The Eighth Conscription Temporary Assembly Zone was the largest and most heavily populated of the nine factories.
It was also, currently, the only one that had not yet reported a victory.
One hour ago, deep within Camp 8, the iron door of a storage room rattled with violent, slamming thuds.
Queek leaned against a cold sheet-metal shelf, panting heavily in ragged gasps.
He was only sixteen years old, an apprentice from an Under-City textile workshop. Thin as a hemp stalk and barely 1.6 meters tall, he was constantly mocked by his peers for looking like a stunted child.
Three days ago, when the press-gang dragged him out of an Under-City alleyway, he had still been clutching a half-finished piece of fabric, thinking this was all just some routine formality. He had never imagined he would find himself in a hellish scene like this.
The moment the ritual erupted, he happened to be hiding in the storage room, quietly eating a stash of nutritional paste. The screams, the roars, and the sickening, bone-snapping sounds of warping flesh outside rushed into his ears like a tide.
Trembling with fear, he huddled behind the shelving unit, not daring to make a sound. It wasn't until a Chaos Poxwalker smashed through the iron door and lunged right before his eyes that he instinctively grabbed a broken wooden table leg lying within arm's reach.
The table leg was made of hard oak with a rusty iron nail driven through one end—something he had caught sight of by pure chance moments before.
The instinct to survive overpowered his terror.
Closing his eyes, he swung the table leg, smashing it hard against the walker's head.
The squelching, nauseating sensation of the nail sinking into the skull made him gag repeatedly. Yet, for the first time, he realized that these monsters could actually be killed.
More monsters came, drawn by the noise.
Hiding behind the storage room door and using the narrow terrain to stage ambushes, he actually managed to take down seven lunging mutants in a row.
The nail on the table leg had long since bent, caked in dark-red blood and bone fragments. By the time the eighth mutant—a snarling horror covered in tentacles—rushed at him, he was so exhausted he could barely lift his arm. His vision swam with black spots, and the fingers gripping the wooden leg were locked in painful spasms.
Am I going to die here?
He thought with bitter reluctance. He hadn't saved enough money to move out of the Under-City yet, he had never seen the golden lights of the Upper City, and he had never tasted the legendary roasted steaks.
Right then, a scalding power suddenly exploded from his chest, surging like a ball of fire through his blood vessels to every corner of his body.
His fatigue vanished instantly. His aching, weakened muscles refilled with strength—strength that felt far greater and more abundant than ever before. Muscular lines began to ripple beneath his originally frail arms.
His fear, too, was incinerated to ash by this inner fire.
Looking at the mutant lunging before him, he felt no fear at all. Instead, an uncontrollable, burning urge to tear the creature apart welled up in his chest.
"The Emperor... The Emperor has blessed me!"
Queek was filled with both shock and joy. Since childhood, he had listened to the Ecclesiarchy priests preach that devout believers would receive the Emperor's favor in times of dire peril. He believed this was a miracle.
He swung the table leg again, and this time, he smashed the mutant's head to pieces with effortless ease.
Dark-red blood splattered across his face. As the warm liquid slid down his jaw, he didn't find it disgusting; instead, he felt a strange, inexplicable sense of exhilaration.
"I need to get out. I need to save the others."
Clinging to this thought, he ripped a thick, heavy bone-blade off the mutant's corpse to use as a weapon. The bone-blade was heavy; under normal circumstances, he wouldn't have even been able to lift it. Now, however, it felt perfectly balanced and remarkably light in his hands.
Kicking open the warped iron door, he stepped out into the living hell.
The factory floor was far worse than he had imagined. Mutants roamed everywhere, amidst a cacophony of tearing flesh and agonizing screams.
He forged ahead, hacking down every monster he encountered. Yet, that mysterious power within him continued to swell. With every monster he slaughtered, the fire inside his body burned hotter, and his strength grew greater.
He wanted to find survivors. He wanted to save ordinary people who, like him, only wanted to live.
But all he found were either completely warped monsters or miserable wretches in the middle of twisting, half-human and half-fiend. Some wept and cried out to him for help, only for their arms to sprout tentacles a split second later as they snarled and lunged at him.
Time and time again, his disappointment built. The people he tried to save ultimately became monsters bent on killing him.
"Why..."
Queek panted, standing amidst a mountain of piled corpses, his bone-blade dripping with blood.
His frame had grown considerably taller. His once-baggy work uniform was stretched tight over his skin, his muscles bulging like solid rock.
He could no longer distinguish between who was a monster and who was still a decent human being.
Perhaps... they were all the same.
Perhaps... if he killed them all, there would be no more pain.
Once this thought sprouted, it grew wildly like moss receiving rain. The fire in his chest burned hotter, and the thrill of slaughter numbed his mind like a potent poison.
He stopped searching for survivors. Instead, he simply wandered forward aimlessly, swinging his blade at anything that moved.
Be it monster or human, pleading for mercy or snarling in rage. One strike, and everything went quiet.
The more he killed, the more massive his body became.
The once-frail, 1.6-meter-tall boy had gradually grown to a towering nine feet, his body heavily muscled and more burly than the stoutest Ogryn. A thick layer of bright-red blood-crust coagulated over his skin like natural armor.
He casually grabbed two smashed machine-tool gears, chained them together with several lengths of mutant spinal bone, and fashioned them into two heavy flails. The metal shards along the edges of the gears were razor-sharp; swung with a whistling wind, a single strike could reduce a monster's head to mush.
He could no longer remember how many things he had slain. He only knew that as he walked forward, he left a trail of mangled carcasses in his wake, with not a single living thing left standing.
Sister Agnes, leader of the Eighth Purification Squad, was feeling an increasingly heavy sense of dread.
Her squad's speed of advance had originally been the fastest among the nine teams. From the moment they breached the gates, the first half of their route had been exceptionally smooth.
There were no swarms of mutants, no hidden sorcerous traps, and even wandering Chaos Poxwalkers were few and far to be seen. The corridors were empty, save for the mangled, incomplete corpses littering the floor—as if something had swept through and cleared the area ahead of them.
"Something's wrong," Agnes raised her hand abruptly, signaling the squad to halt.
She knelt down, her fingertips brushing against the blood on the floor. It wasn't completely dry yet. The wounds on the corpses spoke volumes of the sheer brutality they had suffered before death.
It didn't look like the work of sorcery; it looked like they had been pulverized by raw, brute strength.
"This wasn't done by our forces," the nearby Battle Priest also frowned. "There are no traces of holy fire burns along the way. It's entirely physical devastation."
They continued their advance with extreme caution. The further they went, the denser the corpses became, and the more gruesome the scenes grew.
It was not until they rounded the corner of the main workshop that they saw the figure standing in the center of a mountain of corpses.
A towering, nine-foot-tall figure, covered in bright-red blood-crust, with muscles bulging like mountain ridges. He held a flail made of metal shards and skeletal remains in each hand, dangling at his sides. Hearing their footsteps, he slowly turned his head.
His face still vaguely bore the contours of a young boy, but his eyes had long since lost all traces of humanity, leaving only a churning, near-physical desire for slaughter.
It was him.
It had to be him who had slaughtered every living thing in this sector.
Looking at the purification squad clad in power armor and holding boltguns, a final, lingering shred of clarity flickered within Queek's chaotic mind. He recognized the Ecclesiarchy symbols on their armor. He recognized them as the Emperor's warriors.
His mouth opened, and a hoarse, dry voice scraped past his throat like rusting iron plates rubbing together:
"Please... stop me!"
But before his words could even finish drifting out, his body moved entirely out of his control.
His muscles coiled, his flails were raised high, and the corpses beneath his feet were trampled with such force that they burst like rotten tomatoes. Coated in a heavy stench of blood, he charged straight at the purification squad like an unleashed beast.
Sister Agnes's pupils contracted sharply.
She looked at the crimson aura of malice condensing almost into physical form around him, and she looked at the crushed trail of carcasses he had left behind. Combining this with the bizarrely empty, dead corridors they had walked through...
An unbelievable conclusion manifested in her mind.
Her lips trembled slightly, whispering two words:
"The Blood God..."
The roar of boltguns, the howl of promethium flames, the crackle of plasma beams, and the sizzling hiss of melta rays detonated simultaneously in the cavernous space of the main workshop.
The firepower of over a hundred troops poured out in an instant, creating a barrage so dense it resembled a wall of fire, enveloping the towering figure standing atop the mountain of corpses.
Even if an Imperial Dreadnought were to face such concentrated fire head-on, it would instinctively raise its arms to block or pivot to protect its vital areas. No living flesh and blood could survive such a metallic storm unscathed.
But Queek did not dodge.
He stood in the center of the corpse-laden high ground with his arms hanging down, the heavy ends of his two gear flails resting on the floor, cracking the concrete beneath them.
The sky-covering barrage slammed into him. Bolts detonated, throwing up fine mists of blood; promethium fire licked his body, igniting a brilliant crimson blaze; and plasma beams and melta rays sizzled against his outer crust, burning hot and loud.
Yet, from beginning to end, Queek did not budge an inch, nor did he even furrow his brow.
The layer of blood-crust coagulated over his skin had long ceased to be mere organic residue. Beneath the dark-red crust, Warp energy surged, merging with his mutated, keratinized epidermis to form armor unique to a follower of the Blood God. The kinetic impact of frag grenades only made him sway back slightly, and promethium fire could not burn through his flesh at all.
Sister Agnes's knuckles turned white as she gripped her chainsword, a storm of shock and horror churning within her silver-gray eyes. She recognized the nature of that blood-red skin—it was the blessing of the Blood God, a blasphemous aegis bestowed upon him by the Warp.
In the endless Great Game of the Chaos Gods, Khorne, seated upon his Brass Throne, was ever the one least sparing with his gaze and his favors. Yet, His gifts never conformed to mortal logic. He cared nothing for alignment, morality, or intent, nor did He care if the recipient even worshiped Him.
He cared only for one thing: whether the act of slaughter itself was pure enough, whether it was born of raw instinct, and whether it could bring Him a shred of pleasure amidst the endless bloodshed.
To become a Chaos Champion might only require a single, exhilarating victory; to become a Chosen, however, was as difficult as ascending the heavens. Only when your combat, your raw malice, and the primal destructive urge burst from your absolute limit could pierce the veil of the Warp to please that bloodthirsty deity would He cast His gaze down, pouring His singular power into your mortal vessel.
Clearly, Queek had done exactly that.
A sixteen-year-old Under-City textile apprentice, thin as a reed, armed with nothing but a wooden table leg with a rusty nail driven through it. From the moment he was cornered in that storage room, he had been forced into a warping hell to survive. No sorcerous boons, no power armor, not even a decent weapon. Relying solely on the primal instinct of survival and a mounting, burning urge to kill, he had hacked down monsters far stronger than himself.
This pure, unadulterated slaughter wrung from absolute desperation—free of any underlying schemes—was precisely what suited Khorne's palate best.
"To think he has become a Chosen of Slaughter..." Sister Agnes's voice was incredibly low, carrying an almost imperceptible tremor.
Before her words could fully fade, Queek had already closed half the distance.
He made no tactical maneuvers. He simply took massive strides, charging headlong into the purification squad's formation. His nine-foot-tall body moved like a mountain of charging flesh, his gear flails swinging at his sides with a howling wind.
The front-line Iron Guard soldiers gritted their teeth and held down their triggers, the barrels of their boltguns nearly pressed against Queek's chest. But the giant ignored their presence entirely, letting the rounds crater into his torso and kick up showers of blood.
In the blink of an eye, he crashed into the line.
His heavy gear flail swung with the force of a falling avalanche. The front-row shield-bearing Iron Guards didn't even have time to react or brace before the blunt weapon smashed into the center of their shield wall.
Heavy shields forged from plasteel were treated no differently than thin wooden boards. There was no struggle of armored warriors bracing against a heavy blow, nor any denting of plate.
They simply shattered and ceased to be.
Like fragile aluminum cans, they were flattened, sprayed their juices, and were thrown completely out of sight.
Queek's movements were blindingly fast, utterly at odds with his massive frame. His left hand swept his flail horizontally, sending three Iron Guard soldiers flying, while the gear blade in his right hand sheared downward in a brutal arc, cleaving a soldier holding a multi-melta clean in half, weapon and all. Melta fuel spilled from the severed tank, igniting a raging fire across Queek's arm, but it acted like oil on a fire, only causing the blood-red aura surrounding him to flare with greater intensity.
The Battle Sisters immediately flanked him from both sides, their high-speed chainswords grinding into Queek's forearms and waist. The screech of friction kicked up sparks and blood droplets, but they could not even cut through the outer blood-crust, failing to leave behind the slightest wound.
Queek let out a low growl. His muscles tensed, and by sheer brute force, his flesh shattered the spinning teeth of the chainswords. With a backhand twist, a Sister let out a muffled groan as the wrist holding her sword was snapped instantly.
In the next second, the heavy flail slammed into her breastplate. Her body was thrown backward at terminal velocity, leaving behind a fine mist of blood—and her severed arm, still clutched in Queek's grasp.
Sister Agnes felt no fear as she watched her companion die so easily. Sacrifice was, after all, a supreme honor.
She inhaled deeply, raising her holy relic high as the aura of faith surrounding her flared to its absolute limit:
"Concentrate fire! Aim for his eyes!"
The three Battle Priests in the center of the squad chanted their purifying prayers in unison. Golden holy fire erupted from the tips of their staves, transforming into three serpents of flame that lunged together at Queek's face.
The sacred fire scorched the blood-red light. Queek's advancing footsteps finally halted for half a second. A painful growl rumbled in his throat, and he instinctively turned his head to protect his eyes.
But it was only for half a second.
He took a massive, violent stride forward, forcing his way through the holy flames. The outer layer of his blood-crust was blackened and smoking, but the crimson light within surged wildly, continuously repairing the scorched tissue.
In a fraction of a heartbeat, he breached the priests' line. His flails swept through, unleashing a rain of blood and severed limbs. Staves clattered to the floor, and the golden holy fire was instantly snuffed out.
The bloody slaughter became absolute.
To the current Queek, this purification squad—capable of purging an entire cultist stronghold and boasting a combat strength comparable to a small Space Marine scout squad—was no different from the unarmed civilians and mutated beasts in the rest of the factory. They were merely "toys" that could provide him with a minor, fleeting spark of interest.
Bolts could not pierce him, fire could not burn him, and chainswords could not cut him. He was a tiger unleashed among sheep; wherever he went, flesh flew, armor shattered, and screams of agony mingled with the sound of snapping metal.
In the shadows, three purestrain Genestealers lunged down silently. They had been hidden assets lurking in the deep corners of the factory. Seeing the purification squad completely decimated, they sought to strike while Queek was distracted by the holy fire, attempting to tear apart this rampaging human beast.
Their razor-sharp rending claws flashed with cold light, aiming straight for Queek's neck and eyes.
But it was as if Queek had eyes in the back of his head. Without even turning around, he swung his flail backward in a vicious reverse arc.
Crack, crack, crack.
With three sharp snaps, the three purestrain Genestealers were swatted like flies, crashing heavily against the ceiling before dropping to the floor in mangled, broken heaps. Their bodies were never built to withstand heavy impacts, and before the monstrous strength of a Chosen of Khorne, they were exceptionally fragile.
From the initial barrage of gunfire to the demise of the final Genestealer, less than a minute had elapsed.
The entire hundred-man purification squad, along with the three lurking purestrain Genestealers, had been wiped out to the last soul.