength in his body, let his only remaining hand hold the sword, barely stood up, and began to observe the surroundings.

He saw the wreckage of hundreds of transport planes filling every corner of his vision. Most of them were scattered on the ground, burning fiercely, while the other half were spinning desperately in the air, being hunted by giant winged spiders that were faster than fighter planes. The blood of screws and soldiers was flowing because of an unfair battle.

He saw his brothers, all Moon Wolves warriors, who were thrown to the ground in the same miserable state as him. Some of them lost their lives after falling hundreds of meters, while others could only sit up and desperately tried to stop the giant spider with explosives.

In just a few seconds, more than a dozen soldiers were captured by the flying beasts and fought each other in the chaotic sky, or simply detonated the bombs in their hands: and following the smell of blood and death, tens of thousands of beasts were surging from the border as far as they could see.

He saw pale lime trees behind them, far more in number than he had imagined. They were indeed supporting the operation of the Storm Shield in the sky, just as the intelligence said: but no one told them that there were rotting corpses hanging from the treetops.

The Blood Angels, the Emperor's Children, and the recently hanged Luna Wolves, were all nailed to the lime trees, and most of them had been gnawed away to the bone. The brothers of the Sixteenth Legion were ripped apart alive on these death trees even though they had just died and still had a breath left.

Maybe that was their fate?

Togarton couldn't figure it out, he just felt a dull pain in his brain: as the scene became clearer, countless burning memories began to flood into his mind.

He remembered: Eidolon had indeed pointed out the right path, and the Moon Wolves' support troops did not encounter any impact from the so-called atmospheric turbulence along the way, and rushed unimpeded to the habitat of the lime trees.

But another piece of intelligence from the Emperor's Children contained a fatal error: not only had the brutal beasts on the planet not been completely wiped out, there were still a large number of unknown individuals. Countless individuals that could fly crushed the Luna Wolves' transport planes in mid-air with absolute advantage, and at least half of the warriors were torn to pieces by them without any resistance.

And the remaining half...

Torgaton took a deep breath, barely able to stand firm, and used the corner of his eye to search for his comrades within his field of vision: the previous catastrophe in the air had completely destroyed the organization of the Luna Wolves. After the emergency landing, Torgaton could find less than fifty warriors.

And in front of them and above them, at least thousands of chitinous crowns had surrounded all their retreat routes: the surviving Shadow Moon Wolves gathered in a circle, and everyone knew their next fate.

Standing in the very center, Torgadon gnawed on his last few breaths, which were filled with the smell of charcoal and blood, as well as an indescribable stench: he suspected it was the pus in the spider's body, or perhaps a completely new variant was trying to crawl out of the cracks in the ground.

Thinking of this, Togarton suddenly laughed.

"Kirket."

He called out the name of his comrade beside him.

"what happened?"

In response, Luna Wolf heard tension and trembling.

"Have you ever seen Starship Troopers?"

"what?"

"Never mind, nothing..."

Torgadon licked his lips, twisted the broad blade in his hand, and placed it in the most suitable position for battle. His originally happy face became ferocious: half because of the stimulation of the smell of blood in the air, and the other half because of the pain gnawing at his nerves.

"If I can make it back alive, I'll find a DVD to watch. It's a good movie."

After talking to himself for a while and dispelling the suffocating feeling of death lingering around him, Togarton finally found his smile. He lamented that his pistol had been lost, and then looked for his first target among the group of wild beasts: thousands of strange beasts were gathering around them at an accelerated speed, and their rapidly swinging hind legs were dazzling.

But this did not prevent him from easily finding the largest one. Godspeed, it should be five meters tall.

"bring it on."

Shadow Moon Wolf took his last breath. Instead of standing there waiting for death in vain, he rushed head-on into the Mouth of the Abyss wielding four blade arms.

"For... the Wolf God!"

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“And for ourselves.

"We ended up hiding the news."

"Don't let anyone know, especially not Terra."

It is hard to imagine that such a statement would come from the mouth of a Terra veteran who once participated in the Unification War.

[Do you really think so? ]

The Queen of Avalon sat in her own throne, absentmindedly teasing the sleepy robed figure on the table, making one interesting pose after another in the marble pattern, stroking its little belly, and listening to the satisfied snoring under the robe.

Ever since she had an unpleasant encounter with the Dark Prince on the Thorn Star, although the Lord of the Silver Palace temporarily stayed away from Morgan's neck due to the golden flames, the Spider Queen felt more dangerous for no reason.

She knew very well that Chaos would not give up easily. They had plenty of time to waste and the determination to persevere: just like the ebb tide before a tsunami, a short retreat would only mean that the next offensive from the Warp would be even more turbulent.

Therefore, for safety reasons, Morgan brought the robed man with him: although this little fellow from Caliban can only be regarded as a relatively non-mainstream pet most of the time, it can often produce unexpected miraculous effects when it comes to issues related to chaos or the subspace.

Morgan's fate with these magical creatures can even be traced back a hundred years ago. Long before she followed in Jonson's footsteps and crushed the Great Crusade's strongest enemies, the Randan Empire and his lost brother, Morgan had already signed an invisible contract with these strange beings deep in the jungles of Caliban.

She had taken the least of all the robed beings, and had kept him like a pet for a hundred years, and now it was time for payback: with the Warp invading the physical universe at the tail end of the Great Crusade, the Lord of Avelorn would need all the tools she could to combat the Chaos invasion of her realm.

At least, the Primarch could actually feel a moment of peace as the little robed figure fell asleep peacefully in her palm.

The Dawnbreakers were not surprised by this: among the invasive species that used the Lord of Avalon's office as their main habitat, the robed man was definitely not a headache, at least it was much less dangerous than the primate beast called Midnight Ghost. Especially in the eyes of the Chief Pharmacist of the Legion who had fought side by side with the Emperor, the act of raising the robed man by their own Primarch could only be regarded as a kind imitation of his genetic father: when the Emperor frequently used his diplomatic means in the Unification War, God knows what kind of state gifts his [allies] gave him.

All we can say is that the first zoo and the first prison in the Terra Palace were next to each other: mainly for the convenience of feeding.

"cough!"

With a cough, pulling himself out of the glorious past, the chief pharmacist pushed the documents on the desk forward.

"That is indeed what I thought, my Lord."

[Hmm…I see.]

Morgan nodded, smeared a little saliva on his fingertips, and finally looked down at it with a little regret.

[But this is normal: neither Terra nor my brothers have ever had a headache about gene seeds. Our mutation may just be an interesting topic for them.]

[Two gene seeds that can give birth to twins? Which legion with a primarch would treat such a thing as a treasure: we can digest it internally, there is no need to bother Terra for such a thing. ]

Perhaps he heard the hint of resentment in the Primarch's tone, the pharmacist lowered his head, not daring to speak, but forcing himself to sort out the development of the situation once again.

In fact, the cause and effect are very simple.

During the War with the False Emperor, a Dawnbreaker recruit named Fruit Fly was injured, and while examining him, the legion's pharmacist discovered that the recruit's two gene seeds, which had not yet been extracted, had mutated: there were originally only two seeds, but they had given birth to two twins in his body.

So, actually he gave birth to four seeds.

Although in subsequent inspections, the pharmacists found that one of the seeds was necrotic at the beginning, the remaining three seeds were very healthy and complete: that is to say, three healthy seeds were obtained at one time. This success rate is so high among the genetic seeds of Dawnbreaker that it is simply tear-jerking.

You know, before this, the Dawnbreaker Legion had experienced more than once the tragedy of a team producing twenty gene seeds that all became ineffective: Morgan's inherited bloodline was mixed with countless known or unknown genetic diseases, and just one of them was enough to completely declare a gene seed dead.

It was not known whether it was the work of fate or the Primarch's own constitution, but although the Lord of Avalon, as the Primarch, could theoretically produce unlimited gene seeds, the mortality rate of the Spider Queen's seeds was abnormally high compared to the seeds in the bodies of the Dawnbreakers: so high that the inheritance of the Second Legion often relied on the seeds in the bodies of the battle brothers rather than the Primarchs.

No one has been able to come to a conclusion about this strange situation, and the only person who wanted to conduct research in this area was Magnus before the Council of Nicaea: the King of Prospero had devoted a lot of effort to solving the problem of his "best friend" and came to a relatively reasonable conclusion.

Magnus believed that the Dawnbreakers' genetic disease, the Witch Hammer, was essentially a derivative problem caused by Morgan's powerful but chaotic psychic power. It was a metaphysical phenomenon that could not be determined by science.

Therefore, considering Morgan's powerful psychic power, the seeds produced from her body will naturally be more deeply affected, and the survival rate will naturally be lower. However, the seeds produced in the bodies of Dawnbreakers, because they generally resist or do not use psychic power very much, can obtain a higher survival rate in a stable environment.

It sounds unscientific: but isn't that how things work in the subspace?
The Spider Queen herself remained noncommittal about Magnus's remarks, but even the nearly omnipotent Morgan had to admit that her seeds were indeed not very useful: therefore, being able to produce three mutations instead of two was also a great thing for the Dawnbreakers.

"The only question now is whether we can use scientific means to pass on this mutation as a benign gene."

The pharmacist rolled his eyes and looked at his own Primarch cautiously. After all, he was a high-ranking official in the Legion, so he was naturally aware of some of the red lines in his mother's heart: for example, Morgan held a strong abhorrence towards any body modification involving the Dawnbreakers.

But... this is indeed an opportunity.

It is an opportunity worth letting the Primarch temporarily cross his own red line.

But the pharmacist didn't dare to say it, he was just waiting for the mother's silence to end.

"Da da da……"

The Lord of Avalon tapped the table rhythmically with her fingers. She was silent for about ten minutes. For the Primarch, this time was long enough for them to meditate on the truth of the world.

【First...don't be anxious.】

For the first time, her offspring heard hesitation in Morgan's voice.

[Save the sample and dispose of it when we return to Avalon.]

[Since we really want to study it, I must personally lead and supervise it.]

“No one would question that.”

The pharmacist bowed hastily.

【Hmm... Let's go down.】

"At your service, my lord."

The pharmacist's footsteps quickly disappeared at the end of the Primarch's perception range, and Morgan never opened her eyes. She remained silent, still deeply entangled in her thoughts.

Until new footsteps approached her without permission.

【Um? 】

The Primarch opened his eyes.

【Ania, what happened? 】

【…】

【What did you say? 】

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[Torgadon... is dead? ]

(End of this chapter)