Chapter 23 Ten Thousand and One Deaths (3) Final Redemption and Echo
Yes, although the changes in his soul were extremely slight, Calvin still clearly felt the changes in his soul.
From his own understanding of himself, the golden light belonging to his soul is like the light of a star. It should be a by-product of endless burning, and there is no specific concept of "quantity".
But at the moment when the demon died, he clearly felt the solidification of his soul.
Just like an invisible scale weighing the weight and bargaining chips between each other, when the soul of the demon disappeared, part of the golden light seemed to be permanently deducted, forcibly taken away.
Correspondingly, there are some unknown existences in his own soul.
The missing and extra parts are still only small, but the changes are really happening.
This touched Calvin's bottom line!
I have lived in this world for decades, especially in the special position of Gray Knight where I live with Chaos day and night.
Calvin knew very well that the relatively endless attributes of the Chaos Gods were the reason why they truly became a nightmare for mankind.
Similarly, his confidence in himself has always been based on a similar basis, that is, the indestructibility of his soul.
When this bottom line and escape route were pried, no matter how weak the traces of the prying were, he would inevitably be shaken by his own existence like every mortal.
What to do? Should we continue? Calvin felt the fear of the unknown for the first time in a long time.
This change that endangered his core existence made him rarely stop and hesitate.
He once again looked into his heart and questioned whether his thoughts had changed from the first.
Is he still the one willing to fight for protection?
Is he still the mortal who regrets that he only wants to fight for the rest of his life?
Is he still the warrior who identifies himself as a human being and is willing to defend the interests of the race no matter what changes happen?
If he is still, then what difference does it make if he has this special identity?
Calvin, who had thought clearly, no longer thought about the puzzles deliberately guided by the devil, nor the prompts in the communications from his comrades.
At this time, these were external interference rather than help. He even suspected that Tariq's voice was also impersonated by Tzeentch.
The war has begun and the fighting should continue.
In the eyes of Calvin, who disregarded his own safety, the battle at this time was not about life or death, but about victory or defeat.
He walked around the landmark buildings on the top floor of the nest completely. As expected, in every key building, he saw a big demon waiting for his arrival.
One day passed... Calvin's figure appeared in the core tower on the top floor of the nest.
The fierce battle never stopped, and Calvin, who fought all the way, had no chance to repair himself, and finally began to be injured.
The Terminator power armor named "Original Heart" faithfully protects its owner, resisting injuries that should have been fatal for Calvin in battle after battle.
The folding position on the shoulder armor was exhausted, and then restored to its original state under the power supply of the power backpack.
The originally tall and sacred outer reliefs inevitably began to show the scars of battle damage.
But none of this worries him more than the inner changes. The essence of the soul is constantly being lost, and the extra parts inside are becoming more and more obvious.
"Nine" means the extreme of change, so during the ninth battle, he unexpectedly saw a different demon.
Like the original demon, he not only brought Tzeentch's curse and ridicule, but also brought qualitative changes to the vicious accumulation of Calvin's soul after his death.
Calvin half-knelt on the ground, his lowered head looking into the dead demon's godless eyes.
At the moment when this demon was killed by Calvin's hammer, the unknown existence accumulated in the soul underwent a terrible qualitative change after reaching an order of magnitude.
The golden light in the soul was obviously dimmed by one level, and the extra shadow also vaguely revealed an egg-like shape.
The soul is more sensitive than the body, and the weakened light directly corresponds to the body, making Calvin feel the fatigue that he has not seen for a long time; the foreign body sensation in the core makes Calvin feel dizzy and retching.
"Ninth..." He murmured, took out the dagger from his waist and carved a scratch on the Cross of the Holy Shield, then managed to lift the warhammer thrown at his feet and walked towards the next battlefield...<
/p>
Three months have passed, and Calvin is like a lone wolf, sweeping away the entire top spire of the nest.
The battle is still going on, and this lonely journey like a festival also has no end in sight.
The armor has lost its luster, and after dozens of fierce battles, scratches of various sizes are all over the body.
The folding stand on the right shoulder is damaged, and the blade on the fingertips of the lightning claw on the left hand is also chipped.
Dust and sweat mixed on his face, leaving traces of dried mud like a riverbed.
Both spiritual energy and physical strength have been exhausted, and the weight of the "mission" that was originally as light as nothing has become extremely heavy.
"Ninety-nine..."
The corners of his mouth were dry and cracked due to loss of moisture. Calvin, who was saving all his energy and didn't even bother to speak, flashed the number in his mind.
The upper left corner of the back of the cross is already full of scratches, and the next step can only be made by reducing the size of the scratches.
Now that spiritual energy and physical strength are becoming more and more precious, Calvin's martial arts skills and will have been tempered during this long journey.
Simple moves become fast and effective after eliminating meaningless movements. Psionic skills are no longer built on the beach of squandering. They can only be used when necessary, and they are becoming more condensed and more effective.
January...two months...may...one year...
Nine hundred and ninety-nine demon heads are Calvin's latest achievement.
The "original intention" is close to being broken, but it is still alive. The edges of the "mission" are no longer sharp, but it is still worthy of fighting.
The golden color in Calvin's soul has almost completely faded, and the light of divinity has been shattered. However, he was not knocked down when he returned to the mortal world.
While searching for food calmly, he maintained the maintenance of his weapons as hard as possible.
In a cold storage on the upper level of the nest, Calvin calmly finished eating the expired canned food left behind by mortals.
After rinsing the can with water and drinking up the remaining soup, he picked up the red-hot iron nail from the campfire and gently forged it into a needle with a war hammer.
Then, under the light of the fire, he carefully repaired his faded robe.
The long battle time has worsened the shadow in the core of his soul again, and the oval existence has broken out of its shell. But fortunately, apart from making Calvin's soul more easily exhausted, there is no other harm for the time being.
One year...two years...three years...ten years.
The key nodes of the entire nest have been cleaned and purified, and Calvin's record has reached above the key number of 9999.
The original heart armor has been completely destroyed, and only the remaining left shoulder armor is tied to his body with a belt;
The mission hammer had also been broken, and the remaining hammer handle, together with the lightning claws with only two claw blades remaining, were transformed into a double-edged spear by Calvin.
At this time, Calvin was already like a savage, with no complete cloth covering his body.
But even this body will soon no longer belong to him.
Since the number of demons he killed reached 5,000, he has understood that the end point of soul transformation is the body.
The shadow continues to be nourished after breaking out of the shell, and finally turns into the shape of a fetus.
The fetus continued to grow, and eventually turned into a being that even Calvin did not recognize.
Calvin's psychic energy has been absorbed during this period, and together with the dead demon, became the nourishment for its growth.
Some parts of the body already had some ominous omens, making Calvin understand that when the fetus slowly grows up, he will be replaced inexorably.
The few psychic powers left made Calvin's battle more difficult, but fortunately, his proficiency in martial arts and precise use of psychic powers allowed Calvin to continue to maintain victory in the battle.
Phew!
Standing in front of the door of the central engine room of the hive, Calvin took a deep breath. His understanding of the sacred numbers of Tzeentch made him understand:
Perhaps this life journey will reach its end here, and the final battle of the lonely but glorious journey will also be completed here.
After the demons he killed reached the extreme number of 9999, his body had completely lost its physical signs.
Except for the eyes, the rest of the body is like a barbarian in the wilderness, full of strangeness and containing unknown wild power.
The uncut hair on his face made him unable to see his current appearance. His exposed torso was covered with bronze skin, burly and covered with scars from fierce battles.
The eyes are the last remaining characteristic of Calvin's existence and the last manifestation of his rationality.
But after this battle, he has no way of knowing whether he can leave this only anchor point of existence, and he doesn't care.
At this moment, he only has one target in his eyes, which is the demon in front of him.
"Do you regret it?"
This was the first and last sentence the big devil standing in the engine room said to Calvin.
Calvin's response was to throw the spear in his hand at the demon. A strange voice came from an equally strange body, echoing inside the metal hall with Calvin's last anger:
"In the name of the Emperor! Evil! Come and die with me!"
In the echo of a violent roar, Calvin finally killed this being that represented evil and conspiracy.
In the unrecognizable hall, apart from his own violent breathing, only the pipes destroyed by the aftermath of the battle were left, and cold and transparent liquid was flowing out drop by drop.
Huh~huh~!
The final battle finally ended, and the exhausted Calvin stood up from his half-kneeling posture.
He strolled over to the demon's corpse and looked at the demon's remains in ecstasy.
The demon that was turning into ashes only had its serrated bird head left, which made Calvin chuckle softly after staring at it for a long time.
"Bah! A beast is a beast!"
His hands were trembling slightly. This was not the first time that this sign of losing control had occurred, but this time, it was particularly violent.
He knew that there was not much time left for him to control this body.
"The ten thousandth time!"
He picked up the spear on the ground and used the tip to draw the last line on the back of the medal on his waist.
"Is it still missing once? Or..."
He thought thoughtfully, and under the reflection of the coolant spreading under his feet, he looked at his unfamiliar face and said the second half of the sentence:
"Am I the last one?"
Well, this was the last thing he wanted to do.
"Do you regret it?"
The hallucination appeared again, and the words of the demon before his death were spoken by the strange and familiar face reflected in the feet.
"Sorry! This is what I want!"
Calvin shook his head, driving the hallucination out of his mind.
Even if he is the last one on the list, he will still give himself up without hesitation.
After all, this was originally a deal between him and Him, wasn't it?
A soldier's spit is like a nail! The promise he made in this life:
I devoted my whole life to fighting for humanity. Although it seems that the time is short now, I have accomplished it anyway.
Calvin picked up the spear, broke off the claw blade on it, and stretched it towards his face. Before he died, he was curious about what his face looked like now.
With the slight sound of a beard being shaved off, a somewhat familiar face appeared in the liquid at his feet.
But Calvin didn't think much. He just took a deep look at the simple and resolute face revealed by shaving off his beard, and then stabbed his chest with the long and sharp claw blade!
The sharp and curved claw blade pierced Calvin's original heart immediately, and also extended downward, cutting off his second heart.
Blood and organ fragments poured out from the corners of his mouth, and his body, which had lost the support of blood, quickly fell limp.
At the last moment of his life, Calvin gritted his teeth and screamed at the figure reflected in the liquid!
"The thousand and first time! Say it again! I! He! Damn! No regrets!"
"So, very good!"
The face in the liquid suddenly smiled. This was the last scene Calvin saw before he lost consciousness.
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Calvin looked at Tabers in front of him in the corridor of the Redeemer of Souls, who had his back turned to him. His expression was still, but his confusion about his situation was hidden behind his expression.
Where am I? Am I dead? Where is this?
"What are you thinking about?"
Tabos took a few steps forward, but when he didn't hear the footsteps following him, he turned his head and looked in the direction of Calvin.
Calvin also happened to raise his head and met Tabers' eyes.
"Huh? We are going for a meeting, not a fight! Why are you bringing a sword? Wait!"
Tabers' words made Calvin a little confused. He lowered his head and followed Tabers' surprised eyes to find a two-handed sword in his arms.
The scabbard made of mithril and fine gold is more than a palm wide, and the back plate is engraved with unknown patterns and has several huge gems embedded in it.
Canglang!
The ice blue sword was subconsciously drawn by Calvin, and the large silver cross sword grid composed of sharp swords and wings spread out to both sides.
The ice-blue sword has a six-sided shape, with a row of psychic runes in the center that alternately flicker on and off with Calvin's breath.
"What a sword!" Calvin couldn't help but praise. Needless to say, the surging and sharp spiritual power of the sword itself made Calvin's hair tremble all over as he held it. "The Sword of Oath! Where did you get it?" Tabos, who walked up to Calvin in a few steps, snatched the sword away, looked at it carefully before asking.
"Well...it's a long story, let's have a meeting first, let's have a meeting first!" Calvin rolled his eyes and decided to postpone the matter for a while. After all, even he himself didn't understand the specific situation.<
/p>
The two continued to walk towards the bridge. As soon as they arrived at the bridge's antechamber, Calvin heard Bishop Klein's serious voice:
"I am opposed to the large-scale replacement of ships! This is a huge waste of imperial property!"
Calvin, whose heart was instantly touched, stopped, and he somewhat understood the reason for his bizarre experience.
Tabos obviously also heard the voice of the Mechanical Archbishop. He looked at Calvin and said:
"What? Do you have any other opinions?"
"No, I'm just suddenly curious about the current location of the Soul Redeemer." Calvin asked seemingly unintentionally.
"Now?" Tabers recalled for a moment, and then looked at Calvin thoughtfully:
"Two thousand years ago, this place was called Tingus Sector."