A crushing sense of suffocation made Kain's breathing come out harsh and ragged.
He tried to force his lungs—flattened like a leaking balloon, pressed together like two limp rubber bladders—back into expansion.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Blood was falling from a point about an inch above his right elbow. The droplets were nearly forming a continuous line.
On the ground below was a large pool of blood, far too much for a mere drip rate like this.
The reason was simple: a few seconds ago, it hadn't been dripping at all.
It had been spraying.
Now, thanks to the panacea he'd taken, the clean cross-section where most of his arm had been severed was scabbing over at a visible pace.
No—more like fresh flesh was sprouting.
He looked forward.
The smoke—like meat scorched by extreme heat—was dispersing, and the Astartes battle-brother came into view.
The power armor on the man's torso had partially collapsed and slumped, as if plastic had been melted by a welding torch. Beneath it, exposed flesh had been dissolved into a ruinous mess.
Nearly a third of his upper body was simply gone, including an entire arm.
Part of his face had melted as well, as if a third of his head had been liquefied.
There was only one reason for damage on that level.
The melta charge.
That was the price of trading injury for injury, like sacrificing a wheel to keep the car alive.
If he had tried to face that monster in a clean, head-on duel, he would have lost.
So he pulled the "ditch a wheel to survive" trick.
His arm had not been cut off by the enemy.
He had deliberately triggered a perfectly timed separation cut in his own power armor, splitting it open on command.
That feature existed because he demanded it.
So the severed arm had been flung onto the enemy, and the gauntlet—built with something akin to tank reactive armor—had, in fact, been loaded with a melta charge.
It detonated at point-blank range.
Of course, to pull that off, he had to do more than just throw away an arm. He had to bait the enemy's attention with other actions.
So, during the clash with the greatsword, he exploited a blind spot in the enemy's field of view—making him believe the downward slash had cleanly broken Kain's blade and taken an arm with it.
His calculation had worked.
But his injuries were not limited to losing an arm. The sword's tip had still grazed his chest, carving open a horrifying wound.
It was the same kind of slash as that scene in One Piece—Zoro being cut by Mihawk.
So now, a powerful weakness was invading his body, and even his consciousness was starting to blur.
Yet the pain was intense enough to keep hammering his nerves, forcing his mind into a sharper, colder clarity.
Kain exhaled silently.
A pity. The damage he dealt to this Chaos Space Marine did not look lethal.
As for the promise—survive that strike, and he would be spared?
Don't be that naive.
Kain stayed on full alert. If it came to it, mutual destruction should still be possible.
"Go," the Chaos Space Marine said. "I'll deal with this trash."
He was actually letting him go?
But since the moment those words fell, the traitor really did turn away to butcher the surrounding demons, Kain wasn't about to stand there like an idiot.
He sprinted toward a massive machine fitted with an enormous drill head—an Imperial tunneling beast, the "White Ant," an assault drill.
He intended to drive it back toward the elevator that led upward and drill through the metal door.
No—blast through.
Drilling a wall that thick would take too long. Better to pack melta charges into the machine and detonate the whole thing.
"Letting you go doesn't mean I'm merciful," the fallen Astartes said, baring his teeth as he stared at the figure vanishing into the distance. "Above is even more despair."
He almost sounded amused.
The man might regret it—regret not dying by the Chaos Marine's hand.
Or perhaps, the man really would do something unexpected.
After all, in all these years, this was the first time he'd encountered a Blank this peculiar.
And the man had described himself as "serving the Imperium," in a tone that felt like mockery—clearly not the words of someone loyal to that "hypocritical Emperor."
…
Boom—!
The explosion was so violent it seemed to make the surrounding space scream, as if even this metal-built structure was no longer safe.
Staring at the breach he'd blasted open, Kain didn't hesitate for a second—he dove straight in.
What filled his vision was a colossal elevator shaft.
Then, assisted by his new power armor, he climbed upward with the sharp, efficient agility of a monkey, scrambling toward an upper darkness that felt endless.
This "new" suit was the second set stored in his personal space.
The first had been smashed beyond use.
Now it was obvious: the power armor he'd brought from A2's world could not fully perform here.
Maybe it was the planet itself—some kind of "environmental incompatibility." Or some other factor.
Either way, it looked like it could only deliver about sixty to seventy percent of its intended performance.
He dodged again as liquid continued to drip from above.
A thick, fishy reek of blood flooded the air, mixed with the stench of rot, like something left to decay for far too long.
The situation above was almost certainly disastrous.
And suddenly, Kain understood the meaning behind that lingering, loaded look the Chaos Astartes had given him after "sparring" him.
Kain might have leapt from one hell into another.
A worse one.
But no matter what waited, he had to go up.
How high had he climbed?
According to his suit's readouts, from the starting point to now, he had already ascended over seven hundred meters.
Along the way, he had spotted side passages, but they all led into areas belonging to the Hive City's lower reaches.
Put simply, they were still within the "sewers" of a single city.
Just as Kain used a massive cable for leverage and swung his body toward another higher route—while he was still airborne—
He sensed something.
Instantly, without hesitation, he raised his guard.
Bang—!
Something pounced onto him and slammed him against the metal wall, pinning him there.
Kain's two short blades were braced up—no, they had already stabbed into two claws, stopping those claws from reaching him.
The thing had three arms.
The remaining arm and the claws on its two legs dug into the wall behind like spikes, anchoring its body in place.
Kain's eyes widened. He snapped his head aside—
And the monster's tongue speared past, missing his face by a hair, and punched into the metal wall behind him.
In the next instant, a gunport unfolded from his shoulder plating.
An orange flash.
A melta warhead vaporized the creature's head.
Then Kain kicked hard, blasting the corpse away—sending it tumbling down into the elevator shaft's abyss, toward a bottom that didn't seem to exist.
This was trouble.
Because Kain knew exactly what that thing was.
It wasn't a daemon.
It had the hallmarks of a crawling predator.
It was a Genestealer.
(End of Chapter)
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