The Bizarre Adventures of Cloud Hammer

"Just keep going."

----

After re-equipping, Apu and his two companions, who had changed into Hades Terminators, and a whole team of Indomitable Terminators were transported by Gloria to the location of her previous support team.

"Hey, hey, hey, where are you guys, Xianyu?"

Apu called Xianyu and the others on the comms, but received no response.

"Communication is interrupted?" Awei asked.

"I don't know, the display on my end is normal, Gloria?"

"I can contact them here. They have entered the pollution center. It may be that the subspace energy interferes with the communication." Gloria replied after confirmation.

"Then let's hurry over there. There's something wrong with the fragments in the lower nest."

There were only sporadic enemies on the way forward for Apu and his two companions. After entering the next area, they saw mountains of corpses and a heavy firepower team guarding the rear.

The heavy firepower team had been defending this gap for a long time and their ammunition was running out, but even in close combat, the zombie horde could not break through their defense line.

There were losses as well. Two 'battle brothers' were killed by the enemy's suicide attack. The blood flowing from the broken power armor made it hard to tell that they were combat soldiers. It can only be said that Gloria's camouflage was too good. As long as the whole body was not torn or broken, there would be no flaws.

"Why does it smell so bad in here?" Brother Ou wanted to pinch his nose, but his hand could only touch the Terminator's helmet.

"They killed the Nurgle beast here before, and the smell is still there." Gloria said.

"Even the beasts of Nurgle have come out?"

"This fragment is the source of Nurgle's pollution, so it's not surprising that Nurgle beasts appear." said Apu.

"Just keep going."

Chapter 26: Feeling inferior to the Minotaur...Breaking Defense

The hatch at the end of the passage opened, and Eryu walked into a very dirty and messy area. The air was slightly foul, and the flickering lights made Eryu feel dazed. Hadn't he just been in the lower nest? He still remembered that the team had reached the core of the pollution area. Luochen reminded everyone to be careful. He hadn't even taken a few steps when he ran to this place.

Eryu looked carefully at the surrounding environment and determined the space he was in through some sounds.

This is a spaceship, and it's in space.

"Isn't this the pirate ship?"

Er Yu immediately realized that this place was exactly the same as the bottom deck of the pirate ship in his memory.

"Is it an illusion? Or am I not thinking straight and seeing the future?"

Having said that, Eryu knew very well in his heart that this must be an illusion. He couldn't even contact Gloria, so what else could it be but an illusion?

Although Gloria sometimes fails to deliver, her role as everyone's protective umbrella and logistical support is impeccable. As long as she is still in this universe, there is no possibility of not being able to contact her.

"Let me see what happens next."

There was no way to break this illusion for the time being, so Er Yu had to act according to his previous memory. He also recognized this area, as it was here that he met those slave laborers.

When Eryu was about to open the door that locked the slave laborer, a hand was placed on Eryu's shoulder. Without hesitation, Eryu immediately wanted to draw his sword and chop behind him.

"Stop! It's me, Eryu."

"Luochen?"

Er Yu turned his head and saw Luochen appearing silently beside him. He still remembered that Luochen came to the pirate ship with Apu. At this time, Luochen should still be on the Blue Silver Sword.

So the falling dust in front of me is——

Fake!

Er Yu slashed down with his sword, and Luo Chen was so frightened that he knelt on one knee and took the sword with his bare hands, cursing:

"Eryu, are you crazy? I'm a real person!"

"Is it really Luochen? Then why are you in this illusion? Are you also affected?"

"You know this is an illusion. Is it possible that you're the only one who's been affected? As for me, I'm definitely here to help you."

Luochen was not talking nonsense. After entering the core area, he and Alan soon discovered the mental attack hidden in the echo. The two psychics naturally would not fall for it. Xianyu was not affected at all except that he felt it was a bit noisy. The rest of the 'Astartes' were fighters who were not affected by mental attacks. Only Eryu was dragged into the illusion.

At first, Luochen and Xianyu wondered if Gloria had cut corners on Eryu's work. Then Gloria immediately came out and said that it was none of her business, because she had added psychic resistance to everyone when she modified them.

"Then how did I get pulled into this hallucination?"

Er Yu understood that psychic resistance was magic resistance, but the question was, since he had magic resistance, how did he get hit?

"Gloria speculates that a certain part of the echo resonated with one of your memories, taking advantage of the loophole."

"Is there any loophole for this?"

"Chaos is like this, pervasive."

Luochen began to tell Eryu the origin of the fragments. According to Gloria, these fragments were integrated with a part of the pirate ship, which was taken over by a frigate fleet after they left.

Er Yu also remembered that Gloria said that the Imperial Navy would most likely come, so he left with peace of mind.

"Isn't it a good thing to be accepted by the Imperial Navy? It's better than drifting in space forever."

"It's okay to change the world view, but this is Warhammer 40."

Er Yu was speechless. He had been living so comfortably recently that he had forgotten what the hell Warhammer 40K was.

Judging from the time it took for this frigate to arrive in Attis, they arrived shortly after everyone left, and they were corrupted in such a short time, which makes people wonder if they did something bad to attract the attention of Chaos.

"Eryu, please proceed according to your memory first. I also want to know what this illusion wants to show you." Luochen was very curious about how this frigate formation was destroyed by him.

"Wait, Luochen, will there be any problem with you appearing here? Will the guy who pulled me into the illusion discover you?" Eryu asked.

"I'm just a psychic projection now, what can go wrong? That thing can't find me. It's not powerful enough to directly invade your brain. Gloria is watching too."

After Er Yu was charged, Gloria monitored his mind at all times, and the psychic resistance was still effective. This meant that although the enemy took advantage of the memory resonance to find some loopholes, the other party could not influence Er Yu's thinking through hallucinations, and could not even interfere with the progress of the hallucinations. They could only let the hallucinations follow Er Yu's memories.

"Okay, let's continue reading."

According to his memory, Eryu opened the rooms where the slaves were locked up, and the slaves worshipped Eryu just as he remembered. Eryu still felt uncomfortable with this behavior.

"Even watching it a second time I still feel a little nauseous."

"Religious beliefs are like this. Space Marun has become an angel. If Lorjia had persevered a little longer, he would have become the Pope of the State Religion. But that's not right. Without Lorjia, the rebellion wouldn't have been easy to start."

Nearly ten thousand years ago, the Astartes were simply Space Marines, the high-level soldiers used by the Emperor to conquer the galaxy (it is still the same now). However, under the guidance of the state religion, everything related to the Emperor was given a religious color. The Emperor became the God-Emperor, the Primarchs became demigods (Sons of God), and the Astartes became angels.

After Eryu left according to his memory, the illusion jumped directly to the time when Eryu returned to the lower deck again, and then informed the slave workers of the impending arrival of the Imperial Navy.

At this time, there was a glimmer of hope in the eyes of the slaves. They all believed what Er Yu said and believed that the Imperial Navy would come to rescue them.

A few hours after Eryu left, the Imperial Navy did appear. The navy sailors first boarded the pirate ship with boarding torpedoes, and after discovering that there were only slaves on the ship, they questioned the commander of the formation.

"Clean it all up."

When this sentence sounded in the communicator, Eryu only felt his blood pressure surging sharply, and Luochen also had a face as sweaty as soybeans.

Afterwards, the sailors took all the thousands of slaves directly to a boarding area and asked them to stay there while they had other things to do.

Then the Imperial Navy opened the hatch and threw the slave workers directly into space.

"..."

"..."

It was not until then that the slaves realized that the imperial navy was not here to save them. The light given to them by the angels was extinguished. When hope was shattered, the deepest despair emerged.

Er Yu watched as the slave child who had spoken to him was thrown into space. This child might have just been imagining what his future life would be like and whether he could meet the angel again, but...

Haha, this is all just fantasy.

After watching this scene, Eryu was speechless and didn't know what to say:

"Are these idiots mentally ill? With just this few people, how can they…"

He pressed his head. Even with Astartes' thinking speed, he couldn't figure out why the Imperial Navy did this. Could it be to save a little supplies?

"In this shitty universe, human lives are not counted." Luo Chen could guess the reason to some extent. The physical fitness of these slaves would not create much value even if they were thrown into the hive city. They were not even worthy of being a burden to the Emperor. It would be better to get rid of them directly to save some resources.

This is not something that is difficult to understand. There are too many people in the Human Empire. There are so many interstellar troops that are picked from tens of thousands of miles away, and this number of slave laborers will not make a splash no matter where they are thrown.

Look at the Aitis Hive these days. Not counting the Lower Hive and the Bottom Hive, the two places with the largest population, the number of people who died in the top of the tower and the Upper Hive alone is many times more than the number of slave workers.

"I roughly know the whole story."

The actions of the Imperial Navy and the current Nurgle contamination allowed Fallen to guess how things would develop.

Despair is also a part controlled by Nurgle, and the despair of the slaves when they died, like falling into hell, formed an echo in the warp. There may be countless such echoes in the warp, but this echo just attracted Nurgle's attention. When this frigate formation entered the warp, the pirate ship that had loaded these slaves became the carrier of despair. In addition, the damage to the pirate ship created an undetectable gap in Geller's position, which allowed the Nurgle demons to successfully invade the pirate ship.

But this alone was not enough to corrupt the entire formation, so the Nurgle demon began its operation.

The first to be corrupted were the sailors who remained on the pirate ship. Relying on the echoes on the pirate ship, these sailors were quickly corrupted and turned into believers of Nurgle. These sailors held a sacrificial ceremony on the ship, which set off a warp turbulence that surrounded the entire formation, making it impossible for the formation to leave the warp quickly.

Then the Nurgle demon began to reduce the four to three. It was lucky that among these sailors there were Children of the Void who were born on the warships. Their relatives were on the frigates of the formation. Relying on the blood connection, the demon successfully invaded three more ships, and the corruption spread to the entire formation.

If the fleet commander could react at this time, the frigate formation might still be saved, but this is the Storm Star Field, the imperial territory farthest from the Eye of Terror. The frequency of Chaos appearing here is far less than in other star fields. People born in this star field may not encounter a Chaos invasion for several generations, so they relaxed.

And this was the most fatal blow to this formation.

The spread of corruption has caused this formation's time to fall into a cycle of seven, which is the first condition.

After disrupting the spirits of the entire formation, the demon used a ritual to allow the pirate ship to merge into the formation's frigates, leaving only three frigates in the entire formation.

At this point, the second condition is also completed.

Sevenfold blessings, three holy emblems, when these two conditions are fulfilled, it will be too late to do anything else, and everything will be irreversible.

In this way, before anyone knew it, the frigate fleet was completely corrupted.

"The demon probably wants to create a flaw in your emotions. Once it finds a gap, the Corruption will take advantage of it. This is a common tactic used by Chaos."

"Then it really found the wrong person."

If Eryu was really an ordinary Emperor's son Astartes, he might really have mental weaknesses because of this, but Eryu is not like that. With Gloria's protection and knowing what Warhammer 40k is like, he will only feel disgusted by such things.

He felt very sorry that he couldn't save those slaves, but so many days had passed and he would not be sad about it. It could only be said that it was bad luck that such a thing happened.

"Honestly, this demon might as well have shown a Minotaur movie, and I'd probably feel worse that way."

"Slaanesh might indeed do such a thing, but alas this is Nurgle."

At this point, the two of them had no interest in the subsequent hallucinations. Just like Eryu said, it would be better to watch a movie instead of this Nurgle demon. Even if they couldn't watch a short movie, they could try watching Snow Eater, so that his emotions might fluctuate more.

Luochen clapped his hands, and the two regained consciousness. They had already reached the location of the fragments. Xianyu and the Astartes had already fought with the demon in the fragments. This Nurgle demon merged with the fragments of the spacecraft. The armor of the frigate gave it extremely strong protection. Pustules and tentacles grew from the fragments, spraying corrosive mucus while constantly lashing out. Many "battle brothers" were knocked out and their lives or deaths were unknown.

Alan used his psychic power to attack the Nurgle demon. A layer of psychic shield blocked the spray of slime for him and the warriors around him. He looked back:

"Is the problem solved? Lord Dust."

"nailed it."

"Come and help me once you've finished!"

Xianyu used his dual chainsaw swords to cut off a tentacle, but the next second more tentacles grew out and rushed towards him.

"You're not dead, why are you so anxious?"

Eryu stepped forward and fought side by side with Xianyu. The firepower on the side helped the two of them attract the attention of the devil. After seizing an opportunity, the two rushed to the devil and threw the hot melt bombs on their bodies over.

The Nurgle demon sensed the danger, but its body, which was fused with the battleship fragments, could not avoid the bombs. A small half of its body was melted by the hot melt bombs, but the Nurgle demon fused with the fragments did not die so easily.

"Why are you turning your sword against me? Didn't you see what happened to those poor people?" A voice sounded in Eryu's ears. He couldn't understand what was being said, but he could understand the meaning of this sentence.

This is the Daemon of Nurgle speaking.

"I saw it, what does it have to do with you?"

"You should understand the hypocrisy and horror of humankind. Only a loving Father can respond and save these pitiful lives. Everyone can play carefree in the loving Father's garden."

"It has nothing to do with me. I don't believe in any god. This method of recruiting people is too old-fashioned." Er Yu said as he was about to give orders to continue sending a few more melta bombs to the Nurgle demons.

New gunshots rang out from the rear of the team. Looking back, they saw that it was Apu and his two companions and the Terminator Squad that had arrived.

Chapter 27 Farewell to Ideals

The Nurgle demon died so fast that it disappeared in a flash. After all, it was just a stronger ordinary demon. It could not reach the level of the Great Demon, and the Plague Bearer was not on the same level as it. It could only be said that it was stuck here, unable to go up or down.

Even though the battleship's armor was integrated to enhance its defense, no matter how hard the shell was, it would be melted into a pool of molten iron in front of the Terminator team's multi-barreled melt.

"Ah, why did you die?"

After the demon died, his body dissipated from the real universe, and the remaining armor was scattered on the ground. In order to avoid the possibility of the corpse resurrecting, Apu ordered the Terminator team to burn all the things related to the fragments here.