The Punished

Office.

The guard pushed the door open, and Lu Jin strode in, his first action being to look at Little Damian, who was lying on the floor.

He saw that Little Damian was beaten to within an inch of his life, his body curled up, seemingly holding something in his arms. The boy was still conscious, and as if to protect what he was holding, he had actively used his back to take the blows from the electric baton when it was about to fall.

"I will take the punishment!"

Lu Jin's voice echoed through the office.

Omi's right hand, raised high, paused for a moment before he turned around, leaning on the electric baton and looking at Lu Jin.

"You are the slave who killed the heretic Astartes."

The fierce and brutal expression on his face vanished in an instant, replaced by a somewhat sinister and kind smile.

"Even if you have some merit, you can't let a little brat stay on the artillery crew deck and eat for free."

Lu Jin kept his eyes fixed on Little Damian, gritting his teeth, no longer able to hear what Omi was saying.

It wasn't until Omi raised the electric baton again, as if about to strike, that Lu Jin spoke, "The Management Edict requires everyone to work on the artillery crew, no one is exempt..."

Mid-sentence, Omi struck.

Lu Jin's eyes widened in fury, and he looked up glaring at Omi.

"As a slave, do you have the right to explain?" Omi smiled, his tone and expression as relaxed as friends joking around.

Lu Jin snorted, hot air blowing through his collar. He didn't know how to respond.

When Omi raised the electric baton again, Lu Jin immediately raised his hand, "Yes... yes... I don't have the right to explain."

Omi lowered his right hand and instead pointed the electric baton at Lu Jin, "I don't like your look."

Lu Jin averted his gaze to the floor.

At this moment, Omi suddenly raised the electric baton again and smashed it onto Little Damian's back.

"Didn't you want to take the punishment?"

"You don't look like you want to..."

Lu Jin immediately walked over, took off his shirt, and knelt beside Little Damian with his back to Omi.

The first blow landed.

The pain of the impact was nothing to Lu Jin, but the electric current seeping into his internal organs was truly agonizing.

Omi's baton bounced back slightly after the strike, and he almost lost his balance. He pointed at Lu Jin's broad, muscular back and looked at the others with a smile.

The guards and soldiers watching the spectacle from the doorway burst into laughter.

The second blow quickly followed.

Lu Jin didn't make a sound, looking down at Little Damian.

The boy looked at Lu Jin, his eyes filled with gratitude and weakness, then tried to turn over.

Seeing him struggling to move on the ground, Lu Jin realized that Little Damian's spine had been broken.

Lu Jin took another blow and reached out to help Little Damian turn over.

The boy looked up at Lu Jin, trying to reach for something with his right hand, but his arm fell back down as soon as he lifted it.

Finally, he used his unbroken left hand to reach into his embrace.

That left hand was a mechanical arm. Little Damian had lost his left hand when he was working near the loading machine as a child. The previous officer had approved a modification for him. This hand was indeed unbreakable.

Lu Jin took another blow without a sound, his eyes fixed on Little Damian's chest, a look of confusion in his gaze.

The boy's mechanical hand pulled out a mechanical device from his embrace. Its structure looked very intricate, and it had a ring-like object, seemingly mountable on a shoulder, with a slot at the top, as if something could be installed there.

Lu Jin saw the boy's left hand rotate 180 degrees, point at the mechanical joint, and then point at the thing he had made, implying – this arm could be attached to this.

Then, the left hand pointed at Lu Jin's shoulder.

Implying his creation could be attached to your shoulder.

During this process, Little Damian trembled and coughed incessantly. If his left hand weren't mechanical, he wouldn't have been able to perform these actions.

Lu Jin then realized why the boy had been acting so strangely all day and what his mysterious smile earlier had meant.

He had made this thing at night, which was why he was tired during the day. It was a gift for Lu Jin, so he had imagined Lu Jin's reaction upon completion, hence the smile.

But Lu Jin didn't understand why the boy had made this for him.

"Forget it." Omi stepped aside. "I don't think you're in much pain..."

Lu Jin calculated that he had taken all twenty blows, so he picked up Little Damian, preparing to leave.

"Let's hit him instead." Omi said again.

Lu Jin whipped his head around to look at Omi.

"What?"

"He shouldn't have been beaten?"

Omi leaned on his electric baton with one hand, pointing the other outside the door.

"Parts are always going missing from the deck storage. Those parts probably ended up as toys in this brat's hands. Stealing is a capital offense. Beating him a few times saved him, understand?"

"If this isn't resolved, all of you will die..."

Lu Jin interrupted Omi, "I'll take the punishment, is that not acceptable?"

He didn't believe this was about stolen parts; Omi probably didn't even know about that before.

Regardless of the reason, Lu Jin wouldn't allow the boy in his arms to be hit again.

Omi slowly shook his head. Seeing Lu Jin look away, he turned back to the guards outside the door and subtly made a throat-slitting gesture, while nodding towards Lu Jin on the ground.

The guard slowly nodded, reaching for the trigger of his Laser Rifle.

He didn't know why his superiors wanted Lu Jin dead too, but since it was an order, he had to comply.

Lu Jin put down Little Damian.

The next second, he suddenly exploded forward, landing a punch on Omi's face.

The soldier at the door froze for a second. Just as he was about to rush in, Lu Jin, like an arrow released from its string, charged back. As he neared the door, he kicked out.

The door slammed shut with a bang, also hitting the soldier, who had one foot already in the office, against the corridor wall.

Omi slowly opened his eyes. The world was spinning. After slowly adjusting, he crawled to the desk. As he got up like an old man on his deathbed, he saw Lu Jin locking the office door from the inside.

Omi swallowed and reached for the Laser Pistol on the desk. But after taking a solid punch from Lu Jin, his vision was filled with red. The desk and gun were blurred, showing dozens of afterimages. When he reached out, his hand grasped a quill pen.

Lu Jin turned around silently, glancing at Little Damian.

The boy lay on the ground, looking at Lu Jin with his head tilted.

"You like swinging that electric baton, don't you."

Lu Jin withdrew his gaze, picked up the electric baton, and walked towards Omi.

Omi had just gotten his hands on the pistol and was about to pull the trigger when Lu Jin smashed his right hand with the baton, breaking it.

Just as a scream was about to escape his throat, the searing pain from his left hand being broken by the electric baton forced the scream back down into his gut.

He turned to run but Lu Jin kicked his left leg, breaking it. As soon as he fell, the electric baton came down from above, shattering his right leg.

"You... you..."

Omi was probably about to say something like "You're dead," or perhaps beg for mercy, but it didn't matter. The intense pain and weakness made him use all his strength just to squeeze out two words.

"When I was little, someone said my name was unlucky, 'Lu Jin' (戮尽), meaning too much killing intent."

"The kind of beast I want to 'Lu Jin' is you!"

Lu Jin raised the electric baton high and swung it towards Omi's head.

A cracking sound echoed through the office.

The moment Omi died, Lu Jin felt his stamina fully restored, as if he hadn't done anything and had just had a good sleep. At the same time, he could sense that he had gained a bit more strength.

After a moment of sensation, Lu Jin turned and ran to Little Damian's side, dropped the electric baton, picked up the shirt he had taken off earlier, rolled it up, and passed it through Little Damian's body.

Just as he was about to sling Little Damian over his shoulder, he found the boy had already stopped breathing.

The shirt fell from his hands. Lu Jin felt as if all his strength had been drained in an instant. He just stared silently at the corpse.

The soldiers were smashing at the door.

Someone suggesting blowing the door open reached Lu Jin's ears.

"No matter what... I promised I'd take him back."

Lu Jin took a deep breath, continued to thread the rolled-up shirt through Little Damian's armpits, tied the two ends of the shirt together, and then lifted him to carry him on his back.

At this moment, the mechanical device Little Damian had made, and a drawing, fell from his clothes onto the ground.

Lu Jin paused for a moment, picked up the drawing, and looked at it closely.

It was a drawing of him.

The lines were very rough, and the paint used was black machine oil cleaned from the Nova Cannon.

It depicted Lu Jin as Little Damian imagined him – wearing Power Armor similar to an Astartes, holding a long-handled warhammer in both hands, with a device on his shoulder that housed a Mechanical Arm, and a pistol gripped in the mechanical hand.

He felt that Lu Jin was as tall and imposing as the Astartes he saw during the boarding action that day. He felt Lu Jin should be a warrior, not a tugboat pulling ropes on the artillery deck.

He also felt that Lu Jin looked powerful when swinging a hammer while doing odd jobs, but a Heavy Hammer would occupy both of Lu Jin's hands, preventing him from holding a gun like an Astartes.

So, he invented that device for Lu Jin, which could accommodate a Mechanical Arm.

Lu Jin looked at the drawing, silent for a second, then reached out to Little Damian's creation and attached it to his shoulder.

However, he only installed the device and then got up to search the entire office.

A pile of tools was placed in the corner.

Lu Jin rummaged through them and found a suitable one.

He usually swung a hammer when doing odd jobs, so he chose a two-handed Heavy Hammer.

However, there was another one, a two-handed long axe.

Two heavy tools would be a struggle for an ordinary person to even hold, but in Lu Jin's hands, they were no different from single-handed tools.

The soldiers were about to break down the door.

Lu Jin crouched down, carrying Little Damian on his back, holding a Heavy Hammer in one hand and a Heavy Axe in the other, crossing them into a cross shape in front of him.

With a BOOM, the door exploded open.

As he charged at the soldiers like a wild beast, he didn't know if it was auditory hallucination or something else... Lu Jin felt like he heard a sentence.

"Slaughter all the warriors on this ship..."

Then the voice was drowned out by the sound of bones shattering.

As Lu Jin rushed out, he shouldered one soldier aside and swung his Heavy Axe, cleaving another in half. He spun halfway around at high speed, his right hand wielding the Heavy Hammer to smash through a high-ranking soldier's carapace and chest.

He was still mortal; swords or Laser Rifles could still injure him.

But the guards on the outermost perimeter watched as Lu Jin, after taking a shot to the abdomen and a stab to the gut, still managed to slaughter the others like a whirlwind.

The guard's experience told him that a normal person would lose the ability to move after a single sword strike, and would be immediately taken down by a gunshot...

Lu Jin's knee was pierced by a Laser Rifle. The wound was visible through to the other side, and just as he was about to fall to his knees, he propped himself up with the Heavy Hammer.

The guard held his rifle, the muzzle still spewing residual heat from the laser.

The next second, he saw the wound on Lu Jin's knee healing, and a hammer head, accompanied by a roar, charging straight for his face.