Kingdom Come: Deliverance, but Warhammer 40k

Chapter 106 The War of the Far Travelers (4)

Fear will not end a war, but the fear of one side often gives the other side inner strength.

With the fall of a head belonging to the Chaos Astartes, their invincible myth crumbled—even fallen imperial angels, when killed, still die.

Orion's honor guard immediately seized this fleeting opportunity.

"Now! Push them down! Push them back!"

The leading power armor warriors roared, and the thrusters on their backs suddenly spewed out eerie blue flames.

Taking advantage of the Astartes' lapse in concentration, they advanced, unleashing a barrage of fire from their explosive guns and thermoelectric weapons.

Ordinary human soldiers who had previously been forced to retreat behind cover due to the terror of the plague warriors.

They regained their senses and, relying on sandbags and scrap steel plates, launched a volley of fire at the corrupted hounds that were still charging madly on instinct.

Kinetic bullets and lasers tore apart one deformed hound after another, and brass cartridge cases fell from the gun like flowing water.

Fear and madness intertwined, and the war descended into frenzy.

But the remaining plague warriors were not killed one by one as humans had hoped.

They only sent a few brothers to destroy the mortals' firing positions, while the rest of their guns were all turned towards Henry.

Just now, this knight proved with the blood of his comrades that he was the most dangerous guardian on this battlefield.

Several bomb guns simultaneously spat out blinding tongues of fire.

The corrupted bullets rained down on every possible path Henry could take.

Countless explosives detonated on the metal plate at his feet.

The deck was instantly ripped off, and deadly metal fragments flew in all directions along with the poisonous flames.

Henry had to forcefully shift his center of gravity, awkwardly rolling to the side.

Just as he rolled, another bomb grazed his left shoulder armor, blasting a crater in the ground that burned with eerie green flames, and poisonous smoke obscured his vision.

In just a few seconds, the knight's location was completely covered by a series of explosions.

Henry was so pinned down that he couldn't get up at all.

He could only keep changing position as he rolled, barely using the blade of his chainsaw sword to block stray bullets aimed at his face.

Meanwhile, using the remaining steel plates that had not yet been completely destroyed and the wreckage of abandoned vehicles, they crawled forward, struggling to find an opportunity to kill the next plague warrior.

But every time, just when he was about to find an opportunity...

When the smoke cleared, there would always be two or even three plague warriors standing in his way.

Now, they would rather use their numerical and firepower advantage to hunt the knight down like a wild beast, trapping him behind cover and slowly whittling him down with explosives.

I will never give him another chance to engage in close combat and wield that chainsaw sword.

Henry was forced to stop behind a toppled giant armor plate, slowly adjusting his breathing, which had become disordered due to the intense dodging.

Ultimately, even if he should be difficult to actually kill.

But if he were truly brought to the brink of death, it's hard to say whether Khorne wouldn't possess his body again.

Ultimately, Henry is still in a state of high attack and low defense.

The Blood of Siegfried granted him defensive capabilities, but it couldn't stop all incoming attacks. As for the newly acquired Resurrector, it only accelerated his recovery speed.

Even if you receive a large amount of harm in a single instance, there is still a risk of developing psychopathy.

Just when Henry was at a stalemate.

On the other side of the battlefield, however, the human front had achieved some success.

At some point, two members of the Honor Guard, taking advantage of the terrain and the pile of corpses, managed to get around to the side and rear of the Chaos troop transport vehicle.

One of them used a power backpack to leap from behind cover and quickly approach.

He smashed through the surrounding monsters and came to the back of a plague warrior. He opened his arms and hugged the other's huge, bloated body tightly and desperately.

"For the Holy Emperor!!"

The plague warrior, realizing what was happening, smashed his skull with a battle axe.

The corruption on his body spread uncontrollably, but the power of the power armor remained unbreakable even after its owner's death.

Just as the two were entangled, another Honor Guard member threw a molten grenade at close range between them.

A dazzling white light instantly illuminated the center of the battlefield.

The terrifyingly high temperature, capable of melting refined gold, formed a miniature sun that mercilessly swallowed the three figures together.

Even after the blinding light faded, the surrounding air was still violently distorted due to the high temperature.

The Honor Guard member responsible for dropping the bomb had half of his power armor completely melted into molten iron by the high temperature.

His entire right arm, along with his shoulder, disappeared, revealing charred stubble.

The plague warriors fired several belated bombs, sending him flying.

He collapsed onto the scalding ground, convulsed a few times, and was unable to stand up again.

But the Plague Warrior who was hit at point-blank range by the molten grenade also could not escape the fate of destruction.

All that remained of him was a charred, red-hot power armor wreckage that was gradually cooling and turning black.

The mutated flesh inside was completely vaporized in that instant.

The Honor Guard, with its centuries-old heritage as a merchant ronin family, and its elite equipment, also make it a threat to Astartes.

This forced the Chaos Space Marines to refocus some of their attention on them.

The situation is finally beginning to tilt in humanity's favor, little by little.

Henry also found an opportunity to break out of his predicament.

A plague warrior who was loading explosives with his head down was caught in the blast wave due to the chaos of the front-line formation, and unknowingly fell more than ten meters away from his comrade next to him.

This is a golden opportunity.

Henry stomped his boots and shot out from behind cover like an arrow.

however.

Just as he was about to approach the lone plague warrior.

A strong sense of danger suddenly enveloped his entire body.

His body, almost instinctively honed through countless brushes with death, abruptly stopped its charge and held the chainsaw sword horizontally in front of his chest.

suddenly.

With a sonic boom, a massive spear, its surface covered in verdigris rust and its shaft entangled in decaying thorns, hurtled down from the distant sky like a bolt of lightning.

It was incredibly fast, leaving a visible, long trail of green, toxic smoke in the air.

"clang!"

The chainsaw sword barely touched one side of the spear, but failed to completely block it.

Before Henry could even feel the pain, he was sent flying like a rag doll by an absolutely irresistible and terrifying force.

The spear, carrying overwhelming kinetic energy, easily pierced through his breastplate.

The steel plate armor, the inner chainmail lining, and even the underlying skeleton were all torn apart like paper in front of this spear.

"Bang!"

Henry was propelled dozens of meters by the immense inertia and crashed heavily onto the deck.

The surrounding ordinary soldiers were thrown about by the shockwave.

Dark red blood flowed continuously down the rough spear shaft, pooling into a shocking puddle on the deck.

Henry gritted his teeth, enduring the excruciating pain that felt like it was tearing him apart, and slowly raised his head.

They looked in the direction from which the attack was coming.

Beyond Anastasius's still unhealed gash of flesh.

midair.

A mutated carrion fly, as large as a small fighter jet, hovered silently there.

And on the broad back of that giant rotting fly.

A colossal figure, clad in a power armor far larger and with a more intricate and twisted design than that of a regular Plague Warrior, stood there silently, like a statue.

Beside him, countless visible green, deadly spores drifted and fell like raindrops.

The air around him began to distort reality due to the massive outflow of psychic energy.

Even from a distance of several kilometers, that distorted space.

Even the way ordinary people look at him becomes bizarre and blurry.

Even now, it is wearing power armor and its face is covered, even though they are separated by such a great distance.

Henry recognized it nonetheless.

The Plague Warrior Commander who once dragged himself into the illusion, and who was also recognized and had the opportunity to come into contact with the "Crown of Corruption".

Their gazes, separated by the battlefield, collided in mid-air as if they were physical objects.

In this brief standoff, even the sound of gunfire seemed to fade into the distance.

Henry gasped for breath, and with difficulty, he reached out his uninjured left hand and grasped the spear that had pierced him.

The moment of touch.

A searing pain, as if I were holding a branding iron, immediately shot through my palm.

The green, corrupting power spread wildly through his body like a flood bursting its banks, following the wound.

The shoulder area rapidly turned black and became necrotic at a rate visible to the naked eye.

Large swathes of disgusting gray-green fungal hyphae pierced through his skin, and as if they had come to life, began to greedily spread toward his heart.

But then...

A surge of intense heat erupted from the depths of Henry's heart.

The blood in his body seemed to turn into molten iron at that moment, flowing through his veins.

The Nergig mycelia that were just about to devour his life force instantly turned charred black upon contact with the intense heat.

Curl.

Large swaths of the plants withered, fell off, and turned into black ash.

Two completely opposite forces collided within this body.

Henry gritted his teeth, relying on the superhuman strength in his left arm.

Little by little, he pulled the barbed spear out of his shoulder.

Then the Lost Soul immediately began to heal Henry's wounds, even though Henry's chainsaw sword so greedily craved its master's blood.

far away.

Agripus, standing on the back of the rotting fly, watched silently as his chosen nemesis rose again, without throwing a second spear.

They are separated by such a great distance.

Henry could still clearly feel the overwhelming pressure emanating from the other person, like a tsunami.

It is already close to becoming a demon, and only one step away from ascending to demonhood.

A true warp demon.

Unlike Anastasius, he is a true demon with a status, capable of having his own territory in the warp.

With Agripus's arrival, the surrounding air is rapidly decaying.

The steel quickly developed rust and became as crisp as a biscuit.

On the barren steel deck, large patches of gray-green plague fungus began to grow out of nowhere, devouring the flesh and blood on the ground and even suppressing Anastasius's presence.

no doubt.

He is just one knight's life away from truly possessing the "Crown of Corruption".

As long as we overcome this obstacle in front of us.

He could easily sink the entire ship into the subspace, turning it into a meal for his loving father.

Several plague warriors ceased firing and began to retreat slowly and methodically, backing up to the outside of Anastasius's human wall. The human honor guards also sensed something was wrong and did not rashly cross the cover to launch a pursuit.

The soldiers on both sides, whether mortals or monsters, instinctively stopped moving and looked at the two people facing each other across the distance.

until----

The massive, bloody gash that had been blasted open around Anastasius finally began to heal again with a series of writhing movements.

The fleshy vines began to intertwine with each other.

It was like a door that slammed shut in front of the two armies, sealing off the gap to the outside world and cutting off the view.

Many human soldiers finally breathed a long sigh of relief, thinking that this terrible attack was over.

Just now.

On Anastasius's enormous body, all the exposed mouths of varying sizes opened simultaneously.

The demon cried out in agony.

"escape!!"

"Go back immediately!!"

"Abandon this place! Everyone, retreat!!"

With a frantic scream, Anastasius's mountain-like body began to contract violently and uncontrollably.

Countless tentacles, originally intended for defense, now went berserk, directly engulfing the humans still remaining in the front-line trenches.

Soldier.

They forcibly dragged everyone along and swept into the interior of the settlement like madmen.

Immediately afterwards, a bell rang.

The bell tolled, piercing through numerous obstacles and spreading into the darkness.

At that moment, the air seemed to transform into a calm, still surface of water.

A terrifying, dense green wave, visible to the naked eye, swept across the entire battlefield with overwhelming force.

Where the ripples swept across.

The outermost flesh and blood barrier of Anastasius instantly lost all its vitality, and began to turn black, rot, turn into pus, fester and fall off in large patches.

The second sound followed immediately.

More and deeper layers of flesh began to detach like a mudslide.

The countless eyeballs growing on the fleshy walls burst instantly, the tentacles withered, and the mouths emitted a chilling and shrill scream.

Henry's expression of such anguish was the first time he had seen the demon named Anastasius.

Its enormous face, which occupied half the wall, was completely distorted by the pain that went deep into its soul, and it let out a painful wail.

Finally, with the third chime, the entire forest of flesh and blood used to block the army of chaos could no longer bear the weight and began to collapse in large swathes.

The barrier, stretching for several kilometers, was continuously shattered and melted into pools of foul-smelling black swamps as the bells tolled.

It wasn't until Anastasius used his last bit of strength to send the last batch of human soldiers tumbling and crawling back to the actual defensive line that this continued.

The destructive tolling of the bells finally ceased.

Before the survivors, the wall of flesh and blood built by Anastasius had completely vanished, and there was nothing left to obstruct their view.