"Something's not right…"
Bruce blew apart the cultist lunging at him with a single shot.
The deeper he pushed into the Hand of Fate, the more he realized he was circling the same stretch of territory over and over, like he was trapped in some supernatural loop.
And the heretics aboard were even worse. They just kept respawning endlessly. Clear one area, and another pack would appear in the next. There was no end to them.
Especially when Bruce reached what looked like a cargo hold and tried to search for usable supplies, only to find the place packed with heretics surging toward him like a zombie tide.
That left Bruce baffled. Where had Erebus found so many brainless cultists? None of them had even the slightest shred of sense. All they knew how to do was scream and rush forward to die.
If they knew they were going to die, why couldn't they understand that?
Before long, the bodies Bruce had cut down had piled into a mound, but even then there were still heretics clutching knives and trying to crawl over it, as if landing one hit would somehow let them one-shot him.
Bang.
Bruce fired the last round in the magazine, and another enemy exploded into chunks, joining the mountain of corpses and blood.
Now the only ranged weapon he still had was an overworked plasma pistol, plus five throwing knives and his twin lightning claws.
At moments like this, Bruce deeply regretted not waiting for the others before charging ahead. His ammunition reserves were far too low. And unlike a game, there were no conveniently placed mystery ammo boxes lying around.
After confirming the area was finally clear, Bruce began searching for supplies. Unfortunately, after checking several cargo crates, he found nothing but various materials for building mobile suits.
Unbelievable. So the Word Bearers were running the same racket as the Americans, huh?
Of course, not every hold was full of raw material. Thanks to his broad knowledge base and a bit of luck, Bruce did find one crate full of weapons and ammunition.
The only problem was… none of it was usable.
Whether it was chainblades, boltguns, or bolt shells, every last piece bore the marks of Chaos.
Bruce felt sick just looking at them.
Things tainted by Chaos were technically usable, sure, but the machine spirit in your armor would absolutely throw a fit the moment you touched them. They were the kind of thing that made you want to die just from brushing against them.
Bruce set several charges around the cargo, intending to blow it all up when he left.
If I can't use it, then I'm sure as hell not letting you use it either.
That was the only way he could think of to spite the enemy.
Boom—
Real men never look back at explosions.
The moment Bruce walked out of the cargo section, he triggered the fuse. A chain of blasts rippled behind him, promising ruin for heretics and servants of Chaos alike.
As he continued forward, studying the bizarre environment around him, Bruce sank deeper into thought.
He had boarded this ship with the rest of the assault team.
And yet nearly an hour had passed, and there had not been a second explosion.
That was weird.
There was no way only he had successfully arrived by torpedo, right?
If that was really the case, then things were getting ridiculous.
"Hm?!"
Bruce suddenly heard a burst of static from his communicator.
He halted at once, putting his back to the wall as he watched both corridors to either side. Then he started fiddling with his gear, but Bruce had clearly overestimated his own technical ability.
No matter how much he adjusted it, the damned channel kept cutting in and out.
"This piece-of-junk comms unit… can you be useful for once?! I'm doing the Emperor's work here!"
The instant he cursed, the signal snapped into clarity.
Alfred's voice came through.
"Acting Commander? Where are you? Can you hear me?"
Alfred sounded frantic.
Because the others had arrived only a half-step behind Bruce, Alfred had spent all this time trying to locate him. Yet inside this obviously Warp-warped vessel, despite killing his share of heretics and regrouping with several teammates, he had found no trace of Bruce.
At this point, all he could hope was that Bruce was still alive.
If anything happened to Bruce, then everyone else was doomed too. Compared to what would follow, being flayed alive would count as a relatively light punishment.
"Alfred, I hear you. What's your situation over there?" Bruce replied at once.
See? No matter how slow they were, there was no way an entire hour could pass without any sign of them.
But then why, after stirring up this much chaos aboard the Hand of Fate, had he sensed no explosions at all? That made no sense.
"Acting Commander! Thank the Emperor, we finally reached you!"
Alfred sounded immediately more energized.
He quickly explained, "We successfully completed the task of crippling this heretic vessel. It's immobile now, and friendly forces are on the way."
"But there's bad news."
He paused.
"This heretic warship's interior seems to have been affected by the Warp. In theory, we're inside a strange Warp node. We have to locate the ritual site the heretics are using and destroy it before this ship can return to normal."
"Damn it! I knew something was off."
Bruce could not help swearing.
No matter how large this battle barge was, under normal circumstances he should have reached the bridge by now. Instead, all he'd found were repeating spaces and twisted layouts.
Warp maze.
"Acting Commander, how are things on your end?" Alfred asked.
"Me? I'm fine, mostly. I'm just out of ammo."
Bruce gave a simple summary of his condition.
As for all the heretic soldiers he had killed along the way, that hardly seemed worth mentioning. It was not some grand achievement.
He was an Astartes. Fighting ordinary mortal troops was like sending a college student to spar with kindergarteners. It did not matter how many of them there were.
"I'm trying to use psychic detection to lock onto your position," Alfred said. "Once I do, we'll come meet up with you. Sound good?"
"Meet up…"
Bruce thought for a moment, then pulled the map gadget out of a hidden compartment in his armor.
After a quick scan and lock-on, he found seven extremely obvious green dots—friendly units. Besides that, there was a dense scattering of red dots marking enemy positions.
Yet another miraculous gadget from Doraemon.
Even in a space this twisted by the Warp, it could still generate a full tactical map and identify both friend and foe in detail. Ridiculous.
"Acting Commander?" Alfred called again, thinking the signal had dropped when Bruce did not answer immediately.
"No need to rush. I'm right above you. Give me a moment—I'll head down and regroup with you."
As he spoke, Bruce pulled out another gadget, a circular object that looked like a rubber ring.
With a bit of fiddling, he expanded it until it was just large enough for him to pass through, then placed it flat on the floor.
At once, a perfect hole opened beneath his feet.
The Pass-Through Ring.
Ignore material. Ignore structure. If you want a hole, you get a hole. Adamantium, webway walls—none of it mattered.
Thud.
Bruce dropped through the opening to the deck below.
Just as he reached back to retrieve the ring, a vision flashed through his head.
A psychic strike he could not possibly see was about to hit him.
If it landed, he would die.
At the instant the ring shrank and fell back into his hand, Bruce rolled aside.
A rippling bolt of energy struck the wall where he had been standing.
The steel plating melted away in an instant, leaving behind a circular hole of molten metal nearly three meters across.
Bruce drew his plasma pistol and fired toward the source of the attack while pulling out a detector.
The radar on its screen clearly showed something invisible moving nearby.
Unfortunately, while his shot may have hit the enemy, the creature had no proper physical body, so the plasma blast simply blew another hole in the wall.
"Damn it."
Bruce caught the Pass-Through Ring again and backed away cautiously, thinking through his options.
Fighting an enemy hidden in the dark while you were fully exposed was never ideal.
Then, once more, a flash of the future crossed his mind.
A Chaos daemon, claws brimming with psychic power, lunging forward and punching straight through his chest.
Crackle—
Bruce's lightning claw erupted with energy.
He swung toward where the daemon would be.
"AAAAAAARGH—!"
A bizarre, blue-skinned daemon was forced into visibility at once.
Using the primarch's weapon—or perhaps the weapon's inherent nature—Bruce tore open the veil between realspace and the Warp and seized the daemon hiding in the immaterial layer.
"Get back to the Warp!"
Bruce slammed the bloodied creature into the wall, then finished it with a plasma blast.
Its upper body vaporized, and the sneaky monster finally fell still.
Killing a valuable enemy like that should have been satisfying, but Bruce did not dare relax.
His teammates were still waiting below.
He resized the Pass-Through Ring again and dropped through.
"Hold fire! Friendly!"
Bruce shouted before he even landed.
The seven soldiers below had almost opened fire on him. Under the circumstances, it was only natural. Anyone dropping out of the ceiling like that was immediately suspicious.
"Acting Commander?!" Alfred stared at him in astonishment and relief.
At the same time, he could not help wondering just what kind of entrance that was.
Did that even make sense?
"Well, if I said I'd regroup with you quickly, of course I could do it."
Bruce let the ring shrink back down and hooked it over his gauntlet.
In a warped space like this, the thing was absurdly useful. Invaluable, really.
Too bad it could not be mass-produced. Otherwise, Bruce would have given one to every member of the Legion. In a crisis, it could genuinely save lives.
The assault team members exchanged glances, then nodded repeatedly.
Maybe this was just what made their Acting Commander extraordinary.
"Walfarin, what exactly is going on with you?"
Bruce quickly checked over the team. Once he confirmed no one was missing limbs, he relaxed—but when his eyes fell on the apothecary, he nearly lost it.
For some reason, everyone else looked more or less normal.
Only Walfarin stood out.
She was not wearing her helmet, and several jars were hanging from her waist and back. Inside each one was a fleshy lump suspended in fluid.
Everyone else had come here to fight.
She looked like she had come here to collect crafting materials.
At this rate, was she going to head for extraction before the battle was over?
"I'm collecting gene-seed," Walfarin answered matter-of-factly.
Bruce stared.
Two Blackshields, one Librarian, one Apothecary, three assault troopers with Raptor-style gear, and himself.
That made eight.
So where exactly had she gotten gene-seed from?
"The gene-seed she collected is the enemy's," one of the assault troopers explained, apparently reading Bruce's confusion.
"The enemy's?!" Bruce was even more shocked. He turned to Alfred. "You ran into the enemy's main force?"
"I didn't," Alfred said honestly. "I met up with them afterward."
"The two Blackshields killed one squad. The Apothecary killed three on her own."
Bruce was floored.
An entire squad, and they had won without losses?
What stunned him most, though, was Walfarin.
She had gone one against three, won, and harvested their gene-seed afterward.
But then—
"Walfarin. Throw those away."
Bruce's expression hardened as he gave the order.
"What? Why? I worked hard to collect these…"
She hugged the jars to her chest like a hawk guarding treasure.
"If I'm right, the Astartes you ran into were corrupted by Chaos."
"In that case, their gene-seed has no recovery value at all. Even if we brought it back, it would just become a disaster waiting to happen."
Anything touched by Chaos was basically coated in filth.
Why keep it?
"But I need those gene-seeds for research! How can I just throw them away?!" Walfarin protested.
Bruce went silent.
The two Blackshields moved behind her without a word and prepared to execute the problem.
No wonder the primarch exiled you.
"Setting aside whatever got you exiled in the first place," Bruce said slowly, "I think it's best not to mess with something this dangerous."
"Try not to create problems for yourself and the rest of us, Apothecary."
"...Fine…"
Seeing the atmosphere turn bad, Walfarin reluctantly removed the jars from her person and set them down.
Painful as it was, staying alive mattered more than carrying home experimental samples.
"Alfred, I've got something to show you. Then I need your help pinpointing the enemy's location. Can you do that?"
"I'll take a look."
Alfred nodded.
Bruce showed him the map gadget, and Alfred carefully memorized every detail. It did not take him long to understand what Bruce was asking for. He began working the problem with psychic calculations.
"Route planning complete. If this map is accurate, I can lead us to the target."
"Good. Lead the way."
Bruce felt much more at ease once Alfred spoke with such confidence.
"Understood."
This, Bruce thought, was the real value of having a Librarian in the squad.
Without Alfred, even with the coordinates and markers, simply finding a usable path would have taken a long time.
Because the inside of this ship was no longer just a three-dimensional structure.
It had become multidimensional.
You needed someone specialized to chart a path through it.
Under Alfred's guidance, the group advanced carefully. They moved in a strict four-and-four formation: the two Blackshields in Terminator armor at the front as the spearhead, with the Apothecary and the assault troopers covering the rear.
Then—
Another flash split through Bruce's mind.
The same kind of warning vision.
He stopped.
"On guard! We've got an ambush ahead!"
Bruce sent the warning over the squad's internal comms.
The team halted instantly.
The Blackshields deployed their force shields, while the assault troopers planted their portable cover shields, forming a short-lived defensive strongpoint.
Join here to read ahead.
In Star Rail, Ultra-Beast Armored — Have I Caught "Equilibrium"? l (Chapter 80)
Uma Musume, But I Only Have Five Years Left to Live (Chapter 178)
Zenless Zone Zero: I'm a Doctor, Not a Bangboo (Chapter 115)
Ben Tennyson Wants to Join the Justice League ( 126 )
TYPE-MOON: Redemption Beginning with the Holy Grail War (Chapter110)
Yu-Gi-Oh! — Transmigrated into the White Dragon Girl (Chapter116)
"Is this chat group even serious?" (Chapter82)
I, Lord Ravager, Utterly Loyal! (Chapter144)
Can Playing Games Save the World? 65
Crossover Anime Multiverse: The Demon Hunter of an Unnatural World 77
From Junkman to Wasteland 66
Weekly Refresh of Overpowered 31
I'm Grinding Proficiency Like 46
From Kiana, Lord Ravager, Onwa 118
Honkai: Is This Still the Prev 42
Elf: My Starter Pokémon Is Inc 65
Warhammer: My Primarch Is Remi 111
From Demon Slayer to Grand Ass 80
The Way the Umamusume Look at 68
Uma Musume, but My Cheat Power 112
Naruto: Weaving the Future, Be 65
Zenless Zone Zero, but Kamen R 76
Multiverse Crossover: The Perf 66
My Cyberpsycho Girlfriend 65
Uma Musume: The Dark Trainer 80
Uma Musume: A Calamity Born fr 74
I, a Reincarnation-Loop Player 48
The Violent Girl Group Is Beat 50
Uma Musume: The Horse Girl Who 47
Uma Musume: From Beginner 42
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