Warhammer: I don't want to become a stinky can!

Page 604

Mortarian wasn't going to explain.

........................

After the younger generation was taken away by Vox, only the patients remained in the ward.

"Hey,"

Karas stared at the ceiling, then suddenly spoke.

"Motalian... what did you see when the Dark Prince was staring at you?"

I saw what He wanted me to see.

The Primarch answered calmly, lying without batting an eye. He had seen enough in the garden, and his own life had been a true reflection of suffering, which distorted the illusion Slaanesh had concocted.

Mortarian never believed he could experience all that was "wonderful".

[A beautiful illusion, indeed more appealing than the manure in the garden—what have you seen now, Karas?]

Karas sneered.

"I saw myself kick that idiot into a blazing pile of documents."

【…】

This is no excuse for you to shove the documents in your hand at me, Karas, but perhaps we can take a break together. I think our dear friend will be back soon.

"I have no intention of approving it."

【Oh. 】

..............................

Hades has returned, his armor still bearing the unseen golden light of the Emperor.

"Old Mo!"

Hades shouted, casually pulling a document from the pile. The two men, startled by Hades's dark aura, both gasped.

"The Lord of Mankind says that Slaanesh will lead the Eldar... Do you know why?"

【…】

Mortarion believed he was in pain, but he was unwilling to confide his inner suffering. Millennia of experience had taught him to accept these things with equanimity, but the Primarch still felt a long and desperate pain.

After he struggled to climb out of the swamp of Slaanesh's desires, his biological father still easily, readily, and without thinking led him into a realm he completely did not understand.

But Mortalian was tough enough that he no longer reacted to it. One of the most valuable lessons the Primarch had learned amidst the buzzing flies in the garden was to ignore, to mentally ignore those things.

They mentally neglected the fact that their father was still alive.

I guess my genetic father passed the interpretation of this matter to me.

Mortarian said calmly, "Do you think I would know?"

"..."

Hades was silent for a moment.

"Old Deng is kidding me?!"

On the bright side, Mortarion thought calmly, Hades believed he would know... apparently, Hades always chose to trust him.

"Moth! You're right!!! -- I'm going to grab my knife and go find the weasel again right now!"

Do you think he will tell you?

The Primarch sarcastically remarked that, unfortunately, Hades also harbored a completely unnecessary and irrelevant trust in the Lord of Man.

5k, great!

Chapter 656 The Unexpected Arrival

"So your incompetent bosses are planning to completely overhaul the Endurance using the technology of the Necromancers?"

Karas looked like a dead man; in fact, he always looked like that, so they didn't need to worry whether Typhon was truly unwell.

Anyway, he's been like this for ten thousand years and there haven't been any problems.

Booz, sitting opposite Karas, seemed about to say something, but Karas sighed and interrupted him.

"casual."

Typhon said that, in a fit of despair, he signed the documents for the handover of his responsibilities from logistics to management, then raised his hands in surrender.

His right hand was still in a cast, but that didn't stop him from using his left hand to process official documents.

“Tell them, especially your father, that he’s an idiot. That’s my entire assessment of this project and him.”

This is really tough, Booz thought. He already has a lot of support on Terra, but he's still always being outmaneuvered by these old fogies on the Death Guard side.

But he was indeed no match for them, alas.

The Primarch and Hades were probably afraid of Karas's indiscriminate attacks, so they sent him.

Booz's civil servant smile.

"The Primarch himself also agreed to this project."

"I can't speak," Booth said calmly.

"Then he's an idiot too."

Karas said,

"Alright, you can get out of here now. Next, I'm going to announce to us greenhorns who hate evil, uphold justice, and are indomitable that the Endurance, which they love so much they'd want to worship every single tile of it, is going to be contaminated by alien technology."

"This is the technology of Hades, Om Messiah."

"I declare Om Messiah to be an alien."

This is the reward for living long enough. Booth smiled but his heart was not. It's a miracle that such a wicked old man like Deng hasn't been put in a sack and beaten up yet.

If it were Hades' son, the Hades Warband would definitely let him experience what it means to be ganged up on in a righteous manner.

In fact, Buzz Bella had experienced the enthusiasm of the band, led by an agile fighting brother who warmly greeted him with high-fiber burlap sacks.

"I will relay this to them truthfully."

Booth was sticking to his business. He decided to persuade Black to do the hard work next time, but the kid wasn't so easily fooled, so he had to come up with a plan.

He quickly slipped away from Karas's temporary office. The clear weather of Barbarus shone through the large floor-to-ceiling windows, bathing the hurried pedestrians in its light. The Barbarus outpost, designed by the Primarch himself, offered a panoramic view of the vast fields.

Buz slowed his pace, glancing a few more times at the flat landscape outside the window. The corn seedlings swayed gently, and a breeze carrying the fresh scent of earth seemed to brush against his cheek.

The Death Guard's central stronghold in Barbarossa does not conform to the stereotypes of the outside world. In the eyes of the outside world, the Death Guard is always gloomy, closed off, and stubborn.

In fact, that's exactly what they are.

However, this tall, even somewhat postmodern gray-white stronghold is not Deathguard's "ordinary" style. Large areas of bulletproof viewing windows are used to better allow light in.

The first floor is completely open, interacting with the fields outside. On the most complete circular lawn on the first floor is the only statue here. It is not the Primarch himself, nor Hades, nor the Death Guard. It looks like a local auxiliary soldier. The sculpture is kneeling on one knee, kissing a handful of soil in its hands, or it looks like it is burying its head and crying. It carries a standard military bag on its back and its leg wraps are tightly bound.

The west side of the building is partially embedded in the largest ecclesiastical church in Barbarossa, which merges with the former black stone obelisk. The sharp Gothic church is built directly from large blocks of black stone without any secondary paint, resulting in a pure matte black color.

However, the people who usually come here are not the Death Guard regiments, but the farmers and military academy students from the surrounding area. The Church of the Underworld provides people with free breakfast and dinner, as well as a place to stay.

What puzzled Buz even more was that, apart from the steep and rugged chapel embedded on the west side, the gray-white building had no sharp edges; the original design used curves and arcs to soften those sharp points.

You can't even tell from the outside that this is a military outpost; there are no identifiable gun ports or radar arrays...

This really, really doesn't seem like Mortarion's style, but it is indeed from Mortarion.

Perhaps the Primarch projected some of his hopes for the future into this building. Mortarion did not explain, though perhaps someone once asked him why.

In short, this place is really bright, several times brighter than the dark corridors on the Endurance, which is a pleasant surprise for Buz, who is used to the architectural style of the Macurag.

Perhaps it is a bit simple here, without dazzling colors, without the exquisite and gorgeous tapestries of his hometown, and the legionary mottos inlaid in gold frames, but it gives people a sense of harmonious beauty, as if this big guy walked out of the land of Barbarossa on his own.

Booz blinked. Hades had inherited Hades' aesthetic sense; he thought this place was nice, but—clearly, his aesthetic sense didn't support him continuing with his reading comprehension.

He arrived at his destination, and Buz stopped at the door and knocked three times respectfully.

"Enter!"

Hades' voice rang out. Booz pushed open the door and entered, seeing Mortarion sitting at the Primarch's desk, Hades sitting on the sofa with his legs crossed, eating fruit, and others walking around the room, automatically picking up Tarasin.

There was also a clearly flattered Mint Forging Sage, Death Guard's current Forging Master Seyou, and Blake Butcher, who was sitting on the same sofa as Hades, intently dealing with the fruit in his hand.

"Oh, you've worked hard."

Seeing Buz enter, Hades casually picked up a fruit and tossed it to him. Buz caught it, glanced at Mortarian behind the desk whose expression was unreadable, and decided not to eat it yet.

He walked over in a proper manner, handed Karas's signed document to the Primarch, who didn't even glance at it, nodded, and gestured for Buz to stay put.

So Booz decisively chose to stand behind Hades' sofa.

After the brief interlude, everyone in the room resumed their previous conversation.

[It's worth a try.]

The Primarch crossed his arms. [These few numbers can provide a buffer for the crew.]

"We'll conduct preliminary experiments in the Barbarus star system first,"

Hades said, then looked at Motalian.

"A few numbers...you mean these magic arrays and the like don't need you to maintain them, and the think tank can handle them?"

It's somewhat difficult, but not impossible.

"Blasphemy!"

Tarasin sighed, then reached out to touch one of the alien skulls displayed in the Primarch's office. As it moved, white mist billowed from the skull's eyes. Tarasin wisely withdrew its hand.

"I'm still hoping you can solve the problem of the inertial-free engine, Hades."

So said the Endless One, and Hades gave an awkward laugh.

"There's nothing wrong with the technology itself,"

Hades said that the Necromancer's inertialess engines could accelerate to their limits in a very short time to reach maximum speed.

The problem is that, as an organic substance, the acceleration is too great, and the pressure will directly turn a person into a paste from the inside out.

This is not a technological issue; it's a limitation imposed on the driver.

Currently, the cheapest and fastest way to protect the human body is...

Upper Subspace!

"It's because the human body is too fragile,"

Hades said, "So let's go all out on our invincible Primarch."

Another approach is to develop crewless ships—purely AI-controlled. Hades has already submitted a project proposal to Terra, for semi-automated ships managed by the Nirvana system. Whether it gets approved or not is up to the old man.

Upon hearing this, Tarasim looked at Mortalian. The Primarch, who had previously hated the Xenomorphs, no longer hated them; instead, he readily accepted their presence.

My domain can protect the lives within it.

Motarian picked up his pen, signed his name,

[Then it passes.]

Taracin wanted to say something, but then it remembered the three small tomb worlds Hades had just given it control over, so well, it didn't really have anything to say.

Three months, three small tomb worlds. Recently, Hades also privately contacted Tarachin to finalize the follow-up plan for the protection of the artifacts, and the process will be greatly accelerated after that.

Their plan was to use the undead forces they controlled to automatically excavate "artifacts." The program was static, but with the help of Tarachin and Hades, the computing power of the automatons they controlled would be higher than that of the opposing side.

Just like the scarab beetle, their numbers will explode exponentially.

Really fragrant.

The Endless One thought to himself and wandered over to Hades' side.

Hades pulled the Sage of Forging, the Master Forger, and Tal Rasin together to begin discussing the division and details of the upcoming project. This part belonged to Hades. The Primarch took a deep breath and resignedly continued to approve the next documents.

lie!

The Primarch was actually approving documents while secretly observing the contest between Black and Booz, the two Deathbringers. Were Deathbringers really such active and unconventional Space Marines? Clearly, they shouldn't have been assigned to a sub-corps under the Deathguard.

“The three docks are ready to operate at 80% power at any time,” Hades said, reviewing the report. “Okay, the remaining frigates can be assigned to Grei’e and Adlai III.”

Hades spoke with the two men in charge of forging for a while, then said they would meet again at about three o'clock. The sage and the forging master took their leave first. Tarasin dawdled for a while, and finally the protective varnish on his fingertips was almost completely corroded by the white mist. The Endless One had no choice but to reluctantly make an excuse and leave.