Warhammer: Hail to the Void Lords!.

Chapter 1047 09.1046: 'Assassination Attack'

Below, on the pulpit, the ceremony had reached its climax.

Amidst the chanting of hymns by hundreds of people, Monsignor Doloroso lifted Horatio's second son, Albert, high and then placed him into the holy pool.

The cold holy water soaked the baby's delicate body, and the sudden low temperature made him let out a loud and powerful cry.

The baptism ceremony was completed quickly.

Doloreso carefully held the baby in her arms and wrapped it in a warm, soft swaddle that a nun had prepared beforehand, and the baby stopped crying.

"Under the light of the Divine Emperor, and witnessed by Saint Drusus, you will surely become another hero, worthy of the honor of your ancestors and father." The thin priest bowed his head, looking solemnly at the baby in his arms who had just stopped crying and was looking at him with curious eyes, and solemnly declared.

He took a deep breath, smiled, and handed the swaddled baby to Louise and Horatio below the stage.

At that very instant, high above, in the dark arcade on the fifth floor of the church, a barely perceptible flash of light disappeared through Luisa-Antoniane de Sai de Vigo's sniper scope.

As an experienced battalion commander of the Leaping Battalion, she didn't even have time to see clearly what the flash came from—was it a reflective piece of armor? Or an insignia that was accidentally exposed?
But her intuition, honed through countless brushes with death, rang out like an alarm bell in her mind.

She was convinced that in this moment of intense scrutiny and heightened security, any unsettling glint of light appearing in the darkness represented only one possibility—a threat.

Before her mind could even process the decision, her index finger had already instinctively landed on the trigger.

Below, Horatio is about to reach out and take his child.

[The second stage is over; nothing happened.]
He breathed a slight sigh of relief, but the inexplicable sense of unease still lingered.

[In the third segment, before the nuns' chorus, I should use the sage fragment again to see what happens next...]
“Thank you, Monsignor.” Horatio expressed his gratitude to the priest as he prepared to close his eyes again and activate the strange power in the Dark Vision.

Suddenly, an indescribable, chilling sense of crisis, like the fangs of a venomous snake, bit into the back of his neck.

This feeling isn't new—it's a passive premonition of danger during the excavation of the fragments!

His blue pupils contracted sharply in an instant, then he darted around, trying to pinpoint the source of the deadly threat.

"What...?" Louise, who was next to him, noticed his sudden change in demeanor, and the smile on her face froze.

"dangerous!"

Horatio didn't have time to explain. In an instant, all the muscles in his body exploded, and he grabbed Albert in his arms and fell to the side and back at a tricky angle.

Snapped!
A muffled, silenced gunshot rang out, its heavy echoes emanating from the darkness high above the church.

Immediately following, an even deeper, more muffled sound, like flesh being torn apart, rang out from the pulpit almost simultaneously.

The abrupt gunshot, silenced by a silencing device, silenced the air for a moment.

Then, the solemn and sacred atmosphere inside the cathedral was instantly shattered! After a brief moment of deathly silence, the crowd erupted in terrified screams and uproar.

"Assassin!!!! Assassin!!!! Help!"

Monsignor Doloroso, who was closest to the body, was shocked but did not hesitate to spread his thin arms and shield Horatio, who had fallen to the ground.

The nuns in the choir on the high platform immediately went into battle alert.

Almost at the same instant the gunshot rang out, the nuns of the Shield Guard, personally led by Judge Diana and wielding massive tower shields, surged out of the adjacent artifact room like an iron torrent. They swiftly formed an impenetrable shield wall, completely surrounding Monsignor and the wounded Horatio. Immediately afterwards, the tall grenadier guards, serving as the honor guard, formed a second line of defense outside the nuns' shield wall.

The entire pulpit was surrounded by layers upon layers of people, leaving no room for escape.

"Damn it!"

High up, Louisa-Antonie de Sai de Vigo rose abruptly from the darkness, muttering a curse under her breath.

A wisp of smoke was still rising from the muzzle of the sniper rifle in her hand.

At the very moment Horatio made his evasive maneuver, she also pulled the trigger on the assassin, but only hit his weapon.

The assassin escaped.

She immediately picked up the communicator and issued orders in a cold and urgent tone: "Hunter 04, Hunter 06, the suspect is fleeing from the fifth-floor corridor on the east side towards the stairwell! I hit him, he's wounded! He's on the run! Stop him at all costs! Hunter 03, go check the sniping scene across the street immediately!"

"Okay, boss."

"Hunter06 received."

In an instant, several leaping soldiers and Leithling scouts, who had been hiding in the dark corners of the church, emerged from their sentry posts like ghosts and rushed silently toward the direction the battalion commander had directed.

Why... for a split second just now, could I not see that person...?
Desai, clutching her enormous sniper rifle, moved swiftly, blocking possible escape routes, while still haunted by the bizarre scene that had just unfolded.

In the last second before firing, that spot was clearly empty in her scope.

"Attention all squads," she immediately added in the communications channel, "The enemy is extremely dangerous and may be equipped with optical camouflage devices to deceive the eye!"

"Understood, boss," came a brief reply from the communicator.

Without further hesitation, the female archer ran to the railing of the corridor, snapped her carabiner onto the cylindrical marble railing, and then leaped down like a nimble ibex, jumping directly from the fifth floor into the fourth-floor corridor, taking a shortcut.

On the corridor floor, there were a few drops of black blood, exuding an ominous aura.

This must be where the assassin passed. Although she only hit the opponent's weapon, the shattered fragments suggest that she successfully injured the opponent as well.

She followed the trail of blood, tracking it all the way. The target was clear: a dark, closed staircase next to the elevator leading into the church.

She stood at the entrance to the staircase, which resembled a gaping abyss, took a deep breath, and skillfully folded the stock of the massive sniper rifle, removed the extra-long barrel, and stored this deadly weapon on the portable gear on her back.

Then, she took a miniature submachine gun from the Iron Grey City, the nest capital of Sintira, from the other side of the equipment.

This is a highly customized, silenced submachine gun that uses 12.7×22.8mm heavy solid shot, capable of tearing enemies wearing standard single-soldier armor to shreds at close range.

pat, pat.

She pulled down the portable single-channel thermal imager on her head and quickly adjusted it to the optimal mode using the button; she turned on the laser sight on her submachine gun and switched it to IR (infrared) mode, which can only be seen through thermal imaging devices; then, she adjusted the advanced adaptive noise-canceling in-ear headphones in her ears to the "high pickup, low noise reduction" target acquisition mode.

Having done all this, she cautiously entered the quiet but deadly darkness like a ghost, searching for the assassin's whereabouts.

(End of this chapter)