Chapter 438: Grot Marjack, Truly Ascended to Godhood!
As it turned out, the scripture wasn't just a corruption purge. It also worked as a psychic amplifier, sharpening Kian's perception of the Warp.
The effect showed up plainly in his Focus stat, which had climbed all the way to 80.
He figured his psychic ability right now was probably closing in on Silentium's level.
He hadn't expected this many unexpected upsides. Delighted, Kian thanked Chaplain Reisach properly.
Three full days, and the whole time the Astartes Chaplain hadn't done a single other thing, just worked non-stop inscribing scripture into Kian's body. The sheer time and effort he'd poured into it said everything about how grateful the man was for the rescue of his Chapter.
Reisach told him:
"Count Voss, keep your faith strong. Do not squander the favor and the power the Emperor has granted you."
With everything settled, the Astartes climbed into their flyers and scattered back to the front to hold the line against the Ork tide, leaving the bunker mostly empty.
Kian took the drive Apothecary Desai had given him and returned to Inquisitor Trasolh's flagship, made his way to his Sanctum, and started working on the black needle.
In the medical station of his Second Sanctum, plugging in the drive automatically unlocked the Death Roulette formula.
Feed in one Onslaught-Stimm, one strength-boosting stimulant, and one toxin-dart, let it run through an hour of fabrication, and it would spit out three black needles in one batch.
Kian started the build right away, then waited, buzzing with excitement.
There was something about gambling with his own life that gave him an odd, giddy rush.
While he waited, he hit the training area. After his second tier of Khorne's Blessing, he could now bench a full ton for reps.
After a brutal training session that left him utterly wrung out, he headed back to the medical station.
The black needles were finished. He pulled one out, queued up another batch, then sat on the bed turning the needle over in his hands.
The thing was pitch black from end to end, and just looking at it gave him an uneasy feeling.
Fifty-fifty odds. Half the time, you came out the other side a mini-Superman, all three stats spiking by a third. The other half, you just dropped dead, no take-backs.
But it wasn't only useful in combat. It had daily-life applications too.
With strength and endurance up a third, he could lift weights he normally couldn't budge, forcing his way past thresholds his regular training could never touch.
At this point, without some kind of forced augmentation, his body had basically plateaued on strength and endurance gains. He needed something unconventional to break through the ceiling.
Shooting up a black needle, borrowing power that wasn't technically his, and using it for irregular training, that was exactly that kind of method.
With that thought, Kian stopped hesitating and jabbed the needle into his arm.
"Last time I used one of these it killed me straight off the bat. This time it's gotta land on the win side, right?"
He muttered to himself, waiting quietly. It didn't take long before his head swam, he coughed up a mouthful of blood, and he just... died.
A few hours later, when his consciousness came back online, he stared up at the ceiling of the Sanctum and swore.
"Goddamn it, dead again? I don't accept this!"
He grabbed another black needle and jabbed it in. A few seconds later, same thing: head swam, coughed blood, dead again.
His consciousness surfaced once more, waking up on the bed in the Sanctum, and this time he was grinding his teeth.
"Wait, what happened to the fifty-fifty odds? No way, I refuse to believe this!"
He grabbed another needle, jabbed it in, head swam, coughed blood, died, woke up again.
Kian stared up at the ceiling of the Sanctum, thoroughly lost.
Wondering if maybe he'd misread the instructions, he pulled up the black needle's description in the system and read through it carefully.
Yep, fifty-fifty odds, plain as day. So why the hell was it landing on death every single time?
He grabbed yet another needle, pointed it at himself, and muttered:
"I'm not cursed with bad luck, I'm not cursed with bad luck, I'm NOT cursed with bad luck!"
Then he jabbed it in and waited, breath quickening, for the roll to land.
The familiar dizziness hit his brain instantly. He coughed up blood, glaring furiously as he lay there.
"Rigged. This is DEFINITELY rigged!!"
Then his legs kicked out straight, and off he went to meet his maker, again.
During the waiting period between death and respawn, Kian retained a hazy sliver of awareness, something like a lucid-dream state.
In that state, he was normally offered three options.
One: respawn in his Sanctum on Agri-World Secundus-496b. Two: respawn in his Sanctum aboard Inquisitor Trasolh's flagship.
Three: just drift off to sleep properly, a normal sleep, and wake up once his body finished reconstructing.
But this time, half-conscious and drifting in that lucid state, Kian found a fourth option waiting for him.
The fourth option was a ball of green light, its substance impossible to place, roughly the size of a wash basin.
Kian could feel it, that ball of light was radiating an immense will, some kind of faith-derived power.
Out of pure instinct and curiosity, still half-lucid, dream-Kian chose the green ball of light.
The next instant, his awareness snapped sharply into focus. He opened his eyes to a sight that left him utterly baffled.
Stretched out before him was an endless mountain range of scrap metal, and crawling all over those junk-heaps were tens of thousands of Gretchin.
The Gretchin knelt with their hands pressed together, praying without pause.
Their fervent prayer had gathered into a powerful WAAAGH field, and that field was exactly the ball of devotional light he'd seen in the lucid-dream state.
Kian was baffled. Wasn't he supposed to respawn in his Sanctum? How had he ended up in front of a crowd of Gretchin instead?
And what the hell was going on with his body?
He looked down and found his body was a crude puppet cobbled together out of sheet metal, plastic, and scrap wood, the whole thing painted green, with a pair of wings jury-rigged out of LED panels stuck to its back.
His right hand was a length of crude wire, gripping a plastic toy wand.
As for his head, it was a rice cooker, with eyes and a mouth painted on in green, and two triangular scraps of sheet metal bolted to the sides for pointed ears.
Kian's soul had somehow, inexplicably, ended up trapped inside a pile of garbage shaped like a person.
Still trying to make sense of it, the chanting of the kneeling Gretchin in front of him reached his ears:
"Grot Marjack, Grot Marjack, we pray to you in devotion, please bestow upon us the magic monkey that brings happiness to all Gretchin!"
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