40k: Midnight Blade.

Chapter 385 114. Interlude: King of the Night
  "Come out," said Conrad Coates.

He calmly stretched out his left hand and picked up an Alpha who was not completely dead. The sharp claws made of fine gold touched the man's exposed spine intimately, and the originally entangled nerves and flesh were peeled off bit by bit by him carelessly.

Even so, Alpha is not completely dead yet, and his vitality is surprisingly strong. But of course that's not a good thing; he won't get medical assistance.

Curze grinned at him, and inserted his fingers along the wound between his still beating internal organs. A painful groan suddenly came from behind the silver-blue helmet that was carefully decorated with reliefs, and this would not elicit any sympathy.

Coze let go of his hand and threw the dying body at his feet like trash. Then he slowly raised his feet and crushed his chest.

Blood splattered out, and he smiled softly in the darkness.

Thick fog rolled in all around, it was so dark that no light could be seen, and corpses were everywhere. Even a rough estimate suggests that hundreds of Alpha Legion soldiers died here.

"Fighting me in the dark, that's brave, brother," he said casually. "As courageous as you were when you brought your legions to attack Nostramo, now look what you got?"

He opened his hands in enjoyment, his black hair was flying, and there was undisguised malice on his pale face.

"The position of Warmaster should really be given to you." He said with a smile. "If Horus sits on it, some people will be dissatisfied. If Leon sits on it, some people will still be dissatisfied. So, why not let you go?"

"After all, you have nothing but courage. A fool can be forgiven for anything he does, what do you think, Alpharius?"

There was no answer in the darkness, only the faint sound of wind whistling by. A few seconds later, a voice slowly sounded in the thick fog.

"Nice provocation, Conrad."

"That's my truth."

The man in the dark laughed hoarsely twice: "You can say that, but I don't think you will tell the truth to anyone. Your hypocrisy scares me."

"Oh?" Coz raised his eyebrows. "That's an interesting comment. Some people think I'm an executioner or a butcher, while others think I'm a corrupt judge who cares about human life - but you actually call me hypocritical?"

"Isn't it?" Alpharius asked.

His erratic voice became fainter in the dense fog, and the fog's obstruction was getting stronger, which meant that Nostramo would face more attacks from demons. Coz narrowed his eyes, but he was not worried.

Using the power of subspace to fight Night Blade is really a shortcut to death.

"You have always shown a great distaste for the Warp, but now? Look at your legions, the great Lord of Blades."

Alpharius imitated him and chuckled: "Even the Word Bearers of Luojia dare not say that they are closer to the so-called 'divine grace' than you. Don't you think this is too ironic? ?"

"Well, that's true." Coz responded calmly, turning his head to look somewhere in the fog. "But you talk too much, brother."

As soon as he finished speaking, a blade jumped out of the void onto his right hand, fitting it obediently to the gauntlet, allowing five sharp claws to hold it tightly.

The cold light suddenly appeared, and a cold wind roared from the darkness. The fog began to be stirred up, and it became riddled with holes as if stabbed by countless blades. It dispersed in all directions, and more fully armed Alphas were exposed. No obstruction.

This wind seemed to come from tens of thousands of years ago, from a night when humans were still in ancient times, from outside the dark and lightless cave where a primitive tribe lived.
  In the barbaric era, before the flames were ignited, darkness could always represent fear.

No one knows what is waiting hungrily in the darkness, no one knows what they will encounter when they step out. The primitive people huddled in their smelly furs and slept, while the night watchers could only stare at the dark cave exit with wide eyes, listening to strange sounds and screams.
  It blew from the barbaric era, and Conrad Coates was no longer seen, only his voice escaped in the wind.

"I'm going to enjoy this carnage, Alpharius."

A second later, the killing came as promised. The King of Night appeared beside the Alphas like a ghost, his scarlet-blood cloak dancing wildly in the cold wind. Deep laughter sounded along with the sound of the blade cutting through flesh, followed by screams.

The never-ending scream.

The Alpha Legion has never known fear. Everyone has supreme courage. Otherwise, how could they dare to come to Nostramo and face those sharp blades in the darkness?
  Until now.

Until they met Conrad Coates.

Thirty seconds later, he disappeared into the darkness, leaving only corpses on the ground.

Alpha's elites were helplessly dispersed from their formation, and they didn't even know how many of them died in just thirty seconds.

The whole ground seemed to be covered with pieces of corpses that had been chopped up by thousands of knives and blood. The blood had formed into a stream at some point and flooded their steel boots.

Everything as far as the eye could see was scarlet, and even those who were still standing had the remains of their brothers hanging on their bodies.

A soft smile sounded in the wind, reaching their ears like a whisper, and then, a song. It was just a gentle hum, as long as a lullaby.

But the Alphas know that this is death itself announcing, inviting, and thanking them for their foolishness.

"Alfaris asked me to give you a piece of advice."

The hummer spoke like this, his voice full of smiles that couldn't be hidden, and he was so happy that the final sounds between the words were filled with pure joy.

"You can hide, you can run, you can fight, or you can gather your legions and have them surround you. But I can see where you are, I know who you are, and you have been marked by me. And I won't Kill you unless I first kill every heir you bring."

He laughed wildly, his laughter spreading. A round of silver light then appeared, like lightning, before their eyes, and the bolters fired immediately, but none hit.

The darkness was just darkness, and the silver light disappeared in the wind as if it had never appeared before.
  The Alphas' heartbeats began to beat violently, and they were unable to determine where the enemy was, or even see through the eyepieces what was in the darkness surrounding them.

Just at this time, another breeze blew, and the gunfire rang out again. By the time the commanders ordered to stop firing in anger, there were already a few fewer people on the edge of their respective teams.

Their weapons were thrown neatly on the ground, but the people were nowhere to be seen. Only the screams were scattered in the wind.

No one knows what they have experienced, and some have even begun to refuse to believe that this is the voice of the warriors they know. They think they are strong-willed and have long abandoned their personal emotions and turned them into pure weapons.
  And now, they began to realize something.

Fear is not an emotion, it is an instinctive response to life. No one is immune to fear, and the word 'courage' simply means remaining sane in the face of it, nothing more.

"Assemble!" someone shouted in the darkness. "Gather together, he can't possibly--"

"——You are too noisy." The King of Night said gently.

A flash of scarlet flashed in the darkness, and the gunfire exploded, illuminating a face as pale as a ghost and his smile.

A head immediately flew high into the air. The head of the person who shouted was already missing, and the headless body flew out and crashed into the crowd.

The dazzling fire suddenly erupted in the next second, and the explosion engulfed the squadron, and the silver and blue dragon scales turned into fragments and flew in the air.

"He's here!" someone shouted again. "Fire, fire!"

"Wrong answer, sir."

The ghost smiled with a pity, fell from the sky, and created two more corpses, so no one spoke anymore. They began to use tactical gestures and the built-in tactical voice communication of the communication channel. The neural link signals would be sent by themselves and had already been edited. words.
  Then, as if logically, a harsh noise sounded in their communication channel, as well as Konrad Curze's soft humming that sounded like it came from the realm of the dead.

"Nowhere to run," he chuckled. "Nowhere to escape."

Darkness surged again, and he turned into a shadow and passed over their heads, ushering in a series of bombs. Then he rushed straight from the front of the crowd and pierced several chests with his fine gold claws with satisfaction.

The heart was ripped out, the internal organs turned into sacrifices on the blade, blood splattered, and death could be seen everywhere. Discipline, will, bravery. These are all useless, because they can only be used in battle.

And this thing they were going through now was not a fight.

"Do you regret it, brother?"

Conrad Coates asked intimately in the darkness.

"You sneaked into my hometown, planted bombs, caused chaos, and sent people to sneak into our orbital weapons defense platform. I'm sorry, this is Nostramo, and your all-conquering infiltration tactics will not work here. "

Alpharius didn't answer, so a head was thrown at him.

The eye sockets are deep and the eyeballs are gone. The lower jaw disappeared, and the incomplete tongue hung on Sen Bai's bones and was bleeding. Conrad Coates's voice passed by his ears the next second.

"As I said, I know who you are, Alpharius."

Another burst of fire rain came, but still in vain. The fog has dispersed and darkness has long since taken its place. Alpharius, whose body shape was no different from that of the Alphas, raised his right hand in the crowd and stopped their behavior.

For the next five minutes, no one made a sound here, only the sound of breathing remained, until raindrops of liquid fell from the sky and sprinkled on their heads.

The Alphas looked up, their morale finally shaken irreversibly - they finally knew where the soldiers who disappeared into the darkness had gone.
  But they would rather not know. Above their heads, corpses and entrails intertwined to form a giant web. The bones are the base, the internal organs are adhered, the blood is the base color, and death is its name.

The cold wind blew again, and a sound of footsteps came from the ground, followed by two heavy muffled sounds, as if someone was knocking on the door - knocking on the door under their feet.

"Alfaris, are you there?" the Night King asked with a hidden smile. "I'm here to visit."

Alpharius looked down at the ground and sighed softly: "Your mysticism is really a headache, brother. If I could know your true identity in advance, I would never accept this suicide mission."

"It's too late to regret it now, brother," Coates said. "Furthermore, the initiator of this failure is yourselves. If this war had never happened, if those evil things in the warp had not harmed Horus Luperkar, we would never have had this power."

"You actually sound sensible again now." Alpharius said in surprise. "I would have thought you would be angry about what we did."

"I do, but that doesn't prevent me from having a conversation with you." Coze said calmly. "I know what you want to do, it's nothing more than a two-handed plan."

"If the infiltration plan fails, just let the large troops jump out of Mandeville Point, use sacrificial rituals or formations to summon demons while creating chaos, and turn Nostramo into a A planet soaked in chaos."

"But I didn't expect that not only would you not be able to be penetrated, but there would be no souls on Nostramo for sacrifice." Alpharius replied with a wry smile. "It itself has even been infiltrated by the so-called power of chaos."

Conrad Coates answered with a burst of laughter.

"So--"

The next moment, the King of Night's voice sounded from behind him.

"—Are you ready to die, brother?"

Cold light flashed.
-
  The fog was blown away by the cold wind, and the darkness followed closely and dispersed together. Conrad Curze, his armor drenched in blood, appeared in the wilds of Nostramo.

Over the years, there are not many places left that can be called 'wild', and most of the area has been taken over by industrial equipment and newly built cities.

The moonlight fell, illuminating his pale face. Coze stared thoughtfully at the head in his hand, silent, until the voice of Eighth Company Commander Enric Barbatos sounded, and he moved again, like the resurrection of the dead.

"The original body——" Anrik Barbatos spoke hoarsely, with black flames burning in his eyes. "—Civilians have been evacuated."

"Everyone has been evacuated?" Coz turned around and asked.

"Yes."

"What kind of efficiency are you doing?" the Lord of Blades asked in confusion. "It's only been three hours since the war started, and you've evacuated civilians all over the world? Damn it, if only you could handle documents with this efficiency."

".These are two different things, my lord."

"What two different things? It's basically the same thing. I think you usually do too little."

As Curze said this, he dropped the head belonging to Alpharius, as if throwing garbage.

He smiled coldly, stared at Enric Barbatos for a while before looking away, and mentioned another thing.

"So, what's going on with Nostramo?"

Enric knocked on his helmet hesitantly and did not answer immediately. Cozz glanced at him, hugged him with his backhand, and simply led him to the shuttle parked not far away.

"Don't you dare to say this? Then I'll tell you, the power of the Chaos Gods is competing with the power of our dear instructor to tear up this Nostramo. It's over, it's that simple. Tell me, this Is this simple, Enric?"

The Eighth Company Commander smiled bitterly and nodded, agreeing with the original body's words. A crack was born from his face along with his movements, and dust hung upside down and floated into the sky.

"God damn the warp."

Conrad Coates looked at him, stopped, looked up at the abnormally bright moonlight, and cursed in a murmuring tone.

"And idiot Khalil Lohars"

"Uh-" Enric was stunned for two seconds and suddenly took a deep breath. "——Your words are inappropriate."

"how?"

"Insulting a superior without cause is a felony under your own internal laws."

"He is not my superior, and I am not insulting him without reason. I do it for a reason, Enric."

Curze stared at him, his adamantine claws tapping his shoulder armor menacingly.

"He's not here, why are you still speaking for him?"

The eighth company commander smiled bitterly again, broke free from the shackles of the original body, and turned into a black flame and dissipated in place. When he reappeared, he had arrived at the shuttle's hatch.

"I will wait here, Primarch," he said.

The Lord of Blades looked at him coldly, said nothing, turned around and left the place.

He didn't walk resolutely, and his steps were slow. The blade appeared in his right hand at some point, and the next second, he started running at an unimaginable speed.

He passed through burning cities, deserted mines, bright but silent hives, and finally arrived at a hut built on the top of a building.

The door made by Rogal Dorn himself has disappeared, replaced by a simple and plain wooden door. Cozz pushed the door open and entered, his cloak swiping across the doorframe.

The furnishings in the house are simple, with a table, a chair, and a corner covered with mattresses. This was very different from what he remembered. They didn't have such good conditions at the time.

The Lord of Night slowly raised his right hand, and the blade dissipated like a shadow, pouring into his gauntlet. He closed his eyes, and when he opened them again, dark flames were already lighting up in his eyes.

The sky of Nostramo suddenly began to darken, and a burning broken crown appeared in the sky. Countless people saw this scene with their own eyes, but only a few people understood what it was.

In the room, the air began to gradually become colder, and the midnight ghost waited calmly until a certain critical point reached, and the world in front of him changed in an instant.

In front of him appeared a long and narrow corridor shrouded in fog, and an old man holding an eagle scepter.

"Your father is waiting, Lord of Blades." Markhand Malcador spoke softly.

"Which one?" Ghost asked deliberately.

Malcador looked up at him and didn't answer, just sighed.

"That knife-" He stretched out his right hand. "—we need it."

"I know, otherwise I wouldn't come here." Ghost nodded calmly. "But I want to see him."

"he's not here."

"Stop lying, Malcador. I can always tell a lie. He's here, let him out."

The palm bearer nodded silently, tapped the ground with his long staff, the lies disappeared, and the webway-like scene instantly dissipated. A wasteland full of ashes replaced it. The pale palace was now brighter than ever. The world had never been so vivid.

A skeleton stood before him, the mask firmly on its face.

Midnight Ghost smiled slightly and summoned the blade.

"Take off the mask." He said softly. "I want to see my father's face."
-
  Twenty minutes later, Konrad Curze boarded a shuttle and departed Nostramo.

He will rush to Terra.

With boundless hatred, with vast sorrow.

　This chapter is 5k, updated.

　　I should update 1.3k today, but I'm a little tired, so I'll owe you another day (I hope it won't compound)

　　
  　
  (End of this chapter)