Chapter 125: Trazyn the Infinite (Patreon)

At that moment, the crew inside the Titans were all under crushing pressure — after all, Heydrich's Titan legion had only been assembled recently. Everything about it was new, and though the machines had AI assistance, the standards required of a Titan pilot here weren't nearly as strict as those of the Imperium's own Titans.

Still, whatever the case, these were Heydrich's finest personnel, roughly equivalent to modern fighter pilots. Yet now, one after another, their faces had turned grim, because the ground a single cannon blast cleared was instantly swallowed up again by the enormous swarm.

It was different from what they'd faced at Macragge, where the daemons there had endured purely on the strength of the Dark Gods' blessing. Each strike had limited effect there too, but at least what they killed stayed dead.

This kind of pure numerical suppression left them with a feeling of suffocation.

The swarm did field Zoanthropes comparable to the Titans, but those cost too much to produce, and the Hive Fleet generally avoided making them. As for how strong one was, that came down purely to size — a small one was about the size of an Imperial Knight, while a large one stood as tall as an Emperor Titan.

"That useless pack of wrecks, the Imperial Navy. If they still existed, backed by orbital defenses, the swarm would never dare unload like this so recklessly," the lead pilot cursed at that moment. Because of structural issues on Heydrich's side, his own navy wasn't especially strong either, and the recently completed batch of ships had been prioritized for Guilliman and Calgar's expeditionary needs.

In this situation, Heydrich genuinely had no good options — short of going all-out and simply blowing up this planet too.

"Prepare the second Volcano Cannon strike. Imperial Knights, stand by."

The crew aboard the Titan carried out the order at once. Like the barrel of any modern weapon, a Volcano Cannon couldn't fire too many rounds in rapid succession without risking a burst — much like a certain incident during a Southeast Asian conflict, where someone used a tank's main gun as if it were a howitzer, firing over two hundred rounds in a short span before the barrel finally gave out. That load was already extreme, but reckless use pushed it past the limit regardless.

Boom!!!

So almost in the very next instant, another Volcano Cannon round fired.

A brilliant burst of fire bloomed once more where the swarm was thickest, vaporizing a huge swath of it outright.

The swarm could evolve fire-resistant carapaces, but the trouble was that fire — or rather, extreme heat — was the natural enemy of almost every living thing. A simple fire-adapted strain of the swarm might endure through evolution, but against a Volcano Cannon, there was simply no contest.

Evolving a shell capable of shrugging off a Volcano Cannon would cost far too much.

"Everyone, open fire!!!"

In that instant, at the captain's command, countless streams of fire wove together into a web that slammed into the returning Tyranid swarm. At the same time, the escorting Imperial Knights charged forward, grinding apart every creature within reach.

The forces Heydrich had brought here were all elite units; his Astra Militarum, or rather his auxiliary troops, remained on standby. Heydrich had already prepared for the worst — abandoning this planet if it came to that — so they would not be called up.

After all, once they came through, given how little transport capacity the Gate could spare, there would be no pulling them back out again; they'd be forced to fight the swarm to the death. Heydrich wasn't afraid to do that alongside them, but the swarm's true target was still Baal. If it changed course toward Baal instead, readjusting his own plans afterward would become considerably more troublesome.

What's more, the combat strength gathered here was genuinely formidable — these several million Cadian troops were far stronger than the few hundred thousand Heydrich had brought himself.

A similar scene was now playing out across nearly every corner of the hive, just as it once had at the Gryphonne IV.

As a world sitting on a critical supply route, this planet had to be cleared by the swarm no matter what.

In the command center, Heydrich's brow furrowed deeply.

"Those Tyranids are truly relentless. Order every Titan not to overcharge their weapons in quick succession. This isn't the time to trade blows recklessly with the swarm. When necessary, let the outer layers of the defense fall back one by one — preserve the Titan legion's main strength as much as possible."

Heydrich kept frowning as he watched the scene unfold. The Tyranid swarm was still in its probing phase.

Because Heydrich had used Jimmy to lure out the great numbers of Genestealers hidden inside the hive, the Genestealers within had already suffered devastating losses.

Beyond sharply reducing casualties, this also kept the Tyranid swarm from working out the hive's firepower deployment. Even more importantly, what the swarm now had to contend with was a defensive network inside the hive so tangled that even the hive's own people couldn't fully map it — which meant that, however overwhelming the swarm's show of force looked,

at its core it was really just probing, hunting for gaps in the recorded fire network.

So this wave carried no high-tier units, and the synapse creatures stayed hidden well to the rear. Which meant that the trump cards in Heydrich's hand — including Titus, along with over five thousand Astartes — hadn't been committed yet. And if the battlefield truly turned critical, Heydrich could always step in himself.

"This..." Hearing Heydrich's words, Maelon Dhrost fell silent for a moment, then turned to look at him with a puzzled expression.

He'd realized that Heydrich's strategy might differ from what he'd expected — this man was clearly holding something in reserve, and hadn't even made the Netherworld his main battlefield.

"My goal is simple: to completely destroy this tendril fleet of the Tyranids. And what the Tyranid tendrils are truly after isn't this star system at all — it's Baal... or rather, what lies above Baal: Sanguinius's flesh and blood." At that moment Heydrich brought out a star chart and laid it before Maelon Dhrost. This man's ability needed no proving; when it came to warfare, Heydrich freely admitted he fell short.

Hearing this, Maelon Dhrost was stunned for a moment.

"I'd love nothing more than to fight the Tyranids to a decisive battle right here and finish them off entirely. But look — the Hive Fleet forces they've committed so far don't even amount to a tenth of the whole. If we hit them too hard, they'll simply route around us. Using a trick once and using it twice are two completely different things, so I need to force the Tyranids into a position where they can neither advance nor retreat."

"Understood. We absolutely cannot let the Tyranids defile the Son of God's remains." Hearing Heydrich's words, Maelon Dhrost nodded.

All he'd known before was that he was to protect the Netherworld system. Now that he understood the larger picture, he could adjust his strategy quickly.

As a hard man among the hard men that Cadia bred by the dozen, he naturally possessed razor-sharp strategic instincts.

After all, in an environment like Cadia, nobody cared what family or bloodline you carried — the first test everyone had to pass was simply surviving to adulthood.

To this day, Heydrich still couldn't quite figure out how the Cadians managed such a high birth rate in so brutal an environment. Beyond defending their own world, they also supplied the Imperium with hundreds of millions of Astra Militarum soldiers every single year.

But none of that mattered here. In this environment, bloodline counted for the least of anything — no one who made colonel in the Cadian Astra Militarum was an easy man, let alone this one, who held the rank of Lord Castellan of Cadia.

Heydrich could have smashed him into a bloody smear with a single slap, but when it came to genuine battlefield experience, he had to admit he was no match for this weathered veteran.

So once he'd heard Heydrich's strategic aims, the general quickly set to work coordinating the deployment together with Loken.

"I wonder how the Harlequins are getting on with the link-up..." Heydrich found himself thinking of the Harlequins just then. After they'd reported in, he had given them a new task: use the Gate as much as possible to connect every Imperial world along the route from the Netherworld system to Baal.

After all, in the original storyline, Dante — lacking the strength to spare and fearing these worlds would become blood-bags for the Tyranids — had called down Exterminatus on them outright. Heydrich wouldn't call Dante cold-blooded for it, but now that he himself was here, there was simply no need for that.

With his own tavern behind him, he could wage guerrilla warfare against the Tyranids across the entire sector.

So long as the Tyranids committed too much force to any single world, Heydrich could bog them down right there.

He couldn't promise he wouldn't end up calling Exterminatus in the end regardless, but he intended to save as many worlds as he possibly could.

"As for the other planets — if they can't hold, you'll need to send support and carry out a decapitation strike."

Having handed the matter of the Netherworld hive off to Maelon Dhrost, Heydrich turned his attention to the other worlds.

The number of Tyranids they faced there was far smaller than here, but even so, those worlds were undoubtedly locked in a brutal fight.

And unlike the Netherworld hive, the Genestealers on those worlds hadn't been cleared out. It wasn't that Heydrich hadn't wanted to — there simply wasn't enough time. He could only do his best to secure the main battlefield. As for Jimmy, he was better suited to operating on worlds the Tyranids hadn't yet reached.

Now that the Tyranid main force had arrived here, Jimmy's usefulness on this front had dropped to almost nothing for the time being.

"For now the situation's holding. Based on our estimates, today's Tyranid attack is most likely just a probe — they're mapping our firepower positions through casualties. Only afterward will they send in mid- and high-tier units for targeted strikes."

Hearing Heydrich's words, the Palace Guard officer beside him added at once,

"Right — and one more thing. Go fetch Mimi. There's no telling how many will die in this war, and since it doesn't involve Chaos, have them come and collect the Path of Remembrance...huh?"

Just then Heydrich addressed a jester standing nearby on standby. He couldn't be entirely certain this planet would survive.

And once the first line of defense — the outermost perimeter — was chewed through by the Tyranids, the front would inevitably keep collapsing inward. It would hold at first, but eventually large numbers of civilians would be exposed.

Heydrich would do everything he could to protect them, but there was no way he could save every last one.

And this was, without question, an apocalypse-level war that would decide the fate of the entire galaxy — one worth recording no matter what, so as to keep advancing the Path of Remembrance.

But just then, Heydrich noticed his own Path of Remembrance had stirred.

Rather than say it had "stirred," it would be more accurate to say that as the Path of Remembrance advanced, it had unlocked one of the Path's traits: Glimpse.

But when Heydrich saw the target that Glimpse had revealed, even his eye twitched involuntarily.

Because the person in the entire Warhammer universe who fit the Path of Remembrance most perfectly turned out to be... Trazyn the Infinite.

"Why does it have to be this little bastard? Whatever — I'll give him one push in the right direction. Let him walk the Path of Remembrance. Either way, it works out in my favor."

The war had only just begun, but Heydrich took advantage of the brief lull to draw on his authority and set the power of the Path in motion.

Meanwhile, in another corner of the universe.

"Whew, that scared me half to death."

As the Triarch Council's session continued, Trazyn wiped away a cold sweat that didn't actually exist.

Because the moment they learned the Necron population had risen by one, the entire Triarch Council had erupted into uproar. Then, somehow, every Necron Overlord and Phaeron present had instinctively turned to look at him — the meaning was unmistakable: given how urgent this was, why not just kill Trazyn first and sort things out afterward.

He swore he'd only ever thought about acquiring the newborn — he'd genuinely never dared act on it.

After all, that would mean making an enemy of the entire Necron race — or rather, the Death-Fearers as a whole. In the end, the matter blew over, at least for now.

Because very soon they ran into an even more awkward problem, namely...

Where exactly was the newborn?

Clearly, though the Silent King possessed a device capable of roughly tracking the general state of the Necron race, it could only manage the crudest sort of monitoring. Without the Master Control Protocol, his grip over the Death-Fearers wasn't what it used to be.

So in the end, the only thing the Triarch Council could agree on was this: find the newborn first, and worry about everything else later.

The one thing that struck everyone as odd was that, for something this momentous, the Necrons themselves had stayed unusually quiet. Every dynasty seemed just as baffled as the next — clearly, this hadn't come from within their own ranks.

"Ah, forget it. Even if they do find it, it's got nothing to do with me anyway. Might as well go back to admiring my collection."

Trazyn was full of regret at that point — since he wouldn't be allowed to add the newborn to his collection even if it turned up, then as the self-styled Collector King, he found the whole business rather uninteresting.

Besides, as a former librarian, he'd only ever had one real dream: to record the galaxy's entire sixty-million-year history, so that once the space Necrons fully awakened, he could tell his people about all that had come before.

So if you genuinely wanted to tour or admire his museum, Trazyn would welcome you with open arms.

"This is the Lord Castellan of Cadia, captured at the final moment of Cadia's fall. And this is an Ultramarine facing down the Behemoth Hive Fleet during the First Tyranid War..."

Trazyn walked among his display cases as he spoke, trailed by his human attendants. He kept his own human stewards, after all — men whose families had served him for generations, helping him maintain the entire museum.

Though they lived under his control, there was no denying that, at least here, both the working conditions and the compensation ranked among the very best in the galaxy. Trazyn was, at the very least, a decent employer.

But this time, no sooner had he finished speaking than he found, to his astonishment, that everything around him had frozen solid with frost.