40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 193 18. Melting Steel (End)

"and then?!"

Panting heavily, Perturabo asked.At this moment, he can be said to be grim: "Isn't it still the same in the end? I shook hands with you, and you don't have to respect me. You can say what you want, and then—"

He stopped, and swallowed the second half of the unfinished words like that.And it wasn't because of what Khalil Rohals had done again. No, maybe he had done something, but the way he'd done it was completely beyond Perturabo's comprehension.

No one can understand why the world can be changed in half a second, and no one can understand why a simple iron-gray ward can turn into a gloomy and dull blackness within half a sentence. world.

It was extremely cold here, the wind was howling, and the air was filled with the unpleasant smell left over from the incineration of corpses. It was similar to the smell of ashes, but it was different.

Khalil Rohars still stood facing him, tall and ominous, his cloak flapping in the wind, dancing furiously.

His image changed again, his pale face disappeared, replaced by the face of a skeleton.The swarthy eyes were staring at Perturabo without saying a word.

"What did you do?" Perturabo asked incomprehensibly. "What is this? Some new holographic projection technology that you installed before I woke up?"

He instinctively refused to believe anything beyond his knowledge.

"I'm a psyker, and this is one of the things I can do with psychics."

"You lie!" Perturabo retorted fiercely. "There are also think tanks in my legion, and I have also conducted research on their power. No psyker can do such a thing!"

"That only shows that your research is not enough, and Malcador can do it."

"Macado?"

"Yes." Skeleton said. "Malcador, that old and useless Malcador you despise."

Perturabo was stunned by these words, the cold wind blew past, and the temperature remaining on his hospital gown began to lose temperature rapidly because of them.He thought his skin should be able to withstand the cold, but he was wrong.

He felt a terrible cold.

"Malcador is a very powerful psyker. I'm surprised you don't know about it. Besides, do you really think your father would put someone without talent in that position?"

"I" Perturabo tried to speak and retort, but his voice was extremely weak in the howling wind.This incident made him extremely angry.

Then Khalil interrupted him again without giving him a chance to say anything.

This is the second time.

"Speak louder," the skeleton said coldly.

"Don't act like you're a child about to cry, you're a Primarch, Perturabo. That doesn't mean you're going to be a saint or some sort of moral paragon, but you should have a little A minimum sense of responsibility. People who are brave enough to take responsibility don’t talk like that.”

"Are you accusing me of being weak?" Perturabo asked in disbelief.

He was so shocked, so shocked that he even forgot that he should be angry.He shouldn't have said those words in a soft voice, he should have been more angry and agitated.

"Accuse you?"

The skeleton shook his head.

"No, I'm simply stating a fact. The voice you just used doesn't seem to have much to do with weakness, it just doesn't fit your identity as a Primarch. It appears in a child or It’s reasonable in teens, after all, they’re sensitive and vulnerable too.”

Perturabo's mouth opened wide, and he wanted to say something, but he couldn't - his face was shaking and flushed, and his voice was momentarily silenced by the intensity of the emotion.

And Khalil continues.

"Stop acting so shocked." He said in a tone that was dismissive, even annoying.

"If Sergeant Eltros hadn't insisted on it, I wouldn't even have a word with you. You're a piece of rusted steel, Perturabo, and I don't know where the rust came from, but, clear They are not my responsibility."

The skeleton shook its head, the cloak was raised, and a darkness deeper than the night emerged from it.The burning smell intensified, to the point where Perturabo instinctively wanted to cough.

He clenched his fists tightly, trying to find a little pain from the broken finger to regain a little sanity.He succeeded, but also failed - he did feel pain, but not from his hands, but from something emerging from the darkness.

No, not a thing.

but a person.

A man long dead.

"You" Perturabo stretched out his right hand as if falling into an abyss, he tried to grab the shadow so that he could see his face clearly.However, just as his hand was about to touch the opponent's shoulder, he stopped again.

Perturabo froze in place, as awkward as a stone statue.But the shadow didn't keep him waiting long. It spoke covered in flames, its voice hoarse, as if it had been damaged long ago.

"Primarch," it greeted.

"Elteros?" Perturabo asked cautiously. "Why are you here?"

No reason, no reason - with just one glance, he was sure of one thing.This shadow was indeed Eltros, indeed a member of his legion, an officer in whom he had placed his trust.

"For reasons I can't tell you."

"Do you mean you're going to hide the truth from me?" Perturabo asked again, his gone anger returning for a moment.

Although they climbed slowly, limited by the freezing temperature around them, they never really made him lose his mind, but he did feel angry.

"Not concealment, Primarch, but protection," Sergeant Eltroth replied in the serene tone characteristic of the dead.

"Protect?"

Perturabo almost laughed: "You protect me? Look at me, Eltros, can you see the difference between us? I am one of the sons of the Emperor of all mankind, and I am far more powerful than you Superior, why do you protect me?"

"I don't deny the fact that you are much stronger than me. However, you still need to be protected." The sergeant replied calmly.

Of course he calmed down, what emotions can a dead person have?

"Reason," Perturabo said.

His tone sounded as if he wished Elteros would die again.

"Because a child always needs protection." The sergeant kept his calm and did not have any fluctuations because of Perturabo's performance.

"You call me a child?"

"In terms of wisdom and strength, a million children combined cannot match you. However, in terms of willfulness and irascibility, you are no different from children. And you are still the kind of spoiled child."

"Do you want to die, Eltros?" Perturabo asked very softly.

"I've already died once," the sergeant shot back. "And you can't make a dead man die again."

"I will remove your name from my Legion forever!"

"I don't care," Eltros said. "Because I expected you to say that before I did it, you are a wayward and lucky boy."

"Most spoiled kids like this don't have playmates, but you do, and a bunch of kids stupid enough to trust you with all their heart. You're very lucky in that regard."

"You—!" Perturabo raised his right hand angrily, trying to swing a fist, but he didn't swing it down after all.No one stopped him, it seemed that he was in control of himself.

Considering his previous performance, this incident is quite incredible.Panting heavily, the Primarch said in the most embarrassing and angry voice of his life in the howling cold wind: "—Go away, Eltros, I will never see you again."

"If possible. I hope so too." Eltros said calmly. "But it's not up to you to decide here."

"Let him go, Khalil Rohals!" Perturabo yelled over his shoulder.

"You are not qualified to order me." The skeleton replied coldly. "Also, don't yell when you speak, that will only make you appear incompetent." "Therefore, you can only listen to me now."

"you"

Perturabo took a deep breath: "Okay, then you go ahead, Eltras."

His eyes were full of hatred, which was not a deep hatred, but a short-lived hatred that might disappear with the passage of time.

It usually does not appear in adults. It is usually seen in adolescents who are sensitive and proud, who long for recognition but think that others are not worthy of their applause.

To put it more plainly, it should not appear in a Primarch.

"Would you like to hear it?"

"Speak quickly! Before my patience completely disappears!"

The deceased, the Terran-born Sergeant from the Iron Warriors, Eltros, spoke slowly.

What he was about to say would have killed him many times over, but he didn't care, he was already dead - he died for his primarch, and from that point alone, he had a clear conscience.

"Do you approve of us?"

"I certainly recognize those true Iron Warriors." Perturabo said disdainfully. "But you—Eltros, you're a traitor. You ganged up with outsiders to deal with me."

Eltros ignored the second half of Perturabo's sentence, but simply put forward different opinions on the first half of the sentence: "No, in your eyes we are just a group of unqualified tools. In your eyes, Our only use is to carry out the war according to the policies and strategies you have set."

"Isn't that what my father asked of me?!" Perturabo retorted. "I am also one of his tools, and I am also asked by him to go to war!"

"But the Emperor never asked you to take on everything, such as fighting three recovery battles in sixteen months, without even giving us any chance to recover."

"The Great Crusade doesn't leave much time for humans!" Perturabo growled. "There are still so many worlds that have not yet been recovered, and have not yet been illuminated by the truth of the empire, why should we rest?!"

"You are not alone, you have many brothers."

"Ha!" Perturabo sneered. "Do you expect me to hand over this responsibility to someone like Rogal Dorn or Robert Guilliman?"

"Them." Eltros sighed softly. "Primarch, when did you hear that Rogal Dorn and Robert Guilliman asked their legions to defend their positions at all times, and they would not be allowed to evacuate even if the casualties reached 70.00%?"

"They are weak, but it doesn't mean that I can do it, and it doesn't mean that my legion can do it too!" Perturabo frowned, he had already thrown himself into this debate.

At this moment, his purpose was not to make Elteros disappear, but to win his dead son in this dispute.

"If you want to be steel, you should persevere! I am far better than my brothers, so are you! Let us do what they can't do, didn't I tell you these words Huh, Eltros?!"

"You said so." The deceased replied blankly. "You said it during the [-]th strike. It's a pity that I didn't have the heart to listen to it at that time. I had to punch harder, otherwise my officer would have to endure the torture for a while."

"Eleventh Smash is your punishment!"

"Punishment for what?"

"For your failure!" Perturabo waved his arms as sharply as a sword.

"Before I came back, you were called the labor army. What a shame? In the eyes of the empire, you are nothing but strict obedience to orders and tenacity. You also do not change your tactics, resulting in many people who were originally useless. Necessary casualties."

He sneered and even gave an example to strengthen the persuasiveness of his argument: "Take Inkarati, what's so special about that forging world? But you fought for a whole year and lost nearly 3 people!"

"I don't deny that we were indeed stubborn before you came back. We would even use heavy artillery and heavy vehicles to attack the Forge World head-on and fight against them. However, after you came back, the situation does not seem to have improved much. "

The dead man's pale face finally changed a bit, the corners of his mouth curled up, and what appeared afterwards was not like a smile, but more like a miserable self-mockery.

"We still suffer heavy casualties, don't we, Primarch? Except for the battle against the planet near your home planet, we have been successful, and the other battles have not been great victories."

"We strictly implemented every order you issued. If you told us to hold our ground, we would never evacuate. If you asked us to storm a certain trap of the enemy, we would not hesitate to pounce on it. Therefore, it seems that Not our problem."

"The Iron Warriors now have only one commander, and that is you. As for the rest of us, they are just tools used to receive your orders. Do you have anything to say about this?"

Perturabo was stunned. He should have refuted Alteros long ago, long before he said that the situation had not improved.However, Perturabo suddenly found that he couldn't find a point to refute.

How could he refute the facts?He is not thick-skinned enough to erase the facts and turn them into lies that benefit him.

"It seems you haven't." Alteros nodded. "In other words, after you return, we are still the laughing stock in the eyes of others, we are still a labor force, we are still strict in obeying orders and tenacious and useless apart from that, and who should be attributed to this?"

"you you"

"It should come down to you."

The sergeant came to a conclusion ruthlessly, with his ultimate rationality, and with his heart that had stopped beating but still carried love and concern for the legion and the brothers.

"You're a failed commander, and you're a failed primarch. Across the Imperium, is there a Legion that hasn't changed since the return of their Primarch? Can you find it?"

"Sanguinius turned those ghouls into the elegant warriors they are today, Robert Guilliman turned those bloodless destroyers into today's Ultramarines, Rogue Dorn transformed him from Everything that Inwitt learned in school was given to the Imperial Fist. What about you?"

Perturabo's face turned pale.

"You're just keeping us the butt of a laughing stock, and a consuming one at that. We dig trenches, build forts, and serve as cannon fodder"

"We did not receive replenishment of troops and fought three recapture campaigns against three different planets in sixteen months. And you even said early on that you would not apply for rewards from the empire for us after the war. At the same time, I don’t want to see anyone boasting about it.”

"What are you thinking? Are you waiting for your father to take the initiative to praise you and your legion for the terrible sacrifice?"

"you"

"Are you speechless?"

The sergeant finally laughed, and then sighed softly.

"To be honest, I despise you, Perturabo," he said, lowering his head. "You are just a child. You are immature and unsteady. You just want everyone to admire you, but you don't take the initiative to expose your talents. You just want them to discover them on their own."

"However, to be honest, I actually despise myself more. If I had listened to my inner voice before I died, cooperated with the night blades and carried out feint tactics, maybe my soldiers would not have suffered so many casualties. You are not qualified Primarch, I am also a failed Iron Warrior."

"But anyway—" He looked up and smiled. "—I still hope you can change, it's not too late, father."

When the voice fell, he disappeared.Perturabo froze in place for one second, two seconds, three seconds.When the fourth second was about to pass, he finally made a move.He flew towards Khalil at extreme speed, his broken fingers tightly grasping the skeleton's shoulder.

He growled, "Where are the others? What about the Eltros? Get him back! Give him back!"

"He's dead," the skeleton replied calmly. "And the dead can't 'come back'. Just accept it, Perturabo."

"Give him back to me—!" Perturabo growled. "I still have something to say to him! He, he, I want to refute his self-righteousness. He misunderstood me. I am definitely not the kind of commander who would let his soldiers die on purpose!"

"Really?" The skeleton shook his head. "I don't care about it, and you don't need to prove it to anyone, Perturabo. The dead are dead, and you"

He raised his right hand and patted Perturabo on the shoulder.In an instant, the world spun, and the iron-gray ward returned. Perturabo stared blankly at everything in front of him, his body trembling.Khalil ignored him, just turned and walked out of the room, and left a last sentence.

"...if you want proof, prove it, Sergeant Eltros is out of sight anyway."

The door was closed, and Khalil stood in front of the door and waited quietly for a few seconds. Then, there was a sound of a heavy object falling to the ground inside the door.He turned his head sideways, blue light flashed in his eyes, and saw a figure kneeling on the ground through the wall, powerlessly panting.

He nodded thoughtfully.

+You were right about Perturabo, Malcador. +
+Oh?Have you beaten him? +
+Don't speak so harshly.+
Khalil stepped forward and left the infirmary.

　I wrote 1k3 more in this chapter, a bit late, sorry.update completed.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)