I don't know if it's a pity to say that the "hide and seek" incident didn't actually happen on the Emperor Dream.

According to Rika Fujimaru's prediction, even if the internal communication successfully reaches Leon's side, the lion king of Caliban will not give up trying to find her on the ship. The Lord of the First Legion is very good at keeping secrets, but because of this, it is often difficult for him to bear that something happens in front of him that he does not know and cannot control.

But in the current reality, where the communication was connected, Leon was still nearby, and there didn't seem to be any attempt to escape from the moving room. After Rika Fujimaru made the request to "let's talk", Leon responded in a calm tone.

He said, "Okay." Then he even took a step back in front of the communication station and sat on the floor so that the fixed camera, which was suitable for the height of a mortal, could capture his face.

Rika Fujimaru sat upright in her chair, a little hairy behind her back: this is completely different from her impression of Leon El Johnson!

Leon may have caught some micro-expressions that she hadn't even noticed, and asked a little confusedly, "Is there a problem?" ”

"No, I'm just a little surprised." Without hesitation, Rika Fujimaru decided to tell the truth, "I have studied the history of 10,000 years ago, but you look completely different now than you did then. ”

"I guess so. I've been reminded of this by many. Surprisingly, Leon's tone was even tinged with sadness, "The power of time is terrifying, and that's something I've only learned recently." ”

Anyone who feels so much seems reasonable. But if the person who did it was the lion king of the Caliban, it would sound terrible.

At this moment, Rika Fujimaru was trying not to put the question "who you really are" on her face, and made a decision: no matter how their conversation ended today, she would write it down in the form of a record and send it to Robert Killeman in the regular report of Judge Hastings.

She shouldn't be alone in this fright! ——

There are two flowers, one on each branch. While Rika Fujimaru had to negotiate in horror because the Caliban Lion King had turned around 10,000 years later, Decker, who was temporarily living on the Storm Frontier, was sighing for what he was going to do next.

He was indeed a Holy Blood Priest, and he had done the same thing many times in his military career—but not enough for him to feel numb to it.

He really couldn't enjoy the ritual of returning the remains of his warband brothers to his home planet. Even though he knew it was necessary: for the living and for the dead.

Under the Chaldean technique, the remains of Sergeant Ganon were also well preserved, almost lifelike. The face of the deceased was calm and serene, as if he had not died in the fierce battle with Tyranny, but had died peacefully on his bed after all his wishes. Decker knew that this was not the case, not only because on Skalus, when the only thirteen remaining Angels of the Holy Blood charged with the Manifest San Gillino, Sergeant Ganon was in two positions in front of him; also because he knew how many "illusions" there were in Sergeant Canon's body wrapped in shrouds.

Sergeant Ganon had just been taken back from the funeral, and it was easy to see the cause of his death without any medical background: a large hole had been torn open in his left flank, and a chitin blade was stuck between the rib plates. Before he died, Sergeant Cannon used his chainsaw sword to completely dissect the Tyranid mongrel, successfully making it too dead to die. When he was found, his hands were still sunk in the other's chest, but there must have been some poison on the mongrel's claws.

Endmore the first to approach Sergeant Ganon was a scout cub who had no idea how to ask the Blood Priest for advice before he did it, so he took it for granted that the worm's stump was removed from his brother's body - and Sergeant Canon's half-melted internal organs flowed out of the wound, causing the cub to scream.

But at that time, Sergeant Canon's expression was as calm and serene as it is now.

Thankfully, Sergeant Canon had no problems with his genetic seed glands, and Decker was able to fulfill his last duty with his warband brothers. But the Holy Blood Priest decided to do more for his brother, who had died in the calm of enlightenment: Originally, after the bone plates were broken and the internal organs were missing, the chest cavity of Sergeant Ganon's body would show a strange depression when lying flat. Now, Sergeant Ganon lying in the coffin looked all right, because Decker had filled his chest cavity with prostheses and fillings little by little in his spare time, so that his chest could once again show the healthy arc that a son of St. Giles should have.

Originally, after a large and tragic battle, it was unlikely that Decker, as a priest of the Holy Blood, would have had the leisure to groom the remains of his fighting brothers, and similar work would be entrusted to mortal servants. But now, after this overly tragic battle in which "the Holy Blood Angels threw half a company on the battlefield, but in the end they could only collect the body of one brother and extract the genetic seed of one brother", they lost their ships, lost their vehicles, lost all the Imperial troops that came to support, even including a detachment of the Titan Legion, and lost all their servants and blood slaves. Then of course this work can only be done by Decker, because someone has to do something like that.

Technically, he's not that idle. The subject of red thirst awaited him aboard the Storm Frontier, and Asclepius, who initiated the project and forced him to join the research, was undoubtedly a complete workaholic. Even if the Space Marines were able to stay mobile for long periods of time without sleeping after a good rest, Decker soon found that he couldn't survive the seemingly mortal "ship-accompanying medical officer" under the premise of continuing to do high-intensity mental work.

He asked for a break, and during the break he tried to empty his brain, using the time to try to make Sergeant Cannon look more decent when he returned home. The Storm Frontier was completely foreign to him - a strange environment, a strange device, a strange material. As a result, the progress of the work was slowed down until Asclepius discovered this and joined in.

This surprised Decker a bit. In previous contacts, he had judged Asclepius to be closer in personality to the freaks common to Mechamen, as if nothing else in the world mattered except the subject he was interested in. His other Blood Angel brethren were quickly kicked out of the infirmary at the moment of recovery on the grounds that "those who cannot provide medical records are of no use to the development of medicine", and for the rest of the Chaldean crew, except for Fujimaru Rika and Kelya, who require frequent and regular medical examinations, the door of the infirmary is clearly a flood beast that "never approaches unless necessary".

Decker, who had only seen the superficial phenomenon at the time, inevitably had some bad associations about Asclepius's ability to treat a corpse so calmly. But in the face of related doubts, Asclepius only calmly stated that Decker, who only saw the surface, had mistaken priorities.

"The meaning of the existence of medicine is to enable the sick and disabled to live with dignity like normal people. It is equally important to 'live with dignity' and 'to live'. The ship's doctor from the Storm Frontier said, "Who can easily reverse the matter of life and death?" He's dead, and we can't change that. But at least he should be allowed to walk the last journey with dignity and return to his homeland with dignity. Isn't that right? ”

That's right. Decker has nothing to refute. After that, he and Asclepius worked in silence, and Sergeant Cannon became almost indistinguishable from him again after the next two days of Terra.

There was a tremor on the Storm Boundary as a whole, a pattern that was still new to Decker, but he had clearly learned that the tremor meant that the ship had entered an imaginary submersible state. The notification had already been sent to each of their power armor servos, so he knew that the target of the ascent would be inside the Angel Fortress of Arax after this dive.

"Sergeant Canon, we'll be home soon." Decker whispered to the coffin beside him.

(End of chapter)