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Chapter 71 - New World

World-hopping was, without a doubt, a singularly bizarre sensation.

One moment, Marcus had his finger poised over the shuttle button; the next, an overwhelming whiteout consumed his vision. A fleeting loss of consciousness followed, a void in time where existence simply ceased. When his senses reluctantly returned, his eyes fluttered open, not to the familiar, lifeless subterranean crypts of the Necrons, but to something entirely new. He was no longer in the oppressive grip of that alien tomb.

A quick, thorough self-check confirmed no missing limbs, no equipment misplaced. Everything was intact, a small victory in an uncertain transition. Then, his gaze fell upon the system panel, its stark interface a familiar anchor.

Plane Shift Completed.

Current World: Dead Space.

Commencing Phase One

Main Quest: Clear all Necromorphs on the Ishimura.

Quest Objective 1: Kill the Hunter, rewards 1 draw chance, title "Regeneration Suppression".Quest Objective 2: Clear all Slashers on the Ishimura, rewards 1 draw chance, title "Slashers Killer".

The two stark words "Dead Space" emblazoned next to "Current World" were enough to elicit an immediate, unprintable curse from Marcus. "Out of all the worlds," he grumbled aloud, his voice low and laced with exasperation, "you pick the one with the highest difficulty? System, are you trying to kill me?"

His original, fervent hope had been for something manageable – a world like Resident Evil or The Wandering Earth, places where he could effectively rest on his laurels, where the threats were negligible. While it was true that the Ishimura's inherent danger paled in comparison to the Tyranid-infested Avarax or the Warp Rift-ridden Demerium, that was a relative scale. Compared to the relative safety of Resident Evil or The Wandering Earth, Dead Space was undeniably a gauntlet. Marcus couldn't shake the growing suspicion that his luck was genuinely abysmal. How else could he explain Warhammer as his first jump, and now this?

Still, having survived the sheer, unbridled chaos of the Warhammer Universe, Marcus wasn't about to succumb to excessive worry. His gaze swept over his immediate surroundings, and his location clicked into place with chilling certainty: the Ishimura's flight lounge. This was the infamous spot where Isaac Clarke, the universe's "unremarkable" strongest engineer, first came face-to-face with a Necromorph.

He observed the room, noting scattered debris and discarded documents, but no signs of gunfire or struggle. "Looks like the famous engineer hasn't boarded the Ishimura yet," Marcus murmured to himself, a grim amusement touching his lips.

With a tap on the system panel, Marcus summoned a lictor. In the confined, shadow-laden corridors of the Ishimura, a creature renowned for its stealth and predatory precision was the ideal hunter. The lictor materialized, its insectoid head immediately swiveling, its multi-faceted eyes locking onto a target: a Necromorph, hidden within the ventilation duct above. In a flash, its razor-sharp, scythe-like forelimbs extended, effortlessly piercing the metallic ceiling, impaling the creature, and dragging it, whole and thrashing, into the open.

Under Marcus's explicit command, the lictor held back, not immediately tearing its prey to shreds. Marcus stepped closer, examining the contorted form. It was a Slasher, one of the most common Necromorph variants on the Ishimura. Compared to the myriad of other grotesquely deformed "mutants," the Slasher still retained a semblance of its human origin. Its limbs were unnaturally elongated and slender, its face a rictus of twisted flesh, jaw split wide. Its upper body bore two impossibly long arms, raised eerily backward, each hand ending in wickedly sharp bone blades. Its abdomen was a gaping, eviscerated maw, from which two shriveled, crimson arms, horrifyingly atrophied, protruded. The chilling irony was that the terrifying, bone-bladed upper arms were products of the Markers' horrific distortion, while the withered abdominal limbs were the Slasher's original human arms. If the Tyranids possessed a grim, alien biological aesthetic, the Slasher before him was pure, unadulterated ugliness.

"Kill it," Marcus stated, a flicker of disgust crossing his face as he shook his head.

At his words, the lictor violently tore the Slasher apart. Putrid remains splattered across the floor, but the creature was far from dead. The scattered chunks of flesh pulsed, slowly writhing, beginning to re-coalesce. It wouldn't be long before a new Slasher would reform. A Necromorph itself was little more than a mobile mass of reanimated flesh, manipulated by the Marker's influence. To truly neutralize one, it had to be incinerated to ash or dissolved by potent corrosive acids.

"I knew the mission wouldn't be simple," Marcus muttered, a wry half-smile touching his lips.

He then unsheathed his Psychic Flying Knife, launching it into the still-wriggling pieces of flesh. The attack triggered the "Tzeentch" effect of his "Chaos Power" title. Azure magical flames erupted, engulfing the chunks, swiftly reducing them to nothing but ash. Only then, truly, was a Necromorph unequivocally dead. On the Ishimura, there were at least a thousand low-level horrors like the Slasher, not to mention a considerable number of far more dangerous high-level variants.

As soon as the Necromorph was vanquished, a progress bar shimmered into existence on his system panel: 1 / 1236. The second number continued to tick upwards, a chilling testament to the Ishimura's ceaseless generation of new Necromorphs.

Without further hesitation, Marcus summoned several Tyranid Warbeasts. The Ishimura's layout, dominated by narrow corridors, made bulky units like the Tyranid Hive Tyrant impractical. Instead, he opted for a single Venomthrope, a Spore Beast, and five Tyranid Warriors, each armed with different symbiotic weapons. The Venomthrope, with its lithe form, could infiltrate the tight ventilation ducts to hunt down hidden slashers. The Tyranid Warriors would move as a cohesive unit, efficiently culling Necromorphs wandering the ship's cabins. Once located, they would drag the dismembered creatures to the Spore Beast, whose corrosive Spore Mines would ensure their complete and irreversible destruction.

It wasn't long before the Tyranid Warriors and the Venomthrope had secured and fully annihilated a dozen nearby slashers with the Spore Mines. The progress bar updated: 14 / 1248. The Necromorph count on the Ishimura was still rising. Just killing them one by one would be an interminable task. It was clear he first needed to eliminate the "propagators" – the sources constantly generating new Necromorphs – to accelerate his clearing efforts.

Just as Marcus prepared to lead his assembled Tyranid Warbeasts deeper into the Ishimura's labyrinthine interior, intermittent crashing sounds began to echo from beyond the cabin door, drawing closer. Marcus paused, his eyes narrowing. If his instincts were correct, that would be the Sanctuary, carrying the protagonist, Isaac Clarke, undergoing its emergency deceleration and forced, catastrophic landing.

After a moment's consideration, Marcus chose to remain where he was. He also decided against recalling his Tyranid Warbeasts. This wasn't the sprawling, dangerous Warhammer Universe; this was the Ishimura, a solitary vessel adrift in the silent, boundless void of Dead Space. Aside from the Marker, that super-anomalous entity, Marcus was, at this moment, the most formidable presence on the entire ship. There was no longer any need to conceal his formidable Tyranid forces, unlike his cautious approach back in the Warhammer Universe.

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