A brief daze, like someone spacing out.
The next instant, his vision abruptly went dark, and Kain suddenly rolled hard to the side.
"Boom—!"
That pitch-black, curtain-like view was lit up by the firelight born from the explosion.
Especially the spot where he'd been a moment ago, the ground looked as if it had been plastered over with mud glowing orange-red.
In truth, that was the "cooked" and melted effect of a melta bomb detonating and boiling everything around it.
Kain didn't spend even one extra second paying attention to it. He had already drawn a black blade and slashed diagonally backward in a brutal cross-cut.
He clearly felt metal tearing.
He clearly heard flesh being cut open.
Then he immediately leapt, and his field of view widened. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that the body at the point of his strike had been cleanly severed at the waist.
It was another nauseating corpse that no longer looked human, already reduced to a vessel for a daemon.
Looking around, flashes and explosions erupted from time to time, and chunks of blood flew everywhere.
He remembered that before he'd been pulled across, there had still been close to a hundred soldiers alive. Now fewer than twenty remained.
And those survivors were all veterans, but faced with what seemed like an endless tide of daemons, they could only struggle a little longer than most.
As for these daemons, Kain also knew which Chaos God most of them belonged to.
That pure, overflowing lust to kill, that intense thirst for blood, the way they reveled in slaughter like lunatics—there was no doubt at all.
They were daemons of Khorne.
Suddenly, a shrill, grating sound of metal scraping against metal rang out, followed immediately by a metallic storm that swept past him.
A veteran behind him had activated a weapon that could pass for a 21st-century warship's close-in weapon system.
A twelve-barrel cluster of metal tubes—around twenty-millimeter caliber—was spinning like mad, and rapidly began to glow orange.
He didn't know if it was the bullets heating the barrels red-hot, or if the rotation itself was so extreme that friction with the air was producing searing heat.
But the weapon—capable of firing more than thirty thousand rounds per minute—howled past his side, creating a pressure differential. If a modern human stood this close, they would absolutely be dragged in and shredded into mince.
So Kain instantly threw himself flat, both hands clamping hard onto the ground.
The metal storm swept over his head.
Through the helmet camera's capture of the scene ahead, he saw it clearly: those bodies twisted into monster shapes by daemonic possession were turned into clouds of blood mist in an instant.
Noticing something, Kain rolled over immediately, braced himself, and snapped the muzzle of his bolter upward.
Bang bang bang—!
Amid rapid, strobing flashes, one melta warhead after another unleashed its power against the black ceiling nearly twenty meters above, striking creatures crawling along the metal roof.
With poor eyesight, you might have mistaken them for mutated giant spiders.
But once you saw clearly, they weren't spiders at all.
They were spider-like horrors stitched together from human bodies.
Ugly beyond words, terrifying beyond reason—after being hit, whatever limbs weren't instantly vaporized fell down in dripping remnants.
Along with them fell countless wriggling "grains of rice."
Maggots.
A "beautiful" sight like this really needed to be shared with the group members properly.
The livestream went live.
Why livestream?
Because it might genuinely unlock more functions in this "Super-Dimensional Channel."
During A2's livestream war, an energy progress bar had appeared afterward. Unfortunately, even by the time the war ended, it still hadn't filled.
Now, with Kain starting his own stream, he saw that same energy bar again.
He glanced at it once, then ignored it. This was not the time to let his attention drift to the "Super-Dimensional Channel." He needed to focus on the present danger and find a way to survive.
…
Vers Empire of Mars.
In the princess's room, a blonde young woman sat in worry, unable to properly eat.
"Your Highness…"
The concerned voice came from a petite girl who looked about twelve—Eddelrittuo, the princess's handmaiden.
These past few days, Eddelrittuo had clearly sensed that the princess had something on her mind. The princess kept wearing a melancholic expression.
A few days earlier, the princess had even told her that she intended to serve as the Martian ambassador, to travel to Earth personally, and work to break the ice between the two sides.
Eddelrittuo, of course, had opposed it with everything she had. The princess was the Empire's princess—its first heir in the present era. How could she personally go to such a dangerous Earth?
If anything went wrong, she could be taken hostage and never return.
Worse still, she might be targeted by extremists and lose her life.
And ever since that afternoon—the day the topic came up—the princess had abruptly grown gloomy.
Surely the princess's request had been rejected by His Majesty the Emperor.
Yes, rejected was good.
"Eddelrittuo, am I naive, as a princess, for wanting to visit Earth as a goodwill ambassador?"
"Huh? Of course not."
"Is that so?"
As the granddaughter of the first Martian Emperor—Asseylum Vers Allusia—she gave a bitter smile.
Because she had paid close attention to her maid's reaction, and it was clearly a little insincere.
With a soft sigh, Asseylum logged into the "Super-Dimensional Channel" again. She wanted to see whether Mr. Golden Toilet had come online.
Half a day earlier, Ms. A2's world had just gone through a war, but unfortunately it had been nighttime for her, and she had been asleep.
By the time she woke and went online, Ms. Kuroneko—who had still been online—told her about what had happened. Only then did she learn that such a war had taken place, and that Mr. Golden Toilet had joined it.
Now the war was over, and Mr. Golden Toilet had survived.
"Hm?"
"What is it, Your Highness?"
"Nothing. I want to rest. Please clean this up for me."
"Yes."
So Asseylum went to the bedside and sat down. She let her awareness sink back into the chat group, tapped on Mr. Golden Toilet's avatar, and confirmed entry into the livestream.
In the next instant, the livestream window popped open, and the image—
Huh?
This is—!
Asseylum's face turned deathly pale in an instant. A violent wave of nausea clenched her stomach and surged up toward her throat.
Countless maggots, blood, flesh, rotten meat, things that looked like organs, torn limbs, and other unidentifiable matter were raining down.
The next second, a horrifying figure suddenly burst into the frame, and she nearly fainted from shock.
Its whole body looked like rotting meat. Its armor was fused to flesh, stuck to it, grown into it—so much so that even the armor itself seemed to be decaying.
It barely looked human at all, yet it still carried countless human features. This "spider" monstrosity opened a massive maw made by cutting and stitching together pieces of multiple heads, and lunged to bite into someone's back—so close that Asseylum almost screamed a warning.
But before she could, the one being ambushed—Mr. Golden Toilet—seemed to have sensed the attack long ago. He dodged with razor-sharp precision and swung the black blade, nearly dismembering the creature.
In the next instant, he pressed the attack, slashing at high speed, truly carving it into dozens of chunks.
Asseylum finally breathed out—then she took in the wider scene.
At once, her face went even paler.
This place…
Was this hell?
(End of Chapter)
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