40k: Midnight Blade

Chapter 193 18. Melted Steel (End)

"Then what?!"

Breathing heavily, Perturabo asked. At this moment, he looked ferocious: "Isn't it still the same in the end? I shook hands with you, and you don't have to respect me. Just say what you want, and then -"

He stopped and swallowed the rest of what he had not finished. And it wasn't because of what Khalil Lohars had done. No, maybe he had done something, but he had done it in a way that Perturabo couldn't understand.

No one can understand why the world can be changed in half a second. No one can understand why a simple iron-gray ward can turn into a dark and lightless darkness in half a sentence. world.

It is extremely cold here, the wind is howling, and the air is filled with the unpleasant smell left after the corpse was burned. It is similar to the smell of ashes, but it is also different.

Khalil Lohars still stood opposite him, tall and ominous, his cloak billowing in the wind and dancing wildly.

His image changed again, the pale face disappeared, replaced by the face of a skeleton. His dark eyes were staring at Perturabo without saying a word.

"What did you do?" Perturabo asked incomprehensibly. "What is this? Some new holographic projection technology that you installed before I woke up?"

He instinctively refuses to believe anything beyond his knowledge.

"I'm a psyker, and this is one of the things I can do with my powers."

"You lie!" Perturabo retorted fiercely. "There are also think tanks in my legion, and I have also conducted research on their power. No psyker can do such a thing!"

"That only means you haven't studied enough. Macado is fine."

"Makado?"

"Yes," said the skeleton. "Makado, that old and useless Malcador that you despise."

Perturabo froze because of these words, the cold wind blew by, and the remaining warmth on his hospital gown began to lose temperature rapidly because of them. He thought his skin would be able to withstand the cold, but he was wrong.

He felt a terrible chill.

"Malcador is a very powerful psyker. I'm surprised you don't know this. Besides, do you really think your father would put a man with no talent in that position?"

"I" Perturabo tried to speak and retort, but his voice seemed particularly weak amid the howling wind. This incident made him extremely angry.

Then, Khalil interrupted him again, without giving him a chance to say anything.

This is the second time.

"Speak louder," the skeleton said coldly.

"Don't act like a child who's about to cry. You're a Primarch, Perturabo. That doesn't mean you have to be a saint or some kind of moral paragon in terms of character, but you should have a few things that are most important to you. People who have the courage to take responsibility don’t talk like this.”

"Are you accusing me of weakness?" Perturabo asked in disbelief.

He was so shocked that he even forgot he should be angry. He shouldn't have said this softly, he should have been angrier, more excited.

"Accusing you?"

The skeleton shook his head.

"No, I am simply stating a fact. The sound you just used doesn't actually have much to do with weakness, but it just doesn't fit your identity as the original body. It appears in a child or It’s reasonable for teenagers, after all, they are also very sensitive and fragile.”

Perturabo opened his mouth wide. He wanted to say something, but nothing came out - his face was trembling and red, and the intense emotion made him temporarily lose his voice.

And Khalil continues.

"Stop acting so shocked." He said in a dismissive, even bored tone.

"If Sergeant Elteros hadn't insisted on this, I wouldn't have even bothered to talk to you. You are a piece of rusted steel, Perturabo. I don't know where the rust came from, but remove it. They are not my responsibility.”

The skeleton shook his head, his cloak raised, and a darkness deeper than the night emerged from it. The burning smell intensified, even to the point where Perturabo instinctively wanted to cough.

He clenched his fists, trying to find some pain from his broken fingers to regain some sanity. He succeeded, but failed - he did feel pain, but the pain came not from his hands, but from something emerging from the darkness.

No, not a thing.

But a person.

Someone who is long dead.

"You" Perturabo stretched out his right hand as if falling into the abyss, trying to catch the shadow so that he could see his face clearly. However, just when his hand was about to touch the other person's shoulder, he stopped.

Perturabo froze in place, as awkward as a stone statue. But the shadow didn't keep him waiting long. It spoke covered in flames, its voice hoarse, as if it had been damaged long ago.

"Primarch," it greeted.

"Elteros?" Perturabo asked cautiously. "Why are you here?"

No reason, no reason - with just one glance, he was sure of one thing. This shadow was indeed Eltros, indeed a member of his legion, an officer in whom he had placed his trust.

"For reasons I can't tell you."

"Do you mean you plan to hide the truth from me?" Perturabo asked again, his anger that had gone away returned at this moment.

Although they climbed very slowly and were limited by the freezing temperature around them, they never really made him lose his mind, but he did feel angry.

"Not concealment, Primarch, but protection." Sergeant Elteros replied in the quiet tone characteristic of the dead.

"Protect?"

Perturabo almost laughed: "You protect me? Look at me, Eltros, can you see the difference between us? I am one of the sons of the Emperor of all mankind. I am far better than you. Superior, why do you protect me?"

"I don't deny that you are much stronger than me. However, you still need to be protected." The sergeant replied calmly.

Of course he calmed down. What emotions can a dead person have?

"Reason," said Perturabo.

His tone sounded like he wished Eltros would die again.

"Because a child always needs protection." The sergeant kept his calm and did not have any fluctuations because of Perturabo's performance.

"You call me a child?"

"In terms of wisdom and strength, a million children combined cannot match you. However, in terms of willfulness and irritability, you are no different from the children. And you are still the kind of spoiled child."

"Do you want to die, Elteros?" Perturabo asked in a very soft voice.

"I've already died once," the sergeant shot back. "And you can't make a dead man die again."

"I will remove your name from my Legion forever!"

"I don't care," said Elteros. "Because I anticipated what you might say before doing this. You are a willful and lucky child."

"Most spoiled kids like this don't have playmates, but you do, and you're a kid who's stupid enough to trust you with all their heart. In that way, you're very lucky."

"You——!" Perturabo raised his right hand angrily and tried to punch, but he failed after all. No one stopped him, he seemed to be in control of himself.

Considering his previous performance, this is quite incredible. The original body gasped, and in the howling cold wind, he said in the most shameful and angry voice in his life: "——Get out, Eltros, I never want to see you again."

"If possible, I hope so too." Eltros said calmly. "But it's not up to you here."

"Let him go, Khalil Lohars!" Perturabo turned and shouted.

"You have no right to order me." The skeleton replied coldly. "Also, don't yell when you are talking. That will only make you look incompetent."

"So you're just going to have to hear me out now."

"you"

Perturabo took a deep breath: "Okay, then you go ahead, Eltras."

His eyes were full of hatred, not a deep hatred, but a short-lived hatred that might disappear on its own as time goes by.

It usually does not appear in adults. It is usually seen in adolescents who are sensitive and proud, who long for recognition but think that others are not worthy of their applause.

To put it more plainly, it should not appear in a Primarch.

"Would you like to hear it?"

"Speak quickly! Before my patience completely disappears!"

The deceased, the Terran-born Sergeant from the Iron Warriors, Eltros, spoke slowly.

What he was about to say would have killed him many times over, but he didn't care, he was already dead - he died for his primarch, and from that point alone, he had a clear conscience.

"Do you approve of us?"

"Of course I recognize those true Iron Warriors." Perturabo said disdainfully. "But you - Eltros, you are a traitor. You have colluded with outsiders to deal with me."

Eltros ignored the second half of Perturabo's sentence, and simply put forward different opinions on the first half: "No, in your eyes we are just a group of unqualified tools. In your eyes, Our only purpose is to carry out the war in accordance with the policies and strategies you set."

"Isn't that what my father asked me to do?!" Perturabo retorted. "I am also one of his tools, and I am also asked by him to fight war!"

"But the Emperor never asked you to take on everything, such as fighting three reconquest battles in sixteen months, without even giving us any chance to recover."

"The Great Crusade does not leave much time for mankind!" Perturabo growled. "There are still so many worlds that have not yet been recovered and illuminated by the truth of the Empire. Why should we rest?!"

"You are not alone, you have many brothers."

"Ha!" Perturabo sneered. "Do you expect me to hand over this responsibility to someone like Rogal Dorn or Robert Guilliman?"

"They." Eltros sighed softly. "Primarch, when did you hear that Rogal Dorn and Robert Guilliman asked their legions to defend their positions for a moment, and they would not be allowed to evacuate even if the casualties reached 70%?"

"Just because they are weak doesn't mean that I can do it, and it doesn't mean that my legion can do it too!" Perturabo frowned, and he was already involved in this debate.

At this moment, his goal was no longer to make Eltros disappear, but to win over his dead heir in this argument.

"If you want to become steel, you should be indomitable! I am far better than my brothers, so you are the same! Let us do what they can't do. Didn't I tell you these words? ?"

"You said it." The deceased replied expressionlessly. "You said it when Eleven was killed. Unfortunately, I didn't have the intention to listen at that time. I had to punch harder, otherwise my commander would have to endure the torture for a while longer."

"Eleven killings are your punishment!"

"Punishment for what?"

"For your failure!" Perturabo waved his arms as neatly as a sword.

"Before I came back, you were called the Labor Corps. What a shame. In the eyes of the empire, you have nothing but strict obedience to orders and tenacity. You also did not change your tactics, resulting in many things that were completely useless. necessary casualties.”

He sneered and even gave an example to strengthen the persuasiveness of his argument: "Take Inkarati, what's so special about that forging world? But you fought for a whole year and lost nearly 30,000 people!"

"I don't deny that we were indeed stubborn before you came back. We would even use heavy artillery and heavy vehicles to attack the Forge World head-on and fight against them. However, after you came back, the situation does not seem to have improved much. "

The dead man's pale face finally changed a little. The corners of his mouth curled up, and what appeared next was not like a smile, but more like a miserable self-mockery.

"We still suffered heavy casualties, didn't we, Primarch? Except for the battle against the planet near your home planet, which we fought successfully, the other battles were not considered great victories."

"We strictly implemented every order you issued. If you asked us to hold our position, we would never evacuate. If you asked us to storm an enemy trap, we would not hesitate to pounce on it. Therefore, it seems that It’s not our problem.”

"The Iron Warriors now have only one commander, and that is you. As for the rest of us, they are just tools used to receive your orders. Do you have anything to say about this?"

Perturabo was stunned. He should have refuted Elteros long ago, when he said that the situation had not improved. However, Perturabo suddenly found that he could not find a point to refute.

How could he refute the truth? He is not thick-skinned enough to erase the facts and turn them into lies that benefit him.

"It seems you haven't." Alteros nodded. "In other words, after you return, we are still the laughing stock in the eyes of others, we are still a labor force, we are still strict in obeying orders and tenacious and useless apart from that, and who should be attributed to this?"

"you you"

"That should come down to you."

The sergeant came to a conclusion ruthlessly, with his ultimate rationality, and with his heart that had stopped beating but still carried love and concern for the legion and the brothers.

"You are a failed commander, and you are also a failed Primarch. Looking across the entire empire, is there a legion that has not changed in any way after the return of their Primarch? Can you find it?"

"Sanguinius turned those ghouls into the graceful warriors they are today, Robert Guilliman turned those bloodless and tearless Destroyers into the ultramarines they are now, and Rogal Dorn turned him from Everything that Lord Inwit learned was given to the Imperial Fists."

Perturabo turned pale.

"You just allow us to continue to be the butt of jokes, and the laughing stock of great consumption. We dig trenches, make fortresses, and serve as cannon fodder."

"We did not receive replenishment of troops and fought three recapture campaigns against three different planets in sixteen months. And you even said early on that you would not apply for rewards from the empire for us after the war. At the same time, I don’t want to see anyone boasting about it.”

"What are you thinking? Are you waiting for your father to take the initiative to praise you and your legion for the heavy sacrifices you have made?"

"you"

"Are you speechless?"

The sergeant finally laughed, and afterward, he sighed softly.

"To be honest, I despise you, Perturabo," he said, lowering his head. "You are just a child. You are immature and unsteady. You just want everyone to admire you, but you don't take the initiative to expose your talents. You just want them to discover them on their own."

"But, to be honest, I actually despise myself even more. If I had listened to my inner voice before I died, cooperated with the night blades and carried out feint tactics, maybe my soldiers would not have been killed or injured so many. You are unqualified Primarch, I am also an unqualified Iron Warrior."

"But, anyway -" He looked up and smiled. "——I still hope you can change. It's not too late, father."

As soon as the words fell, he disappeared. Perturabo froze in place for one second, two seconds, three seconds. When the fourth second was about to pass, he finally made a move. He flew towards Khalil at top speed, his broken fingers tightly grasping the skull's shoulders.

He growled: "Where are the others? Where are the Eltros? Bring him back! Bring him back!"

"He's dead," the skeleton replied calmly. "And the dead cannot 'come back', accept it, Perturabo."

"Give him back to me—!" Perturabo roared. "I still have something to say to him! He, he, I want to refute his self-righteousness. He misjudged me. I am definitely not the kind of commander who would let his soldiers die deliberately!"

"Really?" The skeleton shook his head. "I don't care about it, and you don't have to prove it to anyone, Perturabo. The dead are gone, and you"

He raised his right hand and patted Perturabo on the shoulder. In an instant, the world spun, and the iron-gray ward returned again. Perturabo stared blankly at everything in front of him, his body trembling. Khalil ignored him, just turned and walked out of the room, leaving his last words.

"If you want to prove it, prove it. Sergeant Elteros is no longer visible anyway."

The door closed. Khalil stood in front of the door and waited quietly for a few seconds. Then, there was the sound of a heavy object falling to the ground inside the door. He turned his head, blue light flashed in his eyes, and he saw a figure kneeling on the ground, gasping for breath through the wall.

He nodded thoughtfully.

+You were right about Perturabo, Malcador. +

+Oh? Have you beaten him? +

+Don't speak so harshly.+

Khalil stepped forward and left the medical room.

This chapter was written 1k3 extra times, so I’m a little late, sorry. update completed.