The four people trudged hard in the rain. The dense and towering trees around them had been chopped into black by lightning. A piece of residue composed of wood pulp and leaves sank into the swamp. The mudslides had caused landslides in many places. They Great care must be taken not to get sucked into the slippery mud.
In a daze, the three of them followed Xin Lata for unknown lengths of time. They were almost knocked unconscious by the heavy rain.
But almost as suddenly as it had appeared, the rainstorm disappeared.
The world was enveloped in blood, and Xinlata stopped, clutching the knife tightly.
".....I can't leave."
"Ah, what did you say?"
Rozim shuddered, this was not good news.
"Fuck!"
Hank Evans' scream made Rozim look back, and this time it was he who cursed.
"Fuck!!!"
Something was growing out of the void, and Rozim fired at the thing wrapped in warp flame as it formed, but it did not shatter or weaken. It simply absorbed those bullets and blessed fire like thunderclouds absorbing the sky.
Then a huge central eye appeared on its chest, and eight more such eyes blinked open around it, the eyelidless pupils filled with tiny lights that looked like stars.
"give me back!"
These words caused Rozim's will to suffer, his soul to feel pain, and he knelt on the ground.
Then he saw something reflected on the silver mirror-like skin of the thing, and his heart began to hurt.
In every fragment, in every fragment, Rozim saw his own face, lying on the operating bed, eyes empty and stained with blood.
That was the scene when his surgical transformation failed——
"Give it back to me! I will give you supreme power! Make you more powerful than the Astartes! You will no longer be a loser!"
Rozim felt blood flowing out of his ears as he tried to take out the mysterious crystal. He could no longer tell whether this was reality or a dream.
"Don't look at it, and don't listen to its charms."
Suddenly, something pressed down on his arm. Rozim looked up and saw Xinratana's green eyes.
After a shock, he came to his senses.
"No! Damn it! Who are you!!"
Amidst the angry roars, countless shadows began to flash around the four people, all with claws.
"Haino, you humble wretch."
The sound that responds to it is bright, clear, and pure.
That was Zinlata's voice.
Chief Sinlata stood in front of the mirror-like thing and looked at it. His knife was in a prepared posture, but his expression was very relaxed, even with a smile, as the demon continued to grow in the subspace around its body. The magic flame illuminates.
"You...how do you know this name!"
The moment he said these words, time froze, and the demon waved a split claw. It now had wings. The feathers were made of broken glass. The many broken mouths softly repeated that sentence. sentence.
"How do you know this name!"
Madel, who showed his true form for the first time, was very huge, filling all the space in front of Sinlata. Its body made of mirrors rubbed against the real world, or in other words, its entire body was a piece of crystal stained with blood, and its wings were made of Faceted, made of broken glass. Four long arms protruded from it, ending in colorless glass claws.
When they hit the ground, the mud and water ignite.
Looking at this behemoth, Xinlata just smiled.
"You used to serve a cruel god, and now you serve a group of vain gods. Isn't it sad?"
Seeing the other party speak, Madel was obviously stunned for a moment, and then he was immediately irritated and howled.
"Who the hell are you!!!"
Then it moved, its body jerking forward like a glass boa constrictor preying on prey.
Xinlata also moved, extremely fast, like a flash of lightning.
The moment the two figures intertwined, a huge glass arm flew up, accompanied by Madel's roar.
"No! You are not human!"
While the two were fighting, Rozim, who was supposed to be bound by time, suddenly moved, and the Hellfire Stone he carried emitted scorching energy.
He blinked and heard a voice.
"You are the one who was sacrificed. They took away your right to be blessed. You should have been as powerful as Soshyan-"
The voices came from all directions, coming from Rozim's head.
He blinked, frozen in place by the evil power of a dozen images flashing out of the demon's reflective silver surface.
He saw the efforts he had made to become an Astartes, saw the tribe's arena stained red with blood, and saw his relatives killing each other directly for a spot.
"You haven't seen clearly the truth of fate and time. They have blinded you, preventing you from seeing clearly the truth of the road ahead. You can only be a flame as tiny as the tip of a needle in the void of eternal darkness. A small, insignificant light.”
The image changed again, this time it was him training with the inductees, the ones who were gone and familiar.
Soshyan, Axel, Nader and Arkan walked through the corridors of the Obsidian Fortress, surrounded by hundreds of people, talking, laughing and noisy.
Soshyan always looks very serious, Aksei is always joking, Nad speaks very little but is very tricky, and Arkan is always responsive and reluctant to express his opinions.
And he——
He is still dreaming of becoming a space warrior and commanding the battlefield.
"What a huge price, just to die like a martyr."
The operation began, and one by one, the boys were cut into pieces, like animals, leaving very few survivors.
"Shut up! You bastard!"
These words came out from between Rozim's clenched teeth, and heat washed through his body again, like a fever.
It spread outward from Rozim's heart and flowed into his limbs, almost igniting the scars left by his transformation.
Then, even under the demon's control, he raised his gun and pulled the trigger.
Gunshots rang out and bullets exploded on the thing's crystal skin, but it wasn't enough to break the demon, but it seemed to break its spell.
But sadly, that voice didn’t go away.
"Look, they'll all die, one by one, and their light will fade away, one by one, until you're the only one left."
At this moment, Hank Evans next to Rozim also moved, but he almost shouted at the demon crazily:
"Ahhh! Go to hell!!"
The poor cook kept holding the trigger of his gun until the magazine was empty and the bullet struck the demon's other lidless eye.
"Hank!"
Rozim shouted to him:
"stay awake!"
