Chapter 164: A Fucked-Up World and Even More Fucked-Up Things (Patreon)

With Guilliman and his brother the Lion teaming up, the unlucky lord of this Chaos warband hit game over in short order.

Against a two-Primarch mixed doubles team, even a chief Greater Daemon or a Daemon Primarch would have had to kneel.

So the Imperium quickly took control of this Blackstone Fortress, and its army is now clearing out the remaining enemies inside.

Kairos had simply bolted, and the other Lords of Change had been banished by Kairos, so the Tzeentch host had effectively collapsed.

Cato Sicarius is leading the army to mow down what's left of it. As for the Chaos Space Marines, the Lion and Guilliman are reaping them in person.

Faced with two Primarchs itching for a good fight, the Chaos Space Marines looked so weak and adorable.

They had all become stress-relief toys for the two Primarchs, and there was no way they could handle that.

*

Meanwhile, Heydrich led his Men of Stone and a group of space Necron into the Blackstone Fortress's command room. The war was still going on.

But Heydrich chose to pop the champagne anyway. He was in a great mood.

He was in a state of winning so hard it hurt. He had just won the Tyranid war, and now he'd gained this Blackstone Fortress too. Heydrich felt as though the Know-It-All King himself (Trump) had possessed him.

That mood didn't last long, though, because he soon had to face a pile of complicated problems.

"Lord, according to our calculations, fully repairing this already damaged Blackstone Fortress will take an enormous amount of materials. It might send Lord Pearl's oil pressure, which we barely got down, soaring again."

A group of former space Necron Crypteks, now Men of Stone technicians, looked at Heydrich as they delivered some very bad news.

In two words: no money.

This was especially so with Pearl minding his home. Anyone who has ever worked in finance knows one thing:

money is never enough, no matter how much comes in. In the Warhammer universe, of course, it's supplies that always run short, and even Heydrich was no exception.

What's more, repairing and expanding the Blackstone Fortress takes more than just money. Even a simple repair requires a staggering amount of materials.

"Haah."

Heydrich couldn't help sighing, then rubbed his forehead. His finances were stretched thin. The Titan legions, the Solar Auxilia and the huge number of Space Marines all cost money.

Besides, he was not one of the Imperium's High Lords. He built up troops like mad, but military spending still made up only a bit over half of his total output. By the standards of Earth, though, that was already far beyond ordinary militarism.

After all, even the Russians in World War II, in their bloodiest years, could hardly have reached that level.

As for his own lifestyle, in the Imperium it would be on par with a mid-level noble's. Top-tier nobles were certainly out of reach.

Mainly, with the extravagance of those top nobles, even Heydrich couldn't compete. He did have some standards for living, but he had moved past such low tastes and was passionate about tinkering with small inventions instead.

"Waaah! Lord, we've proven our loyalty!!!"

Just then, a portal opened in front of Heydrich, and a group of Thousand Sons came charging out.

The one leading them was none other than Vistario of the Thousand Sons Chaos warband, the very Thousand Sons Chaos sorcerer who had spoken with Rylanor on Isstvan. Had Heydrich not been there, this guy would have helped Rylanor detonate the virus bomb, proving his loyalty with his last breath.

"Uh…"

Seeing these Tzeentch creatures left even Heydrich speechless. He hadn't killed this guy back then, and he hadn't taken them along either, mainly because he found them distasteful.

But Heydrich had to admit he'd underestimated them. Somehow they'd managed to show up in front of him again.

"I see. Haah…"

After a brief talk with Guilliman, Heydrich learned what this was about.

"I'll give you a chance. But don't blame me if you can't take it."

Heydrich figured that if he drove them away again, they would only keep trying to prove their loyalty.

Besides, from what he knew of Tzeentch's faction, these things would sooner or later cook up something huge. Heydrich had no idea what, but he decided to stop that moment from ever arriving.

"How sacred this is… Aaaah!!!"

In that instant, the Chaos sorcerer let out a series of shrill screams. Heydrich had transformed right before his eyes into a towering figure wreathed in blue, pink and white light, and the Tzeentch blessings, or rather the corruption, on the sorcerer's body began to burn away fast.

It was just like that figure in the Old World of Warhammer Fantasy whom Celestant-Prime had washed into one of his Thunder-forged warriors. The method was different, but the effect was the same.

Under the interweaving of the Path of Destruction and the Path of Remembrance, he turned himself into an incineration art and burned away the Tzeentch blessings on the sorcerer's body.

Heydrich didn't know what Tzeentch was thinking, but he wouldn't keep a thing like this at his side.

So all Vistario felt was that his whole being was being sublimated. The power of Tzeentch that had wrapped around him for ten thousand years was rapidly receding. He was becoming pure again, but he could also feel his soul burning.

It was a pain that came from deep within. Heydrich's way of purging corruption was not without cost. Put simply, it burned the corrupted parts away. He could use Abundance to recast the body.

But there was nothing he could do for the mind. It came down purely to whether you could endure it. This was especially true for beings so deeply entangled with Chaos. Whether this unlucky, or perhaps lucky, survivor of Prospero made it through depended on his own will.

If he couldn't take it and his soul scattered, Heydrich could only say that was a kind of mercy too.

Soon…

Crack.

With a crisp clatter, Vistario went limp and dropped to his knees, then collapsed face-first on the ground with no dignity at all.

"Burned clean. You actually endured it."

Looking at the Chaos sorcerer he had just purified, Heydrich was a little surprised.

The guy had been entangled with Chaos so deeply that a great deal of his soul had needed burning. But since his will, or rather his soul, had held without collapsing, Heydrich pushed some pure blank memory-essence into him to stabilize his condition.

"This is rebirth, but not the kind of rebirth Magnus had."

Vistario took a deep breath. Everything he saw now felt different.

"Want me to lift the Rubric of Ahriman from your brothers too?"

But before he could even finish marveling, Heydrich's next words exploded in his ear.

"What?!!"

So soon after…

"Waaaah!!!"

Heydrich now had a crowd of Thousand Sons in front of him, clutching their heads and sobbing. Ahriman's Rubric of Ahriman was, after all, only a Warp trick. Burning it away with the power of two Paths was enough, and since they had been in an unconscious state for ten thousand years,

there was no mind left to corrupt. That made them easier to handle than the Chaos sorcerer in front of him.

"All right. Satisfied now?"

Heydrich looked at the group of unlucky wretches in silence. Vistario was a veteran of the Thousand Sons, and his Rubric Marines were much the same, all survivors of Prospero.

"Lord, we will offer you our loyalty!!!"

"And if I told you to attack Magnus?"

"That blasphemer Magnus has no idea how corrupt and fallen he is. If he'd had even half a sane mind back then, things would never have gotten that bad."

"Oh, you all know about it?"

Heydrich was a little surprised. It seemed that after ten thousand years, the Thousand Sons had learned the full story of what happened on Prospero. By then there had been no road back, and all they could do was walk the one path to its end.

"Fine. Go back for now."

Heydrich couldn't help rubbing his forehead again. Just then, Guilliman, covered in blood but refreshed, and the Lion, Lion El'Jonson, came strolling over using Forest Walk.

"We've cleared every Chaos traitor out of the Blackstone Fortress. Only… uh, what did you do?"

Only now did the Lion notice the pile of Thousand Sons in front of Heydrich. With all their Chaos corruption burned away by Heydrich, the lot of them were now just bare grey models, and the sight made both Primarchs struggle to keep a straight face.

After all, sending unpainted grey models into battle would strike even Chaos as blasphemous and embarrassing.

"Oh, those are the descendants of that psychic Brother Ma. I was worried that if I left them alone, the wisdom they inherited from Magnus would cause a huge problem sooner or later."

"…"

When Heydrich finished, the scene fell dead silent. Magnus's wisdom… yes, thinking about it really was cause for despair.

"I'll take the Blackstone Fortress back for now. It will take a while to fully repair it and expand it to the scale I want."

Heydrich took out his personal A-Ruan Pouch, which was far handier than that mustard-seed dimension.

"All right then…"

"Oh, and one more thing."

Just then, his technical advisor beside him remembered something and stepped up to Heydrich.

"In the Netherworld we ran into a Necron Overlord. We fought over the Grand Prism."

"Hm?"

Heydrich's brow twitched. Another psychotic Necron?

"And then?"

"The guy got desperate and opened a portal to the Triarch Council, wanting the Triarch Council's space Necron to wipe us out."

"Hm?"

Heydrich's brow twitched again. But since nobody had disturbed him during the entire war, it couldn't be a big problem. If it was the Triarch Council, though…

"Did you get into a conflict with the Silent King?"

"No. The Triarch Praetorians' main purpose was to collect taxes from that dynasty."

"Huh?"

Heydrich, the Lion and Guilliman all went blank at once.

This was a style full of Imperium charm. Since when had the space Necron become like this too?

"And then?"

"The Praetorians told the Necron Overlord plainly that they were only there to collect taxes and that he had to pay. They also scolded the Overlord for his incompetence in failing to protect the sacred assets of the Necron empire. In the end they said that whatever the situation, he had to pay his taxes, and they sternly refused his request for them to take action."

"…"

"…"

"…"

When the Man of Stone finished, the scene fell dead silent.

"What a cesspit!"

Heydrich couldn't help marveling. Warhammer really was a giant cesspit. Every race and every faction turned unbearably foul in this dye vat. And knowing humans as he did, people can't imagine what they've never seen.

So Heydrich seriously suspected that the Brits had pulled something like this in his own history. After all, apart from making money, the creators of Warhammer made it specifically to mock the Brits' great misdeeds.

Much of what people call Warhammer flavor is simply the Brits' great misdeeds pushed to the extreme.

"And then?"

"The Necron Overlord clearly lost it and destroyed the portal outright. The Praetorians are strong, but only a few came, and without heavy weapons, so we subdued them."

"Fine…"

Heydrich was completely speechless. What on earth was all this? In some corner of a battlefield he didn't even know about, such impressive fighting had taken place. If he remembered right, those things were roughly on par with the Custodes, and they'd been subdued without a sound…

"You used my improved Iron Curtain Virus?"

"Yes."

"Use that stuff less from now on."

Heydrich rubbed his forehead. What he'd given these people were only small-scale copies, with no ability to iterate on themselves and very limited spread.

But the virus was, after all, a thing of the Path, and there was always a chance it could get out of control.

"Let's go back first. Then we'll discuss the next steps. The Battle of Baal is over now, but the Blood Angels' problem still hasn't been solved."

Heydrich no longer wanted to dwell on this rotten world and its even more rotten affairs. He only needed to keep moving forward according to his original plan.

From here it wasn't far to Holy Terra anymore. It was time to discuss what came next.