Chapter 169: Storm King: The Cowardly Silent King, I Will Make the Entire Galaxy Burn (Patreon)

Pearl had repeated that order countless times already: give Heydrich another hundred years, and they would no longer have to fear the space Necron.

From what Pearl understood, the space Necron weren't united either. Their problems were even bigger than the Imperium of Man's.

Someone was already brewing a rebellion. When it broke out, a space Necron civil war might well be bloodier and crueler than the war between humanity and the space Necron.

"All we have to do is stall until the space Necron implode. After that, we'll be under hardly any pressure at all."

Pearl mulled it over. Of course, she saw no need to make any big moves herself.

*

Meanwhile, in a dim, secluded corner at the edge of the galaxy...

"Have you found them?"

The Silent King surveyed the assembled dynastic Phaerons before him. The two Phaerons at his side, who might well be under his complete control, put the question to everyone present.

The Silent King regretted, more than anything, ever smashing that Master Control Protocol. Without it, he truly had no way to control the space Necron.

And now he could see with his own eyes that their population had grown by five. This was a monumental matter.

Still, if he were given the chance again, he suspected he would smash the Master Control Protocol all the same.

The main reason was that the thing had come from the Aeons. The Necrons had struck those creatures while the Aeons were weak. The Aeons had since been shattered, but one intact Aeon still lived.

To keep that Aeon from using the Master Control Protocol to control them, the Silent King had destroyed it. It might have been for nothing, but he simply hadn't dared to gamble back then.

If that intact Aeon had ambushed them and seized the Master Control Protocol, a single thought from it could have made every space Necron end itself.

But with the Protocol gone, the Silent King could only search for the newborns one lead at a time. And then... there was no "and then."

The trouble was that the space Necron had split into far too many factions, and some even clung to the doctrine of weak flesh and mechanical ascension.

They believed the space Necron of today were the perfect beings, and that both the Death-Fearers of old and the humans of now were trash.

Ask them what happens if the space Necron all die, and they'd say the space Necron are perfect and such a day will never come. Suggest that the space Necron might return to flesh, and they'd go berserk.

The very thought made the Silent King's head buzz. But as long as there had been no hope, he had never provoked a major rift with them. So during this space Necron edition of a census, he had deliberately set out to eliminate that faction. And then he was startled to discover that a very powerful force of rebels against him had already gathered within the space Necron.

Yet more than any rebel force, what made the Silent King want to scream was that they had found nothing at all.

"Any news? Which dynasty is it, exactly?!"

Facing a crowd of space Necron Phaerons and Necron Overlords loyal to him or to his faction, the Silent King had run out of patience.

He had even shelved the Soul-Banishing Death Field. If the newborns could truly be born, they most likely had souls, and using a Soul-Banishing Death Field once souls were involved...

The Silent King felt he'd sooner swap his head for an Ogryn's than do such a thing, so he had no choice but to swallow it.

"..."

But clearly, while the Silent King didn't want to resort to this, someone, or rather some space Necron, did.

"Cowardly Silent King, have these sixty million years rotted your mind?"

A furious voice suddenly rang out from the comm. It was none other than the Storm King.

"..."

The words gave the Silent King a headache. He had been about to say something.

But...

"Now that the Great Rift has opened and split the galaxy in two, the empire of those hairless monkeys is at its weakest. This is a once-in-a-thousand-years chance!!!"

Of course, the Soul-Banishing Death Field couldn't be deployed on a whim. With the Great Rift opening, Chaos was now the Imperium's main enemy, and every alien except the highly proliferating Orks and the Tyranid swarm had been pushed to the back of the queue.

Humanity had even cooperated with the T'au Empire to resist Chaos and the most dangerous aliens.

The space Necron were terrifying, but they had no future. Their numbers couldn't grow, and they were neither Chaos nor prone to corruption. Their loathing of Chaos even exceeded their loathing of humanity, so after the Soul-Banishing Death Field, the Imperium had tacitly abandoned that sector.

It wasn't that the Imperium truly couldn't beat the space Necron. The trouble with them lay elsewhere. Their numbers could only dwindle, and if the Imperium stayed to slug it out, it really could grind today's space Necron to death.

However strong the space Necron once were, their overall strength was nothing special now. Once the fight turned into the sort of attritional slugfest the Imperium excelled at, the space Necron could never withstand it.

But what would the cost be? The Imperium would have to give up every other war zone, abandon all its other enemies, and gather every ounce of strength it could muster. Meanwhile, the denizens of the Warp wouldn't interfere as it ground against the space Necron. They'd even fan the flames.

And the cost? The cost would be total collapse of the Imperium. The space Necron were like Italy in the First World War: strong enough that defeating them would cost too much, yet not strong enough to shake the might of the Imperium of Man.

Of course, the main reason was that these things were basically dead men with no future. So after the first clashes with a host of Mechanicus, the Imperium of Man had tacitly accepted the situation there. Even Magnus the Red's personal visit back then had been a last attempt.

After that, he'd had to face the far more troublesome Stars of Calamity. But now the Silent King had flatly suppressed that plan.

Clearly, seeing this, the Storm King could stand it no longer and launched his rebellion ahead of schedule. He would break away from the Silent King and deploy a Soul-Banishing Death Field of his own. In other words, he was going solo, and for the Silent King that was extremely dangerous news.

"Blasphemy!!!"

The other two space Necron Phaerons of the Triarch Council roared when they heard this.

"You have no idea what this means, Silent King Szarekh!!!"

The Storm King clearly paid those two no mind. He went on in a voice seething with rage.

"This is our only chance. The remnants of the old order are at their weakest. We will never have another. This is the only chance for the space Necron to rise again."

"You are so weak that you actually fear those so-called humans. You have utterly forgotten the pride of the Death-Fearers. From this moment, I challenge you, who cower in the shadows. Victory will no longer be silence, but my storm, echoing across the cosmos. I will make Necron fury burn this universe and set the whole galaxy ablaze again!!!"

"Madman!!!"

The Silent King bristled at the words and leapt to his feet.

But his fury was clearly useless. The Storm King had already cut the link, leaving only one final message behind...

"Activate the Soul-Banishing Death Field!!!"

In that instant the Silent King was both shocked and enraged. He had known about the Storm King's betrayal. During this census he had realized what the fellow was up to.

But if the newborns really were with the Storm King and anything went wrong, they were finished. And even if the newborns weren't there, the Storm King might well purge them.

The Silent King knew the Storm King could betray him and win the allegiance of so many Necron dynasties mainly because they had resigned themselves to their fate. Or rather, they had completely given up on regaining their flesh. Once hope was offered to them, there was no telling what they might do.

"Blasphemous traitor! The Triarch Council decrees the traitor's annihilation!!!"

So in that instant the Silent King decided to set everything else aside. The Storm King had to be destroyed first.

Almost in the next moment, a Soul-Banishing Death Field far smaller than the original unfurled. Then the space Necron, with no time to ravage the Imperium, went to war on the spot.

*

Meanwhile, elsewhere...

"Why are they fighting each other?"

Pearl stared at the news before her in bewilderment. Her situation was rather special.

For one thing, she still kept the space Necron's dedicated comm channel, but she never said a word on it.

It was like lurking on some forum, or on Bilibili or Douyin: just watching videos, never posting comments, never posting videos, purely lurking. With the sheer size of the space Necron, nobody knew she existed.

So, watching the two sides face off head-on, Pearl found it hard to believe. Because she only lurked, watched and never spoke, she naturally never got into the inner circle.

But with a standoff on this scale, she was bound to notice. And since she didn't know the details, all she could do was stare at it all in confusion.

So she soon went to find Heydrich, wanting to hear his opinion.

"Huh? A space Necron civil war? The Soul-Banishing Death Field is deployed, and they've started fighting among themselves?"

Heydrich was stunned for a moment when he heard.

The Field's deployment caught him a little off guard. In the original timeline, by the time it was actually deployed, Magnus the Red had already returned to Holy Terra. The Indomitus Crusade had even begun, and Belisarius Cawl had left Holy Terra by then too.

But now...

"Do we have the specific area? How big is it?"

Heydrich looked at Pearl as he asked, and a wry look of disbelief soon crossed his face.

"It's only a fifth of its original size..."

Looking at that tiny area, Heydrich remembered that originally the thing had carved out a swath the size of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar.

You could tell that whenever Games Workshop didn't want to give a concrete figure, it just said "the size of the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar."

The Soul-Banishing Death Field was roughly like that, and so were the Scourge Stars.

Heydrich still hadn't fully worked out how big the Five Hundred Worlds of Ultramar actually were, but he had a rough idea of the real figure.

But after seeing the report Pearl had given him, Heydrich nearly burst out laughing.

"I think I know what's going on. The appearance of your newborns may have set off the internal struggle between the Silent King and the Storm King early, the two biggest space Necron factions. Someone tell the Astropaths on Macragge to issue a message in Magnus the Red's name: just stay away from that sector."

He didn't know exactly how it had unfolded, but Heydrich could still fill in the broad strokes. He actually had a pawn among the space Necron, that sly bastard Trazyn.

But Heydrich didn't want to expose himself too early, so he had never contacted him.

As for the specifics, Heydrich didn't know, but he could piece together most of it.

The main thing was that the Imperium was now one big lump, and so were the other powers. Even the Eldar had been split in two by the Great Rift, while the space Necron were comparatively intact.

And then they had gone and started a civil war...

Fine, let them tear each other apart. Before his formal appearance, the Silent King had had off-the-charts prestige.

Once he showed up, that prestige shattered all over the floor. Those two would probably fight to a stalemate anyway, so let them take their time.

There was no need to have anyone disturb them, so Heydrich let that bunch of oddballs duke it out at their leisure.

"Understood."

Pearl smiled when she heard that. She had now guessed most of it.

Heydrich simply ordered that nobody disturb the psychotic Necrons, though he knew full well he could never stop everyone.

But stopping the main forces would be enough. As for the stubborn fools, let them be crushed outright.

Anyway, he himself wouldn't dare to take either of the two sides, now fighting at fever pitch, head-on. Or rather, there was no need to. The destructive power of those two was far more terrifying than the Tyranid swarm.

What's more, the space Necron weren't fighting for food, so they would use every kind of ranged weapon once the fighting began. Unless Heydrich flipped the table, there was no way to fight them.

If even Heydrich couldn't handle them, Imperial troops sent in would be nothing but speed bumps. As long as the main forces stayed out, he didn't care.

As long as the Lion and Magnus the Red didn't go, that was enough. After this news, the great First Founding Chapters probably wouldn't go either.

They were all loyal to the Emperor, but none of them were fools. With the Imperium split in two, troops were needed everywhere, and there were priorities. As for the hardheaded, do as you please. Good advice can't save the damned.

"Yes."

Pearl left, satisfied.

Heydrich might be a little eccentric, but he was the pillar of it all. As long as he stayed calm, Pearl had no reason to panic.

Now that Heydrich had reached a conclusion, she only had to follow his instructions.

"Phew, what a hassle. Is this the butterfly effect I set off? But it's fine like this. It's good for everyone..."

Watching Pearl leave, Heydrich muttered to himself.