Going down, Li Qingyu headed straight for the forest. Approaching the corpse, he picked up the assault rifle and checked its condition.
The psyker, thinking Li Qingyu was arming himself against him, immediately began preparing a control spell. Due to the warp energy leak, the ground beneath his feet began to be covered with a crust of ice.
However, Li Qingyu simply slung the rifle over his back and ran to the next body. Zero aggression. The psyker calmed down, dispelled the magic, and began to watch with curiosity.
"What are you doing?"
Li Qingyu was already strapping on his third assault rifle and eyeing a fourth.
"Making money!"
He was too lazy to explain – he was completely absorbed in looting.
Damaged ones – aside, bad ones – we don't take, bare barrel – trash. Only the elite, only the top. Soon, seven rifles were hanging on him.
But these homemade ones are heavy, and there are still about fifty good ones lying on the ground! Greed was immense. The Pluishkin syndrome simply wouldn't allow him to abandon good things.
Suddenly, he turned and looked at the psyker. Ah, here's free labor.
"Put this on!"
He took off the bundle of assault rifles from himself and began loading them onto the psyker. He hung about ten. The latter didn't resist – Li Qingyu's actions strangely calmed him.
"If he's carrying so much junk, he's taking it home. So he'll really take me with him."
And the dangers? Pfft, he's a psyker who can kill a hundred people with a snap of his fingers. What should he be afraid of?
In his understanding, as long as there are no demons around, he is an Imba.
Having loaded the porter, Li Qingyu picked up seven more rifles for himself, found a backpack, stuffed it with twenty full magazines and a couple of dozen grenades.
The weight jumped to over 60 kg. Overload, yellow icon, shortness of breath.
"Hoo-hoo... Okay, let's go!"
Shouldering this load, he felt like an Atlas holding up the sky. It hurt, but it was pleasant.
Next was a long march to the evacuation point in the ventilation system. Li Qingyu ran as long as he had stamina, then switched to walking, then ran again. By the end, his legs were wobbly, but he couldn't abandon the loot.
Crawling to the exit overloaded is a sacred tradition of the "loot shooter" genre.
The psyker, however, walked briskly, without any fatigue. Magic helped.
Psi-powers are universal: foresight (accuracy not guaranteed), power strikes, telekinesis, mind reading.
Strengthening the body with energy or even flying above the ground is a piece of cake for them.
A skeleton-thin psyker can stop a three-meter-tall space marine in power armor's chain sword with his bare hands, and this is considered normal.
Li Qingyu, wet as a mouse, glanced at his new companion and exclaimed indignantly:
"Hey, it's still thirty kilometers to home. With this load, I'll only get there by tomorrow. Maybe you can help?"
The psyker thought, remained silent, but enveloped Li Qingyu in an energy field.
The latter immediately felt lightness. The crushing weight disappeared, and walking became twice as fast.
He exhaled. He wanted magic even more.
"Bro, what other tricks can you do?"
To not get bored on the way, Li Qingyu started a conversation.
The psyker hadn't spoken to anyone in a long time. His gift manifested early, in his teenage years, and people around him were afraid of him, considered him a freak.
He suffered from loneliness, so he poured out everything when Li Qingyu asked him:
"I can gather power and strike so hard that a thick wall will crumble. I can catch bullets, move objects, fly a little. I can skin a person from fifty meters away. Separate flesh from bones. Or drain all the blood from the body."
Li Qingyu listened with envy. If used wisely, it could change the course of a war. The main thing is not to provoke the top players.
"And how did you learn? Did you figure it out yourself?"
The psyker nodded, then shook his head.
"Some by myself. But mostly demons taught me when they got into my head. Skinning and drinking blood – they suggested that to make killing more fun!"
His face contorted in pain again.
The deeper the fall, the stronger the psyker. Demons torment, but they also give knowledge.
The methods, of course, are evil. The goal is to create a Chaos sorcerer who will open the gates to the warp and let demons frolic. The Imperium has lost so many planets this way.
But if you set aside morality, it's just knowledge. Physics.
"Separate flesh from bones" – this is the separation of materials of different densities. It would be invaluable in mining: separating ore from rock!
And "drain blood" – liquid control. Perfect dryer for laundry! Very convenient.
As they talked, the Hive's ventilation hatch appeared. The evacuation point.
Li Qingyu stopped in the mud before a strip of reinforced plating, stepping onto which the countdown would begin.
He turned to the psyker and began to remove weapons from him, transferring them to himself.
"By the way, what's your name?"
The psyker didn't understand why his cargo was being taken away, but he didn't interfere. He was confident in his control of the situation.
"Quiet."
Li Qingyu loaded himself with rifles until his knees trembled and his spine creaked. He breathed heavily:
"Quiet, huh... I see the voices got to you, you like silence. Nice to meet you. Li Qingyu the Scavenger. I do anything if the price is right, I'll even eat rocks! So, Mr. Quiet. Go back and wait for me. I'll come with oil in a couple of days."
Quiet was taken aback:
"What do you mean?"
Li Qingyu took a step with difficulty and stepped onto the solid plating. A green timer lit up before his eyes.
He turned around and broke into a smile.
"Quiet, have you ever seen a person go 'vzhukh' and disappear?"
Quiet blinked.
"N-no..."
Li Qingyu's smile widened even further.
"Well, you'll see now. VZHUH!!"
He shouted this a second before zero. And in the next moment, he simply dissolved into thin air.
Quiet's pupils narrowed to dots.
"Huh? Huh?!"
He frantically grabbed at the empty air with his hands.
Terror washed over him. His salvation had disappeared! What to do now?!
"A-A-A-A-A!! Li Qingyu! How can I live without you?!"
Quiet exploded with the rage of a mad bull. He began to throw energy bursts chaotically, turning everything around into a lunar landscape...