When Angelon Petra finally made up his mind to go into the cave.

His body seemed to be split into two halves of cold and lava by what he saw.

His heart thumped under his extraordinary sternum for some fateful joy, and his stomach began to burn him from the inside as heavy as a frozen acid.

Ten thousand years of experience in this vast, dark, and terrifying galaxy and memories of a recent meeting with a brother were all aloud to Angelon.

He soon had to make a choice.

And more than once.

Because, although he had not met these people, he already knew who they were.

Fifty-six scarred slave gladiators huddled tightly in the deep corners of the cave, wrapped in blood-stained rags from the earlier dead, each struggling to his feet in the cold and hunger, grasping their weapons and aiming them at the unusually tall and noble uninvited guest who had entered from the wind and snow.

"Who are you?! Are you a lackey or one of those abominable high riders?! - No, it doesn't matter! You're not ours! Go to hell! ”

A hoarse female voice spoke in a heavily accented Nukerian voice, and a sharp spear that stabbed at him at a lethal speed arrived faster than the words.

Angelon reached out and stopped her attack with a speed that the human eye simply couldn't catch, and he grabbed her leg—the sharp, blood-stained spear that had been chained to the huntress's stump in a Adamantite chain, her leg had undoubtedly been artificially removed, and then roughly tied to the current weapon.

The Huntress was able to silently attack him from the corner precisely because the weapon that had been removed from her removed limb was attached to a small anti-gravity engine, and it was clear that the person who had amputated her limb thought he had a rather interesting idea of turning a living person into a flying spear, and apparently didn't care how long the Huntress would survive like this, or whether it would be easy for her to move.

He gripped her leg tightly, but with a force that wouldn't hurt her, it could be done, for his palms and fingers covered with finely sturdy gold armor were so wide and huge.

The huntress's follow-up attack did not arrive as he expected.

He looked up.

His glittering eyepieces were two sapphire dots in her swarthy glowing eyes.

A suspicious, frightened expression slowly began to twist her muscles and appear on her dirty, exhausted face that didn't care about death.

At that moment, Angelon Petra suddenly realized that this woman should be very familiar with the proportions, strength, and movement habits of someone in a battle or competition—that the original body was so special that it would never be mistaken even through a layer of metal armor.

"Is that you?" There was a tremor in her voice, an unbelievable tremor that at first glance would almost sound like surprise or surprise. But the attentive Twelfth Genogen immediately realized why her voice trembled: betrayal, the deepest betrayal.

At the same time, as Angron tried to use his powers, he realized something even worse, but strangely unaware of before: his own subtle, appeasing ability seemed to have mostly disappeared with the snow-swept trek—or rather, to be as immature and primitive as it had been when he had first begun to master it.

A chill ran down his spine and permeated his internal organs, and even the thermostat of the power armor couldn't work.

The blizzard outside the cave was still howling.

Inside the cave, he and she, along with the others, were holding their breath, waiting for his answer.

How many possibilities can a genogen calculate for the next sentence of conversation at the moment of a breath?

Angron didn't know, but he was sure that the number of possibilities he had calculated in his mind in the moment before he answered might have amazed even one of his brothers.

Then these cold, subtle calculations were struck by the scorching waves of magma that welled up in his mind.

He opened his mouth.

Unsure if your vocal cords are driven by your own free will.

"Angelon." He said.

His voice rumbled through the helmet's grille through the cavern of the rock, like some kind of small thunderclap.

The sound of crystals and bones shattering could be heard in the distance, maybe both? Some or some creature screams fate in the void.

The last note of these three words melted into the cold, sour air like a sigh, and he saw that on the faces—middle-aged, or childish—there were no older gladiator faces here—the red sand had swallowed the rest of most of them in advance—and there was an expression of despair, or anger, or hatred for the betrayer—

They howled and roared violently and raised their arms against him.

The Huntress writhed wildly in his palms, and she attacked him with anything she could get her hands on him: hands, feet, the chains that bound her weapons, or her teeth, even if they only left a slight mark on the surface of the original body's full armor that could be erased with a single stroke.

"Angelon Petra." He said.

The air froze, and the attacks and struggles stopped.

"Angelon Petra." He repeated it again as he felt something painful and sharp envelop the chill that had been burning down his spine and waist.

Eventually, the older man among them exchanged glances with the huntress.

The tip of the weapon was slightly downwards in a wordless tacit agreement and code, but it was still not lowered.

"Kleist."

The huntress finally stopped struggling, and she raised her head to the tall golden-armored giant.

Judging by Angron's experience with mortals and the changes in the muscles in his hands, it was likely that she had regained some level of sanity enough to converse, so he let her go, watched carefully as she spun the sharp spear at the top of her stump, plunged the tip into the ground, and then stood straight in front of him.

"Kleist." He nodded softly to her.

She reached out to brush away the frost, snow and water that remained on his body, and the golden armor carved with devotion and love emerged.

Kleist wrinkled his nose in disgust, "You look like the nobles we're going to kill, golden, expensive, and well-protected. This is not the case with the Angron I know. ”

"But the Angelon you know is obviously not called that either, is it?" He tried to add a slight softness and chose his voice to speak in the most soothing way, which obviously had some effect, and the huntress hesitated for a moment, and nodded.

"He—our Angron, his name is Angron Tarke."

The name stirred up a ripple in Angelon Petra's heart, a pain, a pain of the extreme, more of a horror and disbelief, they were so intense, so intense that they provoked a nameless rage of oppression and injustice that was written into the genes, just as the first lesson a toddler learns is to kill his fellow human being as a tool for the amusement of others.

Kill！ Kill！ Kill！

Dye everything red!

But he was Angelon Petra. The Twelfth Primordial, leader of Ironheart, the proudest son and disciple of Julius Robert Omar. His brothers and heirs must have been waiting for him to return.

The cognitive incantation, which had been written into his mind since his adoption and education, eventually managed to suppress the corrosive and acidic urge to kill with great difficulty, and his muscles returned to their proper state.

"So who the hell are you? Are you Big Man Anglon? "One of the young men of the slaves looked at him with wide-eyed eyes that seemed too large from hunger and exhaustion, and he was especially like a child at the moment.

He looked around again.

Most of the escaped slave gladiators were malnourished, hungry, shivering with cold, and had little armor, rags and chains formed their shelter, and a few or even just teenagers who had not yet grown into young adults, and without a miracle, their sixteenth summer would never have come.

"I am a miracle that someone owes to his brothers and sisters."

Angelon replied.

He took off his helmet.

"I'm going to fulfill the vow of the red sands."

(End of chapter)