Slaughter Dreams

On a ship, wiping out a family whose members were almost all officers was undoubtedly a major blow.

But no one could disobey an Inquisitor's orders.

As Lu Jin was escorted back with the others, he heard that the Inquisitor's orders had been carried out.

An entire family—all of whose members could casually decide whether slaves lived or died—had been executed because of one offhand order from the Inquisitor.

As he walked through the corridors, Lu Jin heard passing officers discussing the matter. They were pleased that their families would be sharing in the power and resources left vacant that very day.

This kind of big-fish-eats-little-fish infighting made Lu Jin's blood run cold.

Back at the gun deck, Lu Jin took Little Damian off his back and carried him to find his mother.

But when he reached Little Damian's parents' quarters, he finally understood why only Damian had been taken away and executed earlier.

The cramped quarters had five tiers of bunk beds lined up along each side.

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

Someone silently entered the quarters and took out a sack.

Lu Jin bowed his head in silence for three minutes, then quietly placed the family of three into the sack and carried them out.

They arrived at the gun deck.

The family of three was placed inside the Nova Cannon's barrel. When the weapon fired, they would be launched out together... It was a shipboard custom.

Lu Jin looked at the others.

The slaves avoided his gaze and gradually dispersed. Not one of them spoke, and not one of them looked at him.

Footsteps sounded.

Inquisitor Bena, who had left earlier, entered the deck with her attendants and a Space Marine.

The slaves immediately gathered together, knelt, and pressed their heads to the floor, laying their palms flat and facing upward beside their heads.

Lu Jin remained standing, still watching the Space Marine.

His armor was painted white, but the insignia on his shoulder plate didn't reveal which Chapter he belonged to.

Bena could kill anyone she wanted aboard this ship precisely because a Space Marine was accompanying her.

"Kneel."

The Space Marine pointed at the floor.

But he clearly had no intention of waiting for Lu Jin to respond. He walked over and pinned him to the floor with one hand.

"The matter has been investigated." Bena came over and crouched in front of Lu Jin. "But I have a question. Did it never occur to you that Little Damian was doomed to die? By killing Omi, you were as good as killing everyone."

"Omi signaled his guards to kill me." Lu Jin raised his head as much as he could. "I could accept dying, but not like that."

As he spoke, Lu Jin recalled what had happened.

Omi had turned and made a throat-slitting gesture to his guards... He thought no one would notice the little signal, but Lu Jin had seen it.

After hearing him out, Bena smiled. "But your choice got everyone killed. Did you ever consider that if you'd simply died like Little Damian, the matter would have ended there? None of the other slaves would have been killed."

Lu Jin fell silent for a second before speaking. "What the fuck are you talking about?!"

Bena said nothing and did nothing. She only listened.

"Collective punishment is the law on this ship. I fought back, and somehow that means I'm the one who got everyone killed?"

"Yes. If I'd done nothing and just waited to die, they would all have survived. But if I could do it over, I still wouldn't choose to wait for death!"

"I'd kill as many people as I could and make their souls accompany me and everyone else into the grave!"

Bena listened to everything Lu Jin said, her expression thoughtful.

But his instincts told him she wasn't considering whether he was right. It was more like she was conducting some kind of test.

"Then do you think it's wrong to uphold this law? That the rest of us are all implicated?"

Bena asked.

"Then do you think I deserve to die? I saved you and the slaves, and you killed all your enemies. When that idiot was killed by your Heavy Axe, did I say anything?"

"There have never been any rebellions on this ship, but that doesn't mean no one has ever fought back like you did."

"It's just that no one actually enforced the collective punishment law. The others weren't as strange as Omi. They knew manpower was valuable on a ship, so they didn't go around killing people at the drop of a hat."

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

At that, Lu Jin was about to argue.

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

Bena suddenly covered Lu Jin's mouth. "That's enough. Don't say anything else."

The Space Marine looked down at Bena. "The Apothecary tested this Mortal's blood sample. He's exceptionally strong, but still a Mortal. His wounds heal at an astonishing rate. It hasn't even been that long, and he can already walk normally."

Bena looked up.

"Do you think he's been corrupted?" the Space Marine asked.

"Then wouldn't that make him even better as ritual material?" Bena said. "His personality, his physique... He fits their requirements very well. I traveled through several star systems to arrange this deal, and of everyone I selected, he's the best fit as ritual material. He meets their requirements better than anyone."

The Space Marine remained silent, but his eyes showed his disapproval of the Inquisitor's idea.

Bena continued, "I've verified his personality, too... Enough talk. I'm not the only one involved in that deal."

The Space Marine nodded silently.

Bena rose and left.

The Space Marine bound Lu Jin's hands and feet with a steel chain, then removed the Control Chip attached to the back of his head and tucked it into his pocket.

With the Control Chip offline, the device Little Damian had made on Lu Jin's shoulder stopped working.

"Keep it." The Space Marine patted Lu Jin on the chest, then turned and strode away.

The ship traveled for several weeks.

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

No one brought him food, because Bena had ordered that he be forbidden to eat.

But every night, when it was quiet, the others still slipped over and secretly fed him some of the food they had hidden during the day.

Lu Jin had thought they were afraid to go near him now, or that they hated him.

But while feeding him, one of them whispered, "I think if it had been anyone else among us that day, you would've stood up for the rest of us all the same."

Lu Jin didn't starve to death.

While he was bound and unable to move, he passed the time thinking about his strength.

His power was undoubtedly unusual.

After killing someone, he gained a sliver of their strength for himself, and could also recover from wounds and regain his stamina.

But where this power came from, and how it worked, he still didn't know for sure.

He didn't even know how much the part of this power that could increase his strength would actually increase it. There were no figures displayed in front of him.

However, he was good at visualizing and quantifying things. The abstract and intangible became concrete and precise in his mind. Even when something had no tangible manifestation, he insisted on giving it one and assigning it a value.

A Mortal's strength, once quantified, was less than 1.

The limit for a Mortal was 1.

But after estimating his own strength, Lu Jin judged it to be 2, while a Space Marine had a strength of at least 10.

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

The amount he could gain from killing a Mortal was 0.01.

Or even less.

The strength he could gain from killing a Space Marine was several times greater.

He even quantified the powerful warriors he knew from the Warhammer universe. For example, famous Space Marines had a strength of 15 or even higher.

All this forced visualization and quantification made Lu Jin feel as if he were using a scouter in Dragon Ball to measure combat power.

In any case, Lu Jin felt that the figures he had worked out could at least serve as a reference, telling him how many opponents he needed to kill to reach a certain level of strength.

At night, while he slept,

Lu Jin dreamed of killing every soldier aboard the ship, whether or not he hated them, whether or not they had ever done anything to him... His standard for whether to kill them was whether they were non-weaklings who wielded force.

Then, in the dream, he gained a kind of conceptual power that made him even stronger.

A voice told him that he could gain even greater strength by doing similar things, as long as his actions conformed to a conceptual act.

Lu Jin would wake with a start.

He had suspected that his power might have something to do with a Warp deity. His recurring dreams had left him with only one likely answer as to where his power came from—Khorne.

The dreams ended when the ship stopped moving.

"Take him away."

Bena and her party arrived on the gun deck.

At the Inquisitor's command, the Space Marine stepped forward, picked Lu Jin up, and set him on a small cart.

Then a bald man approached.

As he neared the quarters, all the slaves looked disgusted and hateful. They pinched their noses and hurried away, as if they smelled something foul.

The Space Marine also looked disgusted when the bald man drew near.

Only Lu Jin felt nothing.

He realized the bald man was a Blank—a Blank could suppress Warp powers, and that power made others feel a deep, soul-level revulsion.

Lu Jin, who now believed his power came from Khorne, the Blood God of the Warp, immediately closed his eyes and focused.

He felt no discomfort as the Blank approached, and his strength didn't diminish.

Lu Jin found it strange. If his power was a blessing from Khorne, he should have felt discomfort, and the Blank should have suppressed his strength.

"Slaughter the soldiers aboard the entire ship..."

The voice he had heard in his dream suddenly echoed in Lu Jin's ears.

As Lu Jin looked around in bewilderment, the Blank pushed the cart carrying him toward the hangar deck.