"It hurts."
After an unknown stretch of time, Lynn slowly awoke to excruciating pain.
Every bone in his body felt as though it had been taken apart and reassembled, and each breath brought piercing agony.
The blood left around his eyes, ears, nostrils, and mouth had long since dried into dark scabs.
The only thing that gave him any sense of security was the Rending Claws clutched tightly in his hand.
Only that cold, hard touch could clear his muddled consciousness a little.
He opened his eyes with difficulty. His vision was still somewhat blurry, and it took a long while before his pupils barely managed to focus.
Only then did he discover that what he held was merely the empty shell of a Rending Claw.
"Rena!" Lynn's heart clenched, and he anxiously tried to struggle up to look for her.
But his body would not obey. The slightest movement sent a wave of agony through him, making him suck in a sharp breath.
Just then, a dark figure slowly descended from above and landed before him.
It was Rena.
Once Lynn saw who it was, he lay back down and stopped struggling to get up.
By now, Rena's body had recovered considerably, and the cracks across it had mostly healed.
New carapace was slowly growing, and her Psychic Power fluctuations had stabilized again.
After killing Cassius, she too had fallen into a brief slumber because of her injuries.
But a mid-tier Tyranid organism's powers of recovery far exceeded a human's, and she had awakened before Lynn.
Upon waking, she had seen Lynn gripping her old Rending Claw, refusing to let go.
Unwilling to disturb his sleep, she had voluntarily shed the damaged old claw, leaving it there to keep Lynn company.
She herself had first gone to devour the high-quality biomass remaining in the spawning pool, including Tyranids and Space Marine remains, rapidly replenishing her energy and repairing her body.
"Have you dealt with those Astartes' Gene-seed?"
Only after a long rest did Lynn ask, his voice hoarse and dry.
Rena nodded slightly, a complex gleam flashing through her eyes as she conveyed information to Lynn through their mental link:
[Unable to absorb directly. Their genetic sequences contain divine factors beyond my current analytical capabilities.
Temporarily stored within my body using a special method. After further evolution grants me the ability to analyze them,
I can edit and integrate their genetic fragments to breed stronger combat units.]
Lynn nodded in understanding.
As a successor Chapter of the Iron Hands, the Sons of Medusa carried genetic fragments of the Primarch Manus Ferrus Manus within their Gene-seed.
For the Tyranids, powerful evolutionary material was often exceptionally difficult to analyze. It would have to wait until later.
Rena extended an intact Rending Claw and carefully helped Lynn up, her movements so gentle that they were utterly at odds with her hideous appearance.
Leaning against Rena's body, Lynn barely managed to steady himself and looked around.
The entire Abyssal Spawning Pool lay in ruins.
Charred mycelial mats, broken Power Armour, Tyranid remains, collapsed metal supports-the smell of gun smoke still lingered in the air.
He took a deep breath, knowing full well that although this battle was over,
the trouble was far from finished.
Leaning against Rena, he began sorting through their current situation, his mind racing.
He worked backward to deduce whether Cassius had left any lingering threats.
First, one thing was certain: the system's secret had absolutely not been exposed.
He had previously tried more than once to record matters concerning the system or tell others about it.
But each time, the system forcibly corrected his actions. His hand would not obey when he tried to write things down, words on the tip of his tongue simply would not come out, and so on.
There was no way to disclose any information related to the system to the outside world.
Cassius could not possibly have learned the truth about the system either. At most, he would have classified it as some strange ability originating from the Warp.
And just like Lynn, he certainly could not have told the outside world about the system's existence.
Second, as for whether Cassius had sent information about him and Rena to the outside world, Lynn's judgment was "no."
After evolving, Rena's ability to sense the Warp had improved significantly.
She had also previously observed Warp turbulence around this planet.
Communications between the Sons of Medusa squad and their headquarters would inevitably have suffered interference.
From the moment the squad came under attack to the point of death, they had not even had time to make a record.
And once their temporary base had also been wiped out, no one remained to report what had happened here.
Even if headquarters did send someone later, they probably would not trace it back to him anytime soon.
The Sons of Medusa's headquarters most likely still believed Cassius's squad was carrying out its mission.
They probably did not yet know that Cassius's squad had been wiped out.
After all, a Hive World that had not yet suffered a full-scale Tyranid invasion posed little threat to Space Marines.
As for the Inquisition, Lynn was not worried about them either.
As a member of the Sons of Medusa, Cassius would have considered harboring heretics an unforgivable blasphemy.
Even if he were still alive, he would never voluntarily have breathed a word to the Inquisition, let alone now that he was dead.
Besides, anyone with any sense knew that the Inquisition were a bunch of outright double-standard bastards. It was best not to provoke them without good reason.
So the Inquisition would not notice anything unusual here in the short term, much less turn their attention toward him.
Finally, there was Necromunda's local government.
The Adeptus Arbites and checkpoint officials had either been bribed or silenced, while the Underhive populace's surprise attack had ended with every participant dead, leaving no evidence behind.
Even if the government really became suspicious about this incident, he could find a way to keep them at bay for the time being.
His influence in the Underhive now amounted to far more than that of a mere investigator.
If anyone really dared come to the Underhive to investigate him, they could not blame him for showing no mercy.
Although the most urgent crisis had passed, Lynn did not feel the slightest relief.
Any single one of the things he was doing now would be enough to leave him strapped to a Penitent Engine for the rest of his life.
Harboring Xenos, illegal smuggling, the premeditated murder of Space Marines, and inciting a mass attack.
And the target of that attack had been a Space Marine base.
Of course, the most serious offense was that the Xenos he harbored had all but wiped out an entire Space Marine squad (9-0, a verifiable record).
Before long, the Sons of Medusa's headquarters would notice something was wrong and send an investigation squad to Necromunda.
Once the investigation squad discovered the traces left here, they would inevitably launch a frenzied retaliation.
They might even directly request that the Imperium issue an Exterminatus order, destroying this planet completely to eliminate the threat of heretics and Xenos.
What was more, even without retaliation from the Sons of Medusa, the arrival of the Tyranids was only a matter of time.
The very existence of the Abyssal Spawning Pool meant the Tyranids had already taken root on this planet.
Even though Cassius and his men had struck at quite a few Tyranid strongholds, they could not stop the Tyranids from spreading.
Before long, this planet would be completely devoured by the Tyranids and reduced to a dead world.
Lynn raised his head and looked toward the hole at the top of the spawning pool. Beyond it, everything remained dim and lightless.
He clenched his fists and made his decision.
Running away had to be put on the agenda.
He had to take Rena away from Necromunda before the Sons of Medusa's retaliation came or the Tyranid fleet arrived.
They had to find a new hiding place. Otherwise, only destruction awaited them.