Slash! I'll slash again!
Heretics need slashing, Xenos need slashing, Demons... where did the Demons go?
To hell with whatever you are, I'm fucking slashing, slashing, slashing!
One kill meant no loss, two kills meant profit. You inhuman things, I'll send every last one of you to become maggots in the Sea of Filth!
Arthur, who was on a constant winning streak, listened to the Disintegration Field tear through flesh. Though he still found it horrifying and nauseating on a subjective level, he felt neither fear nor tension. He simply felt that shutting off his thoughts and just cutting people down was pretty nice.
He did not need to think about a vague and distant future, nor did he need to think about the terrifying present. All he needed to do was slaughter those grotesque monsters, carving a savage opening through the surging flesh with blade and shield.
At this moment, he was the master of everything around him.
He suddenly understood the thought processes of the Orks and Khorne.
In this universe, being able to kill with high spirits might well have been a blessing.
Arthur could not even be bothered to consider where his exquisite combat skills had come from. Focusing on the enemies before him, his swordsmanship, seamless in both offense and defense, grew ever more fluid within the narrow passageway. The numbers steadily rising in his vision with every kill even felt rather considerate.
Had I really killed that many people?
The brief confusion quickly faded. As his blade, weaving through the enemy ranks like a work of art, paused in midair, Arthur had no choice but to confront a new problem.
A stranger had appeared before him.
He was a Space Marine clad in finely crafted blue Power Armor, roughly as tall as Arthur. He held a Multi-melta connected to an ammunition pack on his back. Above his Power Pack, an Iron Halo bearing the Omega Symbol gleamed in the dim corridor.
He had one hand raised in a guarding stance. Less than a centimeter from his gauntlet, Arthur's blade had stopped, the turbulent blue arcs of the Disintegration Field lightly scraping against the paint on his armor.
"..."
The two men looked at each other simultaneously.
Bang!
The Melta unleashed a surging torrent of molten metal, clearing out a large section of the corridor.
The Power Sword scraped past the Iron Halo. A Chaos Sorcerer who had used strange magic to close in was nailed to the wall. Arthur raised his hand and slashed upward, cutting open the sorcerer's body while splitting a Genestealer in half.
Clang!
Plasteel struck Plasteel as the two men pressed back-to-back against each other.
"Arthur?"
The Ultramarines spoke in Chinese. The language of the Ancient Kingdom of the Dragon cleared Arthur's mind, which had been almost entirely occupied with killing.
Arthur's superhuman brain allowed him to process a great deal of information in a short time. He recalled the Ultramarines' gear behind him, blocked a heretic's leaping strike with his shield, and the rippling impact shattered the courage of several nearby mortals. Then he tested the waters.
"Romulus?"
Romulus was Arthur's good brother in Warhammer. They had fought together from Darktide to Space Marine 2, from the Old World to Warhammer 40k, and they had known each other since childhood.
In the games, Romulus's preferred paint scheme happened to be this one.
"Mm."
The Ultramarines replied softly, then tapped his arm a few times. A 3D terrain map appeared in Arthur's field of vision.
"You take the lead. I'll cover you. Follow the passage straight ahead, and watch your step. Don't fall to the lower level."
"Okay."
Both understood exactly what kind of universe this was, and neither called the other by his real name. Arthur stepped forward.
Romulus casually tossed aside the Multi-melta in his hand. When he raised his hand again, he was holding a Heavy Bolter.
"Did a Chaos God bless you or something?"
Noticing the Bolter rounds precisely grazing past him, Arthur could not help asking as he dealt with the tougher enemies amid the horde of monsters.
Anyone who knew even a little about Warhammer knew that pulling equipment out of Warp-space like this was the sort of thing only a Chaos God entity such as Vashtorr, walking the path of Malicious Craft, could do. What Space Marine could swap weapons like that?
"Blessed?"
Romulus could not help laughing.
"You can buy it outright for thirty points. You should try it too."
"Huh?"
A stream of bullets came flying toward them. Arthur frowned and moved in front of Romulus to shield him.
"You didn't notice what was strange about you?"
Romulus threw a Krak Grenade, sending the machine gunners in the fortification ahead to their deaths before continuing.
"A safe area located in the Warp, numbers in your vision that increase whenever you kill sentient beings, and didn't you notice that the Demons you killed were permanently destroyed?"
Arthur froze. He suddenly recalled that after he had taken down several Demons at the start, only Xenos and heretics had surrounded him. Those Demons really did seem to have kept far away from him.
As everyone knew, Demons existed in the Warp. Aside from Warp creatures devouring one another, there was virtually no way to kill a Demon. Nothing besides death could make a Demon feel fear, either.
"Uh..."
The two continued advancing, and Arthur's face beneath his helmet could not help showing an awkward expression.
"I was too focused on killing. I figured that if I was going into a shit pit anyway, I might as well drag a few down with me to swim in it—you know, getting transported into Warhammer and not crying like a Gretchin already counts as strong mental fortitude, right?"
He awkwardly explained his actions. This definitely was not his fault.
"...Khorne the Second must really like you."
Romulus could not help sighing before explaining.
"I haven't fully figured out the details yet. What we know is that we have a domain in the Warp, something like a Safe House. Hunting beings with souls can increase our power, represented as numbers under the influence of our subconscious. Then we can spend those points to interfere with reality, like creating things out of thin air."
"Bro, did we become Warp Demons?"
Arthur cut down an Ork climbing up from the lower level. Watching his number tick upward, his face twitched.
That certainly did not rule out his concerns. The information he had so far was that he had been transported here, his starting circumstances were not too bad—although he was a Fallen Angel, he was at least a Space Marine—and then he had obtained something that seemed to be a cheat like this.
Honestly, given how the Warp worked, this so-called cheat might well have some connection to the evil creatures of the Warp. It would be hilarious if he blindly placed his hopes in it, only to encounter a Blank after getting out and find that the cheat had disconnected.
He even suspected that his good brother was a Demon in disguise, serving as a tutorial tool to achieve some evil purpose.
Well, that was not impossible.
Arthur's grip on his sword tightened slightly, and he could not help becoming more wary of the good brother behind him.
Come to think of it, the fact that he had accepted such a bloody scene the moment he was transported here, and could slaughter his way through hordes of monsters without feeling much disgust, was also deeply abnormal. He had to stay vigilant.
"Who knows? We'll have to leave the Warp before we can say for sure."
Romulus shook his head. From a rational perspective, he felt that being able to directly exchange the lives of a few random people for a Space Marine body was beyond even the Chaos Gods. Otherwise, Realspace would have been divided among the four long ago.
But this was not the time to discuss that.
Before you continue