Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 461 Samokwan, you look familiar, yet strange
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The sound of...water from a waterfall?
The rumbling sound of water rushing down the towering cliffs began to bring back memories of the Chapter's homeland to the conscious.

The sound…of Hera…Waterfall?
Is he dead? Is this what it feels like to return home?

"Uriel!"

Someone was hitting the scarred bone plate on his chest hard. It hurt. The wounds from the previous drilling and cutting in an attempt to find the gene seed had not healed so quickly. He arched his body in pain, and his back was rubbed bloody on the rough and sharp black volcanic rock.

"Uriel! Sir! Come back to us! Wake up!"

Along with anxious shouts, huge fists slammed into his chest and abdomen.

With a loud "Ugh", turbid sewage mixed with suspicious mud and sand gushed out of the open mouth of the former Ultramarines Captain. His lungs, which had been re-rescued due to suffocation and choking, expanded again against the common sense of mortal medicine, and the alveoli that had been squeezed into a ball began to repair themselves and supply oxygen to his brain.

As Uriel's mind slowly re-established the cognitive logic of the surrounding environment, he moved his fingers and toes and realized that he was still in the devilish world.

All the wounds on his body revealed their existence to him through various methods of pain when he woke up - the earliest external injuries had been temporarily repaired by the cells and membranes secreted by the Lariman organs - his chest ribs were painful and broken in many places, but the whole thing was still there, his lungs and trachea were burning due to choking on water, and there was a longitudinal cut on his back, but fortunately it was not too deep, probably caused by the shredder blades.

Then he blinked and found himself lying on a rock beside a huge pool of water. In the sky of Medlengard, which was eternal and uncomfortably bright like burning white phosphorus, the black sun hanging high in the sky was gazing at him deeply like a huge eye, forcing him to turn his head uncomfortably and meet a pair of deep blue eyes.

"Pasanius...?"

The blond sergeant's face was filled with joy even without the mud. "Great... Uriel! May the Emperor bless us! I knew you wouldn't just give up like that!"

With the help of his best friend, he slowly sat up while continuing to cough, "Where... is this...? Where's Samokan...?"

"There he is." Pausanius' voice was filled with worry again in addition to joy.

Uriel looked in the direction of his finger and couldn't help but gasp, which made his damaged trachea spasm and he coughed uncomfortably.

The first thing that caught his eye was the depression they were in, surrounded by mountains as sharp as dragon spines.

The lowest point here is a pool of sewage, and it is impossible to tell how deep it is. The black and red walls of Karan-Gol are vaguely visible a few hundred meters above the almost 90-degree steep cliff. There is a broken round hole halfway up the cliff. The sewage of the entire fortress eventually pours down from it and falls into this deep pool, forming the sound of a waterfall that Uriel heard when he just woke up.

Just before the steep and narrow path that was the only way out of the small basin of the sewage pool, there was an open space near the pool. Pasanius and Uriel were now standing by the water, with Samokhan blocking their way.

What shocked Uriel was that there were so many other... strange creatures in front of Samokan. There were nearly a hundred of them, and they looked hungry and unfriendly. Their constantly blinking cloudy eyes stared at him and Pasanius, especially himself. They looked at him like wild beasts that had been hungry for days.

These creatures are difficult to describe. They would make any human observer feel uncomfortable, even though their limbs are twisted or at odd angles, sharp, crooked and huge yellowed fangs are exposed from their saliva-dripping jaws, they have too few or too many eyes and ears, their noseless nostrils emit loud snorting sounds, and six or more fingers end in huge black sharp claws. Some even have more than one arm or crab-shaped hands, and their deformed dark red muscles move in a grid composed of pale and abnormal exoskeletons. Strangely deformed organs pulsate and crawl continuously in the deeper part of their flesh and blood. Some are shaped like a mixture of giant apes, bears and humans, while others look like snakes, turtles and fish with hands and feet.

The only common feature is that they all have no skin or only a very small amount of skin from other corpses.

—Nevertheless, disturbingly and uncomfortably, they can still be seen as possibly once “human.”

But as a survivor who had just successfully dug himself and Samokan out of the amniotic fluid farm, Uriel, after the initial shock, could not help but think of the children who had been sewn into amniotic fluid bags before them. The number and operation of the bags indicated that the victims had been produced in an endless stream.

And what they saw before, by the ritual pool next to the demon that had been absorbing the power of the warp to maintain the abnormal vitality of those human skin bags... so many... so many children...

The bloody and brutal "method" of those barbaric undertakers, which was more like random sacrifice, obviously would not have a very high success rate in the end. And if the failed products did not die on the spot or died in the sewage outlet from which they escaped afterwards...

"Primarch..." Uriel whispered, his mind now thinking and realizing that he and these monsters made of flesh and blood might have a common genetic ancestry. "What is going on? What is the situation now? Pausanius? Who are they or what do they want?"

The sergeant lowered his voice slightly, and Uriel saw that he placed his hand on his own rosary pendant, rubbing it over the spot on his breastplate where the eagle had once been.

"Although Samokan didn't wake up after you gave him the rosary, we both maintained a certain body temperature in the water, and there was a strange sense of repulsion. This holy object seemed to form a kind of invisible psychic protective layer or something similar in the water that was too bad. So when I pulled him through the leaves later, although there should have been some scratches, no substantial damage was caused. After we fell from there, he woke up, so I quickly started to salvage you from the water. Your injuries were more serious and you were unconscious. Not long after I fished you out, those monsters came."

"Then why aren't they attacking now?"

"They... at least some of them, can speak human language." Pasanius' voice lowered, as if he was discussing some blasphemous secret that made him feel disgusted or uneasy.

"These monsters can really talk. They claim that this is their hunting ground. For Samokan's sake, I was allowed to leave with him, but it is impossible for us to leave you behind as their meat. However, our weapons were lost when they were washed down, and there are too many of them. So Samokan told him to try to negotiate with them first, and asked me to find a way to wake you up first."

"How is he going to convince them?"

"I don't know, but at least he succeeded in delaying time. Look, if we are going to die in the mouths of these monsters, we can now stand back to back, like we did in the boxing training ground of Macragge Military Camp, right?" Just as they were discussing in a low voice, a low and loud roar came from Samokuan. The leader of these monsters - the strongest one, whose body was larger than an armored Terminator, opened its three-sided, rock-grinding drill-like mouth towards Samokuan who was trying to gesture something. The six eyes from the three heads before the fusion on the nightmarish swollen head were staring at the boy in front of him with extreme viciousness - although he had no skin, compared with these deformed monsters, Samokuan, with perfect body proportions, the correct number of limbs and facial features, and wearing a human skin cloak, undoubtedly looked much more normal.

"Liar! Liar! You—are—not—abandoned—! Don't even think about it—! You—are—lieved—to be—eaten! Eaten! Eaten you all!"

Following the howl of "eat", nearly a hundred monsters around responded towards the burning sky.

"We have to help him!" "This monster is too big!" Just when Uriel and Pasanius were almost unable to stop the monster's fierce attack that was inconsistent with its size, an accident happened.

The first claw missed the hard black volcanic rock, leaving seven deep grooves and flying stone chips, indicating that these claws, which were once fingernails, were by no means terrifying in appearance, but possessed a hardness and hunting lethality that should hardly exist in organic matter. However, the second claw that followed was blocked by something and could not fall.

“What is that?” The former Ultramarines blinked in surprise as he was mid-charge. “Where did he get it from?”

A battle axe made of white bones, golden and silver light, and blood-red subspace energy held up the monster's claws.

Samokan's eyes shone with silver light, just like the Librarians that Uriel knew. But without the cover of skin, the direction and flow of the energy pulsating in his body could be seen between every bone and muscle.

The boy roared and raised the battle axe high - Uriel saw with mixed feelings that the weapon seemed to have "grown" out of the flesh and blood of Samokan's arm. Although it was held in his hand and wielded, the structure of bones and tendons locked the axe handle in the user's hand.

When he focused his gaze on Samokwan's face, he heard Pasanius growl in disbelief and anger, "The blood of the saint..."

A certain phantom appeared on Samokwan's skull, as if covering him with a helmet with horns and sharp teeth. At first glance, this strange phantom looked like a bull's head, at second glance it looked like a dragon's head, and finally it felt like the head of a giant canine. The fainter shapes of hooves, claws and huge membranous wings floated around Samokwan like a mirage formed by black mist, as if adding a layer of black and red armor to him.

"That couldn't be..."

As this frightening sign emerged, Samokan violently swung the huge battle axe in his hand, opened his mouth and let out a war roar.

"Obey or...die...!"

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The floating spire leading to the central throne room of the Karan-Gol Fortress is surrounded by a crack hundreds of meters wide. The light that constantly changes from orange-red to golden-red illuminates the bottom and surroundings of the tower, which is filled with the smell of sulfur, coke, metal, and something burning to ash. At the bottom of the crack, a stream of molten metal magma flows like a river, emitting rolling heat waves and the smell of smelting.

The atrium gate was an iron building taller than any of the outer arches. It was made of black iron and blood-filled stone. Canine-like spikes protruded from it one after another, and warrior statues hundreds of meters high were made of the same material, solemnly and oppressively arranged in the wide doorway.

Lifeless eyes of steel watched everyone who passed from their towering shadows, and the once carefully polished and carved surface was covered with countless marks of bullets and axes from every battle that had taken place in this fortress over the hundreds or thousands of years.

Even taller, more terrifying, and more oppressive than these statues are two nightmarish Titans. Their originally beautiful and solemn red and bronze colors have been replaced by a demonic appearance and inexplicable skin coverings. Extra flesh and pulsating blood vessels indicate that the condition of their internal occupants may be as integrated as their appearance. The tattered flags of the Legio Mortis, which have been ravaged by war, flutter on them, and the malicious eyes in their metal skulls and the huge cannons in their hands are pointed at the hostile visitors of the lord of this place.

Being locked in the firepower of the Demon Titan and pointed at by the weapons of the Iron Warrior Guards who were eyeing here did not scare the Earth Ruler who was walking towards the only bridge suspended above the criss-crossing lava fissures.

Thortann did not even bring a guard with him; he came alone and stood before the gate.

"Tolamino," he began. "I know you can hear me. I know the defenses of this fortress well. I have served here for many years. So don't play those wizard tricks. Let me in."

A strange, goose-bump-inducing chuckle came from the mouth of a gargoyle statue on the eaves at the top of the fortress.

"Oh~~~~~~~Soltarn, our old stonebreaker, what, you still want to surrender to me now? Wise move, you still have time to do so. If you lick the soles of my boots well, I will consider leaving you a seat beside the throne when I conquer Medlengard."

The Stonecaller ignored the insult. "Open the door. I need to discuss something with you in person."

"Haha, you are so impatient, Soltarn. This is not elegant, nor is it in line with the etiquette of a visit from a noble warsmith. But since we were once Olympians, I will still condescend to fulfill your little wish."

The demon Titan guards on both sides of the atrium gate seemed to have received silent orders from someone and put down their huge weapons. With the teeth-grinding piston sound of the transmission joints, they twisted their bodies and stretched out their claw-like hands, with their claws stuck into the sides of the heavy steel doors weighing tens of tons.

More black smoke and hot air hissed from the power chimney of the Demon Titan, whispering the name of the lord visitor. The fishy-smelling power exhaust and suspicious ashes were scattered all over the ground from the hinge pistons on both sides of the gate. With the harsh squeak of metal being squeezed by gravity, the door finally groaned and slowly opened in front of the visitor.

The Stonecaller slowly walked past the demon titan that had returned to silence. The pale sunlight and the orange-red light of the lava accompanied him as he walked into the inner hall of the fortress, which had now been transformed into a ritual hall.

(End of this chapter)