"One hundred and thirty hours."
Horus gazed at the Solar System map hanging in midair and spoke in an even tone, as if implying something deeper.
He was calculating the war's trajectory, and in his heart he arrived at an answer.
At most, within one hundred and thirty hours, the Chaos host under him, the Dark Emperor, would rip apart the final outer orbital defensive line and fully break into Terra.
That outcome was inevitable.
The Chaos Gods had opened an enormous warp corridor and teleported directly into the heart of the Solar System, creating an overwhelming advantage.
That meant the Chaos armies had effectively bypassed the combined Neptune-Uranus defensive line on the Solar System's outer rim, along with the Saturn line and the Jupiter line.
Unlike ten thousand years ago, Horus no longer needed to grind forward step by step and bleed away his strength. He had already reached Terra's far orbital space. What stood before him now were only three defensive platform lines between Mercury, Venus, and Mars.
That alone would reduce his force expenditure by more than half.
"False Emperor, your Imperium never truly prospered. And now it never will."
The Dark Emperor stared at the images being projected back from the front lines and let out a cold sneer.
Those defensive platform lines stationed outside Mars were painfully familiar. They were scarcely different from what they had been ten thousand years ago. If anything, they looked even more dilapidated.
It seemed the Imperium lacked the resources, time, and labor to construct new defensive platform lines, leaving them to do little more than patch up the old ones.
Under normal circumstances, defenses like these should have been rebuilt or restructured. And yet the Imperium had done neither. Even the repair work had been careless and halfhearted.
How weak, Horus thought.
He could not help but feel bored. The Imperium's defenses seemed even flimsier than he had imagined.
Perhaps the Savior was all reputation and no substance, someone who had failed to take the Solar System's defenses seriously. Or perhaps he had ruled for too short a time and simply had not had the chance.
A hundred years was too little. It was not even enough time to reconcile the contradictions festering inside the Imperium itself, much less build defensive platform lines on a massive scale.
Whatever the reason, this was a fatal weakness.
Ten thousand years ago, Horus had personally smashed through that very line.
Now, leading an even greater host, he looked upon it and felt only pity.
That heap of rusted scrap could never withstand the assault of Chaos. There was not even the slightest pleasure to be found in breaking it.
Rustle...
Before Horus, vine-like growths covered in suppurating sores writhed into being, twisting together into the outline of a figure with moth-like wings.
It was Mortarion.
His voice was low and heavy, as if something were lodged in his throat.
"I have reached the designated position. Shall I begin the attack?"
The Death Lord, beloved child of plague, sounded somewhat cold. But under Grandfather's divine command, he was bound to obey Horus's orders.
Not that Horus lacked the right to command him. Earlier, he had personally crushed the other fallen primarchs one by one, Mortarion included.
Otherwise, Mortarion would never have reported in like this and waited for instructions.
"Mortarion, I'm giving you seven hours. Destroy the Martian blockade line, then join forces with Magnus and assault the Lunar defensive line."
Horus issued the order without hesitation.
"As you wish. Plague will drown those defense platforms. Even steel will become a breeding ground for rot..."
The Death Lord's vine-formed figure slowly nodded, then withered into ash as the transmission ended.
After that, reports came in one after another from the other primarchs. The Imperial defensive lines were collapsing.
Magnus had initiated a mysterious ritual, turning a comet into a massive warp rift that punched through the psychic barriers of the deep-space orbit and destroyed several special Veil Fortresses.
Those unseen Veil Fortresses, which had silently guarded Terra all this time, were swallowed whole by darkness without a sound.
The psykers inside were twisted into warped spirits, left to howl eternally at the boundary of the veil.
Meanwhile, the haze of pleasure conjured by Fulgrim was spreading continuously toward Venus and Terra's outer perimeter, its maddening music polluting the minds of all who heard it.
The other fallen primarchs had launched their assaults as well. Space Hulks were laying down ferocious barrages over targeted sectors, while vast quantities of viral scrapcode were shutting down system after system.
Warp-born disasters erupted one after another, overturning Imperial vessels and summoning swarms of daemons into the afflicted regions.
Those abhorrent warp-spawn, all fang and claw, tore into human flesh without mercy. The freighters that failed to flee in time were butchered most horribly of all.
Before such a terrifying offensive, mere cargo ships never stood a chance. But even the battleships the Imperium took such pride in, those steel behemoths of the void, were little better than infantrymen on the wrong battlefield.
They could be annihilated in an instant.
The reinforcement fleets that had come from afar, only to be cut off and stranded by warp rifts before they could retreat behind the defensive platforms, exploded into fireworks in the void under Chaos corruption and attack.
Human screams rippled across both realspace and the warp, so shrill and desperate that they seemed to shake the galaxy itself.
"You can hear their suffering, perhaps. But what can you do about it?"
Horus stared into a certain patch of empty void, as though speaking to someone there.
He could feel it all. More than that, he could sense the fury radiating from the Golden Throne, mixed with emotions far more complicated than rage alone.
Then, in a blur, a faint golden figure slowly condensed into being.
The golden form spoke, every single word painfully difficult.
He sounded utterly heartsick.
The Lord of Mankind, the Emperor's phantom, looked at the loathsome fallen primarch before him. His voice trembled with regret, and with the last trace of paternal concern.
"Horus, my son, stop this. Neither we nor humanity should bear such a fate."
Golden tears fell from his eyes.
He spoke as if condemning himself.
"My mistakes led to your betrayal. I let my most trusted son fall to such depths.
Perhaps I should have given you more care, instead of leaving you aside until cracks and hatred grew within your heart..."
Horus stared at the familiar golden figure before him and remembered the first time he had met the Emperor.
A single tear traced down the corner of his eye.
The Dark Emperor's expression did not change much. He merely raised a hand and wiped away that lone tear with his finger.
"So you finally repent?" Horus gave his trademark sneer, his face growing ever more savage. "Did you think I would accept your hypocritical apology, return to your side, and let you control me again?
That nauseating act of yours only makes me despise you more.
You are unworthy of being the Anointed Emperor. Unworthy of being the Lord of Mankind!"
Horus locked eyes with the Emperor's phantom.
Ten thousand years ago or now, it made no difference. He had never feared this so-called Emperor, this so-called father.
The Emperor's pitiful majesty might frighten weaker primarch sons, but it meant nothing to him, the Dark Emperor.
He was nothing more than a shriveled skeleton playing god. What could he possibly do?
Suddenly, the Emperor's phantom changed.
The gentleness vanished from his face. He looked instead like an unshakable king.
"Horus, your betrayal is futile. In the end, you will fail, just as you did ten thousand years ago.
The Savior will stop your advance. He will destroy you and every traitor beside you, and you will face judgment."
"So that is what you rely on now? I never imagined you would fall so low that you need some blond whelp to protect you.
A pity the Savior is not here. Otherwise I would carry his severed head to you myself."
Horus frowned slightly as he looked at the Emperor's change.
But after hearing those words, his disdain only deepened. He did not take a single word to heart.
"You old fool. Since when did you become so stupid and weak?"
Horus stepped closer to the Emperor's projected phantom, his swollen daemonic frame towering over him, contempt written across every line of his face.
At that moment, all he wanted was to humiliate him.
"If you kneel and beg for mercy now, perhaps I'll consider sparing these humans... and those few others..."
But before the chief chosen of Chaos, the Dark Emperor, could finish speaking, he suddenly felt a dreadful force rushing straight at him.
It was so terrifying that his breathing stopped, as if an invisible hand had seized his withered heart.
In that instant, the Emperor's phantom changed again.
Black flames burst wildly into life.
His gaze turned impossibly cruel and cold, as if it had gathered all the brutality and malice in the universe into one pair of eyes.
At the same time, countless voices rang out in the void, calling the being's name and hailing the Dark King.
???
Every hair on Horus's body stood on end.
He staggered backward so fast he nearly left an afterimage behind him. Even the shadowy manifestations of the Chaos Gods behind him broke and fled.
They ran even faster than he did.
"Aahhh!"
Fulgrim, who had only moments ago manifested a phantom to report his victories, let out a shriek so high-pitched it sounded almost feminine.
Then he practically scrambled away on all fours, extinguishing his projection as he fled.
At some point, the Emperor's phantom had shifted, taking on a trace of the Dark King's aspect, plunging the entire Chaos hall into dead silence.
Horus, who stood closest, and who had been hurling abuse at his father only moments before, took the brunt of the psychic shock and was directly frightened out of his wits.
That was unstoppable darkness.
A fatal aura of death.
It was as if, the moment that being truly descended, Horus, the Chaos Gods' manifested powers, and every living thing in the Solar System would be butchered without mercy.
"F-Father?"
Horus's voice trembled, and in sheer terror he instinctively called him father.
In that moment, he remembered the Emperor's paternal majesty, the horrifying might of the Dark King. Anyone who faced it would go numb.
Whether fallen primarchs or Chaos Gods, all feared the Dark King's descent. It would be the most terrible ending possible for both the galaxy and the warp.
"Has the Dark King truly begun to descend?"
The phantom of the Blood God gripped a gigantic axe made of skulls and molten fire, staring at the Emperor's phantom from afar as though prepared to strike at any second.
The other Chaos Gods were even more cowardly, huddling behind the Blood God's projection, uncertain and visibly shaken.
This was only a projection in realspace.
Yet in the warp, a mass of absolute darkness had already appeared, even larger than the twisted shadows of the Chaos Gods themselves, as though it covered endless tracts of the immaterium.
"No. That is not Chaos's destined ending. The final hour has not yet arrived."
The body formed by the Architect of Fate stretched outward and delivered that answer.
But for all the certainty of the words, doubt filled the tone.
Under the watchful eyes of countless beings, some wary and some terrified, the Emperor's dark phantom simply stood there without moving.
His face twisted and shifted as different personas emerged one after another, changing places in constant succession, as if those personalities were struggling endlessly against the darkness inside him.
Across both the galaxy and the warp, Horus, the Chaos Gods, and all the other watching beings stared at that scene in silence, not daring to make a sound.
Hidden in their eyes was the faintest trace of hope. They were practically willing the Emperor's brighter side to win, desperate for it to suppress the Dark King's birth.
It was, to say the least, a complicated feeling.
Fortunately, it did not last long.
Before much time had passed, the Emperor's phantom returned to golden light. But he had exhausted himself. He slowly faded away and sank once more into slumber.
Horus watched the Emperor's phantom vanish, then instinctively wiped the cold sweat from his brow and forced his trembling body still.
He turned and swept his gaze across the now-empty Chaos hall. Seeing that no one else remained to witness what had happened, he finally let out a breath of relief.
That the Dark Emperor himself had been frightened by the False Emperor was a humiliation beyond words. No one besides the Chaos Gods could ever be allowed to know it.
"I... I survived."
Outside the Chaos hall, Erebus had collapsed in the doorway, his legs still trembling uncontrollably.
Thankfully, he had reacted fast enough. The instant he saw that dark phantom, he had crawled right back out.
Otherwise, Horus would surely have ground any witness to that moment to dust.
Not long ago, Erebus had gone in to deliver fresh intelligence, only to have his legs turn weak from the Dark King's aura the moment he stepped inside.
After that, he had used every ounce of strength in his life to suppress his presence, dragging his half-dead legs as he crawled back out.
He had escaped with his life.
Erebus let out a long breath and slowly vanished into the shadows. He decided it would be best to come back later.
That way Horus would not grow suspicious and punish him even more brutally, or simply kill him outright.
For a shameless villain who had committed every imaginable evil, the fact that Erebus had survived the hatred of so many beings for so long proved that he really did have some skill.
Back in the Chaos hall, Horus returned to the throne and resumed the dignity proper to the Dark Emperor.
Thinking back on what had just happened, he shook his head.
"Perhaps the False Emperor truly has gone mad. What a mocking fate. Humanity will either be destroyed by his hand or corrupted by Chaos."
Horus realized that the Emperor was no longer the Lord of Mankind he had once been. He was now a combination of multiple personalities and a dark side, something akin to a warp god.
That realization only hardened his conviction. Perhaps his rebellion ten thousand years ago had been right after all. He had merely failed.
Otherwise, he would have ended the tyrant's rule and destroyed the very source from which the Dark King would one day be born.
Horus lifted his head, his gaze firmer than ever.
No matter what price had to be paid...
He would break into Holy Terra, drag the False Emperor's withered bones from the Throne, and wash away the shame he had suffered.
More importantly, he would prevent the Dark King's birth.
In the air, the Solar System's holographic map kept flashing. Every moment, new points of light marking Imperial defensive positions winked out.
"The Savior... the False Emperor's only real support?" Horus murmured, thinking of something.
Once Terra's outer defenses were destroyed and void superiority was lost, the dreadful firepower stored within Xinlonglin would be able to rain directly onto Terra's surface in a merciless bombardment.
At that point, no matter how many troops or defensive lines the Savior had arranged on Terra, it would all be useless.
That was an attack from a higher dimension of warfare, something no ground defense or army could possibly withstand.
"So what if Terra has hundreds of thousands, or even more, Space Marines?"
Horus let out a cold laugh.
"That would be the Savior's most foolish deployment. They would only become targets."
The Savior was still too young.
In a war on this scale, Space Marines were no longer the decisive factor that determined victory or defeat.
Gathered together like that, they would only be wiped out in one stroke.
...
Mars. Blockade line.
Seven rotten void-whales drifted through the darkness of space.
These special Nurgle warships, each more than ten kilometers long, exuded foul mists without ceasing, while streams of pus poured from them into the void like waterfalls.
"We must destroy the Martian blockade line. Faster. In less than seven hours!"
Mortarion stood at the head of one of the rotten void-whales, staring at the colossal ring-shaped defensive platforms ahead of him, urgency filling his eyes.
He had just sensed the dark aura of the Cursed One, that False Emperor, and the memory of it still left him shaken and deeply wary.
Mortarion feared the Dark King's appearance.
And not just him. The other fallen primarchs did too.
All of them were now accelerating their attacks, increasing both speed and force to a near-mad degree.
The False Emperor, that father of theirs, was already terrifying enough. If the Dark King were to appear, where could any of them possibly run?
They were afraid of getting hit with a doubled dose of dark paternal discipline.
That was why these fallen primarchs, like the Chaos Gods themselves, were so desperate to use the Shadowlight artifact to suppress the Emperor and eliminate the threat of the Dark King.
Anything to avoid taking a dark backhand from the Emperor.
As the rotten void-whales drew closer, Mortarion's astonishing vision finally made out the true appearance of the blockade line.
That was the Imperial fortress-platform defense network he had come to shatter, one of the strongest lines standing in Chaos's way.
???
Mortarion seemed to notice something, and immediately froze.
What was with the huge red 拆 characters painted all over the outer armor of those defensive platforms?!
(End of Chapter)
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