Golden Light????

"Drip... drip..."

In the cold, damp underground chamber, darkness was so thick that no one could see a hand in front of their face. The sound of water dripping onto stone bricks rang out clearly.

"Step... step, step!"

Then approaching human footsteps broke the silence.

Light came with them, illuminating the chamber.

It was a spacious, rectangular hall, roughly the area of two standard soccer fields and about fifteen meters high.

The ceiling, walls, and passageways were built from granite bricks, with moss growing in the gaps. The load-bearing granite pillars were so thick that three adults would have to join hands to encircle one.

Along both sides, and at the far end opposite the entrance, stood numerous "doorframes," each fourteen meters wide and fourteen meters high.

A small plaza resembling a sacrificial altar stood in the center. At its four corners stood four statues of Giants, their forms indistinct beneath what appeared to be a deliberate coating of earth.

"Step, step!"

The American soldiers led by Lieutenant Krauser were the first to rush out of the passage.

They spread out quickly, using the pillars for cover and the light from their shoulder lamps to advance steadily. The Mercenaries belonging to Atlas followed close behind.

Before long, the soldiers had finished their sweep and confirmed that, for the moment, the chamber posed no danger.

A large number of personnel then poured in. They opened their equipment cases and began setting up powerful lights and specialized surveying and research instruments.

Sui Yang headed straight for the center. He climbed seven steps onto the altar.

Looking around, he saw something else besides the four statues that caught his attention: a platform made of nine massive floor tiles, engraved with an unusual "symbol"—

A human skull.

[Blood... fresh blood...]

"..."

Sui Yang frowned slightly at the words, wondering whether he should keep following that cold voice.

He had watched enough movies to feel that everything about this scene pointed to the moment in a horror adventure film when someone broke a seal and unleashed something unspeakably evil.

And yet the skull symbol looked somewhat familiar to him.

Sui Yang was not the only one on edge. The Atlas personnel were tense, and the Mercenaries remained on high alert, ready to respond to any sudden threat.

The American soldiers were on guard too, though confusion troubled them more.

They belonged to the United States Army's 10th Operational Group and were stationed at the South Africa Base. On June 3, they had received orders to provide full protection for an important figure and had traveled ahead to Ghana in West Africa.

On June 4, an Atlas freighter arrived at Accra Port. After linking up and taking a brief rest, they headed deep into the Comoé Forest.

At first, the soldiers had treated the operation as an ordinary bodyguard assignment.

But before they entered the ruins, Sui Yang had told them, "Boys, you are the warriors I chose... especially you, Lieutenant Jack Krauser."

Those words, combined with the scene before them, made the soldiers wonder whether Sui Yang intended to sacrifice them.

After all, movies, television, comics, and other media had taught them since childhood that superheroes and supervillains arose naturally in this world.

They remained on relatively cordial terms only because they had orders to obey and had not faced any actual threat.

As for Sui Yang, whom Jack Krauser and the other soldiers had mistaken for a potential supervillain, he thought for a few seconds before deciding to take the gamble. He drew the dagger at his waist with his right hand and slashed his left palm.

Bright red blood fell in an unbroken stream.

"Drip!"

The instant a drop struck the brick, it splattered outward as though it had burst.

More blood fell and pooled, gradually flowing into the engraved grooves.

Then Sui Yang felt a pulling force, and blood began gushing from his left palm.

The blood leaving his body no longer obeyed gravity. It streamed straight into the grooves as if guided by a will of its own. In the blink of an eye, a blood-red skull appeared before him.

Boom!!

Suddenly, blinding golden light erupted from the engraved grooves.

Whoosh! Whoosh!

Golden flames engulfed the once moss-covered pillars, turning the chamber as bright as day without any need for the powerful lights.

Crack... crack!!

Then the earth coating the statues fractured like glass and fell away, revealing their true forms...

They depicted Giants clad in Power Armor that looked futuristic yet rugged and old-fashioned, wielding enormous chain-bladed swords or large-caliber rifles.

*!!!*

Before Sui Yang could process what he was seeing, the golden Radiant Light pouring from the skull engraving converged on him.

"Argh!"

Agony tore through him. His skin felt as though a live, heated ironing board were being pressed hard against it, scorching and stinging, while the blood inside him seemed ready to boil.

Fortunately, the pain vanished as quickly as it had come. Once he recovered a little...

Sui Yang felt refreshed, almost euphoric. His hearing, sight, and other senses had sharpened further. He could even faintly sense the emotions around him.

Once his mind had fully steadied, Sui Yang looked at the statues of the Giants, then considered the skull symbol and the changes to his body...

Is this fucking Psychic Power?

He swore inwardly because he had realized that his arrival in this world was somehow tied to the horrors of Warhammer 40,000!

Weren't the statues on this altar Astartes, those warriors known as Angels?

The skull was also a symbol of the Imperium of Man. Sui Yang even suspected that the cold, emotionless voice in his head came from the God-Emperor of Mankind—the one who "loved humanity as a whole, but not its individuals"!

Had the Emperor chosen him and sent him into this parallel world, one that mixed together characters and elements from American television shows and games?

Sui Yang did not know. But he did know that if Warhammer 40,000 was involved, then bizarre horrors such as Demons, the Warp, and the Chaos Gods existed too.

"..."

He was at a loss for words.

To be honest, he nearly gave in to the urge to stop trying. But he had made it through more than a hundred years already. What was a little longer?

Besides, in theory, entering a world connected to knowledge of the Warp should have drawn the Chaos Gods' attention immediately. Yet he was still unharmed.

"Mr. Sui! The door really did open!"

The sudden call broke Sui Yang's brief distraction.

He looked toward the voice and saw that the granite within the fourteen-by-fourteen-meter doorframe directly ahead had turned into a liquid metal resembling mercury.

Seeing that, he recalled the words in his mind: [Doors to other worlds will open] and [Whether humanity survives will be yours to decide]. They suggested he had plenty of room to act.

His first priority was to explore the world beyond the first door and see whether Atlas could use what it found to shore up its weaknesses and acquire weapons and equipment far ahead of its time.

Once Atlas held an absolute technological advantage, it could deal with the threat posed by this world's so-called "superhumans" and ensure its own supremacy.