Warhammer 40k: Melee Warriors

"Make way!" Marcus commanded the believers standing on either side of the gate to clear the way, and then used his great strength to push the gate open.

Beneath the throne of bones, Falla is preparing the souls of the nearly 70-year-old citizens of the Immaculate City for their final resting place. They will eat bread made from the last of their lives, and after their souls leave their bodies, their ashes will return to the soil where the beans were planted.

Fortunately, the ritual in Falla was nearing its end, which meant that Komi didn't have to wait there to maintain the sanctity of the ceremony. He strode forward, avoiding the other believers who were collecting the dust.

"Lord Markus? You've finally come out of your room?" Faya was quite surprised to see Markus approaching her. These days, Markus had either been leading the Unified Hands to capture demons in the Warp or had returned to his room to work on some engineering blueprints.

Marcus didn't mince words with Falla and said directly, "I need to contact the Savior directly."

"Contact the Savior?!" Falla's eyes lit up. "Do you wish to seek revelation from the Great One? Or..."

"Shh..." Marcus put his finger to Falla's lips. "You talk too much. Just stay quiet and wait on the side."

"Mmm." Faya nodded, thrilled that she could witness this sacred moment.

Markarth walked toward the Bone Throne, and after a moment's hesitation, he placed his hand on the skeleton's hand.

......

What's going on here?! How do I feel like this?!

Komi was already used to the perspective provided by his soul residing in two bodies, but as he controlled Markus to touch the Bone Throne, he clearly felt a wisp of his own soul, which was distinctly different from Otto's soul, being sent over from afar.

This wisp of soul entangled his body, transforming into a set of ghostly armor that could be seen by others.

This is Markus's power... Otto can now borrow Markus's power!!!

Komi almost burst into tears of excitement. Although Otto's body was much stronger than that of an ordinary person, there was still a clear gap between him and a Space Marine. If he could have borrowed Markus's power earlier, he wouldn't have needed to wear a trade license to solve those thorny problems.

Of course, at that time, it was probably still impossible to defeat Fugen, who was about to ascend to demonhood...

Before Komi could even try using this power derived from the soul, he discovered that his own soul was dissipating, which undoubtedly proved that he could only borrow Markus's power temporarily.

It's better than having nothing at all...

Komi shook his hand to disperse his soul, and looked at the light on the throne, thinking to himself.

Otto can borrow Markus's power, so what can Markus borrow from Otto?

That almost eerie charm? What use could this thing have other than driving Antoine mad?

As for the duration, perhaps lighting up more nodes would extend it?

To distinguish this place from the Immaculate City, Komi quickly came up with a name: the Blackrock Fortress would be called the Eye of the Faraway Fortress, and the throne would be called the Primal Throne.

After finishing his thoughts, Komi looked down and found that Ella and the others were staring intently at him, clearly surprised by the phenomenon of the soul entangled with him. Komi knew how to explain this.

“The monsters we saw before were all Space Marines loyal to the Empire. I freed their suffering souls, and they wanted to repay my help with the last of their souls.”

The crowd readily accepted Komi's explanation, and they performed a devout Eagle Salute, saying, "May all the loyal ones return to the throne."

"Fithia, send us out!"

At Komi's command, Fetia immediately started operating the Eye of the Distant Fortress. The black stones arranged themselves, and a circular passage leading directly outside appeared, sucking everyone in and pushing them out.

Upon reaching the edge of the fortress, Gu Jian immediately guided the soul paths, concentrating the scattered soul paths throughout the fortress into a single point that extended directly to the Spirit Race arks resting around the fortress.

Perhaps because there were more dead than living people in the Spirit Race Ark, the opening of the Soul Path was extremely smooth. Gu Jian only felt a white light before his eyes, and the next moment he led everyone to land in the abandoned area of ​​the Spirit Race Ark.

The area was littered with traces of orcs. Sensing the fluctuations of the opening and closing of the Soul Path, they gathered around, each wielding axe and short spear.

"Let's warm up by killing some orcs!" Koji shouted as he drew his sword and charged into the orcs, hacking and slashing them.

As more and more orcs died at his hands, Koji suddenly discovered that he had another way to deal with souls: instead of condensing the orcs' souls into bricks, he could use them to condense Markarth's power.

The more you kill, the stronger you become! The stronger you become, the more you can kill!

Komi quickly adapted to his newly acquired power using the blood of the orcs, and he even had a bold idea.

If I arrange things properly, could I take down the masked dancer?

Chapter 496: Utilizing the Soul Path

Having the idea, Koji didn't have time to finalize the plan. With a swift stroke, he severed the orc's head, transforming each wisp of soul into a soul armor that protected his mortal body.

First, Koji made his arms, making him several times stronger than before. He could easily win an arm wrestling match against the orc boy even without his weapons.

"Come on! Orcs! Don't you crave battle? Don't you yearn for a magnificent Waaagh?" Komi roared excitedly, enjoying the thrill of crushing all enemies with the power he had borrowed from Markarth. Compared to pure power, the curse of Slaanesh was truly useless.

Groups of orcs that rushed towards Gu Jian were slaughtered. They screamed and fled into the ruins of the Spirit Race. Gu Jian was too lazy to waste time on them and continued to search for the bigger orc to fight.

Gate, Ella, and the others had never seen Komi so fierce. They even forgot how to fight together and just tried their best to stay behind Komi and not get separated from the group.

The entire street was filled with orcs killed by Komi. Even though their armor could withstand Komi's slashes, it could not keep them steady against Markarth's savage power.

This also made the soul that was wrapped around him even more dazzling and solid. The intangible was almost turning into a tangible form. The ethereal soul condensed into a pale white armor that was constantly disintegrating and dissipating, which was draped over Koken's body.

To outsiders, this was a saint summoning the holy spirits of the throne, who were just as holy as him, to fight alongside him through his courage and piety!

Ella watched Komi's retreating figure and was encouraged that the cat people were loyal to Komi and their savior. This was far more reliable than the emperor who prayed bitterly but received no response!

"Follow closely behind the Saint!" Ella shouted excitedly. She threw down her Howler shotgun, drew her monomolecular saber, and joined the battle instigated by Komi.

When a burly orc leader struggled to withstand four of Komi's slashes and was finally cut in two by the fifth, all the orcs who wanted to fight Komi properly collapsed. They dropped their crude weapons, covered their heads, and fled quickly, fully embodying the philosophy that as long as they were alive, they would fight.

Komi stood there panting heavily. He wasn't tired, but rather too excited. The armor forged by his soul crumbled instantly as his battle ended.

To create this outfit, I would have to assemble a vast soul, but when it vanishes, it's only a fleeting moment...

Komi clenched his fist. Through slaying orcs, he understood the limitations of the Markarth Armor. Once he encountered a single enemy that was strong but few in number, it would be difficult for him to collect a complete set of Markarth Armor.

Smearing the blood from his sword onto the ground, Komi looked at the gate sealed with spirit bones. It was clear that the orcs had tried to attack this obstacle, but they had failed. In the end, they turned this place into their latrine, where fungi were thriving amidst the stench.

The obstacles that the orcs couldn't destroy were nothing to Gu Jian; he could easily tear the spirit bones apart himself, but he wanted to test the effectiveness of the Soul Path.

"Fitia, guide the soul path! Proceed according to our plan."

Within the Eye of the Distant Fortress, Fetia heard Komi's call. Although she did not possess Komi's exceptional control over the Soul Path, she could still influence the deployment of the Soul Path by manipulating the fortress's structure.

She selected a sufficiently spacious area, where she opened two soul rifts. At the same time, she sent out a message, which, based on her knowledge of the Punisher's wartime communication channels, was sent directly to Jack, the Punisher's most skilled fighter pilot.

“Lieutenant Jack, in the name of the Saint, I bestow upon you a glorious mission. A pale rift will open in this dark region, and you must pilot your fighter jet into it to attack the target that Saint Otto has designated for you.”

Jack was bewildered by the sudden order, but he still fulfilled his duty as a soldier and chose to obey Brother Fithia's instructions unconditionally.

The Fury-class interceptor flew through the void, searching for that pale rift.

Aha! Here it is!

Having located the crack, Jack pulled the control stick, causing the flying wing to quickly approach. Navigator Harlan instinctively tried to analyze the crack's structure, but she only obtained a string of unchanging data.

The fighter jet accelerated and plunged into the crevice.

An endless expanse of pure white stretched before Jack's eyes, entering the fighter jet's database. Jack's pupils dilated, and his breathing quickened. Gunner Tyk let out a weak groan at the madness he witnessed, a testament to his toughness—a man whose legs had been crushed by the turret without a single scream.

"Where are we?!" Harlan was terrified. Every string of data she scanned quickly returned to zero. This strange space seemed to want to put the Winged Machine Soul to rest as well.

Jack sensed this through the feel of the joystick; he called out to Wing from the cockpit, but couldn't see any response from her on the screen.

"Damn it... No matter where we are, we'll get out of here alive!" Jack encouraged himself, using his experience and perseverance to force the fighter jet through the final stretch.

Emerging from the pure white, all that remained before him was the ancient darkness of the fortress's interior. Jack felt his eyes briefly go blind as they rapidly shifted between white and black, and the fighter jet trembled as the data calmed and then suddenly fluctuated.

"Winged! Are you alright?" Jack asked immediately after sensing the fighter jet's activity. The fighter jet's spirit expressed her feelings through a series of emoticons that appeared on the screen.

Regaining consciousness from an almost eternal coma made me so nauseous I wanted to vomit up all the fuel in the cabin!

At that moment, Fitaia's voice came again, "Lieutenant Jack, watch your flight path! You are veering off course! If you don't adjust, you will crash into that wall!"

what?

Upon hearing this, Jack's stiff body immediately broke out in a sweat of tension, which dampened his movements. He tried to blink to dispel the blurriness in his vision, but the more he did so, the more foggy his vision became.

Damn it... I can't see anything!

Jack roared somewhat unwillingly, and Fitia immediately reported the dangerous situation to Komi after hearing it.

Tsk... Is it too much to travel through the Soul Path with a mortal body? Jack's soul went from active to calm, and from calm to active again. This tearing sensation had already interfered with his perception.

I need to guide him here...with something conspicuous.

Komi looked back, wanting to use a chorus, but found that there were too few people around him, and the neat chanting was not enough to create a noticeable impact.

So, how about performing a psionic ritual? Using blood to draw a magic circle? That would be too time-consuming. Jack's fighter jet was designed for space warfare, with a very powerful engine. Although it also has an atmospheric combat mode, the speed of the fighter jet is still so fast that its outline cannot be captured by the naked eye.

By the time Koji uses his blood to draw half of the magic circle, Jack will probably be stuck in the black stone of the fortress and unable to pry it off.

As Komi pondered, his hand unconsciously reached into his robes, and a round object immediately caught his attention.

Looking at what he held in his hand, Gu Jian couldn't help but exclaim with delight.

"Soul Beacon!"

Chapter 497: The Grandeur of Future Air Raids

The Soul Path Beacon was originally obtained by Komi from the Dark Eldar. At that time, it had not yet been modified and was called the Net Path Beacon. Because he couldn't figure it out himself, Komi specifically asked Vashtor.

Vashtor answered clearly, saying that the design of this thing came from the vanished ancient saints, and that it transmitted things that were in a stable common space by creating a short-term beacon and another long-term beacon in response.

Previously, Koji had always envisioned using a pure white hall as the core, with passageways made of soul bricks connecting the near and far. However, because building the soul path consumed too many materials, it never reached a large scale and could only serve as a personal space to store his javelins and miscellaneous items.

Now it seems he should use this amazing thing on the Far Eye Fortress. How could I have forgotten about it before?

There are just too many things to do, too many thoughts to keep up with, and my brain can't process them all.

Koji chuckled. He weighed the Soul Beacon in his hand, poured a Soul Brick into it, and activated it. He then swung his arm and threw it at the barrier made of spirit bones.

The beacon landed, and its eerie light shot straight into the sky. This finally gave Jack, who was blind, a sense of direction. He guided his fighter jet toward the light by feel, and it plunged into another rift and disappeared.

call out!

The sound of the Fury-class interceptor cutting through the sky was quite clear. Komi turned around in the direction of the sound and saw a small black dot rushing out from a crack that suddenly appeared in mid-air, constantly approaching their direction.

"Attack the beacon! Attack the beacon!" Komi shouted, waving his arms. To Jack, who was flying at high speed, it was as inconspicuous as an ant waving its antennae. Following Fitaia's previous orders, he activated all the weapons on the fighter jet and then aimed at the eerie light, unleashing full firepower.

Bombs and torpedoes capable of penetrating warship armor, and heavy lasers capable of sinking other aircraft all came at once. Even if Komi was wearing the complete Markus Armor, he would still be skinned alive by such an attack.

He immediately ordered everyone to run with him away from the barrier made of spirit bones as far away as possible.

Just as they took cover behind a collapsed spire, Jack's attack came down. The firepower, which appeared as cannons and spears in the void, was terrifying to the infantrymen like Komi. The heat wave and shockwave from the explosion hit them at the same time, and Komi didn't even have time to turn around before he was hit hard.

"Ugh... I have trachoma..." Komi lowered his body, rubbing his uncomfortable eyes with his hands, enduring the shaking of his head. He felt the ground trembling under his feet, and hot shards kept falling behind him.

If Kojima was like this, the others were even worse. Kranka was directly knocked to the ground by the shockwave, which made his internal organs ache. If Gate hadn't pulled him up, just lying there would have taken half his life.