Chapter 167: The Relaxing Feeling Unique to Gardens
Sizzle~
The hatch on the back of the flesh armor hissed open, revealing a writhing mass of pale tissue and strange tendrils that quested blindly into the darkness.
Pfft~
Francis stepped into the cavity. Immediately, countless protrusions latched onto his body, trembling with what felt like hunger.
They pulled him deeper as he descended, each tendril searching for its master, yearning to reconnect with him.
Finally, he was fully inside. The hatch sealed behind him with a wet, organic sound.
The flesh-and-blood construct, more than ten meters tall, rose to its full height. Thousands of compound eyes blazed with bioluminescent light as it released a deep, contemplative murmur.
When Francis emerged from the laboratory, he dragged countless tentacles behind him. The Thousand Sons warriors froze, their discipline shattered by the sight.
For a moment, they couldn't distinguish between the boy they knew and something far more profane.
His appearance was nightmarish. A single glance at his form made them feel mentally violated, as if their minds had brushed against something obscene. When they looked back at the entrance to the Garden, they were startled to find it seemed almost clean by comparison.
"Primarch! Is Lord Francis unharmed?" The warriors' voices wavered, uncertain as they looked toward Magnus.
"I... I don't know," Magnus replied, his tone darkened by concern.
He stared at the armored form, visibly alarmed. "I sense abominable psionic fluctuations from it, something utterly emotionless, driven only by base hunger."
"What exactly did he create?" one warrior asked.
Magnus's gaze remained fixed on Francis as he moved toward the Gates of Corruption. The Primarch's expression betrayed deep unease at what he could sense through the warp.
The Gates of Corruption loomed ahead, constructed from ossified bone and decaying flesh, emanating a reek of putrescence so thick it seemed almost solid. Diseased plants clustered around the entrance, their leaves crawling with insects.
"Try this strain on me," a green daemon called out to its companion as they emerged from the gates.
"This is the most classic plague from the benevolent Father. Once someone gets infected, dehydration takes them."
"Yours won't work, it's too slow," the other replied. "Use mine. Mine kills someone within seven steps!"
"Heh. So your plague ends before it even spreads."
Just then, the first daemon bumped directly into Francis's armor. Its intestines fell to the ground.
"Are you blind?!" it shrieked. "I'm the top salesman this month!"
The other daemon began to respond but stopped mid-sentence. It slowly raised its head and looked up at the giant mech looming before it, more than ten meters tall, covered in three enormous eyes and writhing tentacles.
"A GHOST!!" it screamed.
"Why is there a ghost here? HOW!!"
"It isn't sientific."
"There's a GHOST!! " other daemons shrieked, their voices rising in panic.
Francis remained silent, watching the creatures scatter with cold detachment. As expected, he thought. These devils are all cowards; they've even learned to play the victim card.
The tentacles wrapped around the first daemon and crushed it instantly.
Pfft!
It exploded like a bursting pastry, its pus sliding into the mouthparts of the tentacles.
Through their shared psychic connection, Francis sensed everything: the taste, the texture, the smell.
It stinks! So salty! Sticky, like eating aged stinky tofu.
For a moment, the calm armor began to tremble. Countless tentacles clinging to its surface twitched with sudden excitement. Francis's eyes widened behind the pilot chamber.
"Oh no! I was too hasty! The impurity genes weren't completely removed!"
Finally, the mouthparts on the countless tentacles released a low roar and waved wildly in the air.
Whoosh!!
The armor became like a wild horse, charging madly through the garden.
Everything in its path, pathogens, Nurgle cultists, minor daemons, was grabbed by the tentacles and pulled into the writhing depths before they could scream.
With each absorption, the armor expanded further, becoming increasingly monstrous and enormous.
...
Not far away, Typhon was directing his followers to build an altar. Daemons sat obediently, listening to his words.
"Our benevolent Father will grant you endless life!" he proclaimed.
"The Father will give you bodies that will never fall to disease."
"Our benevolent Father will..." He paused, producing a bowl of green liquid from the altar. "Drink this, and you'll become stronger."
Typhon poured the liquid carefully and handed it to the believers, speaking softly.
"Come. Let us drink this cup together."
Ton ton ton~
The believers drank with eyes gleaming with fanaticism. Their screams and the splash of liquids quickly replaced their chants, leaving only yellowish-green pus in their wake.
Typhon shook his head in disappointment at the sight.
"Alas, you all lack faith. You haven't fully embraced the Father's love, which is why you're like this," he said calmly. "However, it's alright. Those who come after will serve your benevolent Father."
He scooped up the remains from the ground and poured them back into the altar.
"Indeed, the world still needs us to vigorously spread the Father's word. They have no idea of his greatness."
He paused, lost in thought. "Us..."
Just as Typhon settled into his contemplation, a loud shout came from the side.
"Get out of the way!"
The noise infuriated Typhon. He turned to reprimand the intruder, but the moment he did, a massive shadow fell across him. He looked up and saw a giant-eyed monster, easily twenty meters tall, covered in tentacles, looming above.
It ran over him in an instant, leaving only scattered scraps of power armor in its wake.
"Stop! Stop right now!" Francis gritted his teeth and tried to exert control over the armor, but it almost completely ignored his commands.
The tentacles continued their frenzied consumption, his orders becoming distant echoes beneath the chorus of satisfied feeding.
Along the way, tentacles overturned the altars of Nurgle's followers, tore apart the daemons who worshipped there, and devoured them along with their offerings.
Like a raging flood, the tentacles swept away decaying plants and pools of pus.
With a whoosh, the giant tentacle monster began to roll and spin wildly through the garden like a massive spinning top, crashing through everything in its path.
Rotigus squatted by the pond of rotting flesh, where viscous pus flowed, and disgusting foam floated across the surface. Occasionally, a decaying corpse surfaced from the depths. He had waited here for an entire month for new subordinates to emerge, he wanted to launch an expedition for his beloved Father and prove who was the best.
Thinking of this, he excitedly tapped his stomach teeth, picked at one, and saw that it was stuffed with a mouse.
Puff puff puff~!
As daemons were about to emerge from the water, a gust of black wind blew past him. He blinked, and the pond in front of him was dry. Nothing remained inside.
Rotigus roared in immense anguish.
"Aaaaaah! Who! Who stole my people?!"
"Damn it!!! You beast!!!"
"I'm going to kill you!!!"
As he was about to seize someone else's pond of rotting flesh, he heard the same scream echoing around him.
Looking about, he saw that all twenty ponds had been devoured, and even half of the daemons guarding them had disappeared.
"Brute!!!" Rotigus bellowed.
"They're utter beasts!!! This must be a trick by those blue-haired bastards!!!"
"We must get our revenge!!! Kill those bastards!!!"
Rotigus roared in fury, leading the remaining daemons as he charged toward the crystal labyrinth.
At this moment, Francis's flesh armor had grown rapidly, like an inflating balloon, resembling a creature that could never be satisfied.
The armor's form became increasingly grotesque, barely recognizable as something that had once possessed any coherent structure.
Sitting inside, Francis felt as if he had been forced to drink three large bowls of soy milk. It was overwhelming and nauseating.
"I told you to stop!!!" he shouted.
"STOOOPPPP IITTTTT!!" However, he felt like he was on a roller coaster, drifting wildly through the garden in all directions.
Francis's enormous roar woke Mortarion, who had been sleeping beside the Plagueflower field. He hurriedly rubbed his eyes, confused.
"Huh? Am I homesick? Why do I hear Francis's voice?" he muttered.
"This must be a hallucination," he decided, patting his face. "I am scaring myself."
He accidentally dropped a piece of flesh. He quickly picked it up and put it in his mouth. "I can't waste it. Our bodies and hair are given to us by our Father, and we can't let our resources go to outsiders."
He then leaned against a tree and closed his eyes to sleep.
The plants here were extremely morbid and mutated, with petals composed of fragments of rotting flesh, emitting a cloying, sweet stench. The air was filled with dizzying, toxic gases.
This is perfect for helping me sleep, Mortarion thought contentedly. And the sickly bugs on the ground give me a massage every now and then. This is wonderful.
"Mortarion! You fool! I warned you, stupid, and you still fell for it!" Francis's voice came again, then disappeared in a flash.
Mortarion suddenly opened his eyes as a bold idea popped into his mind.
"Do you think I still care about the Emperor? But I have already taken on the form of the benevolent Father, how can I still think about him?" he muttered defensively.
"He's the one who interrupted my duel with my adoptive father. I can't possibly care about him."
"Absolutely impossible! I hate him so much!"
He didn't notice that without the giant corpse flower, the place no longer smelled quite so foul.
"Mortarion! Get out of the way!!" Francis's voice rang out again.
This time, Mortarion didn't even blink. He muttered to himself instead.
"It's all an illusion. It's all an illusion."
"It's all a test from my benevolent Father. I don't care at all."
"Absolutely not... Aa..."
Before he could finish speaking, he felt as if he had been struck by a Titan and was sent flying. He let out an extremely painful scream.
Bang!
Mortarion fell directly onto the temple spire. The massive, sharp Gothic roof pierced through his body instantly. He tried to struggle for a moment, but eventually drifted off to sleep.
"Mmm, the wind on the roof smells wonderfully pungent," he murmured contentedly.
"Not bad."
Deep within the decaying forest, low roars and the crackling sounds of consumption echoed continuously.
Tangled, Francis's flesh-and-blood armor was devouring rotting trees. The armor's tentacles, like countless hungry serpents, coiled around decaying trunks and tore long pieces away, swallowing the pus- and germ-filled wood directly into the depths of the construct.
The giant trees let out piercing screams. "Aaaaaaah!!!"
The gnawing sound was like bones cracking, terrifying in its persistence.
Francis "..."
From his current perspective, he estimated that the armor had grown to over thirty meters in length. It was covered with countless gaping, bloody eyes and sharp tentacles.
The sensation of uncontrolled growth pressed against his consciousness.
I was trying to sneak in to find some antidote, but somehow...
Sizzle~
A secondary brain activated on the armor. It had undergone enough corruption and transformed into a chaotic mass, then fell to the ground.
Immediately afterward, the armor produced another secondary brain and placed it in the original position.
[End of Chapter]
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