Chapter 163: The Title Was Eaten by Guilliman (Patreon)

Kairos was in a cold sweat. Giant beings aren't exactly rare in Warhammer.

Take the void whales of the Warp. If you don't have a warship, you can simply use a void whale as one.

Just be careful. The carcass teems with microorganisms, even more than the whale itself, and they could easily kill you.

The risks are higher, and it has no Gellar field, but it can be used.

During the Plague Wars, the Death Guard once hurled a void whale corrupted by Nurgle straight into a planet's orbit, and the impact blew that world apart.

But this thing was nothing like a void whale. Kairos was gripped by a deep, terrible dread.

It was a crushing pressure, a trembling that came from the soul itself.

And Kairos wasn't wrong. Heydrich had always had a way to burn daemons out of existence permanently.

Those he killed on purpose could not be resurrected. Whether their masters could bring one back from their own memory of that Greater Daemon was another matter.

On top of that, Kairos now had something else to make his scalp prickle: he had no trump card left in his hand.

Worse, this creature could tear straight through the psychic storm Kairos had raised using nothing but its body. Its physical strength might well be enough to trade blows with those brutes from Khorne's host.

Heydrich, for his part, wore an expression of keen interest. He was fascinated by these Greater Daemons.

Well, only Khorne's and Tzeentch's. As for Slaanesh's and Nurgle's, Heydrich took one look and kept as far away as he could.

The best-known Greater Daemon of Slaanesh is Shalaxi, but the Keepers of Secrets of that house come in all sorts of bizarre shapes, with no fixed form.

One glance at them drains your SAN. Or rather, only Shalaxi, the emblem of the Keepers of Secrets, doesn't. The rest of the designs from the lore can't even appear, because they'd never pass review. As for Nurgle's, they're just plain disgusting.

When he'd Ultra-ized the Great Ultra One, he'd done it with a blow-up-the-cesspit mindset. Humans really are endlessly patient when they're up to no good.

Heydrich had done it purely out of curiosity back then. Mostly it was because Nurgle's were so bulky they were easy to catch. As for Bloodthirsters, the moment things looked bad they'd just stab themselves, and there was nothing Heydrich could do about that.

"For the Changer of Ways!!!"

Clearly, Kairos Fateweaver had finally cracked. He let out a furious roar, and then… turned and ran!!!

"Huh?"

For a moment even Heydrich froze. It was the first time he'd ever seen someone bellow a battle cry and then bolt with his feet greased, wings flapping wildly. In the blink of an eye Kairos shrank to a dot before Heydrich's eyes, a scene with all the charm of a cat-and-mouse cartoon.

Even Heydrich was left dumbstruck. Worthy of a Tzeentch creature, one had to admit.

Kairos seized the chance to tear open a Warp rift and escape, leaving Heydrich standing there, slack-jawed.

"Am I really that scary?"

Heydrich changed back into human form. He could have dived into the Warp rift and chased after him.

But he didn't. Killing Kairos once wouldn't accomplish much anyway.

Besides, Heydrich's real target at the moment wasn't Kairos Fateweaver. It was the gigantic Blackstone Fortress below.

"Looks like I'll need a super A-Ruan Pouch to carry this thing. Technology this powerful ought to belong to me."

Heydrich smiled happily at the huge Blackstone Fortress beneath him. Using it as a throwing firecracker for Abaddon the Despoiler had been a pure waste.

Luckily, there was more than one Blackstone Fortress. There were plenty scattered across this galaxy.

"Heh heh, a new toy. Hmm, I hope Pearl doesn't give me grief!!!"

It was only then that Heydrich remembered something: he was probably about to generate a huge pile of supply bills again.

*

Meanwhile, inside the Blackstone Fortress, the real war was being fought.

"You bastards, why did you go over to the False Emperor!!!"

Verngar, the commander of the Red Corsairs, was so furious he was cursing a blue streak, and more than a little dazed.

He had no idea how it had happened, but the Tzeentch lot had inexplicably started fighting among themselves. Even worse, the Sons of the Dry Sores had turned traitor too.

Betraying him was bad enough, but they were now charging straight for his core command chamber, with Guilliman in tow.

"You know nothing of glory, you wretched spawn of the fallen Sanguinius!!!"

The warband leader of the Sons of the Dry Sores roared. Huron might be an Ultramarine, but this man was a traitor of the Blood Angels, or rather, the Angels Encarmine.

"Out of my way, I'll do it!!!"

Guilliman had seen enough. He meant to smash through the door ahead with the raw brutality of a Primarch's stats.

"This whole fortress is built of blackstone. Even a Primarch can't break it by force. We need to hack into the system."

Seeing Guilliman's move, the warband lord stopped him at once.

Blackstone has two sides. One strengthens the Warp, as seen in Space Marine 2, where it pinned the Ultramarines down. The other shuts the Warp out, like a Soul-Banishing Death Field.

But both effects only apply once it's activated, and clearly this Blackstone Fortress hadn't been.

After all, flipping blackstone takes a special ritual array, and under normal conditions, activating it yields a Soul-Banishing Death Field.

Only a madman among these Chaos lunatics would activate it, and they didn't have the technology to strengthen the Warp anyway.

Either way, blackstone was blackstone. Even Guilliman, wielding the Emperor's Sword, couldn't break it.

"Let me. I'll take you all through with a jump."

From amid a burst of lush greenery, the Lion stepped forward. His Forestwalk could carry them straight through.

Of course, if the fortress were activated, that would be a different story, though who would suffer more was hard to say.

"Take me through."

Guilliman was a little surprised to see the Lion, but he said nothing more. He'd planned to seize the fortress as a gift for Dragon Emperor anyway. With that man's technical skill, he might be able to do something with it.

And so, soon enough…

"…"

Verngar stared blankly at the two enormous tin cans that had appeared before him, and only one thought filled his head…

What have I done to deserve two Primarchs waiting on me!!!

[Author's Note: How can anyone still say the protagonist of the last book never lacked money, so this book is no good? All I want to say is, don't underestimate the substance of the Star Rail, and don't say my protagonist's growth can't compare to the last book's either!!!]