Chapter 201: Noble Magic Immunity, Beneath the Need for Words |
"The Emperor is sick. Those fetid, rotting, and profoundly ignorant thoughts are poisoning him upon his throne."
"Humanity is sick. Those bloated, incompetent bureaucrats are dragging the human race into the abyss."
Seraphax walked down the long corridor, listening to the advancing roar of artillery fire and the agonizing wails of the Chaos Traitors.
His combat boots crushed shards of ceramite embedded with the aquila, while his crimson cape brushed against the peeling iconographs on the walls, where the Emperor's visage was being devoured by writhing, blood-red moss.
Through the narrow, elongated corridor carved out between the flanking structures, Seraphax gazed up at the freezing sky.
Stormbirds streaked across the heavens, and swarms of Valkyrie gunships unleashed devastating saturation strikes.
Beneath his helmet, the corner of his mouth twitched. In his hallucinations, the exhaust plumes of those gunships transformed into the falling confetti of a knightly festival.
Drop pods rained down incessantly, flaming meteoric iron plunging into the desecrated cathedral. The evaporating filth rose within the flames as a golden mist.
It seemed to be a glimpse of the Great Crusade.
He was fantasizing again. Fantasizing that Caliban had never rebelled, that the Emperor's twenty stars still guarded Terra, and that His Progeny, clad in the armor of loyalty, had planted the banners of the Great Crusade across every hidden reef in the Galaxy.
Seraphax gripped the crimson Dagger, dragging heavy chains behind him as he strode forward.
Mixed with the grinding scrape of iron links were low, inhuman gasps.
"I smell it. I feel it. The call of the Lord of Pleasure."
The bound Chaos Lord let out a piercing shriek, guiding the way for Seraphax.
Chained together with him was a Champion of Nurgle—a creature Seraphax had always found thoroughly repulsive. The plague of the Benevolent Father crept along the chains, reaching all the way to the ring connecting to the Dagger's hilt, injecting its foulness directly into the blade.
He was here. He was almost here.
Seraphax knew they were dead men walking.
Bale could not hold out for much longer; a Legion-scale saturation strike was far beyond what this disorganized Chaos warband could withstand.
But before that happened, he needed to find a Primarch. He needed to inject his own thoughts into the demigod's mind.
The Imperium could not stop a Primarch from demanding an audience; not even the Custodian Guard could block their path.
When that time came, he would be able to destroy that rotting throne. The Emperor would be freed from it, and humanity would be great once again.
This singular thought echoed within his skull, drowning out the distant roar of explosions and ringing clearer than the whispers of The Warp.
'I see it. I see it.'
The mist ahead suddenly parted, like a stage curtain drawn back by an invisible hand, revealing a majestic figure suspended within.
Flames burned fiercely over that visage as Seraphax gazed at the levitating silhouette before him.
That was his target. The new master of the Lion's Pride.
"Argh!!!"
The chains abruptly pulled taut. The two Chaos Champions unleashed inhuman howls of agony as their Flesh and Blood melted like wax, flowing down the iron links toward the Dagger, offering themselves as Sacrifices for the final ritual.
Clatter!
He lashed out with the chains.
"Tzeentch, you mother—"
The heavy iron tore through the mist, and the figure seemingly failed to react in time.
Just as Seraphax thought he had succeeded, the venomous chain was deflected by a pitch-black Blade.
The moment the chain collided with the edge of the weapon, a blinding shower of sparks erupted.
Within The Warp, the Lord of Change let out a sigh of disappointment, followed by the sound of shattering crystal, a shriek brimming with dark desires, and the squelching noise of multiplying putrefaction.
Tzeentch had paid the price for his petty tricks.
Seraphax yanked his chains back and stared at his target.
'Are my eyes deceiving me?'
Seraphax furrowed his brow slightly. Was he being influenced?
This knight emanated an aura that stoked his deepest cravings, yet it also felt hauntingly familiar, like the presence of a family member.
It was merely a fleeting illusion. After a moment of calm deduction, Seraphax was certain they had never met.
"Greetings, Primarch."
He made a gesture, and the iron chains levitated into the air.
Rameses decisively ducked behind Arthur.
He could not break those chains, even though they appeared entirely ordinary.
"These chains are not made of ordinary iron,"
Seraphax said.
"I can assure you that if a Tech-Marine were to analyze them, they would find absolutely nothing anomalous save for the exceptionally high purity of the metal. But science cannot explain everything. You should be able to snap ordinary chains without breaking a sweat, but what grants these their true power is the process of their creation, not the materials used."
He paused, his gaze fixed intently on Arthur and Rameses.
"I imagine the same applies to a Primarch. You are composed of nothing more than flesh and bone, blood and genetics, yet the Emperor forged something truly extraordinary out of such mundane ingredients."
He made another gesture, and the chains connecting to the Dagger slithered according to his will.
In his heart burned an unyielding fire; in his mind lay a meticulous plan; and backing him was a power that grasped the absolute truths of the universe.
Seraphax feared nothing!
Clang!
The Blade shattered the iron chains as effortlessly as snipping a silken thread. Relying on the Prophecy flashing through his mind, Seraphax dodged the strike, only to turn and see the sword's tip suddenly thrusting straight toward his face.
A piercing lunge.
A shower of sparks exploded right in front of Arthur. In the nick of time, the enchanted Dagger had guided Seraphax's hand to parry the fatal blow. However, Arthur's sheer physical strength was so overwhelming that the sorcerer was swatted away like a baseball.
"Ignoring the mechanics and just overpowering with raw stats, kid,"
Rameses remarked with a beaming smile, having hurriedly scrubbed clean Ezekiel's memories of the surface and installed a backdoor to prevent any undercover Dark Angels from reading the truth. He glanced at the fallen angel, who was now pinned against the wall, coughing up blood.
He then raised a hand and made a gripping motion. Psychic energy acted as an invisible hand, lifting the shattered fragments of the dark blade from the ground.
The plague of Nurgle, the lust of Slaanesh, the mutation of Tzeentch—the only thing missing was the bloodlust and malice of Kong Nue.
"These Evil Gods never know when to quit, do they?"
Rameses breathed a sigh of relief and abruptly clenched his fingers into a fist.
Within the domain Arthur had expanded, those foul taints were like glass tossed into a pulverizer, crushed into nothingness under immense pressure.
Thank goodness he had always been sharp enough to realize that dabbling in psychic powers usually led to a grisly end. He had fully expected that Evil Gods like Tzeentch might find alternative ways to pinpoint their location despite all their wards. Sticking close to his comrades during every operation was a must; otherwise, he might have met a messy demise without ever knowing what hit him.
"?"
Embedded in the wall, Seraphax's face was a mask of utter disbelief.
'W-Why?!'
Let alone basic combat, the sorcery Seraphax commanded should have been potent enough to easily suppress a Titan.
The ferocious, flame-covered visage glaring back at him only deepened his profound bewilderment.
He had plotted for so many years, murdered so many people, sacrificed so much... and in the end, the power he obtained amounted to absolutely nothing?
Seraphax clenched his fists. In the split second before the sword's tip pierced his body, a thousand thoughts raced through his mind.
He heard the mocking laughter of Change, felt the microscopic Creations living symbiotically within his flesh rapidly multiplying. He even felt a perverse surge of pleasure. Despite it being a moment of ultimate humiliation and sorrow, physiological reactions that should have been scoured from him ages ago were subtly taking root.
Seraphax was entirely stunned, paralyzed until the searing agony radiating from the Blade jolted him awake.
"Kill me! Kill me now!"
The towering figure cut through the howling blizzard, bearing down on him like a collapsing mountain.
It was like a basket of fruit being cleaved cleanly down the middle; viscous fluids of myriad vibrant colors rapidly stained the floor.
Compared to the meticulous care required when dealing with two different generations of Dark Angels, Arthur felt absolutely zero psychological burden when it came to butchering Chaos.
He was always too lazy to waste words on such filth.
Seraphax was a threat to humanity, and that was reason enough.
Clang—
Seraphax froze, his body going completely rigid. Then, his chestplate was split open as something razor-sharp pierced completely through from the inside.
Arthur tensed, bracing himself to face whatever horrific abomination was about to tear its way out of the sorcerer's ruined corpse.
Yet his soul felt the violent tearing sensation recede. He recognized the foreign object emerging from the gory wreckage, and it was far more unexpected than any daemon.
"Greetings, Primarch."
Fabius Bile offered a slight bow, his iconic bald head gleaming with a sickly, pallid hue under the dim lighting.
He glanced over at Rameses, who was floating lazily and barely utilizing his own physical body. Bile openly scoffed at this entity drowning in Warp powers, as if he were looking at a second Magnus.
His gaze then lingered far longer on Arthur.
This particular clone body of his didn't carry much equipment, but Fabius could still keenly sense the incredibly stable anchor of reality anchoring itself around the Primarch.
It vividly reminded him of a place he had once visited: the domain of the Nihilakh Dynasty, the Tomb World of Trazyn the Infinite, Solemnace.
Those ancient races could also rely on extraordinary technological means and the presence of certain entities to stabilize the laws of reality, completely banishing the influence of The Warp.
"Is this the Emperor's brand-new Creation? Fused with a Star God of the Necrons?"
Bile's eyes burned with an intense thirst for research, as countless flashes of inspiration sparked across his mind.
Of course! In the past, he had been far too fixated on The Warp and the genetic level of mutation, completely neglecting those ancient beings who held true mastery over the material universe.
Arthur and Rameses exchanged a brief look.
The former gripped his sword hilt with an utterly expressionless face, while the latter rolled his eyes dramatically.
"Here we go again,"
Rameses communicated via psychic transmission.
"Why do these freaks always assume we have some deep connection to Old Man Huang?"
To be perfectly honest, the Transmigrators had zero desire to form any sort of intimate bond with the Emperor, let alone a father-son dynamic.
They all had their own parents back home. Stepping up to save humanity was basically a pro-bono passion project fueled entirely by a stubborn urge to clean up this miserable cesspool of a galaxy. The fact that they hadn't forced Old Man Huang to call them father was already a massive display of restraint.
"Rameses,"
Arthur tilted his head slightly.
"It's not his true body. Just a fleshy vessel carrying his consciousness. We won't be able to catch the real him."
Rameses shrugged. His psychic vision clearly illuminated the internal structure of Bile's current husk.
There was no complete soul present, merely an artificially implanted fragment of consciousness.
"Just chop it down. I'll see if I can scrape any useful data out of its remains."
Bile's expression instantly froze.
Before he could even process the meaning of those words, Arthur was already moving.
He locked eyes with the old quack, yanked his longsword free from the pile of mangled flesh, leaned forward, and unleashed a savage cleave.
Crack-crack!
The rapid-fire sound of bones shattering echoed continuously as the Pain Engine, thick enough to require two men to wrap their arms around it, was neatly cleaved perfectly in two.
Bile was completely baffled. He couldn't fathom why this Primarch had absolutely zero interest in conversing and simply moved in for the kill without a shred of hesitation.
According to standard logic, shouldn't they have probed for information, attempted negotiations, or at the very bare minimum, let him finish his sentence?
His past experiences had infected the Apothecary with the typical arrogance of an untouchable researcher, genuinely believing that the esoteric knowledge he possessed could always serve as a universal bargaining chip.
Crunch—
Another series of teeth-aching bone-snapping noises rang out.
Bile could only watch helplessly as his own body was split perfectly down the middle. All of his meticulously crafted biochemical organs, reinforced muscle tendons, and advanced neural uplink relays were rendered entirely meaningless before the overwhelming might of that single sword strike.
At that moment, his perspective abruptly pitched upward.