The Eighth Temporary Training Area for Soldiers was the largest and had the most personnel among the nine factories.
It is also the only one that has not yet reported any good news.
An hour earlier, deep inside Factory Building No. 8, the iron door of the storage room was slammed shut with a loud bang.
Quirk leaned against the cold metal shelf, panting heavily.
He was only sixteen years old, an apprentice at the Lower City's textile workshop. He was as thin as a stick and only 1.6 meters tall. Among his peers, he was always laughed at for looking like a child who hadn't grown up yet.
Three days ago, when the conscription team dragged him out of the alley at the Lower City, he was still clutching the unfinished fabric, thinking it was just a formality.
He never imagined he would encounter such a hellish scene.
Just as the ritual began, he happened to be hiding in the storage room, secretly eating the nutritional paste he had hidden away.
The screams, howls, and grotesque cracking sounds of bones outside flooded into my ears like a tidal wave.
He trembled with fear, cowering behind the shelves, too afraid to utter a sound, until a Chaos zombie that had smashed through an iron gate lunged at him. Only then did he instinctively grab a broken table leg from the side of him.
The table legs were made of hard oak, with rusty iron nails at one end, which he had just noticed by chance.
The instinct for survival overcame the fear.
With his eyes closed, he swung the table leg and smashed it hard on the zombie's head.
The sensation of the nails piercing his skull was sticky and disgusting; he vomited for a long time, but it was also the first time he realized that these monsters could actually be killed.
One monster after another followed after hearing the commotion.
He hid behind the door of the storage room and used the narrow terrain to ambush and kill seven mutants that pounced on him.
The nails on the table legs were long bent, and they were covered with black and red bloodstains and bone fragments.
When the eighth tentacle-covered Aberrant roared and charged over, he was so exhausted that he could barely lift his arms, his vision blurred, and even his fingers gripping the table leg were cramping.
Am I going to die here?
He thought bitterly that he hadn't saved enough money to move out of the Lower City, hadn't seen the golden lights of the Uptown, and hadn't eaten the legendary roast pork ribs.
Just then, a surge of intense heat suddenly exploded from my chest, like a ball of fire flowing through my veins and throughout my body.
The fatigue vanished instantly, and the sore muscles were filled with strength again, even stronger and more energetic than before.
His originally thin arms now showed faint muscle definition.
The fear seemed to have been completely burned away by the flames.
Looking at the Aberrant lunging at him, he felt no fear whatsoever; instead, he felt an irrepressible urge to tear it apart.
" The God-Emperor... it is the God-Emperor who has favored me!"
Quirk was both surprised and delighted. He had heard the Ministorum Priest preach since he was a child, saying that devout believers would receive the blessing of the God-Emperor in times of danger.
He thought it was a miracle.
He swung the table leg, and this time he easily smashed the Aberrant's head.
Dark red blood splattered all over his face, and the warm liquid slid down his chin. Far from feeling disgusted, he felt a strange sense of pleasure.
"I need to get out of here, I need to save the others."
With this thought in mind, he tore off the thickest bone blade from the Aberrant and held it in his hand as a weapon.
The bone blade was heavy; he wouldn't have been able to lift it before, but now it felt just the right weight and was very easy to handle.
He kicked open the deformed iron gate and stepped into this hell on earth.
The factory was worse than he had imagined.
Everywhere there were roaming mutants, and everywhere there was biting and screaming.
He continued forward, slashing and killing any monsters he encountered.
But that power continued to grow; with each monster he killed, he felt the flames within his body burn brighter and his strength increase.
He wanted to find survivors and save ordinary people like him who just wanted to survive.
But what he found were either completely mutated monsters or unfortunate souls who were twisting and turning, half-human and half-ghost.
Someone cried out to him for help, but the next second their arm turned into tentacles, roaring as they lunged at him.
Time and again, disappointment gradually accumulated.
The people he saved eventually turned into monsters who wanted to kill him.
"Why..."
Quirk stood panting amidst a mountain of corpses, his massive bone blade dripping blood.
He had grown quite a bit taller, and his once loose work clothes were now stretched taut, his muscles bulging out like rocks.
He could no longer distinguish between monsters and good people.
Perhaps... they're all the same.
Perhaps... they were all killed.
Then there will be no more pain.
Once this idea pops into your head, it grows wildly, like moss receiving timely rain.
The fire in his chest burned even brighter, and the thrill of killing numbed his mind like a poison.
He stopped searching for survivors and just walked aimlessly forward, hacking and slashing at anything that could move.
Monsters or humans, begging for mercy or roaring.
One slash, and all was quiet.
As he killed more and more, his body grew taller and taller.
The originally 1.6-meter-tall, thin boy gradually grew to nine feet tall, his body bulging with muscles, even more robust than the strongest Ogryn.
A layer of bright red scabs had formed on the surface of the skin, like a natural armor.
He casually picked up two smashed machine tool gears, strung them together with several monster spines, and made two heavy flails.
The metal fragments on the edge of the gear were as sharp as knives, whistling through the air as they were swung, capable of smashing a monster's head into a pulp with a single blow.
He had lost count of how many things he had killed.
All I know is that as I walked along, I left behind a trail of broken corpses, not even a single living creature standing still.
Sister Agnes, the captain of the Eighth Purification Squad, felt her unease growing stronger.
Their team's advance speed was originally the fastest among the nine teams.
From the moment they broke down the door, the first half of the journey went exceptionally smoothly.
There were no hordes of mutants, no hidden sorcery traps, and even a handful of wandering Chaos Walkers.
The corridor was empty except for mutilated corpses scattered on the floor, as if something had cleaned the place beforehand.
"Something's not right." Agnes abruptly raised her hand, signaling the group to stop.
She crouched down, her fingertips brushing against the bloodstains on the ground.
The bloodstains were not completely dry, and the wounds on the corpse told the story of the atrocities it had suffered before its death.
It didn't look like it was caused by witchcraft; it looked more like it was smashed by brute force.
"It wasn't our people who did it." The combat priest next to him also frowned.
"There were no traces of holy flames burning along the way; it was all physical crushing."
They cautiously continued forward, and the further they went, the denser the corpses became, and the more gruesome the scene.
It wasn't until they turned the corner of the main workshop that they saw the figure standing in the middle of the mountain of corpses.
His nine-foot-tall, imposing body was covered in bright red scabs, and his muscles bulged like mountains.
He held a flail in each hand, made of metal fragments and bones, hanging at his sides. Hearing footsteps, he slowly turned his head.
The face still vaguely resembled that of a young man, but his eyes had long lost all humanity, leaving only a surging, almost tangible, desire to kill.
It was him.
It must have been him; he slaughtered all the living creatures in this area.
Quirk stared at the Purification Squad, clad in Power Armour and wielding Boltgun, a last vestige of clarity remaining in his chaotic consciousness.
He recognized the emblem of the Ecclesiarchy on their bodies; he recognized them as the Emperor's warriors.
He opened his mouth, and a hoarse, dry sound came from his throat, like rusty iron scraping against each other:
"Please, stop me!"
Before he could finish speaking, his body began to move uncontrollably.
Muscles tensed, the flail was raised high, and the corpse beneath their feet was crushed under immense force, bursting like a rotten tomato.
He reeked of blood and charged straight at the purification team like a ferocious beast out of control.
Sister Agnes ' pupils contracted sharply.
She looked at the almost solidified crimson aura emanating from the other person, and at the corpses that had been crushed along the way.
Combined with the eerie scene of no one along the way...
An unbelievable answer appeared in her mind.
Her lips moved slightly, uttering two words:
" Blood God..."