Chapter 185: Damn It, Left Too Early! |
"Oh, the kitty is about to hiss, right?"
Rameses's voice rang out exceptionally clear in the psychic realm, carrying the playful tone characteristic of the Thousand Sons. He even casually twirled his staff, the gemstone at its tip tracing a whimsical arc of light through the flow of psychic energy.
Not far away, the Chief Librarian who was directing the Revenant Titan suddenly gripped his scepter tightly, his adamantium gauntlets emitting an overwhelmed creaking sound.
This Thousand Son was truly infuriating!
"Not quite. I am not foolish enough to wait for a conflict to erupt before thinking about solving the problem."
The Revenant Titan's ion cannon roared in the distance, blasting the spire of the Slaanesh temple into fine powder.
Arthur shook his head. He had merely noticed a few warning signs.
What was wrong with desiring honor? People needed to have pursuits in life. Reasonable demands had to be addressed somehow; dragging things out would not make the problem disappear.
"I mean, I need a little free time."
Rameses shook his head and continued, "That is why I do not like babysitting as you do. There are too many bonds. If possible, I hope the troops I command in the future will be like the Ultramarines. At the very least, they would not require constant worrying."
The Chief Librarian's body began to tremble. His breathing beneath his faceplate grew as heavy as a working bellows. For a moment, he genuinely considered directing the Revenant Titan, which was currently dismantling the Slaanesh ritual, to deliver a sweeping slash at this loose-lipped Thousand Son.
"I can guarantee our speed on this end. Slaanesh's gaze is not on the material universe lately. The Warp has been turned completely upside down, so they will not be causing trouble for a while."
Seeing that the kitty was truly about to hiss, Rameses knew he had provoked him enough and finally got down to business.
"The main point is whether you can resolve this quickly. It would be a joke if we missed the Blood Angels' victory banquet."
The kitty was fuming.
"Of course we can."
Did he not realize he currently looked like a daycare director desperately shoving problem children into someone else's arms?
Pressing a hand to his temple, Arthur's mouth twitched slightly as he replied.
"They are the First Legion."
His tone was flat, yet it carried an unquestionable weight.
With just that single sentence, the restless psychic energy surrounding the Chief Librarian suddenly calmed.
He silently loosened his grip on the scepter. The joints of his adamantium gauntlets let out a soft clicking sound as they reset, and the Revenant Titan's cannon muzzle turned back toward the remnants of the Chaos forces in the distance, as if his furious outburst had never happened.
"I believe that reason."
Rameses shrugged.
——
With the arrival of the Wings of Dawn, the overall situation was secured.
The once deadlocked and desperate battlefield suddenly cleared up. The army that descended from the heavens advanced with banners raised, launching offensives in all directions in an attempt to end this drawn-out farce overnight.
On the other hand, the Tyranid Swarm had been thrown into utter chaos as their synapse creatures were systematically eliminated one by one by Librarians who had undergone professional extermination training.
Meanwhile, in the human ruins on the other side of the planet, there remained an enemy force wandering outside the main battlefield. Creations forged of flesh and blood stood atop carapace eaves that resembled a fortress.
From the clothing wrapped within their fleshy carapaces, one could vaguely tell that they had once been the defense officers of this planet.
Ignorant of the battle's progress on the frontlines, they stretched their necks and peered into the darkness.
Using Chaos to counter the Tyranid Swarm had been going smoothly, and Asteria's liberation seemed imminent. Yet, even as the first rays of dawn fell, the news of victory never arrived.
"Hold on just a little longer."
The leading defense officer rubbed the ruined aquila on his chest with a newly sprouted third arm, his festering eyelids blinking with great effort.
These pathetic creations believed they had never truly yearned for the boons of Chaos. They huddled in the shadows of the flesh fortress, fantasizing that one day they could kneel before the holy icon of the Emperor once again.
Their alliance with the Slaaneshi cultists was nothing but an act of sheer desperation. When the Tyranid Swarm ravaged the planet, these half-corrupted defense forces dragged their mutated bodies and hid inside the outermost tunnels of the Fortress of Pleasure.
Here, the bewitching incense of Slaanesh masked their scent, and walls built of flesh and blood blocked the Tyranid talons. They curled up in the darkness, waiting for the war to end, waiting for a 'salvation' that might never come.
—What a sorrowful delusion.
They waited like this until dawn, when a purple-clad figure rushed over.
And then, dawn descended.
The purple-robed figure stumbled into the tunnel, his ornate robes stained with foul blood and scorch marks. That face, which should have maintained eternal elegance, was now twisted in terror, cracks sprawling across his crystal-clear skin.
The defense officers poked their heads out from the crevices of the flesh fortress, their hyper-developed nasal cavities twitching acutely.
It was the scent of Slaanesh, but mixed within it was an unprecedented feeling of... fear?
The Daemon Prince paid no mind to the ants gathering around.
Six of his elegant appendages suddenly ruptured. Pinkish-purple smoke spewed from the stumps, and a bizarre song echoed through the tunnel. It was the chorus of tens of millions of tormented souls, resonating against the flesh walls to form a physical wave of sound.
The moment the incense dissipated, the defense officers' deformed eyeballs suddenly widened.
They saw their own festering bodies.
They saw the mountainous piles of their comrades' skeletons deep within the fortress.
They saw the aquila they had been so piously rubbing, long since corroded into a squirming lump of flesh and blood.
"Ah—"
Piercing screams tore through the silence of the tunnel.
These pathetic souls finally understood that from the very moment they hid inside the fortress, they had already become the eternal playthings of the Lord of Pleasure.
And now, even their right to self-deception had been cruelly stripped away.
The Daemon Prince swept past them, fleeing deeper into the tunnel. Behind him, the wails of the defense officers gradually warped into manic laughter.
Riiip!
Listening to the desperate sounds behind him, the Daemon Prince ignored these normally tantalizing sacrifices. He tore apart the veil of flesh with a violent tug. The dawn light spilled into the chamber through the tear, illuminating numerous pink limbs, with a grotesque silhouette situated right in the middle.
He possessed a long, slender serpentine tail. Vastly different from other Keepers of Secrets, he appeared far more bloated, resembling an ill-proportioned eel.
This appearance was somewhat unique within the Slaaneshi ranks, but judging by the way the Daemonettes nearby dared not twitch their segmented limbs, his status was incredibly exalted.
Seeing him, the purple-clad Prince dropped to one knee without a second thought, immediately beginning to lick the viscous tip of the tail.
"Something has happened, Your Highness."
Before him, the twisted body suspended beneath the dome of flesh slowly raised its head. Dozens of nerve bundles extended from beneath a mask inlaid with mother-of-pearl, connecting to the pulsing vessels on the ceiling like a living crown.
Squelch-squelch.
The tendon bundles contracted rhythmically, squeezing the air into eerie pitches. By the time the sound waves passed through the resonance chamber near the Prince's temporal bone, they had morphed into an inhuman whisper with multiple echoes.
"What is it?"
The Daemon Prince opened his mouth. Saliva oozed from his vocal cords and dripped onto the serpentine tail, triggering a reaction akin to an allergy that made the tail twitch slightly.
"Yucasa has been captured. The lackeys of the False Emperor have arrived."
In a mere instant, the tail pulled away. It was clear that this pheromonal communication was vastly more efficient than human speech. Yet, for a long while after, the tail remained motionless, as if it had fallen into a deep slumber.
Sweat rolled down the Daemon Prince's forehead. He sneaked a glance at the surrounding Daemonettes, who were watching him with keen interest.
After quite some time, the sickly-sweet voice echoed once more.
"This is not what we agreed upon."
Indeed, it was completely different. Daemons had always shown a distinct lack of interest in territories invaded by the Tyranid Swarm. Even with a weakening World Soul and the presence of Aeldari souls, the Lord of Pleasure offered neither support nor opposition, preferring to remain wholly engrossed in the Great Game against the Lord of Decay.
The original plan had been incredibly simple: corrupt the World Soul before the Tyranid Swarm engulfed the planet, then use the Aeldari souls within it to fuel a ritual. Once completed, these Daemons would open a portal, enter the material universe, and then depart through Warp transit. By then, none of them would care about what happened to the planet or the bugs.
"The plan... encountered an accident."
The Daemon Prince took a deep breath and spoke with difficulty. "Yucasa, that arrogant bastard, fell into the hands of the False Emperor's lackeys. The corruption ritual was completely destroyed."
That pig had still been playing his little mortal noble role-playing game. Before he could even react, he had been shackled into his physical flesh by the False Emperor's vile power, strung up on a cross, and set ablaze.
The subsequent situation became painfully clear. The False Emperor's lackeys would inevitably scour every inch of the planet's soil. There was no way they could hide.
This accident was overly fatal. Their plan was ruined right from the source.
"Who did this?"
"I do not know. All information has been blocked."
"Mmm~"
The sticky voice sounded extremely close. The Daemon Prince raised his head and realized that, at some point, the unformed serpentine creature had slithered right in front of him. He raised his hair-like fascia and gently stroked the Prince's body.
"So, you are trying to tell me that after so many years of preparation, our plan to seek an audience with the Goddess has failed before it even began?"
Those nerves and fascia had been stretched as fine as down yet remained as sharp as steel needles. As they brushed past the Prince's body, they carved out a series of bloody gashes.
He did not dare defend himself. His senses were forcibly bound by the superior entity, rendering every ounce of torment agonizingly real.
He also had no way to excuse it. The plan had indeed been thoroughly disrupted. A series of schemes had been declared a failure before they could even be implemented.
However, the flesh did not devour his body. The anticipated extreme agony never arrived; instead, the entity slowly pulled back.
"This is not your fault. I was simply too eager in my anticipation for my progeny."
Crystal-clear mucus oozed from the Daemon Primarch's cloaca. His pearlescent scales constantly opened and closed in rhythm with his heavy breathing.
He sensed it out amongst the stars, upon Istvaan—that breath of pure, unblemished essence.
That was his progeny, a flawless, untainted creation. Merely picturing dragging that body down into the abyss of depravity caused his serpentine tail to excitedly coil tight around the palace pillars.
It seemed this Daemon Primarch had not yet completely burned out his mind with lust.
Seeing the Daemon Prince breathe a sigh of relief, a soft command reached his ear before he could even speak.
"I shall abandon this opportunity to descend. I will leave you with something. Remember, the blooming of a flower always requires the taking of something else. This is your final chance for self-salvation."
'Something? And how am I supposed to evade the pursuit of the False Emperor's lackeys?'
Too many questions lingered in the Daemon Prince's mind. Yet, before he could voice a single one, his material brain lost the ability to think.
The Prince's remaining sanity screamed frantically, but his brain in the physical realm had shut down from the overwhelming overstimulation.
He struggled to force out his final words: "No... you cannot... Lord Fulgrim... I dedicated six hundred and sixty-six grand..."
His voice came to an abrupt halt.
His soul was violently wrenched away, squeezed like a grape for wine until every last drop of psychic essence was extracted. The power belonging to the Lord of Pleasure began returning to the body of the favored concubine beside him, continuously bolstering his strength.
Since you could not bring me a perfect sacrifice...
Then become the sacrifice yourself.
The Daemon Primarch's movements were chillingly practiced. Clearly, this was not his first time plundering the residual value of his failures.
Suddenly, he paused his lip-smacking.
"Hmm, it is still lacking quite a bit. It appears I will need to visit other worlds."
The Daemon Primarch smacked his lips. Fluids indicating his satisfaction dampened the fabrics of the inner palace. His bloated serpentine body began to stretch, extending into a slender monster nearly eight meters long.
In the material universe, his physical body gradually began to turn into ash.
Swooosh—
His flesh turned to dust in an instant. The dawn light shone in unobstructed, followed by a tremendous boom.
'Heh heh, too late.'
The Daemon Primarch turned his head at the very last moment, wishing to cast a mocking gaze upon the intruder and savor their ensuing frustration and unwillingness. Instead, he saw a solemn knight standing right outside.
He wielded a shield in one hand and a sword in the other. Beneath his feet lay several Fiends of Slaanesh. The monsters' skulls were caved in and their appendages twitched. A wound that normally would not have been fatal had sent them spiraling into death, looking exactly like a few bugs that had been stomped on.
His gradually disintegrating eyes abruptly went wide. Faced with a blast of plasma that eclipsed his entire vision, a surge of icy chill shot straight to the tips of his hair, accompanied by a sudden, furious roar from Slaanesh.
'Damn it, I left too early!'
Boundless strength immediately erupted from his body as he lunged forward wildly.
Even though his soul could not tear through the veil, Fulgrim managed to seize control of this physical vessel through Slaanesh's forced infusion of power.
His roar was instantly drowned out by a relentless barrage of attacks.
The Librarians relied on spells to forcefully siphon away the surrounding Warp energy, suppressing any potential Chaos corruption. Amidst the hum of the super-combustion plasma cannons, the dissolving sand sculptures that were just beginning to regain their color vaporized one by one, exploding into clouds of mist.
"Oh, my dear brother, let me have a look at you."
The sandy body lunged forward, only to be methodically blocked by the knight.
Arthur had zero desire to converse with Fulgrim. If he were forced to choose the Primarch he detested the most, this half-human, half-monster monstrosity would be his top pick.
"It seems my brother is quite shy. But it matters not; I will make you speak."
Fulgrim glanced at the silent knight, peering through the faceplate to meet a pair of eyes brimming with disgust.
A surge of stimulation brought forth boundless excitement, making his true form involuntarily clench.
Seizing this brief moment of deadlock, several melta beams crisscrossed through the last Altar of Pleasure, subsequently focusing all their firepower onto the Daemon Primarch's physical shell.
Just as Fulgrim gained the upper hand in the short exchange, Arthur decisively retreated.
BOOM!
The Revenant Titan's massive strike crashed straight down. With a force of countless tons, it utterly smashed the body into a scattering of shattered carbon flakes.
Within the Warp.
Inside Slaanesh's Sixfold Palace, Fulgrim—who had closed his eyes out of sheer arousal just moments ago—was abruptly jolted awake.
'No, this isn't right.'
'I am a Primarch, the flawless Fulgrim!'
Even the most arrogant Guilliman would cast glares of intense hatred when facing him; even the most stubborn Dorn had once marveled at his masterpieces.
Yet now... that sword-wielding knight, that brother who should have been bathing in the perfection of his sibling, lacked even the slightest desire to converse?
'Do you truly have no desire at all to communicate with me? To interact with your dear brother?'
Being unceremoniously banished back to the Warp by the forces of the material universe brought a deep sense of humiliation at having his charms rejected by a brother. Sticky fluid began to pool beneath him.
But this fleeting shame did not last long, for the highly favored Daemon Primarch immediately heard the furious shriek of Slaanesh.
His punishment was about to arrive.
"Master... I..."
Fulgrim instantly curled up his eight-meter-long body. His sculpturally perfect upper half prostrated before the Throne of Pleasure, his meticulously maintained silver hair draping over his master's feet.
He panted heavily. With each lash of the whip, the image of the black knight was seared deeper into his mind, becoming impossible to shake off.
Especially that look—the look of staring at literal garbage.
"Oh-oh-oh, no, ah—"
Smack~
Drip~ Drip~
His twitching reflection warped and contorted in the pool of slime beneath the throne. What it reflected was no perfect god of war.
It was simply a pathetic pet snake dominated by lust, groveling obediently beneath its master's whip.
In the material universe.
After confirming the threat had been neutralized, Arthur gestured, and the Dark Angels quickly dispersed.
The heavy armored units that had been converging on Arthur's position also redeployed into standard formations. On the perimeter, the Ravenwing mounted on anti-gravity vehicles continued to advance, constantly relaying data to the other wings and coordinating the overall operation of the entire Legion.
There were absolutely no wasted movements. They functioned like a killing machine that had been running flawlessly for ten thousand years.
"Talk about overkill."
Rameses arrived behind Arthur, tossing a soul circuit lightly in his hand.
He had only just finished negotiating the coordination of the Aeldari souls with the World Soul, yet this area had already been turned into a slaughterhouse.
Gravity bound the scattered flesh to the center, where the squishy gore was baked into solid carbon. Those once-writhing creations of pleasure were now frozen in their moments of death, displayed like taxidermy specimens in a museum.
The most shocking part was that the entire battlefield showed not a single sign of combat besides scorch marks. It was as if these enemies had been brutally crushed by some primordial, violent force.
How much time had actually passed? Yet the Slaaneshi forces had been wiped out to the last monster. Naturally, there was no need to ask whose hands were responsible for this utterly one-sided obliteration that defied all logic.
'So this is the Dark Angels.'
If he hadn't needed to maintain his persona, Rameses would have gasped out loud.
These guys might be neurotic, but their combat efficiency when fully supplied was truly incomprehensible.
If other Adeptus Astartes Chapters, with their more rigid and singular combat styles, could give opponents the false illusion of 'I can win,' then the Dark Angels offered nothing but absolute, crushing despair.
They could not be broken, they could not be stopped, and even the chances of fleeing were microscopic.
They were fully capable of autonomously gathering battlefield intelligence, formulating tactical plans, executing frontline combat, and flawlessly completing any objectives assigned by the commander.
You simply provided the manpower and the equipment; the Dark Angels handled the winning.
They were the very definition of a hassle-free command.
No wonder the group had been so eager to shove these 'stray cats' into various administrative and military posts the moment they took them in.
Earlier, the decision to hand over Romulus's administrative duties had been purely because handling Imperial affairs was too hellish. They just didn't want to do it and had wanted to pass the buck, but the Dark Angels had managed the assigned administration remarkably well anyway.
Rameses slowed his pace slightly. He spotted a clump of remains sprawled on the ground, rising and falling in rhythm with the tidal surges of the Warp.
His expression shifting slightly, Rameses scooped it out from the ethereal tide.
It was a mortal corrupted by Slaanesh, one who had tried to rely on the power of Chaos to fend off the Tyranid Swarm.
Unfortunately, no miracles had occurred. Tainting oneself with the Chaos Gods led only to a doomed path of shattered destruction.
"No matter how much we try to avoid them, the Evil Gods are always present."
Rameses let out a sigh, bearing no intention to blame these people.
In their worldview, it was entirely reasonable to pay a terrible price to resolve a planetary crisis. Even if one person was unwilling to do it, someone else would eventually harden their heart to the task.
There was no relationship between them; they had never even met. Rameses had no need for misplaced sentimentality. He merely planned to completely annihilate the soul, sparing it from Slaanesh's eternal torment.
"Leave it to me."
Just as Rameses lowered his head, a somewhat deep voice drifted over from nearby.
He opened his eyes and saw Arthur striding over the ashes. The knight then swung his sword.
"My side is better equipped to handle these corrupted souls."
His movements were as smooth as flowing water; evidently, he had done this many times.
"It is quite tragic. In the end, they could only rely on Chaos."
Rameses could not help but complain to Arthur.
Although he always loved cracking dark humor and provoking all sorts of people, he was ultimately a twenty-first-century youth at heart. Even his jokes were well-measured—
There were plenty of jokes thrown around on the 'Vow of Silence,' but he would never mock the dead, such as Sanguinius.
"We are working to ensure that more people like them can rely on us instead. As for the Chaos Gods, they will pay the price for this."
Arthur did not deflect the topic, replying with absolute certainty.
Rameses nodded solemnly. Only then did he notice the numerous scratch marks on Arthur's armor, causing him mild surprise.
"Did you run into a master?"
"Yes, Fulgrim."
Fulgrim?
Rameses was somewhat bewildered. He had been busy haggling with the World Soul and clearly had not expected a Daemon Primarch to pop up on an agri-world.
However, he wasn't too worried. It was just a Daemon Primarch. Without a Legion backing them, the four of them could easily handle one.
But before Rameses could ask, Arthur had already sheathed his sword and reset his shield.
"Do not worry, he has already been banished. The ritual was never completed, and the firepower of the Dark Angels was more than enough to destroy his physical form in the material universe."
"...Oh. So basically, I intercepted the World Soul, and seeing that the situation was bad, he decided to snatch whatever he could and run, only to bump straight into you."
Receiving the combat footage Arthur transmitted over, Rameses couldn't help but burst into laughter.
"I seriously suspect the blue-feathered bird might have interfered here."
If Arthur had arrived later, they naturally would never have met—out of sight, out of mind.
If Arthur had arrived earlier, dealing with a solitary Daemon Primarch instead of an entire Legion was just a matter of the Revenant Titan taking a couple more swings. Faced with the might of the Wings of Dawn, Fulgrim would still have been banished, but he would have been utterly crushed in a direct, head-on fight. At least he would have put in the effort, sparing him from subsequent regret.
But it just had to happen at this exact moment.
He was banished, yet due to the various disadvantages of his forced manifestation, it left him with the agonizing illusion of, 'If I hadn't given up so early, would I have had a chance?'
It was precisely like reeling in a fishing rod, only to discover a massive fish right next to the hook.
Never mind whether the rod could actually pull the fish up—the point was, wasn't that fish huge?
"That snake demon is really in for it now—speaking of which, he actually didn't have any scars on his face yet. That means Rylanor hasn't fed him his favorite virus bomb yet. If we have some free time, shouldn't we go look for Istvaan III?"
"..."
Arthur did not reply. He accepted the combat reports handed over by the various Orders and the Hexagrammaton, lowering his head to review them.
From now on, the specific internal affairs of the Legion would fall to him, while Romulus focused on macro-strategy and commanding key campaigns.
The Wings of Dawn needed at least one Legion capable of holding its own and acting independently of Romulus.
The First Legion was the prime choice.