Chapter 461: Survivors of the Third Day
On the third day, when the star rose once again, it shone upon a procession on the verge of collapse.
The final twelve hours were no longer a contest of physical stamina, but the ultimate interrogation of willpower.
Days of high-intensity marching, dehydration, and starvation had squeezed the physical strength of the vast majority of candidates to its absolute limits.
Their bodies seemed to be reduced to empty shells; every step taken was like squeezing the final drop of water from a dried-up well.
The simple boots on their feet had long been worn through. Wounds mixed with blood and pus rubbed repeatedly against the rough soles. Every step was accompanied by a distinct, piercing agony, leaving intermittent dark red trails on the sand behind them.
Dehydration caused their lips to crack; their throats felt as if they had been ground by sandpaper, making even the act of swallowing difficult.
Vision began to blur, accompanied by bouts of tinnitus. Some candidates even experienced hallucinations, muttering to themselves at empty sand dunes, or mistaking distant rocks for oases.
Despair spread like a plague through the staggering crowd.
Some could no longer hold on; their knees buckled, and they collapsed to the ground, letting out uncontrollable, sobbing gasps. They stared blankly at the sallow sky, allowing the minutes and seconds to slip away, passively accepting their fate of elimination.
However, upon this ruin of willpower, even more sparks burned tenaciously.
Despite their cloudy, bloodshot eyes, despite their tottering bodies, something deep within their pupils remained unextinguished. Perhaps it was a pure thirst for supernatural power, perhaps it was an extreme obsession with escaping the fate of their social caste, or perhaps it was simply an innate, stubborn refusal to bow their heads to fate.
It was exactly this thing that supported them in wringing out the last trace of energy from their muscle fibers. Dragging heavy bodies that felt as if they no longer belonged to them, they moved forward inch by inch in a slow but resolute posture that bordered on crawling.
Falling down, struggling to get back up, falling down again, getting back up again... The cycle repeated, until they reached the destination, or until they completely lost consciousness.
The finish line was set on a flat stretch of sand on the outskirts of an abandoned mining outpost, a white chalk line drawing a glaring boundary between the sallow earth and sky.
Several Black Templar Astartes stood solemnly behind the line like statues of steel, their crimson eye lenses gleaming with inorganic light beneath the shadows of their helmets.
Their heavy power armor was coated in sand and dust, yet it diminished their majesty not in the slightest.
A few Adeptus Mechanicus Tech-Priests were operating portable auspex arrays nearby, while servo-skulls hovered in the air, emitting low hums.
When the clock reached sixty-two hours and seventeen minutes, the first figure stumbled across the white line.
It was Kax.
The grey robe on his body had been reduced to tatters. His exposed skin was covered in abrasions and bloody scratches, and his face was caked in a thick, hard crust of mixed dust and sweat.
Only those eyes remained as sharp as ever; the moment he crossed the finish line, they rapidly swept the surroundings, evaluating every detail.
He did not pause to celebrate. He merely bent over sharply, hands braced firmly on his knees, his chest heaving violently as he let out ragged, saw-like gasps.
Grumm also reached the finish line.
This mid-hive worker practically half-carried, half-dragged a young noble who was on the verge of slipping into a coma across the white line.
After completing this action, he set his companion down on a relatively flat patch of ground, sat down silently, closed his eyes, and began to regulate his breathing.
His movements were as steady as if supporting the weight of two people had merely been just another task to complete.
Over the next few hours, more figures began to appear before the finish line.
A youth from the underhive, dragging an injured right leg, used a scavenged metal pipe as a crutch, shifting across the white line step by step; a few mid-hive workers supported each other, collapsing to the ground almost simultaneously; a noble scion trekked alone, his originally refined features now bearing nothing but numbness and exhaustion.
Alvaro and his small group only appeared at the edge of the horizon, supporting one another, when approximately seventy hours had passed.
Their condition was worse than anyone else's—clothes in rags, faces gaunt, every step appearing incredibly arduous.
The moment they crossed the finish line, the few of them collapsed to the ground almost simultaneously, lacking even the strength to maintain a sitting posture, leaving only their violently heaving chests.
More and more candidates arrived in succession.
Every person who crossed the white line looked utterly devastated: some knelt on the ground dry-heaving, some fainted straight away, and others lay prone, digging their fingers into the sand, silently venting their emotions.
A young gang member still maintained a defensive posture after crossing the line, gripping his dagger deathly tight; another candidate, looking like a scholar, lay flat on his back, staring at the murky sky and muttering to himself.
When the timer's needle finally passed exactly seventy-two hours, the entrance leading to the wasteland was officially sealed.
Skitarii soldiers stepped forward and erected isolation barriers, ruthlessly shutting out those figures still struggling a few hundred meters away.
The statistical data was quickly presented: the final number of candidates who successfully reached the finish line halted at 3,127.
The Black Templar warriors, as if executing a daily routine, expressionlessly recorded the final data.
Their gazes swept over the arrivals lying scattered everywhere without any indication of emotion, as if what lay before them was merely a pile of supplies needing to be inventoried.
The Tech-Priests, meanwhile, began commanding the servo-skulls and automated equipment to commence their work.
Cold mechanical tentacles roamed over the exhausted bodies of the candidates, conducting basic vital sign scans.
Disinfectant sprays hissed, and the pungent odor of radiation purifiers permeated the air, mixing with the heavy stench of sweat and blood to form a sickening smell.
The entire process was highly efficient and indifferent, devoid of any humane care.
There was no applause of congratulation, no motivational speeches, not even a clear announcement that they had passed this round.
A Skitarii soldier used a vox-caster to emit an unfluctuating electronic voice, informing all arrivals that they had a six-hour rest period, could receive a fixed ration of water and nutrient paste, and demanding that they "remain on standby, awaiting notification regarding the next round of trials."
The first round of the wasteland trial was over, but what permeated the air was not relief, but a deeper, heavier unease.
The survivors lay on the hard sand. Although they had escaped the direct threat of the wasteland, the severe pain wracking their bodies and the exhaustion seeping into their bones prevented them from truly relaxing.
Kax sat leaning against a ruined wall, his sharp gaze scanning his surroundings.
He noticed that the Tech-Priests were isolating a few of the most severely injured candidates. This discovery made him subconsciously clench his fists.
If the next round of trials was even more severe, would an injury lead to direct elimination? He began to re-evaluate the risks of maintaining a lone-wolf strategy in his mind.
Grumm silently chewed the issued nutrient paste, feeling his physical strength slowly returning.
He couldn't help but think: if the first round had already caused nearly half the people to fall, what would the ensuing trials look like?
He touched his injured ankle, doubting his own endurance for the very first time.
Alvaro and his small group leaned against each other, exchanging their worries in low voices.
"This is only the beginning," a companion said hoarsely. "I heard that the Astartes trials last for months; whatever comes next will only be more terrifying."
Alvaro did not reply, but he involuntarily touched the empty waterskin at his waist. Recalling the taste of extreme thirst in the wasteland, his stomach tightened.
The air was permeated not only by the smell of chemical agents but also by silent anxiety.
Every survivor looked at the gloomy silhouette of the fortress with blurred vision, knowing clearly in their hearts that stepping across this chalk line merely earned them a ticket to enter the next, potentially even crueler, furnace.
The three days of suffering they had just experienced might just be the mildest warm-up before the true forging began.