I am in Warhammer's Heartsteel

Chapter 036: The Warrior of Pure Love

If the Fisher family's attitude can be considered a benchmark for imperial knightly families, then the Hoffmann family can only be classified as traitors.

After Dejan announced his order to inspect the Hoffman family's knight mechs, Aldrich Hoffman refused, nearly crushing his champagne glass in his hand.

"Are you sure you want to go against the Inquisition and push the Hoffman family to the opposite side of the Empire?" Dejan looked coldly at Aldrich Hoffman, already quite certain of the outcome.

There's definitely something fishy going on; you don't even need to guess.

Otherwise, what are you afraid of?

It's quite possible that this group of people are indeed trying to smear the Fisher family, and that last night's assassination was orchestrated by them, attempting to incite the Fisher family to antagonize the court.

"Mechs are ancestral spirits flowing with the blood of steel!"

It is the embodiment of the Hoffmann family's eternal glory!

"Not some parchment scroll you can just flip through in your courtroom archives!" Aldrich Hoffman growled, his face grim, the words echoing in the drawing room.

"This is a joint order from the Inquisition and the Mechanicus. The Empire needs the truth. The Fisher family has proven their innocence. Now, the Hoffman family needs to clear their name with the same honesty. Resistance means destruction. You'd better think it through." Dejan's voice was undeniably authoritative, and the "I" logo on his cuffs was eye-catching. The intimidating power that the Inquisition had cultivated over millennia was spreading outwards.

The air seemed to freeze.

The Hoffman family guards, hands on their weapons, confronted the stormtroopers brought by Dejan.

The courtroom is not made up of kind-hearted people.

Investigating a rebellion is not a dinner party; if talks break down, ruthless suppression will follow.

Aldridge's facial muscles twitched, and after an internal struggle, he raised three fingers.

"Three days. I need three days for the Tech Priest to complete the routine maintenance and self-checks of all the mechs to ensure they are in optimal condition, so that some laymen won't misunderstand and defile our sacred artifacts."

"Okay, I'll give you three days."

Deyang insisted and turned to leave.

On the way back, inside the hovercar, Sister Marta asked in bewilderment, "My lord, if I may be so bold, Aldrich Hoffman is clearly stalling for time. Three days is plenty of time to do a lot of things."

"I know I won't sit idly by and wait to die." Dejan looked out the car window at the castle that was shrinking in his field of vision. He didn't think that the men he brought could deal with the 120 knight mechs of the Hoffman family.

A single Knight mech is enough to easily wipe out a company, or even a battalion, of the Astral Army.

120 Knight Mechs are enough to crush a conventional force the size of an army group on the front lines.

Faced with such an enemy, temporarily avoiding direct confrontation is the wise choice.

That night, under the cover of darkness, Dejan reappeared near the Hoffman family castle, hid his jet motorcycle, and used his arm guards to teleport into a ghost, dodging the automatic sentry guns, patrolling guards, and buzzing servo skulls, before slipping into the castle.

"I'd like to see what you're up to."

Avoiding the main castle and residential areas, Dejan set his sights on the hangar, foundry, and repair shop.

The advantages of Arcane Shift were fully demonstrated.

Those tight security measures were completely ineffective in front of him.

It's just about Arcane Leap.

He has mastered this skill to perfection.

The only thing to be careful about is that if the jump distance is too far or too frequent, it will consume a lot of physical strength and put a burden on the body.

Emerging from the casting, one is greeted by a heavy alloy gate, equipped with complex mechanical locks and authentication devices.

As the servo skull flew past, Deyang slipped inside, and the sight before him made him gasp for breath.

A huge array of transparent culture jars.

Indescribable, distorted flesh and blood are soaked in a dark green, viscous liquid, forcibly spliced ​​together and proliferating, growing alongside rusted metal parts, thick cables, and even shimmering crystals, like a creation from a nightmare.

The bloated mass of flesh, suspected to be from a Nurgle demon, twitched unconsciously in the liquid, revealing a heart and brain with nerve bundles and tubing wrapped around them.

"This is insane! Are they trying to create Frankenstein? How blasphemous..."

Deyang was terrified, and his sanity plummeted.

Deep within the laboratory, in a static field bathed in soft white light, lies a crystal coffin.

The girl inside the coffin had a near-perfect appearance, dressed in a classic and elegant white dress. However, she was lifeless, her chest did not rise and fall, and her body appeared intact and fresh, which was out of place with the surrounding decay and grotesqueness.

Deyang carefully observed the girl. Among a bunch of inhuman things, the most normal one was often the most dangerous.

"Aldrich Hoffman's daughter?"

Noticing the mechanical prosthetic eye in the girl's eye socket and the large amount of metal structure on her body, Dejan dismissed this conjecture.

"Aldrich wouldn't be so morbidly interested in turning his daughter into a mech servant, so who is this girl?"

"A coffin lined with roses... Could it be some cliché plot of a noble young master falling in love with a maid?" Dejan clicked his tongue in amazement, the scenario he conjured up was enough to fill a dark romance novel in Warhammer 40K.

A maidservant, admired by a noble young master, grows flesh and blood, only to discover it's her loving father's genital warts.

A horrific and perverse love affair.

Logically speaking, in this situation, one should seek help from Slaanesh.

Nurgle doesn't know anything about love!

Dejan felt the thrill of solving a mystery after discovering the truth, but soon found himself in new confusion.

If Aldrich Hoffman's goal was to resurrect his beloved mecha girl, then why would he risk being targeted by the Inquisition by attacking the Imperial World, which is several star systems away?

Do those two imperial worlds have what he wants?

What is it?

Just as he was momentarily stunned by his astonishing discovery…

"Unauthorized life signs detected!"

"Intrusion Alert!"

In the corner, a blinding red light burst from the eye sockets of a servo skull disguised as an experimental instrument, and a sharp alarm instantly shattered the silence of the laboratory!

"Oh no, we've been exposed!"

Deyang felt a sudden alarm bell ringing in his mind.

Almost at the same instant the alarm sounded, the loud bang of hydraulic gates closing suddenly came from all the exits of the laboratory.

Heavy footsteps and the sound of weapons being cocked drew rapidly closer.

The Hollock arm guards glowed faintly.

Swah—

Ripples of spatial distortion spread out, and Deyang vanished instantly from the laboratory filled with the smell of blasphemy.

However, due to the distance, he could not control his landing point. The next second, he appeared in the Hoffman family council hall in a superhero landing posture, meeting the gaze of Aldrich Hoffman, who was sitting at the end of the scarlet tablecloth, and they stared at each other in bewilderment.

The scene became very awkward.

Seeing Aldridge and his retainers with menacing eyes, Dejan feigned ease and waved his hand in greeting.

"Hi, we meet again. The night is beautiful tonight."

Aldridge glanced out the window out of the corner of his eye. Tonight, the moon was dark and the wind was howling; there was no darkness at all, it was clearly a night for murder.

The piercing alarm and the inexplicable appearance of the judge's attendants made him realize that he had been exposed. He decided to stop pretending and angrily questioned, "Why, why are you pressing me so hard?"

All I want is to resurrect Alice!

You lackey of the court, you know nothing about love.

Fear can be conquered, but love can never be conquered.

It sometimes weakens, sometimes expands, but it has never truly faded, supporting me through difficult times. Are you going to take even this last vestige of my will away?

Who would have thought that the usually arrogant and noble patriarch of the knight family was actually a warrior with pure love?

Deyan sighed deeply. He sympathized with the hysterical man before him, but disagreed with his views and loathed his actions.

You're wrong!

I may not understand love, but I do know that in a world where both loving and being loved are sins, unrestrained infatuation is an even greater sin.

"Resurrecting Alice is nothing but wishful thinking on your part."