40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 765 54. Regaining Hope (XI)

A man walked through the dark exhibition hall.

Under his feet there was some gravel or something like it, a fine-grained substance, and a color somewhere between pale and a barely discernible tint.

This caught his attention, so he lowered his head to observe, and as if that was not enough, after staring at them for a few seconds, he even chose to half squat down and touch them with his hands.

He looked completely harmless, and his thin back under his shirt also showed that he was harmless.
Then something moved in the dark.

Without any warning, its sickle-like claw broke the silence and slashed towards the man's neck with an extremely slight sound of wind.

It was an apex predator, perfectly capable of occupying the top of the food chain in any natural environment. The blow should have undoubtedly torn the man's head off - but things did not go in that direction.

The man used only two fingers to hold back the one-meter-long claw. The huge force it brought was completely absorbed into it, and his fingers did not shake at all.

This absurd scene, like a meteorite being caught by a branch, caused the predator's extremely developed nerves to be unable to react for a full second.

And the man did not fight back.

He just stood up. In this brief but fatal second, that was all he did.

He looked toward the predator.

“Tarasim has a really rich collection,” he said.

The predator's consciousness was interrupted, all its senses were cut off, and a smooth but deep arc completely split its head and body in two.

It took several seconds for its body to realize what had happened.

Gravity dragged the heavier part of the body downwards suddenly, breaking muscle fibers one by one, and finally completely separated from the head. It fell to the ground, and the exposed muscle and bone sections at the broken ends trembled constantly.

Blood splattered, and the man grasped its spine and lifted its head, almost like holding a shield. He moved closer and carefully examined the overly hideous head structure of the monster, and found a rather funny pale gold inlay on its side, on which someone had written a line of small words.

[Licat, an evil little creature, a sophisticated, cruel and efficient design, my twelfth favorite Zerg collectible. ]

He let go and let the head fall to the ground.

"He is still quite leisurely."

Throwing down a bland comment, the man continued forward, walking seemingly aimlessly in the exhibition hall.

The surroundings were dark and boundless, but this was not a problem for him, as he had his own way of seeing through the darkness. From this, he knew that this exhibition hall was actually very large, even larger than many of the giant cities he had imagined, but there was nothing inside.

Before his arrival, its last survivor was the recently deceased Licat.

However, considering that the total area of ​​Soloms is not too large, if an exhibition hall is this size, how can it accommodate the Endless One Trazyn's terrifying desire for collection that has expanded infinitely over a long period of time?

The man stopped and closed his eyes in thought.

He had a special perception, with a wide range, and could accurately capture everything around him. Unlike the darkness in front of him, the world in his mind was actually "overlapping", like many soap bubbles fused together. They were densely packed, one inside another, one connected to another, and it could be said to be endless.

Yes, that was the answer - the Endless twisted the boundaries of reality.

To humans, this is nothing short of a miracle, but to the Necrons, it is just a commonplace technical means.
However, Trazyn was indeed somewhat radical. He created hundreds of large exhibition halls with different themes.

He collects human history, but is also interested in other races. In fact, since he woke up and decided to be the best archaeologist and thief in the galaxy, he has reached out to every race that has not yet become extinct.

Needless to say, orcs and elves. More than half of the twenty-one exhibition halls the man had walked through were themed on them, and they were fighting each other fiercely.

But Trazyn is not a collector with mediocre tastes. His exhibition hall also includes some races that have been extinct before the Great Crusade began, and even some extremely dangerous monsters.
The man opened his eyes and continued forward, expressionless.

He had to find a way to get out of here. Time was running out, and he had to find Trazyn's human exhibition hall quickly.

You know, there are not only collections of loyalists of the empire, but also many things that were originally used as 'platforms' or 'scenery'.

Moreover, according to his own statement, all the "landscapes" in the large exhibition halls have been restored by him personally to highlight the precious courage and determination of the collections.

In other words, this damn bastard performed completely free medical operations on a large number of enemies of the Empire. Not only did he serve as a doctor and a nurse, he also did the post-operative care himself, which is simply a model for collectors.

Roboute Guilliman nearly went mad when he understood this.

The man recalled that moment and stopped again. A dark wall appeared in front of him.
found it.

After having Roboute Guilliman hold a sword to his neck, Trazyn abandoned his literary ways and spoke in plain language, telling the Empire everything it needed to know.

Let’s not talk about things like the STC template for now, and just talk about the most critical and important point at the moment - Tracin designed a very special anti-theft measure for his museum, which is the wall in front of the man.

From a physical perspective, it is indestructible. Even the weapons of the Necrons cannot cause any damage to it unless they push their power to a certain level.

However, when it comes to the subspace, it is just a slightly harder stone. Any energy beyond its tolerance will destroy it in an instant and trigger a large-scale chain collapse reaction.

In other words, if a powerful psyker or dangerous Warp creature attempted to enter any of the large exhibition halls without Trazyn's permission, the walls would collapse instantly, crushing all living things beneath them.

The design was not complicated, and Trazyn did nothing to cover it up. He just threw it there in plain sight for everyone to see.

A complete conspiracy.

He probably danced with joy when he came up with this idea, and probably showed off his cleverness to the grave technician he found.
Of course, when he talked about this matter to the gloomy Robert Guilliman on the Macragge's Glory not long ago, his expression was not much different from the despair.

A thief doesn't like others stealing his things.

The man laughed and raised his right hand, holding a perfect triangle between his fingers.

A bunch of keys.

The man pressed it against the wall in front of him. The triangle immediately began to vibrate, and a smooth membrane invisible to the naked eye was released from its inside and extended out, wrapping around him, and then leading him behind the wall to a brand new exhibition hall.

There was a blood-red sunset floating in the sky, and its bloody light dyed a city that was suffering from war red. There was no need to do any investigation, or even use a capture net to carefully explore. Just by listening to the sounds around him, the man accurately judged the theme of this exhibition hall through his past war experience.

War between humans and orcs
Trazyn had probably somehow captured a city from the war and put it in his exhibit. If the museum hadn't lost power and the stasis field was still functioning, this completely still city would have been beautiful.

But the electricity was cut off, so the afterglow of the setting sun really turned into blood, flooding every brick and tile in the city.

The man put away the key, raised his eyes slightly and looked upwards.

There, a bell tower that had just been blown down was breaking into thousands of pieces in the flames, pressing down on him. The culprit was a group of airships with funny graffiti, rough in shape, primitive and weird in appearance, like childish graffiti.

The man bent his knees slightly and jumped up. Time seemed to freeze, or maybe he was too fast, the thousands of pieces that should have crashed to the ground seemed to be floating in the air.

He stepped onto one of the blocks and then jumped again. With just two light jumps he was hundreds of meters high, facing a bomb that had just been launched.

It also had funny graffiti, and the surface was dented and dirty, with a long trail of fire at the end. The man held it with one hand, closed his five fingers, and turned it into powder.

Fire and black smoke erupted. The orc pilot who had completed the bombing mission lowered his head in confusion, wondering what had happened, but two crisp knocking sounds came to his ears.

It looked up and saw a human smiling at it from outside the cockpit.

The man casually lifted up the broken cockpit glass, which was almost useless, and threw the orc out of the cabin.

It screamed and landed on top of a building, its internal organs falling out of its body.

Without its pilot, the orc airship should have crashed, but the man stood up straight on its square nose.

The wind howled, blowing his black hair, and the airship began to freeze where he stepped. In a short moment, it was frozen into a huge block of ice, but the engine fire was still dragging at the end, drawing a stunning trajectory in the sky, and flying the man to the far end of the city in a way that violated any laws of physics.

The place has almost become a ruin. The city wall, which was originally an ancient monument, is now being trampled under the feet of many orcs. They are roaring savagely and cheering for a huge metal monster not far away.

It was fighting against several knight mechas alone, and thanks to its huge size and terrifying armament, it even had the upper hand in the encirclement of the knight mechas.

The man narrowed his eyes and took a look, knowing that it was probably only a matter of time before these knights were defeated.

Fortunately, I arrived in time, he thought.

Half a minute later, in full view of everyone and while the orcs were stunned, an airship that came from nowhere and was frozen into ice crashed into the side of the metal monster.

This kind of impact should not have caused any damage to it, but the nearly pitch-black ice suddenly began to spread, and in just two seconds, it completely froze the orc war machine as tall as a building. Then, a human figure appeared on top of it.

The ice began to melt, taking its contents with it.

The battlefield suddenly fell silent. Both humans and orcs forgot to speak and just watched the ice melt. A large amount of molten iron mixed with orc corpse fragments flowed out.
A man strolled out from behind these things, with his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows and a ridiculous rusted and broken dagger in each hand.

His face remained expressionless, but his words were like thunder.

"."

The orcs could not understand what he said, but they were shaken by the sound. The fighting spirit in their hearts disappeared in an instant, and was replaced by incomparable fear.

The man had already turned into a shadow and disappeared from the spot, appearing on a high slope hundreds of meters away and falling into an orc camp.

The thunder had already destroyed their fighting spirit, and the blades had torn apart their brutality and gunfire. Broken limbs, broken bones and flesh flew everywhere, and death bloomed clearly.
One minute and forty-four seconds later, the man stood up, shook the blood off his hands, and left.

For the next seventeen minutes, similar scenes continued to play out across the city until the last orc died. The city's defenders were still puzzled, the civilians shouted that this was a miracle, but the perpetrator had already left and moved to the next exhibition hall.

He was so good at this job that he even felt happy about it. Until Conrad Kurtz's voice rang out between swings of the knife.

"You'd better not get too obsessed."

"how you said that?"

He didn't answer, but the man easily understood what he didn't say with a unique tacit understanding between them - because you always have to deal with people.

Yes, you are right, Conrad.

The man suddenly stopped and pulled his right hand out from the gaping chest of something. His shirt was still spotless, but his hands were already stained scarlet with blood. A Khorne demon fell at his feet, becoming one of the countless corpses on the battlefield.

He looked back, then realized belatedly that he had gone a little too far - this also explained why the team of Astartes in front of him were so alert, not everyone could accept such a horrific scene of killing.

The man thought for a moment, silently put away the knife, and observed the team of survivors.

None of them were in good condition. Everyone was injured. Two of them couldn't even stand. They could only stay where they were, barely firing their guns and waiting to die.

The man's eyes finally stopped at their checkerboard-shaped shoulder armor, and the bright red hearts and tears on them.

He already knew what he was supposed to do next, but one of the Astartes beat him to it and took on the responsibility of doing the talking.

"I am Sergeant Lucerne of the Weepers." He spoke hoarsely, his hands still holding the gun vigilantly. "Who are you?"

"I understand your suspicion, Sergeant, but I cannot give you a detailed explanation, so I will just keep it short. My name is Khalil Rohars, an Inquisitor of the Imperial Inquisition, sent here to assist the Primarchs Sanguinius and Roboute Guilliman."

After saying this, Khalil slowly raised his hand and took out a pure white feather from thin air. As soon as it appeared, it attracted the attention of all the wailers. They stared at it blankly and forgot to speak for a moment.

Khalil held the feather and walked towards the two seriously injured people. No one stopped him along the way. He bent down and put the feather close to them. A warm light flowed out from it, and in just a moment, the bleeding of the terrible injuries that even the pharmacist was helpless to treat stopped.

The remaining Weepers immediately knelt on one knee and bowed their heads in respect to the feather.

Khalil frowned.

"You hate and fear this the most," someone smiled happily. "It's a pity that you can only bear it now, old man - or learn from the past and take some time to emphasize to them your annoyance with similar things?"

I did that before because I have some kind of post-traumatic stress disorder.
"So, you're well now?"

No, but I have learned to let other people be themselves instead of forcing my will on them.

He left the feather behind, flew away, and used the key to stick to the 'wall' again. However, this time, the key did not take him to the next exhibition hall, but took him out of this distorted dimension.
Trazyn had specifically mentioned this when he handed him the key. The 'wall' would only be activated when there was a power outage. It would not work when everything was normal and there was sufficient energy.

Therefore, if Kalil was brought out by the key halfway, it means that the Undead Lord in charge of guarding Sollems has found a way to restart the operation protocol - the tomb technicians are not just there to do nothing, they have their own ways to get everything back on track, but things like large stasis fields will definitely take time to get back online.

In other words, the collections that were once stagnant in large exhibition halls and then trapped in distorted pocket dimensions will now regain their freedom.

He doesn't have much time left.

He turned around and started running, his posture almost sliding. The key in his hand was vibrating regularly to remind him which way to go.
However, even with it to point the way, it became difficult to identify the direction.

The reason is simple, because the space that was once folded up is slowly expanding - and this is what Trazyn said, the end of Solomus.

"My museum has a total of 272 large exhibition halls, 309 small exhibition stands, and some large warehouses that I haven't counted."

"Let's not talk about the small exhibition stand. The miniature stasis field is enough to meet the needs. But the size of the warehouse and exhibition hall is far beyond the limit that Sollems can bear. For this reason, I found some tomb technicians who are good at this and asked them to work for me for a period of time."

"What I want to say is, sir, if you were taken out of the exhibition hall by the key, it would prove that my compatriots have found a way to restart the energy, but they would never have thought that I was a pioneer who dared to use this dangerous multi-overlap technology in my own dynasty. Therefore, in this case, I am afraid that Sollems will usher in its end."

What he said was true. Khalil could clearly sense it. The exhibition halls that had been forcibly stuffed into the pocket dimension were now expanding.

Half the world, a city, a vast desert and a vast glacier. Countless magnificent wonders. All of these have broken free from their shackles and regained their freedom, just like the collections within them.

This process is very slow, but it is unshakable and is being implemented resolutely.

It won't be long before these exhibition halls that Trazyn had carefully maintained will bring destruction to his dynasty, along with everything in them, turning into empty bubbles that dissipate between dimensions, leaving no trace in the world.

Khalil couldn't help but sigh and hurried to one of the link rooms in the Sollems World Hub.

Even if he chose the one closest to him, the process would inevitably become very slow, and he could no longer step into the darkness as usual - the current structure of Soloms could not withstand his use of such means.

Fortunately, the key's guidance was indeed genuine. After only seven minutes and thirty-two seconds, Khalil arrived at his final destination, which was already crowded.

A dozen or so crypt technicians were standing silently in the glow of the hub, exchanging data with it. The lords they served had probably issued death orders, requiring them to reverse the destruction of Sollems at all costs.

Unfortunately, it's a done deal.

Khalil stepped into the hub, and two huge phase blades immediately slashed at him from the left and right. He didn't even look at them, but just strode forward, as if these two terrifying blades didn't exist.
What was strange was that the hands of the two undead guards stopped in mid-air.

After another half a second, they even began to tremble, and the weapons in their hands suddenly fell to the ground, making a dull echo.

The green light in their eye sockets began to flicker, and the sound generators installed inside their bodies were involuntarily activated, making terrified sounds like a living person.

Before they fell to the ground due to the huge impact, Khalil placed his hand on the control panel of the Solomus World Hub.

Fifty-five thousand five hundred and fifty-five exorcist charms shone once again, creating an earthquake-like and tsunami-like impact inside this ancient creation, instantly engulfing the consciousness of all the tomb technicians connected to it. However, they were not erased, but slowly began to change in this intense emotion.
After that, countless underworld scarabs creaked out from their respective sleeping places. Even the lowest-level undead warriors had their thinking protocols confused by this unreasonable scene.

For those undead who still had memories, personality and status, this scene soon became a nightmare that was enough to terrify them - countless undead who were overwhelmed by scarabs fell to the ground at the same time.

However, when they get up again, the chain of command and hierarchical suppression that once seemed invincible will no longer have any effect on them.

In fact, in the perception of the nobles and lords, these low-level undead no longer even exist.
Yet they began to speak the ancient tongue of the Necrontyr, whether or not they had previously been self-aware.

They walked towards them, unthreatened, unmoved, with green flashes in their eyes, and walked in a strange way, like zombies controlled by something, their bodies even trembling. Weapons could stop them, but only temporarily.
Furthermore, all undead touched by them or the scarab will become like them.

Soon, the first transformed undead noble appeared.

He was probably a lord, fighting alongside his guards the second before, angrily denouncing how shameful the rebellion was. However, everything changed completely when a supposedly unconscious undead warrior murmured and put his hand on his shoulder.

He fell to the ground trembling, and when he stood up again a few seconds later, his voice had already echoed in the ears of all the nobles through the communication protocol.

"It's back!" He yelled, screamed, and even cried. "Everything is back! My compatriots, accept it quickly and stop resisting. This is not a rebellion at all!"

Soon some people responded to him with curses, while others firmly stated that they would not surrender, fight the betrayers to the end, and investigate the cause of all this.

But a few people expressed their concerns - they said uneasily that this scene was exactly the same as what happened in front of the Bio-Forge in their memory.
In the command room of his own battleship, the crowned General Zandrick smiled.

"Of course it is, you idiots."

He muttered to himself, raised the golden cup in his right hand, and shook it slightly towards the Imperial Combined Fleet speeding towards him not far away.

"After all, it's another deal with the gods."

After saying this, he raised his glass and poured the wine on himself, then laughed out loud, began to give orders, and threw himself into the war completely and selflessly.

(End of this chapter)