Warhammer: Start with a dog.

Chapter 853 Your Steel Warriors' construction quality is terrible... Ah... Ah?!
Finally, after traveling for several more hours, under Brother Ramizan's intense gaze, Mephisto pondered for a moment, then took out a rarely used spellbook from a small pouch on his belt, and softly chanted a few incantations. Under Lacerius's "Are you crazy?" gaze, a small dining table materialized, on which were placed psionic burgers and psionic water.

—Can this psionic contraption, created in the warp rift, really be eaten? The recipient, Zaan, was extremely wary of this.

But Lamizain accepted it quite well. "Oh my gosh! So many years! I can finally see it with my own eyes! It's said that the food products created by a great mage taste quite good... But it also seems to be related to the maker's culinary skills? Let me try it first..."

"Hmmmmmm..."

After finishing the burger in one bite and then gulping down a bottle of water to cleanse himself, the person burped and commented, "It's about the standard of a roadside breakfast stall. It's not particularly delicious, but it's perfectly edible."

He then handed Zan to another hamburger and water, saying, "Here, have some!"

Lacerius appears to have begun to doubt the reliability and authenticity of everyone around him.

As the procession continued forward, the chief clerk caught up with Mephisto in a few steps.

"Are you really alright, Morpheus? I've never seen you like this before, or have you become distracted here?"

“My mind has never been so clear, and my will so firm, Lacerius. I am certain that we have come here to fully follow the path that the archangels have shown us, and this premonition has not weakened as we ascend, but has grown stronger.”

"Did you just say 'advance to the next level'?!"

Lacerius stopped abruptly, and those following him had to stop as well—they had passed through hundreds and thousands of human firewood that had been unfortunately ignited to become the energy source for this spatial labyrinth, and their initial surprise and reluctance had long since turned into anger towards the final boss.

The passageway gradually changed from a room with nine doors to six, then to three, and finally they were walking along a passageway with only one door, wide enough for a maximum of two Astartes to pass side by side.

Therefore, after Lacerius stopped, the others could only line up behind him.

"What's wrong, Lacerius, my old friend?"

Wisps of black flame seemed to emerge from the edges of Mephisto's figure, and countless laughing and commotioning sounds and blinking eyes could be heard from within the shadows.

"Who are you?!" the Grand Secretary shouted, raising his staff. The skull with two horns on its head began to gather the light of psionic lightning in its eye sockets.

"Stand behind me... Huh?! Where's that silver-skulled man?! Hmph! Never mind, sergeant, battle formation!"

Mephisto before them swelled up, then shattered into a thousand, then ten thousand pieces, each fragment containing a Tzeentch Dreadlord that screamed shrilly and charged at them, engulfed in demonic fire.

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"Wait, wait, Mephisto! Hold on!"

Ramizan took a few steps forward, trying to keep up with Mephisto, who seemed to be walking faster and farther away.

But when he placed his hand on the other man's shoulder, he discovered something terrifying: Morpheus was calm and composed, his eyes unwavering, his steps confident and steady—just as he had been walking ahead of them—except for the fact that the Chief Think Tank seemed oblivious to Ramizan's shouts and the pat on the shoulder.

"...What's wrong with him...?"

Seeing that things were not going well, the person decisively withdrew his hand and stayed behind the chief think tank to observe.

“I don’t know how to describe it,” Zao said, the boy’s eyes open, though Ramizan couldn’t see them from his angle. “He thought he was walking down the path he had chosen, but something seemed to be pulling him… Only him, not you or me, and not… wait? Where is everyone else?”

"...Where are the others?" Ramizan also noticed this and his first reaction was to order LOGOS to turn the shield's preparation power to the highest level.

He looked up and saw Morpheus's distinctive figure continuing forward, almost disappearing into the thin yet dense black mist.

"I don't want to be left here. Come on, LOGOS, boost my waist and legs and catch up with Mephisto—thankfully, although he's a bit of a domineering protagonist, the survival rate should be pretty high around him, so following him shouldn't be too unlucky."

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"This is just too unlucky..."

The Ironblood drifted silently in space, like an eerie, silent ghost ship, while against the backdrop of deep space where it floated, a dying sun—a red giant—was emitting its blood-red light.

"Although this is a well-known 'place of no return,' where countless ships have disappeared every century, I do not believe that 'my ship' would be among such an ordinary vessel."

He spoke with great confidence because he was Peturabo, and he was on the Ironblood.

"So what's going on with us now, drifting here?"

Lehman Russ reverted to his lazy, savage demeanor, placing his feet on the table, though his clean-shaven chin and meticulously braided hair betrayed him somewhat.

“I told you, I’ll find out!” Peturabo BC grinned, showing his white teeth. “It’s perfectly normal when one of your living star map navigators is a weeper!”

"Ah-ha-, then I'd suggest that next time we see an alien empire that we don't like, we should let them capture a bunch of Weepers first. That way they'll start having bad luck, and we'll win without a fight—hey, you know what, I think that's a great idea! Hahaha—! Ouch!"

Lemanrus, who was happily shaking his head with glee over his idea, clutched his head and let out an incredible scream of pain.

"What?! What is that?"

"...It looks like the upper half of the statue."

Pallas bent down and picked up a broken angel head from the ground. Looking up, it seemed that the carved marble angel that decorated the top had suddenly shattered and fallen, hitting Rus squarely.

"How could this thing suddenly fall down?" The Wolf King rubbed the swollen bump on his forehead in dissatisfaction. "Peturabo, your Iron Warriors' construction quality is... terrible... Huh?! Huh!!!"

The moment Ruth uttered that taboo word, everyone else in the room paled.

Forgrim Pallas immediately leaped back, his face clearly saying, "Don't get my blood on me"; Magna Dorn remained seated, but a branch of his data stream had already begun dialing the apothecary's infirmary's emergency contact number; Pigeon fluttered his wings anxiously, "Have mercy! He's still your brother..." Seeing that these words couldn't deter Perturabo BC's determination to blast Lemanrus to dust, Pigeon shouted at top speed, "He's indispensable to what you're doing!"

The annihilation beam had completely separated everything in its path at the atomic and electronic levels. When it reached Ruth's power armor, the paint and ceramic coating on the surface were instantly decomposed and reduced to the most basic cosmic particles. The ends of his braids were also completely decomposed as he looked surprised and tried to dodge. But at least this devastating weapon still followed the physical law of linear motion. After Peturabo BC stopped pulling the trigger, Lehman Ruth stood still on the other side of the table, still shaken.

Then his power armor began to emit smoke, sparks and other problems, and malfunction alarms blared incessantly. Only a very short stubble remained on one side of his hair, and the destructive ray was just two centimeters away from hitting his scalp. Clearly, Perturabo BC meant it when he fired.

"Hey, you madman!" Leman Ruth roared. "Even Leon has never treated me like this! Do you really want to kill me?!"

“This is a death threat, nothing more,” Peturabo BC said coldly. “And you’d better remember that.”

"If you've got the guts, fight me properly with your own body." The wolf king had recovered from his shock and anger and clenched his fists.

"It was clearly the decorative sculpture in your room that hit my head first! Why are you still so self-righteous?!"

"Why would I engage in melee combat when I can beat you to a pulp from a distance?" Peturabo retorted rudely. "Besides, that's not a construction quality issue for me or my offspring! You'd better keep your mouth shut!"

"Ok?"

"The emergency call-up orders for the pharmacist and the stasis field have been rescinded. Monitoring of this ship's deployment indicates..."

Magna then spoke up, “The angel sculpture suddenly developed a crack, which doesn’t seem to be due to poor construction quality, because it was carved from a single piece of natural stone, not glued together by hand.”

"So you mean I'm just unlucky?" Ruth shouted, quite annoyed.

"Not entirely." The pigeon hurriedly hopped onto the wolf king's uninjured shoulder and squatted down. Russ's exposed muscles visibly stiffened and twitched for a moment before forcibly relaxing.

“You shouldn’t make fun of those who wail,” the dove said seriously. “We may not be able to do what they do, but we shouldn’t laugh at them. Ruth, you can keep your pride, but you should also respect those who can do the right thing that you can’t.”

"You didn't say that at all during your great expedition ten thousand years ago," the Wolf King snorted defiantly. "You don't really remember what you once made me and my pack do, do you?"

No one in the room made a sound, but more than one person had already pricked up their ears.

The pigeon shifted its red claws on the wolf king's shoulder. "...I am not the same as I was. If you believe we are completely the same, I can apologize to you; if you believe we are not the same, then I think you don't need me to apologize on your behalf. Is that right, Ruth? My son?"

Peturabo raised an eyebrow with a hint of surprise, Pallas looked dumbfounded, and Magna blinked—the flashes of light deep in his pupils were incessant.

The wolf king fell silent, his still strong shoulders drooping, making him appear somewhat weathered and hunched, like a strong alpha wolf inevitably heading towards its aging end.

“Cunning,” he muttered. “Only that bastard Horus among us inherited your cunning, no wonder you favor him the most.”

The pigeon neither confirmed nor denied this.

"The scan of this strange sector that suddenly ejected us from warp space is complete," Magna reported, his eyes flashing for a moment.

"Oh? This place is actually recorded on the Imperial Star Map? Or were we ejected to a region outside of the recorded areas?"

“It’s documented,” the Ironblood’s machine spirit replied matter-of-factly. “It’s even quite old. In an archive predating the founding of the Empire, an exploration fleet that set out from Mars sent back a report naming this region. Of course, after sending that report and stating that they had entered the area, no one ever saw them again.”

“If there are no remains, then there must be something sinister going on,” the wolf king sneered.

"This place is recorded in the star charts of the Empire, the Adarin, and other alien races. The most frequently mentioned name is 'Coronim Bay.' The reason it is widely mentioned in the navigation records of all races is because it has been swallowing up ships that have been passing through or straying into this place since very, very early times. Because it has been going on for so long, there are actually quite a lot of records about it."

"And the navigation routes in the heads of those two Saint Gilles' descendants led us here?" Russ grumbled. "Since it's a place of no return, they shouldn't have been here before. Why would they navigate here?"

“You’ve finally hit the nail on the head this time.” Peturabo BC’s humanoid appearance frowned and pondered for a moment. “I need to see them in person and figure out where the problem lies.”

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On the deck of the Ironblood's bridge, Malakin Foros opened his eyes.

The wounds that this Lamenter Chapter Commander had previously suffered had been completely healed. His handsome and beautiful appearance and his brilliant blond hair were entirely those of a pure Ninth Legion descendant, and there was no indication of any influence from other gene sequences—no wonder no one would think that way.

"Elder Kadormo?"

He asked the Imperial Guard standing in front of him, who was relaying the message, with a puzzled look, while the Flesh-Tearer beside him also cast a curious glance.

"Is there a problem, Malakin Forros?"

“No.” The weeping man nodded good-naturedly. “I’m just happy to have the opportunity to meet the owner of this ship and to thank him for everything he has done for us.”

Warren and Diocletian both wore expressions that seemed to say, "Why are you being so easy to talk to? You're not like an Astartes at all."

The Imperial Guard nodded. "In that case, you will see him soon."

As soon as Diocletian finished speaking, the hatch leading to the command deck rattled as it opened, and then a Defiant, the most beautiful, harmonious, and majestic vehicle Malakin and Warren had ever seen, strode fearlessly onto the deck.

“Then…” What came from the loudspeaker was not the usual fearless electronic synthesized voice or the voice with many gears and mechanical noises that the two sons of Saint Gilles expected, but a voice that surprised and delighted them.

"It's a pleasure to see you all. It's been some time since I last saw the inhabitants of Baal."

The elder spoke a pure and ancient Baal language, which immediately lowered the guard of the two descendants of the Holy Blood Angels.

(End of this chapter)