Interlude 48: Zabriel's Encounter

Zabriel quickly adjusted his breathing.

Scalding rain poured down from the sky, crashing onto the Power Armour like molten lava falling from above, sending up puffs of white smoke. The jet-black paint was blurred by the raindrops, like an oil painting that hadn't quite dried yet, but the Ceramite beneath didn't turn gray or white; instead, it presented a strange black that had no texture whatsoever.

Zabriel gripped his sword tightly—his only weapon at present.

The sky was dark, and the sun had disappeared. The black-armored giant stood silently in the pitch-black rain, his sword lowered.

Until a certain instant, a burst of pulsating electricity erupted, filling the sword's blade. A white light shattered the rain, and high-temperature steam burst forth like flames.

Zabriel let out a deep roar from the depths of his chest, his face contorted in a ferocious grimace behind his helmet. He gritted his teeth, drew his sword, slashed horizontally, and slashed again, delivering four more blows in the blink of an eye.

The muscle spasms in his arm that had been present earlier were no longer visible. At this moment, his hand moved with the same steadiness, speed, and brutality as in every previous killing.

A flash of sword light, swift as lightning. Corpse parts scattered on the ground; something was thus cleanly and decisively slain on the spot—was it truly so?

Judging from the Dark Angels's raised arm once more, the answer is clearly not so.

"Die!"

Zabriel let out another low growl, the words escaping his throat, deep, hoarse, and carrying an indelible ferocity.

His past experiences hadn't turned the old knight into a resentful person, and he'd never fought in such an extreme way. But that's just how things are; he doesn't want peace now.

After all, seventy-six hours earlier, he had witnessed this creature devour an entire village.

He didn't know how many people had perished in its belly, only that there were a total of twenty-one houses in the village. The village roads were covered in blood, mud and blood-stained rags mixed together, and the simple handcarts were piled with grain that the villagers had not been able to transport to their own houses.

He arrived too late, so late that the screams could not even be heard. But he also arrived just in time, because the perpetrators of such atrocities and evil deeds were still there.

The battle took place almost exactly three seconds after Zabriel stepped into the village—the first second, he saw the carnage and analyzed the events; the second, he followed the clues to find the killer; the third, he drew his sword and gun and charged towards the village entrance.

The bomb struck the monster's head like lightning. A huge hole appeared in it, and more shattered flesh flowed down like molten wax.

Only then did the monster belatedly turn around, only to find that what awaited it had transformed from the weak and powerless resistance of ordinary humans into something it had never seen before.

After being slaughtered for more than four minutes, it decided to escape, but Zabriel did not choose to let it go.

But he had no reason to do that, did he?

He was in the midst of a recurring, labyrinthine history, with no connection to the medieval commoners of that village of Caliban. He had more pressing matters to attend to; he was out of ammunition, out of supplies, and all alone.

Two paths have been laid out on a scale. One side is full of chips, the other is empty. In this situation, what would someone else choose?

Zabriel had no answer; he simply kicked the scales over.

No reason is needed, the Dark Angels thought. I just want to kill it.

If necessary, he could find various reasons for his near-mad pursuit, but he didn't want to; he was too lazy to find reasons. He simply wanted to kill it.

Temporarily leaving one's duties?

"For the Emperor and the Lion El'Jonson!"

The Dark Angels continued to wield his sword, and the corpses wailed as they rapidly disintegrated under the disintegration field, one of the most ferocious weapons in the galaxy, yet they were never truly destroyed or killed.

Its "vitality" is like a kind of cancer, truly existing in every deformed blood vessel and every thick bone. No matter how violent or cruel Zabriel is, it is of no use to this terrible vitality.

The old knight certainly didn't overlook this strange fact—after all, the chase had lasted for a full seventy-six hours. If he couldn't even notice this most basic enemy situation, there were probably only two possibilities.

First, he was corrupted by Chaos. Second, he suffered mental trauma and temporarily lost his mind.

But even if he notices it, what can he do? He can't kill it unless he takes another approach.

Or rather, a last resort. In any case, he believed that the Aquila insignia stored in his belt could affect the monster's regenerative abilities. But for some reason, Zabriel was unwilling to do so.

Whenever such a thought arose in his mind, a sense of crisis would surge up, reminding him not to do it. He was certain that the sense of crisis did not come from his intuition.

Considering the sudden appearance of the monster and the changes in the surrounding environment, the answer is self-evident.

The rain poured down, and the sky had turned from gloomy to pitch black. Zabriel's wing helmet was covered in dripping blood, and the Ceramite was still being battered by the hot rain, with steam constantly rising from it.

His goggles were a deep crimson, and his hands were crammed with bits of flesh and bone. In the darkness, his silhouette was almost entirely defined by red, black, and white, making him appear far more grotesque and monstrous than a monster at first glance.

If a primitive person saw him wielding his sword at this moment, they would probably only think of him as some kind of ferocious Ghost that only appears at night.

And what about his opponent? If Zabriel is only in the nascent human form, it doesn't even have a "shape" anymore; language can hardly describe its current appearance.

A dozen or so tangled, intertwined clumps of flesh groaned and writhed, spewing bones, bits of flesh, and blood from their wounds onto the surrounding mass of flesh. Scalding rain fell on their wounds, creating a mist of blood and eliciting even more screams that carried far and wide through the darkness.

Zabriel fought until dawn, and when he finally stopped, exhausted, the battle timer provided by his eyepiece had reached the eighty-seventh hour.

He could still fight, and so could that thing; its "mass" hadn't even noticeably decreased. The constantly howling lumps of flesh revealed a peculiar pinkish hue in the morning sunlight, and then, they fused together again.

This time, without Zabriel's intervention, it returned to unity without any hindrance.

However, compared to its appearance in the village, where it was at best a lump of flesh, it now looked somewhat like a human—the exhausted old knight was horrified when he saw this scene, gritted his teeth, raised his Power Sword and pounced again, but failed to succeed.

The monster, which had never resisted before, raised its hand just before the blade pierced its body.

And that so-called arm, irregularly distributed with a large number of deformed muscles, looking more ridiculous than terrifying, actually firmly gripped Zabriel's wrist.

At that moment, the speed, power, and familiarity with swordsmanship it displayed caused Zabriel's face behind his helmet to darken suddenly.

He had a rough idea of who was controlling this thing, unless that person was incredibly stupid.

"Zabriel," Seraphax greeted him in an unusually mild tone. "Long time no see."

"Long?"

Zabriel coldly retorted, simultaneously releasing his sword and throwing a punch that shattered the deformed arm. The blade fell, the disintegrating force field crackling through the desecrated flesh before rapidly shutting down, then falling into the mud along with the arm.

Seraphax, who was either inside the monster's body or was the monster itself, didn't seem to care. He simply took two steps back, and a sickeningly loud tearing sound of flesh and blood suddenly came from deep within his body.

Zabriel had no intention of giving him any chance to use his evil magic, so he immediately chased after him and punched his disproportionately thin neck.

With a muffled thud, Seraphax's bloodied and mangled face was sent flying, while his headless, swollen, and twisted body stood in place, a large gash slowly splitting open in his chest and abdomen.

A heavy, beast-like breathing sound began to gather within it.

"I've been searching for you for a long time," the head of Seraphax said with a touch of melancholy. "The chaos of time and history far exceeds my imagination, but the promise of the Tzeentch— "

He burst into laughter.

Zabriel stopped his pursuit, turned around and stared, seeing the swollen body rapidly shrinking and deforming. The texture of flesh and blood vanished in an instant, replaced by the roughness of tree bark.

In less than half a second, a bizarrely large and eerily green giant tree took its place, standing in its place. Its roots were still spreading underground, and Zabriel could clearly hear the terrifying sound of the roots creaking and groaning as they moved through the soil.

The Dark Angels felt a chill run down his spine, as if his intuition had told him what was about to happen.

"--It's actually genuine! Can you believe it?"

The head kept talking, its voice gradually fading into the distance. Although it remained in the same place, motionless, and even slowly disintegrating, seeping into the soil.

Zabriel bent down to pick up the Power Sword and walked towards the giant tree. He was still exhausted, but his fighting spirit remained.

After parting ways with the Emperor, he felt no more confusion. Even if he didn't know when he was, even if he often lost his way and was taken to the depths of the unknown turbulent flow of time, he never retreated or stopped, let alone gave up.

He rushed to the giant tree, pressed the end of the sword hilt to activate the disintegration field, and was about to cut it down—however, the ground cracked open as soon as he raised his arm, and thick roots burst out of the ground, grabbing his wrist tightly.

A chilling wind howled, and despite the clear blue sky, an intense cold emanated from the surrounding forest, as if winter were upon them. The Power Armour began alerting Zabriel, informing him of multiple damages and the presence of unknown electronic interference.

Hundreds of lines of gibberish flew rapidly across his retina as he struggled with the tree roots, and finally, 0s and 1s intertwined to form a few sentences of a report.

Along with this came horrifying pain emanating from all the neural interfaces of his Power Armour. Black smoke and arcs of electricity erupted from within the Power Armour one after another, and Zabriel roared in pain, his eyes involuntarily drawn to the reports.

He felt a heavy weight on his shoulders.

The servo motor is stopped.

Significant damage detected; attempting overload operation to maintain basic functioning.

Attempt failed, unable to restart, unable to connect to the servo motor, unable to break the bottleneck.

The program encountered an error and attempted to restart. Restarting failed and was rejected. A logical error that should not have occurred was detected; errors will be summarized shortly.

Error report A-01: No errors, redirect, re-edit. Editing, editing complete, input complete.

+Notification: This unit will execute the Omnissiah's program, protecting the wearer at all costs. To achieve this goal, this unit will self-destruct to sever the influence the enemy is exerting on you at the power armor level.+

+ Zabriel, the Dark Angels, it is an honor for this machine to fight alongside you. For Omnissiah.+

"I'm so sorry, brother."

The head of Seraphax spoke again, and Zabriel wanted to turn back, but more roots had already taken advantage of that brief moment to entangle his body.

The thing created by this strange and evil magic was incredibly powerful; no matter how much he struggled and resisted, it was all in vain, and the roots only tightened their grip.

His sword had been taken from him, and his fingers had been torn apart one by one—a humiliation beyond measure. Moreover, his Power Armour was damaged and could no longer assist him in any additional exertion.

All of these are official terms existing in the Dark Angels's mind, words he tries to use to convince himself with reason. But the most real and loudest sentence, which is echoing in his heart at this moment, sounds quite chaotic, even enough to make him seem insane.

"My comrade is dead," Zabriel thought, overwhelmed with grief and utter confusion.

He didn't understand why he felt this way; he was completely bewildered. Seraphax, the instigator, however, knew perfectly well, and amidst the howling wind, his voice continued to reach Zabriel's ears from some distant place.

"I need to borrow something from you temporarily; it can help me find someone—I think you know who it is, Zabriel."

"Don't even think about it."

"It's not up to you," Seraphax said calmly.

At the same time, a root broke through the ground and opened a hidden compartment in Zabriel's belt.

A sudden burst of dazzling light erupted, revealing an unparalleled golden majesty, as intense as the sun rising before one's eyes. The giant tree trembled, but it did not burst into flames as Zabriel had imagined.

How is that possible?!

"His power can indeed dissolve other Daemon and those favored by the gods. But this tree is not one of them, my brother. Thank you for your help; I will bring you Luther's corpse."

The roots tightened again, and Ceramite cried out in pain. Zabriel gritted his teeth and endured it, and began to try to pry them open with his fingers without any regard for his image.

He failed as expected; more roots entangled him, shattering his eyepiece, leaving only darkness around him.

A sudden wave of drowsiness washed over him, and amidst the shattered crimson, the old knight strained to open his eyes, trying to glean more information from his tactical instincts—he did not give up.

In his last moments before losing consciousness, he saw a blond boy not far away, entwined—no, protected—by roots as he drifted into a deep sleep.

He looks familiar, Zabriel thought.

After that, his world was plunged into complete darkness.