Chapter 186 Traitor
"Seven hundred and eighty-one." The golden skull opened and closed its jaws, vibrating in Dorn's palm. His chainsaw sword cut through the pack of hyenas leaping from the air. A surge of fiery demonic wind made the demon army's charge extremely fast. The flesh and blood of the warp and the hungry entities were wrapped and protected by the etheric torrent. The power that could almost tear the curtain of reality here could not invade the blade range of Dorn's one-handed longsword. Dorn ignored the stinking blood flowing from the body of the red devil. The golden skull continued: "Seven hundred and ninety."
"You can't count like this," Dorn said, "They have three heads, but you shouldn't count three times."
"You counted three times." The skull said in two voices, "Seven hundred and eighty... five."
Dorn turned around, and the chainsaw sword hummed to extend Dorn's will on it. The bodies of the dead were further torn and shattered after being pierced.
He threw away the bodies and observed a series of burning skulls coming from the sky, like meteors of disaster cutting the bloody sky. A row of grotesque brass war machines roared and lined up at the edge of the battlefield, igniting the terrifying furnace with corpses.
Dorn accurately cut off a string of charred skulls shot out from the skull cannon. The violent explosion caused by this action suddenly seized the part of his senses used for listening, and a rumbling and strong vibration was stimulated in his head. Before he recovered from it, a blood-red demon driving some kind of armored mechanical beast rushed towards him, launching an inhuman charge with the momentum of attacking the outer wall of the city. Dorn avoided the sharp edge, slapped his long sword horizontally, and tore the small red demon off the back of the beast with spikes, stirring the sword edge to tear it apart.
His hearing was still blocked by the explosion just now, and his senses were tightly compressed in his head. The dense sound of swords colliding with swords and the vibration of flesh being cut were far away from him, as if the sand and dust blocked the existence of hearing while covering his vision. Remove his golden skull.
"Eight hundred and twenty-two," the golden skull said, "Is the skull cannon you just dismantled alive?"
"I don't know." Dorn answered, without hearing the sound coming out of his own mouth.
The vibration of the armor and the collision of metal and the fanatical roars filled his remaining hearing. His hearing was deceiving him, telling him that Rogal Dorn's self and these unconscious war-killing demons were the same kind of existence that could be mixed and called. Instead, his inner words came out from the golden skull outside. The incorruptible rune power and Dorn's will maintained a consistent and unshakable nature. Even if all his calmness and rationality did not exist in this golden armor body that was endlessly swinging the long sword that had begun to collapse, they were also placed in the words of the golden skull.
He kept thinking while fighting.
He counted, and sometimes adjusted the numbers because of misjudgment of the enemy's situation. He recorded the form of every strange creature that was caught in the buzzing sawtooth by the Storm Fang, the toughness of their horns, the maximum pressure that their bodies could withstand, and the possible meanings in their roars. Although he didn't know where this place was, he would hand over these data to people who could use them when he left.
He consciously maintained complete rationality, because - to be honest, some World Eaters made him see the consequences of surrendering the battle to instinctive reactions. He took it as a warning.
Among the pure demons and deformed evil creatures, another kind of enemy began to appear in groups. They were wearing armor that was familiar to Dorne, but compared with the Mark II armor commonly used by the army now, it seemed to be improved.
The original color of the ceramic steel armor was covered with blood, and the logo was cut off by the blade, replaced by an extremely blasphemous dark logo composed of horizontal bars and vertical stripes.
A large number of spikes and inhuman blasphemous features extended from all the gaps in their limbs. Weapons and limbs merged with each other. The brains that would have brought them powerful computing power were replaced by a rage without impurities and abandonment of thinking, and the mind paid for a more crazy fighting instinct.
"Astartes?" said the golden skull.
"Yes." Dorn confirmed this.
This confused Dorn. He had never heard of any legion that had a large number of mutated or uniformly expelled warriors now - there were exceptions, such as Perturabo's secret mission executors, no, that didn't count.
In any case, he killed them like killing demons. Since these former warriors were against him, their only remaining identity was the enemy.
Within every second, several effective attacks were used by Dorn. Not carrying a shield was an unexpected mistake. He used more solid combat skills to overcome all of this and defeat the multiple attacks that were surrounded from all directions of the body. These Astartes-like warriors brought a more carefully planned raid, but they were still unable to hurt a Primarch.
He walked by fighting in the bloody swamp, making the corpses of his enemies into organic matter with no other meaning except stepping stones. They fell within his blade and became part of the scorched earth in the yellow sand. In this swamp mixed with blood and mud and the sand plain covered by trauma and strong wind, he only owned this small piece of nothingness.
The blood of the enemy spilled into Dorne's golden armor from the cracks and seeped into his inner clothes, making him feel bound and stiff. They penetrated every inch of his skin, every drop of blood, every bone, and every trace of consciousness. Even so, his heart was still calm, without madness, and killing was only equivalent to survival.
In the core of this chaos and violence, in the eternal blood-sand storm of axes, swords, hammers, and chainsaws, the golden armor of the Primarch became the only constant hurricane center, steadily driving the attack trajectory of the entire Unborn and the Corrupted Warriors forward, like a still eye in a crimson storm.
"Are you going deeper into this area, or retreating backwards?" the skull asked. "Are you looking for your way?"
"I'm moving forward," Dorn said to himself.
His hearing was recovering, and the whole world of blood was getting closer to him. In addition to the small demons and Astartes, there were also some different giant war machines approaching him. Those huge red demons held huge swords and claws that seemed to be able to blast and crush all the enemies in front of them. The hot blood torrents and spit bombardments that burst out from their throats and cannons baked the sand on the ground into a charred carbonized structure.
The attack of the larger demons finally left scorch marks on his armor, and a few knives penetrated his golden armor. Dorn ignored these slight pains expressionlessly and fought back.
He blocked the flail's attack with the outside of his arm. This attack was heavier than he thought, and his bones made a slight friction sound.
He protected the golden skull and stabbed out the long sword. A handful of blood turned into a raging fire and flew out from the unprotected abdomen of the armored red devil. Dorn turned his head to avoid it, and his steps turned. The blood-red devil immediately flew back. The broken black wing membrane fanned the hot wind. The hellish flames spewed out from the breath and burned Dorn's right shoulder. Dorn quickly changed his position and chopped from the chest armor to the legs with a sword, cutting the demon who wanted to fly up and adjust his position to the ground.
"Watch out... behind." The skull said, and the voice became incoherent.
Dorn turned around and pierced through the two warriors with a sword, raised it up and threw it out quickly.
The fallen mutant Astartes warriors climbed up from the ground. They seemed to be unable to be killed, and the golden skull's suppression of them was also weakening. The void area under their feet also shrank, and they could hardly stand anymore. Dorn took a moment to look at it, and saw cracks on the orange-yellow gem on the skull. He stubbornly held the chipped chainsaw sword tightly and counted for himself.
Two thousand nine hundred and ninety-six, he thought. No, it is more appropriate to count the resurrected enemies only once, so it is two thousand three hundred and seventy-eight.
"You... should throw me away." The skull said, and the runes cracked and the flow rate was slowing down. It might lose its effectiveness in a short time. Dorn knew that he would be injured later for protecting the integrity of this skull, but he didn't care.
After the voice of the skull was weakened, Dorn vaguely heard another voice sounding directly in his heart. It was a savage persuasion, a furious advice, a shallow mockery and a call from the highest and farthest.
Blood sacrifice. Answer me. Fight for me.
Dorn did not answer, holding the golden skull in his arms and protecting it with his gauntlet. This triggered a long laugh, harsh and disgusting.
The laughter faded away from him, gradually evolving into a distant echo. At the same time, the entire bloody sand began to change.
Bones emerged at his feet, ordinary human bones, deformed demon bones, and the special sternum of Space Marines. These things raised the ground where he was, lifting him up from the blood-red sand. His pupils shrank, and he immediately jumped off the pile of bones and supported his body with his long sword.
It was this force that caused the Storm Fang to break directly from the middle, the chain fell, the metal cracked, and the length was halved. The primarch staggered and stood firm. The flying fragments cut through his side face, leaving a bleeding wound through the brow bone. The blood-red color dyed into his eyes.
Dorn closed one eye, and the blood and sweat made his eyeballs hurt. He hugged the golden skull tightly, adjusted to the new center of gravity of the broken sword, and re-examined the changing battlefield.
The ground composed of some kind of ancient stone slabs was covering the surface of the yellow sand, with craters and twisted flagpoles everywhere, and the fragments cracked in the vibration. Among the skeletons, more strange Astartes crawled out, and their armors vibrated. It was at this moment that he noticed that a strange and evil silence was quietly descending. Because no crazy enemy roared.
Right in front of him, at the end of the bloody sky and the broken walls, a large enough shadow appeared. The huge monster was almost twice as tall as Rogal Dorn, wrapped in a blood-red cloak, and some heavy and huge weapon was also wrapped in thick cloth, making it difficult to identify.
A terrifying bloody aura rushed towards Dorn, accompanied by silent lightning and destructive power ripples. The deep red erosion shattered the stone slabs, causing the chariots and spears to collapse, and the military flags, emblems and all the symbols of the glorious battle were crushed into powder by unparalleled violence. Those ordinary demons were directly pierced by an extremely sharp force, and their black and bright red bodies were cut and broken wantonly, and were swept silently in all directions.
All the brutality and frenzy were suppressed by the dead silence, turning it into another astonishing atmosphere of terror. In this silence, the gem inlaid on the forehead of the golden skull held by Rogal Dorn suddenly broke into pieces. Following this ominous sign, the entire gem that contained the power suddenly broke into several cracks, and the golden skull no longer shone.
Dorn's heart twitched, and he silently hung the skull back on his waist, holding the broken sword in both hands to welcome the giant approaching him. It was so tall that Dorne had to look up to see the top of the head of this strange monster shrouded in blood mist and thick smoke, and the black and red wing membranes spread out in the blood mist. He couldn't see the face clearly, but a guess was coming to him along with his calm thinking, causing his will to begin to oscillate surprisingly and rarely.
He had never seen this enemy, but he gradually felt a terrible commonality from the other party, just like they were born in the same way, they... are connected by blood.
"Your skull is right." A voice said, heavy, hoarse and strange, retaining reason, and even hiding emotions, like a replica formed by the residue of something burning.
The terrifying power hidden in the other party's body made Dorne blink hard, squeezing out the sweat and blood that fell into his eyes. The primarch's eyes were already a blur of bright red. Dorne stood with his feet apart, unshakable.
The monster in the blood mist continued to make sounds, and the emotion became vivid, and heavy anger spread out from the monster.
"Throw it away. It can no longer protect you... Rogal Dorn."
"Who are you?" Dorn asked, his voice clear and calm, as if the countless killings before had never existed, the sword was still sharp, and the golden bones were still there. "A brother who has not returned? A future traitor?"
"You are the fallen traitor!" The monster roared suddenly, and the red light in its eyes illuminated the blood mist, and the ground around it burned and shattered. It was halfway through its words, and it had already swung its weapon with its claws with roar and fury, the brass tip pierced through the wrapping, and the unparalleled hatred turned into a merciless force, smashing down on Dorn's head.
Dorn dodged on the spot, and the weapon still pierced his calf, peeling off half of the leg armor and tearing out a bloody piece of muscle.
Too fast, he thought. The other party moved too fast, and his eyesight could hardly catch it. This was undoubtedly beyond the limits of the Primarch. Some kind of ascension or transformation must have come upon the other party's body that was doubled in height. This was not an enemy he could face.
Dorn tried his best to analyze what he saw, ignoring the burning pain in his legs, trying to see more details of the battle. Before he could do that, another huge force hit his breastplate. The golden sky eagle on his chest was dented after this heavy blow, pressing into his chest cavity, squeezing his rapidly beating heart and struggling lungs. The crisp sound of broken bones burst into his buzzing ears, and he felt his blood spurting out from between his lips.