Warhammer 40k: Melee Warriors

Gu Jian couldn't discern the source of this advice, but it did help him suppress his deep longing to slaughter the figures that had appeared in the first seven stages.

Facing the towering, mountain-like base of the bronze throne that blocked his path, Komi roared and, as if in despair, swung his power sword, which was almost glued to his arm, at it.

There was no earthquake or any earth-shattering event.

The mark left on the Brass Throne by this attack, which failed to carry any passive effect, was completely negligible. After doing all this, Komi lay exhausted in the blood swamp in front of the throne, sinking into eternal oblivion.

Khorne pulled Komi up, manipulating his blood energy to hold her firmly. His deep voice held both recognition of Komi's will and disappointment at her weak strength.

"Your anger and stubbornness surprise me, but that's all. As the only weakling who dares to raise his sword against me, I will bestow upon you an unimaginable favor." Khorne's ethereal hand clenched tighter, forcing Koji to grit his teeth and suppress any groans amidst the crushing pain.

A bronze seal, forged by Khorne himself, was imprinted on Komi's soul. Amid the burning sound, Khorne continued, "I will grant you this gift: you may keep the blood and skulls of any creatures you have slaughtered, without having to offer them to me."

Even as Komi's thoughts were about to crumble, he instantly understood just how valuable Khorne's blessing was.

The blood and skulls of all those he kills are preserved. Simply put, if Komi kills enough people, his extremely difficult-to-grow soul will become stronger and stronger in the flames of war, infinitely extending the time scale, making it inevitable that he will become a demigod.

However, Khorne was not an overly generous being; when He bestowed gifts, challenges followed closely behind.

"I will take back the blood and skull you have offered." Khorne forcibly extracted much of his power, leaving Komi with only a weak shell. Then, Khorne personally placed a ring around Komi's neck. "You will be eternally hunted in unease. How long can you protect my gift from those challengers? I am very curious about that."

The burning pain on his neck never stopped, as if it were burning Komi's soul to ashes. Amid Khorne's deep laughter, he felt like a glass ball being held in Khorne's fingertips.

"This is punishment for the offender."

With a casual flick of his wrist, not even his own hand, but merely a phantom hand formed from blood energy, Koken suffered immense damage. Koken tumbled down eight steps from the brass throne, crashing heavily onto the sawmill ground torn apart by the previous battle.

Komi couldn't even vomit blood, and lay in the deep pit with his eyes closed, falling into a deep coma.

To onlookers, Komi leaped into the blood-soaked steps in an instant, and then fell out like a rag doll the next moment. His body, which was much stronger than the Space Marines present, twitched like a dried-out orange, and his hard, iron-like skin had a deathly dark gray hue.

Did Marcus fail?

Antoine couldn't bear to see Komi suffer such cruel punishment from Khorne and die alone. He overcame his fear and approached Komi step by step, finally embracing her body and calling out in anguish, "My master, I'm here... Please wake up, or I'll kiss you."

Seeing that Gu Jian was not awake, Antoine merely shed tears and did not further defile his frail body.

Khorne's command descended from the heavens, the voice becoming ethereal along with the vanished throne.

"Get out of here, you ants!"

The sound carried an irresistible divine power, engulfing everyone within it before crashing into the Fifth Walker.

The terror and horror that this warship suffered was no less than what they experienced. Elaine and Demas were already exercising the utmost restraint to prevent the warship's crew from killing each other or even injuring themselves.

The blood-red wave propelled the Fifth Walker away, and Khorne, in its final moments, only glanced at the tense and silent Vashtor and warned, "There will be no next time."

Vashtor froze, not daring to blink or breathe. He had clearly seen the miserable state of Komi. Faced with Khorne's deep threat, he made the fastest thought in his demonic life.

I apologize, Lord of Blood; there were indeed some flaws in the trade I proposed...

I have no regrets about this, Lord of Blood; carefully reviewing trade contracts is a quality every businessperson should possess...

Vashtor hesitated between the two answers, and finally he thought he should apologize to Khorne, but his typical STEM-minded thinking made him say something insincere, and he uttered a second sentence that was very offensive to Khorne.

Vashtor began to hate his rigid logical thinking. He had schemed and plotted on his path to godhood, but he never expected that he would die at the hands of the enraged Khorne because of his personality problems.

"Oh..."

Khorne laughed, but Vashtor couldn't discern the emotion in the laughter. He only knew that the next moment, he was struck in the chest by a heavy hammer and slammed against the ship's metal wall, losing consciousness.

Chapter 195: Seizing More Souls

"We...we're back?" Bennett seemed to wake from a dream. He had thought that after losing Hela, he longed for the day of death, but when he actually saw Khorne in person at the end of his life, that deep melancholy turned into a strong fear of what was lost.

What kind of being would he have to be to maintain basic freedom and dignity after death in the face of such a terrifying god?

It's simply impossible...

Bennett calmed his anxious heart with a few cough-like breaths, then stood up and stopped Antoine's distraught wailing. At this moment, the Midnight Lord once again demonstrated his leadership talent, which was different from his other brothers.

"Antoine! Stop acting crazy! Holding Marcus like that will only break the rest of his bones!"

Antoine carefully released Komi and laid him flat on the ground, then blinked and stared at Bennett, asking, "How do we save him? His flesh and soul are almost being drained by that Blood Lord. Why...why..."

Why wasn't it you who drained Marcus dry?

Bennett thought with a wicked glint in his eye that all he could do was inject the combat potion into Komi's incredibly tough skin, and whether it would work was entirely up to God.

The chaos inside the warship gradually subsided after they were far from the Blood God's domain. Demas, who was fighting a defensive counterattack against the crazy code in the ship's data sea, and Elaine, the navigator whose third eye was almost blinded by the berserk psionic energy, were finally able to ask what had happened on the ground.

“Markarth insulted a true god and was punished for it.” Faerûn said wearily. As one of the Chaos Space Marines whose body and soul had fallen the deepest into Nurgle’s embrace, he clearly understood the gods’ wrath more than others.

As for whether it's right or wrong... just say there was no interpretation at all!

“This… how could this be? Isn’t Master a warrior of the Blood God? Why would he insult Him?” Elaine couldn’t understand Ferren’s simple answer. Her heart, which had been gripped by pain and anxiety, now held a glimmer of relief.

As expected, my master did not completely succumb to the embrace of the dark gods; he always held the Emperor in high esteem and affection.

However, this was not the time to fantasize about what Komi, who was lying on the ground, believed in. Elaine immediately realized this, suppressed her chaotic emotions, and used her painful third eye to observe Komi's soul.

Like the flesh, it was weak and withered, its faint light like a candle flickering in the wind, which could be extinguished in an instant.

If you want to fill the void in your soul, you must compensate with your soul.

This is what Sharon said, and Elaine remembered the teachings of this Word-Bearer very well.

“We need to find some souls for our master,” Elaine said in a deep voice. Antoine’s despairing face immediately lit up with a glimmer of hope. He moved closer to Elaine, whom he had always regarded as a third party, and asked her.

"Soul? What soul? How many souls do you need?"

Elaine didn't know the answers to these questions. She could only take a deep breath and tentatively reply, "Should we... offer up the souls of those beastmen?"

“The Beastmen are almost all dead in the bloody frenzy... If you want the lower-level equipment to be completely unmaintained, then do it.” Demas told everyone about the ship’s terrible condition while clearing out the remaining crazed code. Even the veteran Iron Warriors he brought from Broken Steel Fortress had been injured by the Beastmen’s frenzied and reckless attacks.

The Blood God's rage amplified these foolish beasts to an unbelievable degree, even allowing them to dent their thick boarding shields by smashing them open with the large horns that sprouted from their heads.

The power of chaos is terrifying!

This left Demas, who did not believe in any god and was only focused on opposing the empire and the emperor, feeling quite helpless.

“Then offer up my soul first!” Antoine replied immediately after hearing Demas’s explanation. He exposed his fair neck, which would make Elaine jealous, and guided Elaine to kill him and extract her soul to crash into Demas’s body.

“Wait, Antoine…” Elaine hesitated. “Sharon said that the soul used to fill the void should be pure and weak. Forcibly stuffing in a complex and strong soul will only cause the injured person to suffer a mental breakdown. Your soul clearly doesn’t meet the standard…”

"Only an idiot would believe what Sharon says!" Antoine screamed, his eyes bloodshot, ignoring Elaine's explanations. All he wanted was for Elaine to save Komi's dying soul.

"Enough, Antoine!" Elaine was also getting angry at being yelled at like that. She was already anxious because Komi was seriously injured, and at this moment she didn't care that Antoine was a space soldier who was much stronger than her. "Your shouting only interrupts my thoughts! You might as well shrink to the side and think about where to find some pure and weak souls for the master!"

Antoine didn't retort, but silently pulled his raised neck back, then got up, sniffed, and quickly ran to his room.

"Did Antoine go crying?" Ferren asked in a muffled voice, while Bennett licked his dry lips in response.

"I think he's seeing his old flames."

"Old flame?"

“Faron, he is the son of an emperor, and his old friends are the most skilled slave traders. Now it depends on Antoine’s choice: does he prefer Markus, or his former masters?”

"His previous masters? Before Antoine joined..."

"Shh... Ferren, you're asking too many questions. The Emperor's Son's methods aren't the focus you should be investigating." Bennett's gaze sliced ​​through Ferren's body from top to bottom like a knife meant for slow slicing. After the curse of sharing life and death was lifted, his attitude towards his former comrade-in-arms became increasingly harsh.

Elaine sensed Bennett's complex and cold emotions. Instead of asking for his help, she called to the dogs who hadn't disembarked to help Komi sit on the throne. She knelt beside him, watching the faint flicker of Komi's soul, and prayed to the Emperor that this warrior, loyal to humanity and the throne, would not perish so easily.

Koken knew nothing of these things. All his memories were stuck at the moment before Khorne's fingers exerted force. When he awoke from the chaos, the scene he saw was neither the ancient, square bridge of the Fifth Walker nor the bloody scene in the Bonewood Forest.

"Where am I...? I'm wearing this again? No way..."

Koji glanced around and realized that he was floating in a space made of pure white.

His voice drifted into the endless distance, with no possibility of receiving an echo.

Could this be another realm of gods?

Komi pondered the colors of the gods.

Red, blue, green, purple, gold... and there's also black, which has never been born.

Who is this Bai?

The question had barely surfaced in his mind when the pure white world changed. A throne appeared in the void, drawing Komi to sit upon it.

Chapter 196: My Old Comrade-in-Arms Has Become a Fanatic

A cunning and treacherous man?

Komi retreated far away as soon as he saw the throne, subconsciously attributing all the strange things he was experiencing to the mastermind behind the schemes and conspiracies.

However, his retreat proved to be futile. Like an invisible wall in a game, it blocked Komi's retreat path, and then the throne actually started to move on its own, slowly moving towards Komi's direction.

This movement wasn't a change in location; it was more like an image being stretched and magnified in one's eyes. Even with his eyes closed, Komi could still see the throne continuing to enlarge.

This gave Komi a severe sense of unreality, and at the same time, his nervousness in the face of the unknown was also amplified.

He wasn't afraid of the Four Gods because he knew their nature, and finding a way to survive based on what he already knew wasn't impossible.

But faced with the pure white space and the enlarged throne, Komi panicked. He recalled that he could not find a similar scene description in any of the Warhammer books.

In the end, Koji didn't try to dodge. He stared intently at the throne, thinking that even if he died, he should die knowing why.

Komi could thus see the details on the throne clearly. This throne, tailor-made for Komi's physique, was made up of many more identical thrones stacked together. By zooming in on a point, one could find infinitely repeating details, like a fractal image rendered by software. This made Komi's eyes dazzle, and a large amount of information was forcibly poured into his mind.

Each of the other smaller thrones that make up this throne is occupied by a person, some of whom are excessively robust orcs, with guns, ammunition, and extremely rough axes piled up beside their thrones.

Some were tall and slender Eldar, sitting on their thrones and exuding arrogance and disdain for the younger races of the galaxy.

Among them were humans, their bodies covered by coarse linen robes, revealing only an old and solemn face.

More thrones, more races—Komi couldn't name them all, nor could he find the right words to describe their appearance.

Seated on the throne, no sacred voices rang out, no countless believers stood in his presence, only a profound sense of despair and loneliness arose beneath Komi's buttocks and spread to his mind.

The emotion finally stopped when it reached her neck, making Komi feel like a victim about to be drowned in the deep sea.

"What on earth is going on..." Komi asked, his lips trembling. The pure white space was unresponsive, with only the excessively cold throne reminding him that he was still alive in the world.

Its neck swayed back and forth, the ancient coin of the dead descent dangling from it.

Gu Jian subconsciously looked down, his gaze lingering on the ancient coin for a moment before moving on to his fingers.

A ring made of brass and blood-red gemstones sat quietly on his index finger, reminding Komi of Khorne's whisper before he sent him flying.

You need not offer your skull or blood; I allow you to retain all these honors.