Chapter 146: The Terrifying War Forge (Patreon)

At that moment John felt himself trapped in a kind of frenzy. Even within the Imperium of Man, there were plenty of units whose strength could rival that of a Space Marine.

Take the Ogryns, for instance — those ape-like brutes the high command both loved and despised. Their raw strength genuinely surpassed that of an ordinary Space Marine.

Hand one a sufficiently massive club, and it could crack open a Space Marine's ceramite armor.

The problem was their reflexes couldn't keep up — against a Space Marine, they'd still be cut down in an instant.

John was in much the same situation now. He'd had no time at all to grow used to his new power — or rather, what remained of his life wouldn't allow him the time. So when the Tyranid Warrior attacked, it slammed him straight to the ground.

Countless Hormagaunts swarmed in after that, tearing at his limbs. John felt no pain at all.

The immense power of Destruction had already burned out his nerves completely. He was nothing now but a pure engine of war.

"For the Emperor... Anna, I'll protect you all..."

In that moment John let go completely of his hold over the power within him, and his consciousness faded away before his body did.

At the same time, the bugs tore at him with everything they had, and the Tyranid Warrior even drove a blade clean through him.

Then a colossal force erupted from within his body, and...

BOOM!!!

The blast roared out, engulfing everything within several hundred meters of him.

But this explosion had no dazzling sparks, no terrifying shockwave. It looked almost unremarkable — yet its effect was horrifying.

Because everything within its reach, centered on him, simply ceased to exist — as though it had never been there at all. All that remained was a crater dozens of meters deep. The Hormagaunts and Termagants were simply gone.

A silent annihilation — quiet, and terrible.

For a moment, the swarm froze. Just as Heydrich had said — mere death meant nothing to the swarm, not with their biomass recycling efficiency. Hormagaunts and Termagants were pure expendables. But this kind of death, one that left nothing behind at all, was what truly terrified the swarm.

And clearly this wasn't a one-off. Heydrich's teleportation, though short-ranged, was extremely precise — one Voidranger after another was sent straight into the densest clusters of the swarm. And these ones didn't have John's degree of self-control.

Nearly every one of them detonated against the swarm in a fit of fanatic zeal, and visually, the effect was —

— hollow gaps opening up one after another within the swarm's mass. Even the soldiers on the front line stood there stunned.

The swarm's offensive fell into total disarray. The Great Devourer wanted to thin out the swarm's density.

But thinning the density wouldn't shrink the front line they needed to cover, which meant the whole assault would simply fall apart.

After all, the swarm had always relied on sheer numbers. Earlier explosions had at least left something behind — this time, there was nothing left at all.

But if the density stayed too high, the blasts were simply too devastating. So in that instant the swarm was caught in a bind on both ends, stuck frozen in place.

Meanwhile, back in the command room, everyone — Viktor and the Lion included — stared at the scene in stunned silence. Even Viktor had never seen Heydrich pull out something like this before.

"So this is the Golden Age of mankind — the legendary Grand Cathay. What kind of catastrophe could possibly destroy a nation like that?"

The Lion himself was equally dumbstruck. The instant the Voidrangers appeared, his heart had all but stopped — he could sense that their combat values were already approaching those of a Space Marine.

They were extremely unstable, though — or rather, the moment they appeared, they were already on a countdown to death. Even so, just thinking about it sent chills down his spine.

If Heydrich simply skipped the pleasantries and converted people directly into Voidrangers before dropping them from orbit — well, the Imperium's population was practically limitless.

Which meant Heydrich could, in theory, draw on an endless supply of soldiers. If it ever came to a real fight, even the Great Heresy against Horus would look like child's play by comparison.

Yeah — next to this guy, Horus was as cute as a little girl.

"When I get back, I need to warn the Imperium — under no circumstances can we ever fight this man."

Right now the Lion had only one thought in his head: whatever happens, never fight this one.

As he saw it, there was only one reason Heydrich hadn't already done something like this — kindness, or perhaps the discipline to hold his own power in check. But if someone ever pushed this man too far, who knew what might happen. With the Great Rift already torn open and the Imperium riddled with wounds, they couldn't afford to provoke him further.

And given what the Lion knew of the Imperium these days, that possibility was disturbingly real.

"Thank goodness Guilliman woke up. With him around, the High Lords of Terra can't stir up much trouble."

The Lion couldn't help muttering to himself. In truth, if Guilliman hadn't woken up, he wouldn't have felt easy serving as Knight of Nihilus at all — he'd have gone straight back to Holy Terra to take charge himself.

All he could say was that this wretched Imperium had driven Rogal Dorn, Vulkan, the Wolf King Leman Russ, and Jaghatai Khan to madness — but as the eldest brother among the Primarchs, the Lion would never spit on his own responsibilities.

As for why those brothers had vanished, there were all sorts of reasons given — but it was hard to say it wasn't simply the Imperium's endless administration driving Primarchs out of their minds.

After all, ever since Fulgrim had put a sword through Guilliman's throat and left him for dead, the Imperium's administrative burden had inevitably fallen, at least in part, on their shoulders.

Meanwhile, elsewhere, at the boundary between the upper and lower levels of the hive.

Bang! Bang! Bang!

The Space Marines were firing wildly into the corridor, and below them the swarm packed the passage so densely it was enough to trigger anyone's trypophobia.

The Tyranid swarm no longer cared about anything else — if they could just break through this last chokepoint, they could burst straight into the hive's interior, and every position the Imperium had held would collapse instantly.

So the swarm was fighting with everything it had. The Ultra-Orks were essentially gone by now — the 'Ultra Ribs' had all withdrawn to regenerate — because the swarm knew full well that slowly prying open the shell from the surface would cost too much.

This spot was unsuited for Titan legions or artillery, which made it the perfect weak point. So the swarm had thrown at least a third of its forces at this single chokepoint, and though the Imperium had committed its elites, they were still barely holding on against a swarm this size.

"Any more reinforcements coming? Dragon Emperor can keep breeding more Ultra-Orks."

Titus felt his scalp prickling. The hive wasn't the wastelands — the ground here was metal everywhere, and no matter how sloppily the Ork mushroom spores grew, they still needed soil.

If Heydrich hadn't brought enough nutrient fluid, there'd be no way to cultivate these Orks at all.

It looked more than a little blasphemous, sure, but the Ecclesiarchy had already ruled it wasn't. And with the situation this dire, Titus had no time to worry about that anyway.

"There's no soil left — and now the swarm's draining the nutrients right out of what's left of it."

Irena said grimly, cutting a charging Hormagaunt clean in two.

Their fighting force here was already the cream of the crop — the Blood Angels' own main strength, Titus with his Tyranid War Veterans, and the troops she'd personally brought. Even so, faced with a swarm this vast, they were still being pushed back.

And after all these years tagging along with Heydrich, mooching off him, she had a good idea of how large his conventional forces actually were.

It wasn't that he'd run out of strength — the Men of Stone led by Pearl, and even that elite Legion of Men of Iron, hadn't been deployed yet. But even if they came, they probably wouldn't help much here.

After all, even the colonization fleet at its peak had been pushed back by the bugs — there was simply no way to send in anything stronger right now.

"Don't tell me that guy's about to bring out one of his little toys again — though I'll admit, they do have a certain beauty to them."

Irena muttered to herself, and just then the Lion's voice came through everyone's comm channel.

"Reinforcements have arrived. I've had a teleportation circle set up at the top of the corridor — stay clear of them."

The Lion's voice carried both exhaustion and what sounded like a stomachache, but he'd still routed the reinforcements over in time.

Without giving Titus or Dante any time to react, group after group of Voidrangers were teleported directly above their heads.

Then, one after another, they charged the swarm in a frenzy of fanatical zeal, each one detonating like a living bomb.

Every explosion wiped out a whole swath of the swarm without a trace. Actually, "without a trace" undersold it — it was more like they'd been deleted from existence entirely.

"For the Emperor!"

Fanatical war cries rang out one after another, and under this rain of living airdropped bombs, the surging swarm was blasted into chaos in an instant.

Some of the bugs even broke free of the Great Devourer's control and turned to flee. It wasn't fear of death driving them — it was dread of never being able to feed again, or perhaps that was simply hardwired into the Hive Mind's deepest code.

As for the Voidrangers, they too burned with fanaticism — most of them had already been zealots to begin with. And once folded into the War Forge, their emotional state itself became one of extreme, unstable zeal.

If any of them somehow survived the war without dying, the follow-up problems that would create could give even Heydrich a splitting headache.

"This is simply beautiful!!!"

In contrast to the stunned Dante and Titus, the young man's face shone with something like reverence.

He thought it was magnificent — this kind of grand, silent annihilation was the most beautiful thing there was.

Irena's eye twitched a little. She had to admit it was impressive too, but wasn't this a bit... well, blasphemous?

Meanwhile, back in the command room, Heydrich returned once he'd confirmed the War Forge was running properly — though right now he was finding it a little hard to keep a straight face.

To start with, the war engines were supposed to consume the power of the Path of Destruction, and in theory they should eventually run out of energy and stop over time...

But that was only theory. Because once these Voidrangers voluntarily entered the War Forge and were transformed, every single one of them became the purest possible Pathstrider of Destruction — and the sudden surge in their numbers instead reinforced the Path of Destruction itself.

Which meant the energy inside the War Forge just kept growing — basically stepping on his own foot to climb higher.

Heydrich could easily imagine that if this thing were ever allowed to spread unchecked, the entire Imperium would go up like a rocket.

After all, the Imperium never lacked people — some Planetary Governor could easily fly off the handle, convert citizens into Voidrangers, and drop them on enemies like bombs. He knew that if that ever happened, the entire galaxy would descend into chaos.

And Heydrich was fairly certain that if he actually did this himself, the Path of Destruction could deepen dramatically within years, even decades — to the point that a Lord of Annihilation might actually emerge.

But by then, the galaxy might well be scorched to bare ash — now that would be truly terrifying.

"Ugh, forget it. I'm not making any more of these things after this anyway."

Fortunately, only he could build a War Forge, and every single one was handcrafted. The only method of construction existed solely in his own mind, so there was no real risk of it spiraling out of control.

Once the battle was over, he'd recall the things immediately — every use needed to be handled with care.

In truth, while Heydrich wanted the galaxy to have plenty of Pathstriders, he absolutely didn't want an actual Aeon in the Star Rail sense to emerge.

"So this is what you meant by your 'little toys'..."

The Lion, watching Heydrich walk in, rubbed his eyes wearily.

Every time he thought this man had already hit peak blasphemy, Heydrich somehow managed to top it.

"Yep. A very clean form of war energy. See how tidy it is? Even the Tyranids would cry looking at it."

Looking at the Lion, Heydrich privately admitted the effect was a bit much — but saying so out loud would have undercut the moment, so instead he simply pointed at the dazed, blasted Tyranid swarm.

With ten million Voidrangers now being steadily dropped onto the battlefield, the swarm's offensive rhythm had finally been thrown into disarray.

The Imperial forces who'd held the line for days could finally breathe a little easier — even Heydrich's own Titan legion got a chance to squeeze in some maintenance on their gun barrels.

"They're just... well, too cheap."

Hearing that, the Lion couldn't help but sigh. It wasn't that Golden Age technology itself frightened him.

After all, the Dark Angels had plenty of it themselves, and many Archmagi of the Mechanicus kept collections too. But this thing was simply too cheap to make — practically free, even.

After all, the Imperium lacked everything — except people.

"I know. That's why I'll be careful. No matter what, none of this will ever leak out — honestly, if the situation weren't this urgent, I wouldn't have brought it out at all."

Heydrich sighed at that too, finally dropping his bravado. The Lion said nothing more in response — though he had no idea that Heydrich's mind had already wandered off to something else.

"Maybe I should get an Emperor's Scepter ready. A single scepter should be fine, probably..."