Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 381: Ritual and surprise are both essential

Let's go forward a little in time to the beginning of the party aboard the Relentless Flame.

The Garden of the Dead in Port Wander

In the kitchen of a "delicious and nutritious" restaurant

The victim's family and investigators are gathering in a dark room for a meeting.

Today, this famous restaurant finally announced its closure, which made the people waiting in line in the square sigh in disappointment, and some even shed tears - they were about to leave here, but they had not yet been able to completely imprint the sacred torch in their eyes.

"Have you got the target's itinerary for the day?"

"Yes."

“Come on, please show it for us.”

A holographic projector was turned on, and the people in the room began to watch the action record of Lucius after arriving at the port, which was pieced together from the fragmented images captured by different shops, passers-by's servoskulls, Cherubim, or any recorders of the Ministry of Justice or others - here, if you have money and know which intelligence dealer or broker to buy things from, you can buy almost anything.

They watched as Lucius' beautiful silver hair and tall figure caused a small commotion at the port, but the commotion was soon quelled. The champion swordsman of the Emperor's Children looked around with some curiosity, but still remembered his arrangements. Although he dawdled on the way and stopped in front of various stalls selling strange and alien swords or limb specimens, he was generally heading in the right direction and route.

"That's very strange. He obviously remembered the way and was always walking on the right route. We can rule out the first option that he got lost."

Ramizarn sat in a huge armchair, wearing a deerstalker hat and holding an extremely ancient smoking device in his hand. It was carved from the roots of some extinct plants. In the hands of the Primarch, it was as fragile as if it were made of sand. He held it very carefully.

"I think you're talking nonsense," the border collie commented scathingly with his electronic voice box. "Can't you just speed-play the footage? Everyone here has eyes and brains that can process data much faster than a mortal. We can watch it in a few seconds - and then we can go find that damn thief, bring back Lucius, intact or not, and throw him into the sewer of our ship?"

"A sense of ritual, a sense of ritual is a very important part of solving a case! Per... Perturabo, a successful detective story, let's not talk about anything else, but the sense of ritual in reasoning and solving a case is a must!"

"...I shouldn't have wasted my time talking to you about this. Just read on."

"He's almost in the Court of the Dead. I think we'll soon see what happened..."

Just as the extraordinary human reasoning and detective exhibition led by Ramizane and Perturabo was proceeding step by step, Magna Dorn, who was bored because he had actually seen the ending in advance when he was editing for Ramizane, was watching here from the Thinker connected to the projector.

His main body, who stayed nearby, secretly turned on his sensor array and began to curiously scan all the buildings and facilities in Wandering Port and the nearby asteroid belt - of course, secretly.

Suddenly, Magna Dorn curiously discovered a well-hidden ship code. He had never seen this type of ship before. It was too rare. He curiously turned another part of the sensor array to the ship hidden in a hidden asteroid dock. "Eh? Look, I found this. What is this? A cruiser? But I have never seen such an Imperial Navy ship." He sent a code with an inquiry to the armory, and the other side quickly gave a reply.

"It's a prototype of an Ignis-class heavy cruiser. It's really rare. I remember it was built by Riza back then. There was only one. After so many years, I thought it had become a wreck. It's still in normal use, but there aren't many original parts left. Tsk tsk, what a shoddy workmanship."

"Prototype ship? Very interesting. Is it crude? It looks like she was repaired very seriously." So, the young and ignorant Iron Blood Machine Soul, with a curious exploration and a teenager's sense of excitement, turned up the power of his sensor array and fired a concentrated and directional beam in that direction.

Then Magnar Dorn's mind froze at what he saw as he scanned the depths of the Relentless Flame.

At Wandering Port, a mysterious Astartes humanoid robot was quietly standing at the door of the back kitchen that was temporarily used as a meeting room, ignoring all the questions and small movements of Torgarton who was also guarding the door. Loken watched helplessly as Torgarton continued to pass the time here with verbal jokes.

Suddenly, all the Astartes nearby had goose bumps all over their bodies and tried to draw their weapons immediately: their superhuman reflexes and their instincts from years of fighting and escaping death were warning them that something extremely, extremely, extremely powerful and dangerous had suddenly awakened next to them.

Then the former captains of the Moon Wolves saw the mecha walk to the door at a speed and movement that was almost impossible for them to catch. He tilted his head slightly in a certain direction, as if he was listening intently to something.

"Hey, did you see that? Loken?! Look at him! Look at his movements! It's simply..." Torgaddon said in surprise, and stood up straight, holding his pistol in his hand.

Locke narrowed his eyes. "Yes, I think so. I know what you want to say. This is very much like him...but why...he shouldn't be here. It's impossible for him to be here. It can't be like this."

Just as Torgathon took a step forward to continue asking questions, right in front of their eyes, the smell of ozone, a slight crackling sound, and a flash of teleportation appeared.

Then the mysterious Astartes figure just disappeared on the spot.

Staring at his pocket, Torgaddon turned to Loken, "Are our power armors so advanced? Can we teleport with just an ordinary model? Isn't that something that can only be supported by the energy of the Terminator and the Dreadnought? And where is he going to teleport? This is near Wandering Port! Hey! Man! This thing is so powerful! I really want to know how to get it!"

"How am I supposed to know all the answers to your questions?" Lorcan said. "You speak as if I can see the future like some of our smarmy cousins."

"What should we do now?" asked Torgaddon.

"Hurry up and tell the adults and Tarvitz who are in the meeting."

"Um... uh... are you sure you want to disturb the Iron Lord who is in a meeting?"

"I don't know whether I should disturb him now, but I know that if we don't tell him now, we will definitely die a more miserable death next." Locke replied.

(End of this chapter)