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In the pitch-dark, narrow tunnel, Eden crawled forward, inching along a path filled with years' worth of filth mixed with unidentifiable, slimy substances.
Fortunately, he'd used his psyker abilities to create a protective membrane around his body, shielding him from the contaminated surroundings. Despite this, the stench was enough to knock out an ordinary person.
But Eden wasn't ordinary.
Anticipating such an environment, he had instructed Moss to strip this custom body of its sense of smell and taste, making this journey easier to bear.
After crawling through the damp, confined tunnel for almost three hours, Eden finally saw a bright light at the end.
Most people would have been overcome with excitement upon seeing such a sign of escape. But Eden stopped, raised his staff, and fired a compressed psyker blast toward the light.
"Ambushing me? Nice try!"
Keeping his psychic senses active had made a surprise attack impossible.
Bang! The psyker blast struck the light source, followed by a beastly scream that echoed through the passage. The light at the end of the tunnel dropped, plunging the area back into darkness.
Once the screams died away, Eden resumed his crawl, peeking out of the tunnel to survey the scene below.
At the base of the passage, he saw the creature that had attempted to ambush him: a mutated beast with tentacles, bearing a glowing organ on its head, much like an anglerfish from the deep sea, using light to lure in its prey.
The vast, maze-like tunnels within the hive had long given rise to unique, isolated ecosystems filled with strange and dangerous creatures.
According to records from the Royal Court, over three hundred years ago, a maintenance worker had gotten lost in these tunnels and stumbled upon a tribe of mutant humans.
These "subhumans" had lived in the tunnels for centuries, unaware of the outside world. They subsisted on various fungi growing in the sludge and had even developed simple farming techniques.
Fortunately, the tribe hadn't lost its language entirely, allowing for basic communication. After the subhumans saved the lost worker, he reciprocated by teaching them basic tool-making skills.
The two sides got along well, and the tribe even helped guide the worker back to the surface.
But once this was reported, a local officer forced the worker to reveal the tribe's location. The officer led a group of soldiers into the tunnels, massacring the tribe and presenting their heads as proof of "cleansing" the area from "mutants."
Eden had come across this story in the archives while researching tunnel routes, finding it both tragic and absurd. The Imperium's purity standards were ruthless for anyone with "unclean" skulls.
Eden wriggled out of the tunnel, dropping onto the slimy floor below with a sigh. Strewn throughout the sludge were the skeletal remains of dozens of scout soldiers. It seemed the mutated beast had claimed many lives here.
However, the majority of scouts had managed to pass through this area safely. The creature likely only attacked when hungry; in such an environment, conserving energy was a matter of survival.
As Eden moved past the beast's corpse, the creature suddenly sprang up, tendrils lashing toward him in a last-ditch effort.
Caught off guard, Eden reacted with his combat knife, its monomolecular edge slicing cleanly through the beast's head, killing it instantly.
A psyker using a knife in close combat—no problem at all.
After leaving the pit, Eden continued on his journey. Along the way, he encountered dozens more mutated creatures and saw an increasing number of scout corpses.
Consulting his map, Eden noted he'd only covered thirty kilometers—less than a third of the journey. By his estimate, half of the scouts had perished just to reach this point.
In the following stretch, the scout remains thinned out, suggesting a safer passage ahead.
Relaxing slightly, Eden quickened his pace, but his psychic senses suddenly alerted him to a massive danger ahead.
Not far away, he felt an overwhelmingly evil presence radiating from a cloud of fog, accompanied by the unsettling whispers of a demon.
Eden's heart raced as he reflexively raised his staff, prepared to unleash a psyker blast.
Seeing what lay ahead, Eden managed to hold back, barely avoiding a disastrous mistake.
Close call. Had the blast been fired, this body would have been done for on the spot.
Ahead in the enormous tunnel, a dark fog shrouded a chained, twisted figure. Strewn around it were the dismembered bodies of other scouts—a horrifying sight.
Eden was stunned. "What the hell is this thing doing in the tunnels?"
It was a daemonhost—a mortal vessel forcibly bound to a daemon by heretical rituals, creating a terrifying abomination. In slumber, the daemonhost emitted a dark mist and whispered to itself in its sleep.
Daemonhosts were ferociously dangerous. Once awakened, they would pursue any living creature that disturbed their rest with relentless aggression, only stopping once their target was dead.
For those who understood them, however, they were relatively easy to bypass.
As long as one avoided the mist or didn't physically harm the daemonhost, it was unlikely to awaken.
With careful, silent steps, Eden pressed himself flat against the tunnel wall, inching along slowly, keeping a wide berth from the eerie mist.
Almost there, he thought. Just a little further to safety.
But halfway across, a blundering teammate appeared.
A smooth-skinned, four-legged mutant creature crawled from a side tunnel, snuffling around, seemingly searching for something.
Eden froze, holding his breath and praying the creature wouldn't notice him.
"Please don't see me. Please don't come over here..."
But the creature suddenly turned, locking eyes with him.
The tension in the air was palpable.
The mutant's face broke into a gleeful expression.
With a gleeful screech, it scurried toward Eden, legs kicking wildly.
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