Gaia unconsciously reached out and gripped the sword.
In the next instant, a surging aura erupted from it. Its sharp, overbearing presence was so intense that even Gaia's psychic power began to stir in response.
At that moment, she deeply felt just how sharp this blade truly was.
That sharpness was like a law. As long as the conditions were met, it could sever anything it touched.
Unfortunately, that strange state lasted only for an instant.
As the sword's hum faded, that feeling of absolute sharpness disappeared, and it returned to being merely a well-balanced, deadly weapon.
Gaia stared at the longsword, her thoughts in turmoil.
She had sensed its extraordinary nature many times before, but never once had she witnessed its divine power so directly.
And yet, no matter how she looked at it, she could not discern a single clue.
"What exactly are you, and why did you come into my hands?"
Gaia extended her right index finger and gently traced along the flat of the blade as she muttered to herself.
Just as she was sinking deeper into thought while staring at the sword, someone knocked on the door to her room.
She immediately picked up the scabbard from the floor, sheathed the blade across her back, and strode to the door before pulling it open.
Looking down through the gap, she saw Solomon rubbing his mustache while staring up at her with a very strange expression.
It was a look mixed with awe, helplessness, and the kind of suppressed laughter that clearly wanted to burst out.
Gaia immediately felt baffled and asked,
"Do you need something?"
Solomon coughed twice, forced his expression into something more controlled, which somehow made it look even stranger, then spoke in a slightly trembling voice.
"Oh, nothing much. I just came to check how you were doing."
Hearing that, Gaia finally began to come back to herself.
Wait, why am I suddenly in bed?
She tried to recall what had happened, but the last thing she could remember was reaching out toward the battle barge visible beyond the bow viewports.
After that, nothing.
She could not remember a thing.
But clearly, somebody here did.
So, full of confusion, she immediately asked Solomon,
"Why am I in the resting quarters?"
Solomon raised an eyebrow and carefully watched her expression, as if trying to confirm whether her confusion was genuine.
Then he patted his face, took a deep breath, and finally replied in a tone he was clearly trying to keep normal.
"Oh, nothing much. You suddenly started insisting that you wanted to go aboard the Space Marines' battle barge, and then you suddenly got distracted by the arm-wrestling competition the deckhands were having nearby. After that, you proceeded to beat every single one of them with overwhelming force by flipping them over, and then you collapsed and fell asleep."
Solomon did his best to deliver the whole explanation as evenly as possible, then inhaled sharply, his tightly controlled face gradually turning red.
Gaia froze for a second, then immediately remembered that she had absentmindedly taken a small sip of wine earlier.
At once, she felt an overwhelming wave of social death, but at the same time, she could not help but feel puzzled.
By all rights, with her altered body, not only should ordinary alcohol have done nothing, even chugging a whole barrel of industrial ethanol should not have affected her in the slightest.
So what exactly had happened?
Gaia fell into thought.
After calming down a little, Solomon managed to put on a somewhat more serious expression and said,
"The Space Marines who rescued us transmitted a simple star chart to us and also gave us the coordinates of the nearest Forge World."
"I'm planning to head there next, since we need to replenish the crew and repair the main engine."
"Also, Priestess Rena says Mitchell's condition is a bit critical. She may need to buy some special medications to keep him alive."
"What a shame. If Horne weren't still unconscious, he might have been able to disembark and return to the unit he's been obsessing over this whole time."
Hearing that Mitchell was in critical condition, Gaia felt a stab of concern.
That foul-mouthed bastard looked so thin and fragile he might snap in half, and his injuries had been horrifying to look at.
The fact that Priestess Rena seemed confident she could save him made Gaia genuinely admire her a little.
After thinking briefly, her attention was caught by the first thing Solomon had said.
"What happened to those Space Marines afterward?"
Solomon spread his hands.
"How would I know? We were heading in the opposite direction. But it's pretty obvious they must've beaten the hell out of those xenos."
When he said that, Solomon practically ground the words out through clenched teeth.
That was understandable. Anyone who had been chased like that would have been just as furious.
...
In the Warp, a massive Inquisition cruiser was cutting rapidly through the tides.
What was surprising was that its imposing hull was covered in fresh battle scars and scorched black craters from heavy gunfire.
And that was one of the main reasons Inquisitor Daklide was currently in a towering rage.
After entering the Warp, he had followed every clue he could find and, under the guidance of his Navigator and Astropath, had pursued the vessel he considered his target all the way here.
However, while passing through a treacherous graveyard of derelict voidships, they had been ambushed by a large pirate flotilla that had very clearly prepared the attack in advance.
Still, under the terrifying firepower of the Blade of Retribution, those reckless criminals had been blasted into ashes one after another, while the surviving few had been dragged into the black cells and given a thorough lesson in recovered memory.
During interrogation, he learned something that sent him into an even greater rage.
A heretical cult called the Gluttony Cult was rapidly expanding, and it had already begun making contact with many pirate groups and even certain forces within the Imperium itself.
The moment he heard that, Daklide nearly exploded with fury.
The corruption of Slaanesh was spreading like a flood and a beastly plague, endangering the very security of Imperial space.
This was no ordinary heresy. It had to be crushed beneath the iron fist of the God-Emperor.
Still, that was only a secondary objective.
Breathing heavily, Daklide sat upon the bridge, his bloodshot eyes fixed on the warped and churning distance ahead as his fingers clenched tightly around the handle of his Hammer of Judgment.
As a veteran Ordo Hereticus Inquisitor who had spent his career hunting down heretics, his attitude toward such enemies was simple. He wanted to tear them apart, flay them alive, drink their blood, and grind their bones to dust.
And yet now, after pursuing that target for so long, he still had not made any meaningful progress.
That was unacceptable.
It was a stain. A stain upon the reputation of the Inquisition. A stain upon his flawless record.
That second part angered him the most.
To him, the purging of heresy was a sacred task. It had to be executed perfectly, flawlessly, with utter purity, in order to embody the majesty of the God-Emperor.
And then, at that very moment, the Warp ahead suddenly twisted.
A flash of dark green light followed, and an alien vessel, its shape unmistakably xenos in origin, appeared directly in front of the Blade of Retribution.
That alien ship looked utterly miserable.
Its hull was heavily damaged, and across its center ran a massive gash so large it nearly split the entire ship in half.
Daklide had no idea what these xenos had gone through, but now that he had finally found something to vent his rage upon, he rose from his seat at once.
"Xenos are definitely heretics. Unacceptable. Kill them all."
(End of Chapter)
[Check Out My P@treon For +20 Extra Chapters On All My Fanfics!!][[email protected]/euridome]
[+500 Power Stones = +1 Extra Chapter]
[Thank You For Your Support!]