AI Model: gemini-2.5-flash
If he could strip away this body that carried his mission, and shed the halo of a Primarch, he might truly be able to extend this moment of peace into eternity. He wouldn't have to worry about the fires of war in the galaxy, nor bear the responsibility for humanity's rise and fall; he would only need to be the child who craved warmth by Worp's side.
Normal children his age would still be acting spoiled in their parents' arms, still learning to speak, but he had lost his privilege by being forced to grow up.
Yet, fate had already woven cause and effect within a paradox: precisely because he was a Primarch forged by the Emperor's own hands, Worp would cross the stars to meet him.
But this inherent burden was destined to separate them.
Worp: "If the Golden Fleece we find is truly an STC, then we will have the key to rebuilding civilization. Once Colchis returns to the Imperium, as long as you make a request to the Mechanicum, they will actively volunteer to help you repair the orbital star-ring. I believe that under your leadership, Colchis will become as prosperous as Terra."
"Would you like Colchis like that?"
"Of course."
"Would you like it more than Terra?"
Worp shook his head: "Terra is my homeworld."
Logar was not disheartened; he understood Worp's special feelings for his homeworld.
Even if there were trillions of planets in the galaxy, some even more perfect than Terra, a homeworld was priceless.
Just like a father.
"Then what about second favorite?"
"That depends on your ability."
"I will,"
Logar smiled as happily as a child, "I promise."
"I believe you."
Logar asked: "What are my brothers' homeworlds like?"
Know yourself and your enemy, and you will never be defeated in a hundred battles—this was what Worp had taught him.
"You already know Koz's Nostramo; the environments of the Primarchs' homeworlds are generally very harsh. If we're talking about the best environment, it should be Guilliman's Macragge, right?"
"Guilliman, Macragge."
Logar memorized these two names, deciding that he would find an opportunity to visit his brother's homeworld in the future.
They talked for a long time, about everything from Terra to the Primarchs, from Jason slaying dragons in Southern Liang of Asia Minor to Saint George raising Romulus.
"I'll sleep for a bit first."
Worp yawned.
Logar: "I will stand guard for you."
Forever, he added in his heart.
The night was as dark as ink, and all was silent.
Colchis's biting night wind carried fine sand, scraping tiny sounds against the Crawler's armor. Logar sat in the direction the wind blew from, shielding Worp from the cold.
His tightly wrapped white robe swayed gently in the wind, like a piece of moonlight refusing to fall.
...
The Crawler reached the Pit of Grief at dawn the next day. Behind the jagged, ridge-like rocks was a massive crater, forty kilometers in diameter, like a wound smashed into the earth by a god's giant hammer.
Twisted metal skeletons jutted abruptly from the sea of sand, like the weathered remains of giants.
The ancient ruins of the sky city twisted slightly in the heat haze, yet the outlines of circular sections and portholes could still be discerned.
"Golden Fleece."
Logar, standing on the roof of the vehicle, whispered softly. The descriptions of the sky city in The King of Swift Dragons were now unfolding before him in a magnificent spectacle beyond imagination.
Even if only the remains of the sky city from yesteryear lay before him, he understood that the descriptions in the book were by no means false.
The splendid civilization created by the ancient ancestors, its grandeur far surpassed what modern people's impoverished imagination could achieve.
Not even a Primarch could, for Logar had not been fortunate enough to witness it with his own eyes.
"Logar!"
Worp suddenly called his name, "Ten o'clock, two hundred meters!"
Logar's gaze, sharp as a blade, pierced the sand at ten o'clock. A strange bulge was rapidly snaking across the sand a hundred meters away, rolling sand waves like a sea parted by an invisible hand, splashing golden foam to either side.
"Bang!"
The King of Swift Dragons burst from beneath the desert, its colossal body overturning tens of tons of yellow sand like a collapsing mountain. The sky-full of grit formed a golden waterfall under the moonlight, every grain of sand trembling with the roar of friction against its large, reddish-gold triangular scales.
Its body length was over three hundred meters, its three sets of compound eyes gleamed with cold light, and its enormous mouth, large enough to swallow the entire Crawler, opened completely, tearing its head apart to reveal layers of scimitar-shaped teeth.
Its 'neck' arched fifty meters high like a giant python, then plunged down violently, intending to swallow the entire Crawler whole and chew it to pieces with its teeth!
"Bang!"
The King of Swift Dragons' gaping maw slammed heavily into the pale blue psychic barrier, its ferocious fangs creating ripples on the energy field's surface, violently oscillating like a lake struck by a massive stone.
At the same time, the Crawler, in the nick of time, rolled over a sand ridge, narrowly avoiding The King of Swift Dragons' deadly pounce.
The King of Swift Dragons, its attack missing, let out a deafening roar, then plunged back into the sea of sand.
Its burrowing motion stirred up monstrous sand waves, yellow sand splashing like a waterfall onto the Crawler's armor plating with a crisp sound like heavy rain.
"Can you do it?"
Worp transmitted telepathically into Logar's mind.
Logar's violet eyes peered through the flying sand curtain, locking onto the rapidly moving bulge beneath the sand.
"Its hide is too thick; I have to get inside its mouth."
Logar had conceived a way to kill this monster within a nanosecond of seeing The King of Swift Dragons. Just now was the best time, but he didn't want Worp to worry, so he gave up that opportunity.
"Are you confident?"
"Yes."
"Then go for it!"
"Okay."
The second opportunity came faster than expected.
The King of Swift Dragons seemed to sense the subtle tremors in the sand, precisely locking onto the Crawler's trajectory. As the Crawler drove over a seemingly calm dune, the sand surface suddenly churned violently as if boiling.
The King of Swift Dragons burst from underground, swallowing the Crawler and tens of tons of yellow sand into its abyssal throat. The mournful screech of twisting metal tore through the sandstorm like ripping cloth, the Crawler's armor plates collapsing layer by layer like fragile tin foil under the crushing force of the beast's fangs.
Worp had already exited the Crawler earlier, using his psychic powers to land on the sand nearby.
But the monster, after successfully landing its blow, did not retreat into the sand. Instead, it let out a painful wail, convulsively shaking its head, slamming it violently against the sand like the Hulk smashing Loki.
In its final death throes, The King of Swift Dragons' body convulsed violently, finally crashing heavily onto the sand, splashing a turbulent wave of sand.
Logar emerged from its mouth, covered in foul-smelling saliva.
"I want to throw up."
Logar could endure the stench, but he deliberately wrinkled his handsome face to complain to Worp.
Psychic energy poured like a waterfall, cleansing his body. Each energy ripple was like an invisible carving knife, precisely stripping away the impurities that did not belong to him.
"That's much better now."
Logar smiled happily.
"Now it's a mess."
Worp sighed. The King of Swift Dragons was dead, but the Crawler was gone too.
Logar: "I always wanted to walk with you like this, just like now."
"Are you a child?"
"Yes."
Logar nodded, "If calculated by the Colchis calendar, I just turned 60 days old today. If calculated by the Terra calendar, I'm only 14 months old."
Worp was helpless, but he truly couldn't do anything about Logar like this.
Two figures, one large and one small, trudged through the scorching sun, ascending the weathered rock formations along the high sand ridges into the depths of the ruins.
The large one was a fourteen-month-old child, and the small one was a thirty-something-year-old adult.
"I find it very strange."
Logar suddenly asked, "Why was The King of Swift Dragons able to ambush us so precisely the moment we entered the crater?"
The Pit of Grief is forty kilometers in diameter. At the speed The King of Swift Dragons demonstrated, crossing the Pit of Grief would take several tens of minutes.
Either their luck was too good, and The King of Swift Dragons caught them for an extra meal just as they entered.
"Or that wasn't the only King of Swift Dragons."
Before Worp finished speaking, he saw a strange bulge rapidly snaking across the sand dune a hundred meters away, like a swimming snake.
Logar moved to block Worp. The King of Swift Dragons had existed in stories thousands of years ago. Either it had an astonishing lifespan, or The King of Swift Dragons was not a single monster, but a species.
He should have thought of that earlier.
Chapter 65: Iron Man and Zion.
"Bang!"
The King of Swift Dragons' massive, scale-covered bodies churned violently in the sea of sand, raising yellow sand like a golden tsunami. Their necks rose proudly like ancient towers, opening their fanged mouths to try and capture the two figures in the air, but each time they missed by a hair, crashing heavily into the sea of sand, stirring up a thousand layers of sand waves.
Worp: "Did you kill their mother?"
Logar: "It's also possible it was their father."
Logar had only killed one King of Swift Dragons, but these Kings of Swift Dragons had pursued them relentlessly all the way.
Their behavior was very much like revenge, indicating that The King of Swift Dragons Logar killed held a very high status in the species, and also that these creatures possessed intelligence.
The King of Swift Dragons that was killed was over three hundred meters long, while the longest of the Kings of Swift Dragons pursuing them was only two hundred meters. The King of Swift Dragons that was killed was clearly much older than the other Kings of Swift Dragons.
"With so many dragons guarding it, what did the ancient ancestors think the Colchis people would rely on to find the Golden Fleece?"
Even if the Covenant, which unified Colchis, were to search for the Golden Fleece, they would be helpless against these giant beasts.
The King of Swift Dragons' scales could withstand repeated artillery bombardments. To kill them quickly, one had to enter The King of Swift Dragons' body.
But The King of Swift Dragons' saliva was highly corrosive; mortals entering The King of Swift Dragons' mouth would be seeking their own death.
If not for Logar and Worp, the Colchis people would have been utterly unable to reach the core area of the ruin site under the protection of these Kings of Swift Dragons, nor would they have been able to obtain the Golden Fleece.
Logar: "Jason gathered many heroes and traveled to Colchis on the Argo. Medeea used a magic potion to put the fire dragon to sleep, allowing Jason to successfully obtain the Golden Fleece. Perhaps the ancient ancestors also set up a similar test, and the answer might be in The Rejected tribe deep in the desert."
"I don't have time to go back and seek answers from The Rejected, but we can still avoid The King of Swift Dragons' attacks right now, which has the same effect as the magic potion. Now we just need to find the Golden Fleece."
They had already flown over the sea of sand, arriving above the core area of the former sky city ruins.
The Kings of Swift Dragons restlessly roamed the periphery of the ruins, their bodies writhing beneath the sand, plowing winding bulges across the flat sand surface, like giant pythons slithering through the desert, yet they never dared to step into this ruin buried by wind and sand.
Logar: "They truly have intelligence, and they are constrained by the ancestors."
Worp adjusted his altitude, and the two slowly descended onto the crest of a sand dune sculpted by time.
Logar's legs sank into the fine sand, making a slight crunching sound.
"Where do we go now?"
Logar asked.
"There."
Worp raised his arm, pointing to a faint outline shimmering between distant sand dunes.
Under the scorching sunlight, an ancient architectural ruin lay dormant in the sea of sand like a sleeping giant beast.
They had seen it when they were in the sky; it was the most intact building in these ruins. Whether or not there was a Golden Fleece there, there would certainly be clues.
Logar knew where to go; he asked him because he wanted to ask him.
Despite thousands of years of wind erosion, its overall outline still maintained a graceful, geometrically compliant curve.
Its incomplete dome twisted slightly in the heat haze, broken metal skeletons gleamed with a cold light under the scorching sun, and mottled stone pillars jutted towards the sky like broken ribs.
Although the outer walls were covered in wind-eroded mottling, the main structure remained intact.