Slaughter Dreamscape

On a starship, uprooting a family whose members were almost all officers was undoubtedly a major upheaval that would shake the ship to its core.

But no one could defy the Inquisitor's order.

While being escorted back with the others, Lu Jin heard that the Inquisitor's command had been carried out.

An entire family—every single one of them capable of casually deciding the lives and deaths of slaves—had all been executed on nothing more than a light, offhand order from the Inquisitor.

Walking through the corridors, Lu Jin could hear passing officers discussing the matter, congratulating themselves that their own families would soon be sharing in the vacated power and resources.

This kind of big-fish-eating-small-fish oppression sent a chill down Lu Jin's spine.

Returning to his gun position, Lu Jin untied Little Damian from his back and carried him to find Little Damian's mother.

But when he reached the dormitory where Little Damian's parents lived, he understood why only Damian had been dragged off and executed earlier.

In the cramped dormitory, with five bunk beds lined up on each side.

Little Damian's mother hung from a beam that ran across the room.

One person walked silently into the dormitory and pulled out a bag.

Lu Jin lowered his head in three minutes of silence, then silently placed the family of three into the bag, picked it up, and walked out of the dormitory.

Everyone gathered on the gun deck.

The family of three was placed into the breech of the Nova Cannon. When the weapon fired, they would be launched together... That was the custom aboard the ship.

Lu Jin looked at the others.

The slaves averted their eyes from Lu Jin, gradually dispersing. Not a single person spoke, and not a single person looked at Lu Jin.

Footsteps sounded.

The Inquisitor Bena, who had left earlier, walked onto the deck. Beside her, aside from her attendants, followed a Space Marine.

The slaves immediately clustered together, kneeling and pressing their foreheads to the ground, palms facing upward and flat beside their heads.

Lu Jin remained standing, even observing the Space Marines.

These Space Marines wore white armor, but the patterns on their shoulder pauldrons didn't reveal which Chapter they belonged to.

The reason Bena could kill anyone she wanted on this ship was also because she had Space Marines accompanying her.

"Kneel."

The Space Marine pointed his index finger at the ground.

But he clearly didn't intend to wait for Lu Jin's reaction. He walked straight up to Lu Jin and, with just one hand, pressed him firmly to the floor.

"The matter has been investigated," Bena said, walking over and crouching in front of Lu Jin. "But I have a question. At the time, didn't it occur to you that Little Damian was never going to survive? By killing Omi, you doomed everyone else?"

"Omi signaled his guards to kill me," Lu Jin said, straining to lift his head. "Dying is fine. But not like that."

As he spoke, Lu Jin recalled the situation at the time.

Omi had turned his head and made a throat-slitting gesture to his guards... That bastard thought his little move went unnoticed, but Lu Jin had caught it.

Hearing this, Bena laughed. "But your choice harmed everyone. Didn't you think that if you had just died like Little Damian, the matter would have ended, and no more slaves would have been killed?"

Lu Jin paused for a second before speaking. "What the hell are you talking about?!"

Bena said nothing, did nothing. She just listened.

"Collective punishment is the law on this ship. I fought back, and now I'm the one who doomed everyone?"

"Yes. If I had done nothing and just waited to die, they all would have lived. But if I had to do it over again, my choice still wouldn't be to wait for death!"

"I would kill as many people as I could, make their souls accompany me and the others into the grave!"

After hearing everything Lu Jin said, Bena wore a contemplative expression.

But instinct told Lu Jin that Bena wasn't thinking about whether he was right or wrong—it was more like she was conducting some kind of test.

"So you think maintaining this law is wrong? That the rest of us are complicit?"

Bena asked.

"Then do you think I deserve to die? I saved you, I saved the slaves, your enemies are all dead, and that idiot earlier—you killed him with one swing of your axe. Did I say anything?"

"There has never been a rebellion on this ship, but you're not the first to resist."

"It's just that no one actually enforced the collective punishment law. The others weren't as twisted as Omi. They understood that manpower is precious on a starship and didn't go around killing people at the drop of a hat."

"They were normal people, just like this gun crew's previous overseer. So do they all deserve to die too?"

Hearing this, Lu Jin was about to argue.

"If you were like Omi and wouldn't even spare a child, then you'd deserve to die. That Heavy Axe earlier would have landed on you..."

Bena suddenly covered Lu Jin's mouth. "Alright, stop talking."

The Space Marine looked down at Bena. "The Apothecary has tested this mortal's blood sample. His physique is strong, but he is still a mortal. However, his wound recovery rate is astonishing. In this short amount of time, he can already walk normally."

Bena looked up.

"Do you think he might be corrupted?" the Space Marine asked.

"Wouldn't he be better as ritual material?" Bena said. "His personality, his physique... they fit those people's requirements perfectly. I traveled through several star systems to make this deal, and out of everyone I screened, he's the most suitable as ritual material, the most compliant."

The Space Marine remained silent, but his eyes were filled with denial of the Inquisitor's thoughts.

Bena continued, "I've verified his personality too... enough nonsense, that operation wasn't my affair alone."

The Space Marine nodded silently.

Bena stood up and left.

The Space Marine bound Lu Jin's hands and feet with a steel chain, then removed the Control Chip stuck behind Lu Jin's head and tucked it into Lu Jin's pocket.

With the Control Chip offline, the Little Damian's Device on Lu Jin's shoulder went dead.

"Keep it." The Space Marine patted Lu Jin's chest, turned, and strode away.

The ship sailed for weeks.

With his hands bound, Lu Jin could only lie in the dormitory.

No one came to bring Lu Jin food, because Bena had ordered him to be denied meals.

But every night, the others would still sneak over under cover of darkness, secretly feeding Lu Jin food they had hidden during the day.

Lu Jin thought these people would no longer dare to contact him, or would hate him.

But one of them whispered while feeding him, "I think if it had been any of us that day, you would have stood up for us too."

Lu Jin didn't starve to death.

During the time he was bound and unable to move, Lu Jin passed the time by pondering his own power.

His power was undoubtedly peculiar.

Killing a person allowed him to claim a sliver of their strength as his own, and then he could also recover wounds and stamina.

But where this power came from, and what its mechanism of action was, Lu Jin didn't yet have a precise answer.

Even the part of this power that could increase strength—how much strength it could actually increase—wasn't presented to Lu Jin with any data.

However, he was good at visualization and quantification. Those ethereal things took concrete, accurate form in his mind. Even if they inherently had no tangible manifestation, Lu Jin insisted on making them concrete and quantifiable.

An ordinary person's strength, when quantified, was below 1.

The limit for an ordinary person was 1.

But after assessing his own strength, Lu Jin felt his was 2, while a Space Marine was at least 10.

He even quantified the sliver of strength he could gain from killing each opponent.

The sliver gained from killing an ordinary person was 0.01.

Or even lower.

And the strength gained from killing a Space Marine was several times greater.

Lu Jin even quantified the powerful warriors he knew from the Warhammer universe—for example, named Space Marines had a strength of 15 or even higher.

These forcibly visualized and quantified things made Lu Jin feel like he was observing combat power through a scope in Dragon Ball.

Regardless, Lu Jin felt that what he had figured out could at least serve as a reference, telling him how many opponents he needed to eliminate to reach a certain level of strength.

During sleep at night.

Lu Jin would dream of annihilating every soldier on the entire ship, regardless of whether he hated those soldiers, regardless of whether they had done anything to him... The criterion for killing or not killing was whether the opponent was a non-weakling who wielded force.

Then in the dream, he obtained some kind of conceptual power, which made him even stronger.

A voice told him that as long as he performed similar actions, he would gain greater power, as long as his deeds aligned with conceptual behavior.

Lu Jin would wake up from the dream with a start.

He had guessed that his power was probably related to some Warp god, and the repeated dreams made his speculation about the source of his power converge on a single answer—Khorne.

The end of these dreams came after the ship stopped sailing.

"Take him down."

Bena and her group arrived at the gun deck.

After the Inquisitor gave the order, the Space Marine stepped forward, picked up Lu Jin, and placed him on a small cart.

Then a bald man approached.

When this man got near the dormitory area, all the slaves showed expressions of disgust and hatred, pinched their noses, and scattered far away, as if smelling some foul odor.

The Space Marine also showed disgust as the bald man approached.

Only Lu Jin felt nothing.

He realized the bald man was a Blank—Blanks could suppress Warp power, and this power would make others feel a soul-deep revulsion.

At this moment, Lu Jin, who now believed his power came from the Warp's Blood God Khorne, immediately closed his eyes to sense.

He didn't feel any discomfort in his body as the Blank approached, nor did he feel any loss of power.

Lu Jin found it strange, because if his power were Khorne's blessing, he would inevitably feel discomfort, and his power would be suppressed by the Blank.

"Slaughter every soldier on the ship..."

The voice from his dream suddenly echoed in Lu Jin's ears.

As Lu Jin looked around in bewilderment, the Blank pushed the cart transporting Lu Jin to the hangar deck.