"Confirm entry."
Leticia's voice was calm and rippleless.
Beside her, Valeria, dressed in a crisp black uniform, had absolute obedience and trust in her clear gray eyes. This newborn Iron Rose had already dedicated all her thoughts to her goddess.
The hull of the genesis emitted an almost imperceptible slight hum.
The deep universe outside the bridge began to rapidly distort, blur, and fade like a painting dropped into water. Pure darkness was replaced by a nauseating, rust-like murky yellow.
As if only the interval of a single breath had passed, a brand new scene presented itself outside the porthole.
This was a dying planet.
The sky was a permanent, sickly murky yellow; thick industrial dust and sulfur clouds obscured the star's light, with only a few dirty rays of light feebly spilling onto the ground. Below was a crimson wasteland riddled with holes from endless open-pit mining and industrial waste.
The air was thick with a stench so dense it could almost condense into a solid form, a mixture of rust, ozone, and dried blood.
"What a... truly unpleasant place."
Fogremia stood behind Leticia, wearing a simple pinkish-purple silk gown, her moonlight-silver hair falling softly to her waist. She slightly furrowed her beautiful brows, her amethyst-like eyes revealing an undisguised disgust born of aesthetic instinct.
This crude, ugly, and utterly chaotic destruction made her feel physically uncomfortable.
Terrania's face was a bit pale, and she subconsciously gripped the corner of Leticia's clothes. The resentment and pain hovering over the planet, almost materialized, caused her pure soul to throb with stabs of pain.
Leticia's gaze pierced through the murky atmosphere, accurately locking onto a massive building on the surface that resembled a hideous scar.
It was a Colosseum so grand it could be called a miracle.
Its main structure was forged from a mixture of black volcanic rock and rusted steel; its style was crude and barbaric, filled with the aura of blood and fire. The massive arches were like the fangs of a giant beast, and the towering stands were layered, enough to accommodate tens of thousands of spectators.
At this moment, the stands were filled with spectators.
But they were no ordinary spectators.
They were giants clad in blood-stained, blue-and-white Ceramite power armor. They were the Space Marines of the World Eaters Legion, each one like a fortress of slaughter composed of muscle and steel.
They did not cheer; they did not shout.
They just sat silently like statues, but beneath that silence was a suppressed, volcano-like fury and violence ready to erupt. The entire Colosseum was permeated with a suffocating oppression because of their presence.
In the center of the Colosseum, the sand had long been soaked in blood, turning into a dark brown mire.
A slaughter devoid of any glory was underway.
Dozens of gladiators were engaged in a desperate struggle like trapped beasts in this bloody swamp. Among them were hulking Ogryn slaves, xenos with chitinous shells from remote worlds, and mortals who once belonged to the Imperial Astra Militarum but were now reduced to playthings.
They used broken weapons, teeth, and fingernails to attack everyone around them.
No tactics, no formations.
Only the most primitive survival instinct, exploding for the sake of living one more second.
A human veteran with a severed arm used his body to forcefully shove aside a greenskin's slash, while simultaneously plunging the short spear in his hand into another xenos's soft abdomen.
Before he could pull out his weapon, a massive, barbed metal greataxe whistled from behind him, splitting his upper body entirely.
Warm organs and blood splashed across the victor's scarred, numb face.
He gasped for air and looked around.
On the sand, there was no longer a single living creature capable of standing.
He won.
However, there was not a hint of joy on his face, only a deeper fear that seemed to have solidified into substance.
Because he knew this was just the appetizer. The real "reward" was about to make its appearance.
"Rumble—!!!"
On one side of the Colosseum, a massive gate forged from dozens of tons of heavy alloy made a tooth-grinding grinding sound as it slowly rose.
Behind the gate was a bottomless darkness.
A pure, undisguised anger and pain, a hundred times more intense than all the bloody scents in the arena combined, swept out from that darkness like a tsunami.
On the stands, all the silent World Eaters Space Marines instinctively straightened their bodies at this moment. Their breathing grew heavy, and the joints of their power armor made slight rubbing sounds.
It was a complex reaction mixed with fear, worship, and the sympathy of shared suffering.
A massive figure slowly walked out from the darkness.
He was taller and more burly than any of the surrounding Space Marines; his custom power armor was heavily scarred, with armor plating peeled off in many places to reveal the knotted, rock-like terrifying muscles beneath.
Most striking were his head and back, which had been modified beyond recognition.
Dozens of thick, hideous metal tubes and nerve bundles were deeply implanted into his skull, the back of his neck, and his spine like venomous snakes. These implants, known as "Butcher's Nails," flickered with an ominous dark red light as he breathed, as if pumping an unceasing pain into his brain that was enough to tear a soul apart.
His eyes were not a furious red, but a void crimson scorched by pure pain.
In his hands, he tightly gripped two exaggeratedly large chainaxes. The teeth on the axe blades were spinning at high speed, emitting a low roar like a wounded beast.
Angron.
The Primarch of the World Eaters Legion, the incarnation of anger, the Slave King of the Red Sands.
He didn't even look at the sole survivor in the arena.
His enemy had never been anyone before him.
His enemy was the eternal, inextinguishable agony perched within his mind.
"ROOAAARRRR—!!!"
A roar that didn't sound human, mixed with endless pain and heaven-toppling fury, exploded from deep within Angron's throat.
That roar turned into a physical soundwave, making the entire Colosseum tremble slightly.
He moved.
The ground beneath his feet cracked violently; his massive body turned into a red blur, instantly crossing a distance of a hundred meters to charge in front of the victor.
The gladiator didn't even have the chance to form the thought of raising his weapon.
The two roaring chainaxes, in a posture devoid of any beauty and purely for venting, slashed down in a cross.
"Pshhh—!"
Blood, shredded meat, and bone fragments splashed in all directions like an explosion.
A living person was completely decomposed into the most primitive parts in less than a second.
But this was only the beginning.
Angron's slaughter did not stop there.
His crimson gaze swept across the arena, including the corpses lying on the ground within his attack range. He rushed over, using his chainaxes to tear and crush the long-cold remains again and again.
He was attacking everything.
Attacking the sand, attacking the walls, attacking the air.
As if only this unceasing, indiscriminate, violent destruction could prevent the string named "sanity" in his mind from being completely snapped by the intense pain.
The entire Colosseum had become his personal execution ground for venting pain.
Right above this bloody hell.
In the air a hundred meters high, unnoticed by anyone.
Three figures quietly emerged like deities who had strayed into hell.
When the murky, yellow light touched the area around their bodies, it was purified and distorted by an invisible force, turning into a holy and soft halo.
Fogremia looked at the chaotic violence below, performed purely for venting, her elegant brows furrowing even tighter.
「A beast... it can't even be called combat.」
Terrania was already so frightened that she buried her face deep in Leticia's embrace, her small body trembling constantly from fear. The materialized pain and resentment erupting from Angron were more terrifying to her than any physical attack.
Leticia reached out and gently, soothingly patted Terrania's back.
Her gaze, however, pierced through the bloody slaughter and the facade of fury, falling upon the lonely giant who was frantically destroying everything.
In her pure black eyes, there was no fear, no disgust.
Only a deep compassion that seemed capable of embracing everything.
「So... this is your pain, Angron?」
Leticia did not intervene immediately.
She slowly closed her eyes, isolating herself from all the blood and noise outside.
The majestic power of [Intellect] was quietly activated.
She tried to use her own soul to trace and perceive the true source deep within that heaven-toppling fury.
However, the moment her psychic tendrils just touched Angron's mental domain—
An indescribable, sharp, chaotic psychic noise, filled with countless steel needles and glass shards, suddenly poured back!
That feeling was as if hundreds of millions of souls tortured for a thousand years were simultaneously letting out the most shrill screams in her mind!
"Ugh..."
Leticia let out a muffled groan, and for the first time, a clearly visible paleness appeared on her flawless face, which usually carried a divine radiance.
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