Shipping goods from the game to the World of Warhammer

A burst of fire erupted beneath Dane's feet, shattering the metal floor. Steel fragments, like irregular jigsaw puzzle pieces, streaked in all directions amidst sparks and smoke. Several fist-sized pieces of iron grazed the armor plates of the raider where Rhodes was hiding, sending sparks flying across the aluminum alloy surface of the sail.

Dann's body was lifted off the ground by the blast wave. He tumbled in mid-air and crashed heavily onto a pile of equipment wreckage three meters away. His charred left side of his face was facing upwards, and his almost melted evil eye was still flickering faintly unconsciously. Where the floor beneath his feet had been flat, a black hole nearly four meters in diameter had appeared. The metal plates at the edge of the hole were curled outwards, and the cut surfaces gleamed with a dark red heat radiation. A scorching blast of air mixed with an indescribable bloody smell surged up from the hole.

A mechanical war chariot slowly drove out of the black hole in the furnace.

No, calling it a "mechanical vehicle" isn't accurate. Its outline is indeed made of metal and gears, with spiked wheels, a cannon barrel encased in black iron, and rivets and chains covering its body—all of which make it look like some kind of heavy artillery vehicle. But every inch of its surface radiates a temperature only a living thing possesses. The pipes wrapped around the base of the cannon barrel are clearly contracting and expanding rhythmically, like blood vessels pulsating. Dark red liquid seeps from the seams of the cannon, meandering down the grain of the iron plate, dripping onto the floor with a soft "hiss" and leaving a small, smoking crater.

This is a skull cannon, one of the demonic engines under Khorne's command.

Legend has it that this terrifying creation was forged in the furnace beneath the skull of the Blood God, born after being hammered and refined a thousand times on the powerful demonic anvil of Khorne. It is not merely a combination of metal and machinery, but a fusion of demonic soul and hellish forging techniques, with an eternal thirst for blood and skull burning within its twisted conduits.

Even after slumbering for countless years, when the overloaded energy of Dane's Evil Eye penetrated the floor and touched the demonic engine sleeping beneath, an ancient bloodlust was reawakened.

Rhodes realized the origin of this thing almost immediately. Mordax was a reburning forged world, which meant that it had been occupied by the forces of Chaos for a considerable period of time. During that period, it was entirely possible that the dimensional blacksmiths in the invading Chaos Space Marine Legion forged this Daemon Engine underground on this planet to enhance the influence of their Blood God on the world.

When the war ended, the Mechanicus expedition liberated Mordax, but apparently no one discovered that such a relic was hidden beneath the abandoned forge.

For years, Dane had been conducting his forbidden research in this forge, unaware that a demonic engine belonging to the Lord of War lay dormant beneath his feet.

Under the control of the Bloodletter, the skull cannon's muzzle and tracks quickly changed direction, showing no mercy, and immediately aimed at Dane, who was still lying in the pile of wreckage.

Dane struggled to lift his head. His evil eye in his left eye socket was completely destroyed, with molten metal solidified around the socket like a silver tear. He tried to see clearly with his remaining right eye, and then his body froze.

The skull cannon gave him no time to react.

A barbed entrance opened beneath the fuselage, and several thick chains shot out, binding Dane's limbs and torso, dragging him into the black, abyss-like cavity. Dane let out a grotesque scream, a metallic, distorted sound, before being suffocated within the engine's cavity, his voice abruptly cut off.

Through the thick iron wall, Rod could vaguely hear a mixture of sounds of bones cracking and metal grinding coming from inside. After about ten seconds, everything fell silent.

Then the demonic engine started moving again.

Something was pushed into the chamber from the muzzle, accompanied by a dull metallic clang and a low, eerie sound that was both laughter and groan. The entire body of the skull cannon shuddered violently, and a ring of dark red heat shot out from the muzzle.

The moment Rhodes peeked half his head out from behind the Marauder's armor, he saw the shape of the shell.

That was Dane's head, with half-melted metal implants solidified on the surface of the skull. His left eye socket was a collapsed black hole, with solidified silver metal dripping from the edge of the eye socket, like a distorted face that was both angry and crying.

His right prosthetic eye was still spinning unconsciously, its pupil flashing with a dark red light that didn't belong to Dane's own consciousness. Most chillingly, the head's mouth was opening and closing, uttering a series of indistinct and rapid syllables. It was impossible to understand what it was saying, but the tone was mixed with a frenzied, almost terrifying, tremor.

The red light from the cannon muzzle suddenly shone brightest.

"Get down!" Rhodes pulled Casal down to the ground and pressed his own body against a piece of equipment.

The skull-shaped cannonball, imbued with the wrath of an evil god, shot out from the muzzle, enveloped in a ball of dark red flame. It traced a curved arc through the air, and the sound it emitted during its flight was not the sharp whistle of a cannonball breaking through the air, but a low, intermittent laugh mixed with the hum of metallic vibrations.

The shell grazed less than a meter above where Rhodes and Casal were crouching before crashing into the wall behind the furnace.

The explosion instantly engulfed the rear half of the furnace. The forbidden implants in Dann's skull, including the residual energy of the Saxon light wave generator, the laser medium that had not yet been exhausted in the evil eye, and dozens of unknown forbidden enhancement components, all exploded simultaneously under the catalysis of the demonic fire of the skull shell. The resulting shock wave was several times more powerful than that of an ordinary skull shell.

The entire abandoned furnace was shaking violently, the overhead support beams groaned under the strain, and several alloy roof plates were shaken off the top, crashing onto the floor and bouncing high into the air.

The energy coil that was originally powering the repulsion device was also severed by the explosion, and the four beams that fixed the SCV went out at the same time. The gray-blue space engineering vehicle crashed heavily to the ground, and a scream from the operator followed by a string of curses came from the cockpit.

Amidst the smoke and debris rain, Rhodes lay on the floor, coughing a few times, his ears ringing. He turned his head and, through the swirling dust, saw the skull cannon slowly turning its tracks to face them. The pulsating wires on its fuselage were beating faster and faster, as if the previous shell had completely awakened it from its slumber; clearly, it wasn't full yet.