In such a deep part of the ship, the environmental anomalies had disappeared, and they had not seen any small daemons burrowing out and running around in panic from the heat for a long time.
The walls around them displayed an increasing number of scenes depicting giants battling serpents, yet compared to the initially grand images at a distance, these sculptures now seemed a bit mad.
These intricate patterns ultimately converged before a magnificent set of gilded double doors.
From a human perspective, standing beside the doors made Zhang Ge feel like a tiny insect.
"Inside... there is something incredibly powerful. I can't describe what it is," High Canoness Heloise stated solemnly while standing beside Zhang Ge, ensuring his safety.
Incredibly powerful? Can't be described?
That sounds ideal.
Zhang Ge nodded solemnly, feigning seriousness, and replied, "We've come this far; there's no turning back now. Let's see how we can open the door."
The group spread out to the sides and quickly found two lever mechanisms shaped like the Imperial Aquila atop their respective pedestals.
The two Sisters pressed the levers simultaneously. The heavy doors, propelled by the air displaced by their movement, slowly swung open, revealing a golden radiance pouring through the widening gap, casting an orange glow onto the metallic floor.
They gathered on either side of the door, but when they were about to rush out, every one of them halted in their tracks.
In the center of the grand hall, intricately sculpted with countless exquisite reliefs and embedded with numerous precious gems, there indeed stood a giant.
A Knight Paladin knelt on the ground.
It was a common and ancient Questoris Knight.
The paint on its upper body still gleamed, and an emblem on its chest indicated which family it belonged to. Its massive form trembled occasionally, with black tubing and mechanical structures hidden beneath heavy armor plates, and its arms wielded prominent weaponry.
In the complex adornments of its shoulder armor, a line of small numbers indicated it was born in the 36th Millennium.
Upon seeing the group enter the hall, its electronic eye, glowing red from a gap in its protective helm, slowly turned to scan them. After a lengthy pause, it spoke in a slow, pained voice:
"You are... here to rescue? ...What year has it come to?"
No one in the room replied to it.
Below, the Knight's lower body was enshrouded in a mass of pink flesh-grafts that encircled its legs and snaked upwards, intertwining in layers, pulsating like innumerable entwined serpents.
These tendrils had almost completely fused with its entire lower half, slithering through the armored plates and entwining within the moaning structures, ultimately converging in its waist, merging into its torso's framework.
Each contraction and squeeze of these defiled flesh-mechanisms caused this towering construct to tremble. It was unfathomable how long it had struggled against this corruption.
Zhang Ge, seeing it had no intention of attacking, was about to step forward when Heloise stopped him.
"It has fallen," she said.
Zhang Ge halted. He had not felt the Warp fluctuations affecting him before, so he had overlooked certain details. But now, stopping to sense the unusual aura in the air, he understood what Heloise meant.
The Knight had not betrayed them, but it had indeed fallen.
The unimaginable Warp Energy spilled forth uncontrollably. This place had not escaped corruption—in fact, it had long been so severely tainted that it had completely become a reflection of the Knight's internal visions.
In its imagination, it was the glorious defender that had battled against the Dark Gods for countless years, holding fast to faith and loyalty. However, the surrounding environment mirrored its true inner thoughts.
It had maintained its thousand-year loyalty not out of fidelity to the Emperor, but in pursuit of an extreme form of self-gratification; the more it was tormented by the Dark God, the more it believed its ability to remain loyal was a great and valuable honor.
What may have initially driven it to endure eventually evolved into a compulsive addiction, where what it sought after was no longer honor or loyalty in themselves, but rather the self-satisfaction they provided—satisfaction derived from within.
The more it clung to its convictions, the more pain it was able to withstand, raising its threshold for such sensations far beyond physical stimuli.
It had become an art piece crafted by Slaanesh, and even this ironically twisted behavior itself became a source of power for the Dark God.
Even if they were to save it now, the thrill of battle or typical loyalty could no longer satisfy its desires. Moreover, the deep-seated Warp Corruption had made it a mobile corruption node.
The Adamantium Ram had suffered significant damage and distortion from its impacts with the ground, with numerous cracks barely revealing the outside world. Yet, the night and moonlight were barred from entering.
In that golden radiance, which clearly lacked any true light source yet filled the entire hall, wisps of pink trails swirled.
Despite understanding this, the pressing question remained: how could they destroy a Knight without heavy weaponry, even if it posed no resistance until its end?
Just as Zhang Ge pondered this dilemma, the floating cross suddenly began to glow more intensely.
A howling sound seemed to come from above, from the exterior above them.
As the sound grew closer, a booming explosion rang out at the top of the hall, as if two large objects had collided.
A crack in the ceiling that had only held for a moment was completely torn open, ripping away large sections of surrounding panels.
Accompanied by sparking electricity and countless metallic shards ripping through the air, a foot—larger than the entire Knight itself—descended into view in the next instant.
Connected to that massive foot was the metallic colossus of a Warlord Titan, its grandeur illuminated in the golden light as it made its presence clear.
If time could be frozen at that moment, looking upward through the newly made aperture, one could see an opening on the shell of the Hive City.
Indeed, if the elevator was broken, why not take the stairs?
After realizing that the lift would take considerable time to repair, Olivia directly ascended to the outer shells of the Hive City and climbed step by step to the tower's peak, ultimately descending at this moment.
Her mechanical eyes were in no way concerned with the absence of the Knight in view.
The massive foot with incredible momentum crushed down on the Knight's "broad" back.
The once lightly humming Knight's knee joint was decisively shattered, and the half-kneeling position it had maintained crumbled in less than half a second; its enormous form toppled under the Titan's foot.
In quick succession, as its body fell to the ground, obstructing Olivia's footfall, a crisp sound of armor plates cracking echoed through the chamber, and the protective layers on the Knight's body splintered, leaving its mechanical components exposed to further trampling.
The sound of flesh and machinery being crushed resonated, and the other leg of the Titan landed without obstruction, sending tremors filled with dust and shockwaves surging outward, forcing everyone to lean slightly forward to avoid being toppled.
The foot that crushed the Knight had turned the remains below into a mass of twisted metal, with countless shattered gears and pink flesh scattered around.
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