Chapter 120: Dragon Girl Miaoying (Patreon)

At Baal, Dante — looking more than a little burned out on life — was poring over the planet's defensive dispositions.

Baal wasn't just Baal itself; it had several moons besides, and it was easy to predict that every single one of them would become a battlefield. Worse than the Tyranid swarm itself, what truly frightened Dante now were the Genestealers.

They served as the hive fleet's vanguard, its pathfinders, and even its seasoning — and now all of Baal lay shrouded in dark clouds of suspicion. Dante could no longer say for certain how many Genestealers lurked here, or who among his own ranks might secretly be one.

The entire Baal sector was in utter chaos now, and he still couldn't pin down which direction the swarm would strike from.

So all he could do was concentrate every significant force he had right here — after all, there were several critical nodes surrounding Baal. With good intelligence and rapid troop deployment, they could put up a solid defense against the Tyranid swarm. At the very least, they could lay traps in advance, rather than being reduced to reacting passively to whatever battle reports came in.

"Dante, there's someone you need to meet." His second-in-command — Karlaen, captain of the Blood Angels' 1st Company — spoke up just then, a note of hesitation in his voice.

"Hm?" At Karlaen's words, Dante stepped outside. There, looming before him, stood an enormous, oppressively imposing figure — like some giant tin can — and for a moment Dante simply stood there, stunned.

"I am the Lion, Lion El'Jonson — First Primarch of the Imperium, and also your father's… brother. Sanguinius's brother."

As he said this, the Lion felt a pang of guilt. His situation during the Great Heresy had been different from Guilliman's.

Guilliman had been ganged up on by all four Dark Gods at once; the Lion, by contrast, had simply been a bit slow on the uptake.

In truth, however overwhelming the rebellion had looked — tearing straight through the Imperium — the Loyalists had actually held overwhelming strength at the time, more than capable of driving swiftly to Holy Terra. What tipped the balance was, first, the element of surprise, and second — and far more crucially — the four Emissaries' interference.

Tzeentch had teleported Horus's main battle fleet straight to the skies above Holy Terra, rendering the solar system defenses Rogal Dorn had built utterly useless.

Of course, had the Lion charged straight for Holy Terra the way Guilliman had, he too would most likely have been intercepted by all four Gods acting in concert.

Of course, the Lion knew none of this. As far as he was concerned, he'd simply dawdled behind while everyone else fought — and by the time he returned, he found his father crippled, and Sanguinius, the shining star among his brothers, reduced to nothing more than boneless chicken strips. So now the Lion was consumed with guilt.

"Great Lion, Lion El'Jonson…"

Seeing Dante's eyes brimming with tears only deepened the guilt weighing on the Lion. And then—

"Mm…"

Looking at the mountain of paperwork piled before him, and at Dante's expectant gaze, the Lion couldn't shake the feeling that something was off — though he couldn't quite put his finger on what.

"Great Primarch, here are the defensive maps for Baal and the surrounding sector."

With Lion El'Jonson now seated behind the desk, Dante eagerly pulled out yet another stack of documents.

Meanwhile, in his own laboratory, Heydrich— BOOM!!! "Cough, cough, cough…"

After several coughs, Heydrich stumbled out looking thoroughly disheveled, then took the towel Pearl handed him and wiped his face.

— if only to keep his handsome face from getting too grimy — before his eyes started to shift evasively.

"What are you up to this time?"

Pearl was more than a little exasperated. As a former Necron Cryptek, she carried the complete technical inheritance of the Necron lineage — a pity none of it had proven any use so far.

The trouble was that all Necron equipment was designed around a Necron baseline — put it in the hands of anyone else, and it was crippling. Never mind ordinary humans; even Space Marine, even the Necrons themselves in their new bodies, couldn't handle it.

After all, a Necron's original body was made of super-reactive living metal; the new bodies Heydrich gave them simply couldn't match that raw strength. Yet because of the Path's influence, their ceiling was actually higher now.

In other words, they now had both a higher ceiling and a higher floor — but in terms of raw physical toughness, their new flesh simply couldn't compare to the original metal bodies.

So Necron technology was essentially unusable for them. There were plenty of excellent Necron devices, sure, but without the full production system behind them, they were far too difficult to manufacture — and building out that entire system from scratch would mean over ninety percent of the output ending up as scrap.

Heydrich did have plenty of Necron Warriors on hand, but they had no minds to speak of and couldn't properly operate this kind of equipment anyway.

Even so, Pearl still couldn't wrap her head around Heydrich's latest brainstorm. This lunatic was actually considering whether to try tweaking the physical constants of the entire universe.

Seriously, what did he even want that for — was he planning to wipe out every living thing in the universe by rewriting its physical constants?

"I just want to test out the power of antimatter, and figure out how to make the most of it," Heydrich said.

He looked a little sheepish about it. A byproduct of the war-engine, this stuff had to be bound by the power of the Path of Destruction — otherwise it was just a bomb, plain and simple.

"Pity — the power of the Path is still too weak."

Heydrich sighed. Right now, Destruction was the one thing he had on hand that actually worked well against the bugs.

As for what would happen if he had Propagation instead — well, Heydrich would just say he wouldn't use it even if he had it. This world was already enough of a cesspit; he had no interest in making it worse.

Especially not without the Paths of Preservation, Equilibrium, and Hunt yet in hand to offset it.

"Too weak, huh. Makes me wonder if you've gotten desperate enough to send your living planet out there to trade bites with those Tyranid things."

"Mm, I'd rather not. A living planet's hard to control — even I can't fully rein it in."

Heydrich couldn't resist grumbling. However much of a cesspit the Dark Gods made of the Warp, at least they could only cause trouble there — there was still a membrane separating them from the physical universe.

But if an Aeon's creation ever slipped its leash, it would be a physical-universe problem — and the whole physical universe could end up just as much of a cesspit. Sure, people liked to say the space Necrons had made a massive mess of their own.

But considering they'd crippled that whole pack of Aeons, it counted as a genuine act of mercy. After all, Aeons fed on stars — if left unchecked for sixty million years, they could well have devoured every star in the galaxy.

So the truly necessary thing had been joining forces with the Old Ones to bring those Aeons down — not wiped out entirely, of course, but reduced to their current crippled state.

"So why not use Aeon shards, then? Over the years we've already gathered three decent ones — one of them's even a fragment of the Void Dragon."

Much as Heydrich would rather not run into more Necrons, the number of worlds he'd been encountering had suddenly multiplied ever since the tavern opened its doors.

And, unsurprisingly, that meant running into plenty of space Necrons still not fully awakened. Left alone, most of them would sooner or later turn into a menace.

So Heydrich had gone and packed them up to bring back. As for the number of Men of Stone, it hadn't really grown much — mostly because so many of these Necrons had had hive-cities built right on top of their old tomb-strongholds without ever waking, and by now most of the mid-to-high-tier Necrons there were already finished for good.

Still, there was good news — over time he'd gathered three Aeon shards in total, one of them even a fragment of the Void Dragon. That sort of find didn't come along every day. The Void Dragon might have been shattered, but not nearly as thoroughly as most — as an Aeon whose strength ranked second only to the scythe-wielding Nightbringer,

it still held together as one large mass, before the Emperor sealed it away on Earth, beneath Mars. Which was exactly why its shards were so rare, and never amounted to much in size.

"Speaking of the Void Dragon, that reminds me of something. The Path of Permanence really is incomplete — though that's not too big a problem. I've still got Abundance in hand. Time to create an immortal dragon."

Just then, something clicked for Heydrich. The so-called dragon-transformation technique worked by combining a tuft of fox fur with Abundance-infused Shuhu flesh and blood — the product of their joint effect. This would be the first addition to the Vidyadhara dragon-clan's population since the Cosmic Locust Plague.

He could already imagine the stir this would cause among the Vidyadhara — no less than the shock of him adding a whole new population to the space Necrons. These days, that particular someone's residence was even guarded by a former Deathmark assassin — 'former' because he'd given up his original body to take the post.

And it wasn't just that one Necron couple, either — among the whole pack of psychotic Necrons under his command, making babies had become everyone's favorite pastime, Pearl excluded.

They were all trying their hardest, but unfortunately, not a single one had managed to get pregnant yet.

Getting pregnant just wasn't that easy for this bunch, apparently. Heydrich had nothing to say to that, and no better solution either — beyond reminding them, in passing, to get some actual work done instead of obsessing over babies every single day. Who knew, maybe it would happen when they least expected it.

"What are you scheming now?"

"Gathering some materials, then building myself a commander. The Path of Permanence hasn't made a shred of progress so far — and it's not like it's the Path of the End, where letting it just sit unused would be a waste."

Heydrich added, by way of explanation, that he meant to draw directly on the combined power of the Path of Permanence and the Path of Abundance to create a dragon. The trouble was that this Path had made zero progress in his hands so far; he couldn't even figure out how it was supposed to advance. Same problem as with the Path of Voracity — both seemed built for one specific kind of creature.

"So how are you going to do it? Do you need to use your own DNA?"

Pearl asked, curious, after hearing him out.

"No need. I've got no interest in having some special bloodline tie to my own creation."

Heydrich's expression soured a little as he said it, his mind drifting to the Emperor and Horus.

Those two were absurd even by absurd standards. Sure, Heydrich liked to talk big on a daily basis — claiming he was more Khorne than Khorne, more Tzeentch than Tzeentch, that sort of thing — but that was purely him taking advantage of the fact that his soul wasn't in the Warp, bullying the Dark Gods precisely because they couldn't lock onto him.

But Horus had genuinely managed to out-Slaanesh Slaanesh itself. By the final stretch of the Siege of Terra, even Slaanesh hadn't expected Horus to go that far, and had ended up furious enough to curse it as blasphemy. Which was why Heydrich had something of a lasting complex about the whole subject.

Much like many of his own creations, which all ended up shaped, to one degree or another, by the fundamental nature of this Warhammer universe.

"Besides, plenty of Path-creations are known for exactly two things: conjuring something out of nothing, and being an even bigger mess than the Greenskins."

Right about then, Heydrich took a deep breath and made his way to the base of the Ambrosial Arbor, at the heart of the Ark.

Under Heydrich's care, the Ambrosial Arbor had grown remarkably well, without falling into the kind of runaway growth the Path of Abundance suffered in Star Rail. So Heydrich simply picked out its sturdiest bough.

"The Emperor made twenty Primarchs to fight Chaos. If he could manage that, why couldn't I? Besides, there are plenty of times these days when I simply can't be everywhere at once — I need someone who can hold their own when I'm not around… Whew."

Heydrich drew another deep breath, and light burst dazzlingly from his outstretched hand.

"With Abundance as the foundation, with Permanence as the branch — be born here, now! Dragon of Permanence!!!"

In that instant, blinding, brilliant light erupted from Heydrich's hand, and wave after wave of immense power began exploding outward from him at the center.

Even Pearl had to teleport away in an emergency at the sight of it — a direct Path-level shockwave like this was exceptionally dangerous, even for her.

"Seal off this whole area, and activate the protective barrier array."

Pearl took a deep breath, then immediately ordered the soldiers already standing by to activate a Soul-Banishing Death Field, cutting off any possibility of the Warp getting involved. Beyond the Death Field, she had a void shield set up as well — in case containment failed and the whole thing blew, they could hurl the void shield straight into the Warp.

Say what you will, but in a setting where high offense and low defense was usually the norm, void shields were absurdly overtuned — turning the era into one where everyone effectively carried around a personal turtle shell.

After all, even a torpedo powerful enough to incinerate an entire planet wouldn't shatter a mid-to-large warship's void shield outright on a direct hit. ROOOAR!!!

The very next instant, a resounding dragon's roar tore through the air. A colossal thunder-dragon burst into being, its raw, savage power enough to make even Pearl's expression change.

Then, almost as quickly, the divine dragon's massive body shrank down, reshaping itself into a tall woman who landed right in front of Heydrich.

"Well, damn. I figured I'd get something like Dan Heng, or Bailu, maybe even Feixiao, and instead I get you… Wondrous Shadow, hold on. Don't tell me I've actually turned into some Old World Dragon Emperor. Something's wrong here — nine parts out of ten wrong. Did something go sideways somewhere?"

Staring at the tall, stark-naked woman kneeling before him, Heydrich couldn't help grumbling to himself.

Granted, this was Wondrous Shadow by way of Warhammer Fantasy — but as a creation born of imaginary numbers, she naturally came with a heavy beautification package built in. The result was a striking, spirited young woman, gorgeous enough that even Heydrich felt a faint nosebleed coming on.

"I grant you the name Wondrous Shadow — dragon of the north wind, of ice, and of thunder. Oh, and put some clothes on. Someone's coming…"