This Is Our Warhammer Journey

Slashing, blood, death.

Blades cleaving flesh, the damned souls, burning with urgency.

Urgent to drag everything in their sight into an even crueler hell.

Heretics were fleeing, xenos were wailing, daemons—

Where were the daemons?

Arthur, in a meditative-like state, listened to the sound of the disintegration field tearing through flesh.

Though subjectively still feeling horror and disgust, he didn’t actually feel scared or nervous. In fact, he kind of enjoyed mindlessly hacking things apart.

No need to think about some vague future, no need to worry about the terrifying present. All he had to do was slash those twisted abominations with his blade and tear open a hideous hole in the writhing mass of meat with his sturdy shield.

At this moment, he was the master of everything around him.

In this universe, being able to charge into battle with joy in your heart—maybe that was its own kind of blessing.

Arthur didn’t even bother wondering where all his finely honed combat skills had come from. He focused entirely on the enemies before him. His swordsmanship, perfectly balanced between offense and defense, flowed effortlessly in the narrow corridor. The ever-growing kill count on his HUD felt oddly considerate.

Did I really kill that many?

The brief doubt passed quickly. Just as his blade, dancing like a work of art through enemy lines, paused midair, Arthur had to confront a new problem.

An unfamiliar figure appeared before him.

It was an Astartes clad in finely crafted blue power armor, about the same height as Arthur, wielding a multi-melta linked to a backpack ammo unit. Embedded in his power pack was a glowing iron halo with the Omega symbol, shining in the dim corridor.

Right now, he stood with one hand raised in a blocking stance—and just a centimeter from his gauntlet, Arthur’s blade was frozen in place. The disintegration field’s crackling blue arc lightly grazed the paint on his armor.

“……”

They locked eyes at the same time.

BOOM!

The melta fired a torrent of molten metal, clearing out a huge chunk of the hallway.

Arthur’s power sword skimmed past the iron halo, pinning a Chaos sorcerer—who had warped in close with strange magic—against the wall. Arthur raised his sword, slicing through the sorcerer’s body and bisecting a Genestealer in the same motion.

CLANG!

Ceramite clashed. The two stood back to back.

“Arthur?”

The Ultramarine asked in Chinese, the language of the Dragonborn homeland, snapping Arthur—whose brain had mostly been occupied with chopping things—back to clarity.

Thanks to his superhuman brain, Arthur processed a ton of info in an instant. He recalled the gear on the Ultramarine behind him. Blocking a heretic’s overhead strike with his shield, the shockwave burst outward, shattering several nearby mortals’ organs. Then Arthur tentatively said:

“Romulus?”

Romulus—his bro who had been playing Warhammer with him forever. From Darktide to Space Marine 2, from Warhammer Fantasy all the way to 40K

In the game, Romulus always preferred this exact armor color scheme.

“Yeah.”

The Ultramarine replied softly, then tapped a few times on his arm. A 3D terrain map appeared in Arthur’s HUD.

“You take point. I’ll cover. Straight through the corridor—watch your step, don’t fall to the lower levels.”

“Alright.”

Both fully aware of what kind of f**ked-up universe they were in, neither of them mentioned real names. Arthur stepped forward.

Romulus casually tossed aside the multi-melta. When he raised his hand again, he was holding a heavy bolter.

“You got blessed by some Chaos god or something?”

Arthur couldn’t help but ask as he dealt with a tough elite in the middle of a monster mob, noticing the precise bolter rounds whizzing past him.

Anyone who knew even a bit about Warhammer understood—weapon-swapping like that screamed Warp entities like Vashtorr, twisted tech-demon sh*t. What kind of Astartes could do that?

“Blessed?”

Romulus chuckled.

“Thirty points and you can buy it directly. You should try it too.”

“Huh?”

A stream of bullets rained down in a line. Arthur frowned, raised his shield, and protected Romulus behind him.

“You didn’t notice anything weird?”

Romulus lobbed an armor-piercing grenade, wiping out a heavy gunner inside a bunker ahead, then added:

“There’s a safe zone in the Warp. You’ve got a kill counter on your HUD that goes up whenever you kill soul-bearing beings. Also—did you not notice the daemons you killed are gone for good?”

Arthur blinked. He suddenly remembered: after slaying a few daemons at the start, all that had surrounded him since were xenos and heretics. The daemons had definitely been keeping their distance.

As everyone knows, daemons live in the Warp. Outside of other Warp creatures eating them, there’s almost no way to truly kill one. And there's nothing but death that could actually scare a daemon.

“Uh.”

They kept pushing forward. Inside his helmet, Arthur’s face showed a hint of awkwardness.

“I was just focused on slashing stuff, man. My thinking was—if I landed in this sh*t pit, I might as well drag a few down with me for the swim. You know what I mean? A guy transmigrates into Warhammer and doesn’t cry like a goblin—that’s already impressive mental strength, alright?”

He explained his behavior, clearly feeling it wasn’t his fault.

“…Khorne would definitely love you.”

Romulus sighed, then continued:

“I’m still figuring things out myself. So far, all I know is we’ve got some kind of domain in the Warp, like a safehouse. Killing soul-bearing beings strengthens us. The number shows up thanks to our subconscious. And we can spend those points to affect reality—like conjuring stuff out of thin air.”

“Dude… did we become Warp daemons or something?”

Arthur sliced an Ork that had climbed up from the lower level. The kill count ticked up, and he twitched a little.

Sure, his concerns weren’t unfounded. What they knew so far was: transmigrated, landed in a decent body—Fallen Angel, sure, but still an Astartes—and got a cheat ability that might or might not be from the Warp.

Honestly, knowing how shady the Warp is, this so-called cheat probably had some connection to Warp entities. If you got too comfy with it and then ran into a Necron and the cheat cut out—now that’d be hilarious.

He was even starting to suspect his bro might be a daemon wearing a friend-skin, assigned to be his quest-giver with some evil end goal in mind.

Yeah… wouldn’t be impossible.

His grip on the sword tightened. Arthur grew slightly more cautious of the “good bro” behind him.

Now that he thought about it—being able to instantly adapt to all this bloodshed, calmly slicing through waves of monsters without flinching… that in itself was abnormal. He had to stay alert.

“Who knows. We’ll have to leave the Warp to figure it out.”

Romulus shook his head. Rationally, he thought the idea that you could just slice up a few people and trade it in for an Astartes body was absurd. Not even the Four Gods were that overpowered—otherwise they’d have conquered realspace ages ago.

But this wasn’t the time to debate that.