40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 666 48. Interlude: Zabril's Experience
Zabril quickly caught his breath.

The scalding rain fell from the sky, hitting the power armor like magma hanging upside down, stirring up bursts of white smoke. The black paint was washed away by the raindrops like an oil painting that had not yet dried, but the ceramic steel underneath was not grayish white, but instead presented a strange black color without any texture.

Zabril gripped his sword - the only weapon he had available.

At this moment, the sky was dark and the sun had disappeared. The black-armored giant stood in the dark rain, saying nothing, with his sword lowered.
Until a certain moment, the jumping arc suddenly rose up and filled the sword. A white light shattered the rain curtain, and high-temperature steam burst out like flames.

Zabril let out a deep roar from deep in his chest, and his face was ferocious behind his helmet. He gritted his teeth and drew his sword, slashed horizontally, and slashed again, and in an instant, he slashed four times.

The muscle spasms in his arms were no longer visible, and his hands at this moment were as steady, swift, and violent as they had been in every killing moment in the past.

The sword flashed, as fast as lightning. The body parts scattered to the ground. Something was killed cleanly and immediately - was it really like this?

Judging from the Dark Angel's raised arms again, the answer was obviously not the case.

"die!"

Zabril growled once more, the words falling out of his throat, low, hoarse, and filled with an indelible hostility.

None of his past experiences had turned the old knight into a resentful person, and he never fought to such an extreme. But this was how things were, and he didn't want to be at peace now.

After all, seventy-six hours ago, he had witnessed this creature devour an entire village.

He didn't know how many people were buried in its belly, but he knew that there were 21 houses in the village. The roads in the village were full of blood, mud and blood-stained cloth mixed together, and the simple carts were piled with food that the villagers had not been able to transport to their homes.
He arrived too late, too late to even hear the screams, but he also arrived in time, because the thing that committed such atrocities and evil deeds had not yet left.

The battle occurred almost in the third second after Zabril stepped into the village. In the first second, he saw the tragic scene and analyzed the process. In the second second, he followed the traces and looked for the murderer. In the third second, he raised his sword and drew his gun and rushed to the village entrance.

The explosive bomb hit the monster's head like lightning. A huge hole appeared on it, and more broken flesh and blood flowed down like melted wax.

Only then did the monster belatedly turn around, and what greeted it had changed from the weak resistance of ordinary humans to something it had never seen before.
After being slaughtered for more than four minutes, it decided to escape, and Zabril chose not to let it go.

But he had no reason to do that, did he?

He was in a maze of multiple, repetitive histories, he had nothing to do with the medieval civilians in the village of Caliban, he had more pressing things to do, he didn't have enough ammunition, he had no supplies, he was alone.
Two paths are placed on the scale. One end is full of chips, the other end is empty. If it were someone else, what would they choose?

Zabriel had no answer, he just kicked the scale over.

I don't need a reason, the Dark Angel thought. I just want to kill it.

If necessary, he could find many reasons to justify his almost irrational pursuit at this moment, but he didn't want to. He was too lazy to find excuses. He just wanted to kill it.

Taking a break from duties?

"For the Emperor and the Lion!"

The Dark Angel continued to swing his sword, and the corpses wailed, quickly shattered by the decomposition field, the most brutal weapon in the galaxy, but they were never truly destroyed or killed.

Its "vitality" was like a cancer, existing in every deformed blood vessel and every thick bone. No matter how violent and cruel Zabril was, it was useless to this terrible vitality.

Of course, the old knight did not ignore this strange fact - after all, this pursuit had lasted for a full seventy-six hours. If he could not even notice this most basic enemy situation, there were probably only two possibilities.

First, he was contaminated by Chaos. Second, he was mentally traumatized and temporarily insane.
But even if he noticed it, what would that do? He couldn't kill it unless he took another approach.

Or, the last resort. In any case, he believed that the Eagle emblem stored in the belt around his waist could affect the monster's regeneration ability. But, for some reason, Zabril was unwilling to do so.

Whenever he had such a thought, a sense of crisis would surge from his heart, reminding him not to do this. He was sure that the sense of crisis did not come from his intuition.

Combined with the sudden appearance of this monster and the changes in the surrounding environment, the answer is self-evident.
The rain was pouring down, and the sky had turned from gloomy to pitch black. Zabril's winged helmet was covered with dripping blood, and the ceramic steel was still under the impact of the hot raindrops, and steam continued to rise.

His eyepiece was scarlet, and his hands were full of broken flesh and bones. In the night, his outline was almost entirely made up of red, black, and white. At first glance, he looked far more hideous than a monster.

If primitive people saw him swinging his sword at this moment, they would probably think of him as some kind of cruel ghost that only appeared in the middle of the night.

And what about his opponent? If Zabril was just beginning to take human form, it couldn't even be called a "shape". Words couldn't even describe its current appearance.

Dozens of bodies were tangled together, making strange noises and wriggling, spraying bones, broken flesh and blood from their wounds to the surrounding crowded flesh? The scalding rain fell on its or their wounds, stirring up blood mist and more screams, which spread far and wide in the darkness.
Zabril fought until dawn, and when he stopped exhausted, the battle timer provided by the eyepiece had reached the eighty-seventh hour.

He could still fight, and so could that thing, its 'mass' had not even noticeably decreased. The screaming lumps of flesh revealed a strange pink texture in the early morning sun, and then they glued together again.
This time, without Zabriel's interference, it returned to oneness without hindrance.

However, compared to the appearance of a ball of flesh in the village at that time, it now looked a bit like a human being, which it shouldn't have. The exhausted old knight was shocked after seeing this scene. He gritted his teeth, raised his power sword and rushed forward again, but failed.
The monster, which had never resisted before, raised its hand just before the blade entered its body.

The so-called arm, which had a large number of irregularly distributed deformed muscles and looked ridiculous and even more terrifying, actually grasped Zabriel's wrist tightly.

At this moment, the speed, strength, and familiarity with swordsmanship it displayed made Zabriel's face behind his helmet suddenly gloomy.

He had roughly guessed who was controlling this thing, unless he was extremely stupid. "Zabriel." Serafax greeted him in a tone that shouldn't be gentle. "Long time no see."

"How long?"

Zabril asked coldly, letting go of the sword, and smashed his fist with his backhand, breaking the deformed arm with one punch. The blade fell, and the decomposition field crackled in the blasphemous flesh and blood, and it closed quickly, and then fell into the mud with the hand.

Serafax, who was hiding inside the monster, or perhaps was the monster itself, didn't care. He just took two steps back, and suddenly, a teeth-grinding sound of flesh tearing came from deep within his body.

Zabriel didn't want to give him the chance to use any evil magic, so he immediately chased him forward and punched his disproportionately thin neck.

There was only a muffled sound, and Serafax's bloody face was blown away, while his headless, swollen and twisted body stood there, with a large hole slowly opening in his chest and abdomen.
A heavy, beast-like breathing sound began to condense within it.

"I have been looking for you for a long time." Serafax's head said with a little emotion. "The chaotic time and history are far beyond my imagination, but the promise of the Lord of Change-"

He laughed.

Zabril stopped chasing and looked back, seeing the swollen body shrinking and deforming rapidly. The texture of flesh and blood disappeared in an instant, replaced by the roughness of bark.

In less than half a second, a strangely large and strangely green giant tree took its place. Its roots were still spreading underground, and Zabril could clearly hear the terrible sound of the roots creaking as they moved through the soil.
The Dark Angel couldn't help but feel his scalp tingling, as if his intuition had told him what was about to happen.

"——It's actually genuine. Can you believe this?"

The head kept chattering, and the sound was gradually becoming distant. Although it remained in the same place, without moving, it was even slowly disintegrating and seeping into the soil.

Zabril bent down to pick up the power sword and walked towards the tree. He was still tired, but his will to fight was still there.

After parting with the Emperor, he no longer had any confusion in his heart. Even though he didn't know where he was, even though he often lost his way and was taken to the depths of the unknown turbulence of time, he never retreated or stopped, let alone gave up.

He quickly walked up to the giant tree, pressed the end of the hilt, activated the decomposition field, and was about to chop it down - however, just as he raised his arm, the ground cracked, and thick roots burst out of the ground, tightly grabbing his wrist.

The wind howled. Although the sky was clear, the surrounding forest felt extremely cold, as if it was experiencing winter. The power armor began to warn Zabril, telling him that he was damaged in many places and that he was experiencing unknown electronic signal interference.
Hundreds of lines of garbled code flew across his retina as he wrestled with the tree roots. In the end, 0s and 1s intertwined to form a few sentences of reports.

Along with it came horrific pain from all the neural interfaces of his power armor. Black smoke and electric arcs burst out from inside the power armor, and Zabril screamed in pain, but his eyes involuntarily looked at the reports.

He felt a heaviness.

+The servo motor is stalling. +
+Major damage detected, attempting to overload to maintain basic operations.+
+Failed attempts, couldn't reboot, couldn't connect to servos, couldn't break free.+
+Program error trying to restart. Restarting, failed, refused to restart. Detected logical errors that should not occur, errors will be summarized. +
+Error report A-01: No error, redirect, re-edit. Editing, editing completed, input completed. +
+Notice: This unit will execute the Ohm Messiah's settings to protect the wearer at all costs. To achieve this goal, this unit will self-destruct to sever the influence that the enemy is exerting on you at the level of the power armor. +
+Zabriel of the Dark Angels, I am honored to fight alongside you. For the Om Messiah. +
"I'm sorry, bro."

Serafax's head began to speak again. Zabril wanted to turn back, but more roots had already wrapped around his body during that short period of time.

The power of the thing created by this strange and evil method was incredibly great. No matter how he struggled and resisted, it was useless and only made the roots wrap around him tighter.

The sword had been taken away, and his fingers had been torn apart one by one, which was a disgrace among disgrace. Moreover, his power armor was also damaged and could no longer assist him in any additional force.
All of the above are some kind of official words that exist in the mind of the Dark Angel, and they are the words he tries to use to convince himself rationally. However, the most real and loudest sentence that echoes in his heart at this moment sounds quite confused, even enough to make him look crazy.

My comrade is dead, Zabril thought in great sorrow and confusion.

He did not understand why he felt this way, and was confused. But Serafax, the one who had started it, knew it clearly, and his voice continued to reach Zabril's ears from some distant place amid the howling of the wind.

"I need to borrow something of yours for a moment. It may help me find someone - I think you know who that is, Zabril."

"Don't even think about it."

“It’s not up to you,” Serafax said very calmly.

At the same time, a root broke through the ground and opened a secret compartment on Zabriel's waist belt.

The sky suddenly lit up with an incomparable golden majesty, as hot as the sun rising before his eyes. The giant tree trembled, but it did not burn as Zabril had imagined.

How can this be? !
"His power can indeed dissolve other demons and gods, but this tree is not one of them, my brother. Thank you for your help. I will bring Luther's body to see you."

The roots tightened again, Tao Gang cried out, and Zabriel gritted his teeth and held on, trying to pry them open with his fingers in a completely unpresentable manner.

As expected, he failed. More roots entangled him, shattering his eyepieces and leaving only darkness around him.

A feeling of drowsiness suddenly came over him, and amidst the shattered scarlet, the old knight opened his eyes as wide as he could, trying to use his tactical instincts to gain more information - he still didn't give up.

In the last moment before he fell into coma, he saw a blond boy entangled by roots not far away. No, he was protected and fell into a deep sleep.

He looks familiar, Zabril thought.

After this, his world fell into complete darkness.

(End of this chapter)