Over the following year, an exceedingly strange and comical sight appeared on the poison-shrouded lowlands of Barbarus.
A skeletal old mortal, staggering along as though a gust of wind might knock him over at any moment, always walked in front, leaning on a metal cane and muttering an endless stream of curses.
Behind him followed a pale giant as massive as a hill, matching his every step. The giant always kept his head lowered, silently carrying an enormous pack stitched together from scrap metal and animal hides, stuffed with assorted bottles, jars, battered metal, and strange plants. His face, once filled with gloom and stubbornness, now often wore a peculiar expression that mingled bewilderment, concentration, and the dejection of someone who had just been scolded.
They traveled through more than a dozen nearby mortal villages. With medical and chemical knowledge far ahead of its time, the old doctor treated patients tormented by the poisonous fog and the xenos lords' new "toys."
Over that year, Mortarion's terrifying aptitude for working with his hands finally erupted into full bloom!
He no longer thought of nothing but climbing to the mountaintop to fight Nakare to the death. He became obsessed with another kind of "battle": a battle with materials, structures, and chemical formulas. He began systematically collecting discarded metal they had once considered rubbish, stripping tough hides and bones from the carcasses of xenos beasts.
Under his tremendous strength, warped steel plates were forcibly straightened, and hard beast bones were shaped into form. Combining the chemical filtration formula supplied by the old doctor with the most primitive forging and stitching techniques, he created the first true heavy-duty gas mask capable of effectively resisting the lowlands' poisonous fog. It was crude and ugly, yet immensely practical. When the first villager put it on and,