Chapter 166: Borrowing Too Much Power, Even the Gods Will Become Weak
Konrad Curze lay on the medical bed, his face ashen. His breathing came in shallow, labored gasps, his brow furrowed as though trapped in an endless nightmare. His hands hung weak at his sides, fingernails stained with blackish-green poison.
Francis stood beside the bed in silence, studying the Night Haunter.
"Let's just amputate! If we drag this out any longer, not only will he need an amputation, but he'll also be genetically castrated, and that would be a net loss..."
The surrounding Night Lords collapsed in despair. Some had prosthetic limbs themselves. All had killed countless enemies. But they still wished their father was whole. Were they destined only to have an incomplete Primarch?
Sevatar lowered his head. "Is there really no other way?" His voice came out hoarse. The others bowed their heads as well.
Francis stared in silence.
He sighed. "There's one more way, but you must keep it absolutely secret. You cannot speak of it."
The Night Lords reacted with shock. They nodded frantically, their eyes gleaming with hope.
Francis no longer hesitated. He pulled out the mixed Primarch's blood and drank it in one gulp.
Gulp, gulp, gulp.
Golden light enveloped his body. Psychic energy erupted like a volcanic explosion, shaking everything in the medical room. Francis's form changed. His face became majestic and sacred. Golden light emanated from every inch of his skin.
"Holy crap! It's the Emperor! It's the Emperor!"
"Ah! Ah! How is this possible!"
"Impossible!"
The Night Lords screamed in shock.
Francis raised his hand, remembering the Emperor's gravitas. Golden psychic flames surged like a torrent toward Konrad Curze's injured arm.
The Chaos corruption twisted frantically under the cleansing flames, emitting piercing screams and resisting with desperate fury.
Francis watched the corrupt energy retreat. His face lit up. "You beast! Where do you think you're going! Take a punch from old Francis! Hah!"
The Night Lords grew excited. "It's working! It's going to work!"
Francis exerted more force. Then his body weakened suddenly. He returned to his original form.
The Night Lords looked sorrowful again. "Father doesn't believe it again!"
"No! This consumption is too fast!" Francis said in surprise. The corrupt energy began re-infecting Konrad Curze. He couldn't hesitate.
Gulp, gulp, gulp!
Francis transformed into the Emperor again. "Charge!"
The golden flames burned once more, repelling the corrupt energy.
The Night Lords became excited again. "Oh! It's the Emperor again!"
"Father is saved!"
"Why do you say 'again'?"
The psychic flames repelled the corruption once more. Then Francis returned to his original form again.
The Night Lords fell into sadness. "Father...!"
"I'm going to—" Francis almost cursed, but the situation was urgent. He gulped down more blood.
Again, the corrupt energy was forced back to the core area. Again, the Night Lords cheered.
Again! The energy is depleted. He returned to normal.
Konrad Curze's face went from ruddy to ashen.
After repeating this seven or eight times, Francis gritted his teeth. He stomped his foot and growled, "I'm doing it!"
Gulp, gulp, gulp, gulp.
He drank all the blood in the canister. He transformed into the Emperor again. But the psychic flames wouldn't emit.
"No way! Old man, you're getting weak too fast!" Francis looked on with a depressed expression. The Night Lords beside him, now numb, saluted in resignation.
At the same time, in the depths of the Warp, the Emperor battled three figures.
Every punch, every dodge, every wisp of psychic radiance carried world-shattering power. Twisted storms raged around them. The void echoed with distorted screams and mocking laughter.
"We won't let you go back!" The first figure roared, wielding a great blade burning with blood-flames. Each swing tore bloody gashes in the Warp.
The second figure's form constantly shifted, emitting eerie laughter that shook the mind. "Just wait! Your Imperium will eventually be destroyed." Dozens of psychic rays transformed into hideous chains, assailing the Emperor from all directions.
The third figure's stench permeated the entire battlefield. He wielded a massive, rusted scythe. Rotting maggots poured from the cracks, attempting to devour the Emperor's golden radiance.
The Emperor swung His sword, severing one of the bloody gashes. He released golden psychic energy to repel the chains. His movements paused for an instant.
His body swayed violently. His steps faltered. He almost got hit by the scythe.
Disbelief flashed in the Emperor's eyes. He could feel part of His power being forcibly drawn away.
He tried to perceive the source. The first figure saw His distraction and roared, lunging forward with his great blade.
The Emperor released a psychic shockwave, shattering the chains. His movements paused again. His body swayed violently. The psychic flames momentarily weakened.
He swung His sword, splitting the toxic cloud. His legs suddenly went soft. He stumbled, almost getting caught by the scythe's aftershock.
He had thought that after losing His humanity, He would feel emotions less and less. Right now, however, He really wanted to hit someone.
It was unbelievable! Every time He gained the upper hand, someone interfered. He had to find out who it was.
When He returned to Terra, He would deal with them!
Under intense fury, terrifying black energy erupted. The three figures retreated instantly.
The Emperor had a chance to investigate. Following the direction of the psychic energy, He saw Francis. His head almost exploded.
He roared in anger. "Francis! What in the Warp are you doing!"
The Emperor's voice boomed like a bell, making Francis's head ring. He pointed to Konrad Curze on the nearby medical bed.
As the Emperor's energy entered Konrad Curze's body, the Night Haunter visibly recovered.
But at that moment, the green figure doubled the Chaos energy pouring into Konrad Curze's body.
Francis stared in silence.
In the Warp, the figures became entangled in battle once again.
On Konrad Curze's body, the corrupt Chaos power continued to erode. It burst out of his arm and corroded his body!
The Night Lords felt despair. They had a strong feeling their father was likely to be lost.
Francis slammed his fist on the table. The opponent was too despicable. "What in the damn Warp is this mess!"
He rushed out frantically. "You guys watch Konrad Curze, I'm going to get the antidote!"
In the corridors of the Blackstone Fortress, Francis's hurried footsteps echoed on the metal floor. He rushed past like the wind.
The laboratory door opened with a low rumble. Francis stepped inside. With a flick of his hand, the door slammed shut behind him, cutting off the outside noise.
Magnus looked at the Soul Drinkers beside him. They looked bewildered as well. He didn't ask aloud. Things were clearly serious.
The space was brightly lit, filled with robotic arms, experimental benches, and suspended organic tissues. The air was thick with the smell of disinfectant and burning metal.
"It's just corruption, isn't it? Let's do it!"
Francis threw ingredients into a large pot. "Eyestalker, Hrud, Navigator, Catachan Toads, Vesken, Enslaver, Goliath, Orks, Tenfold Mutation Factor, Universal Supplement, Chimera Fusion Agent..." He stirred them constantly, then placed the mixture in a cultivation pod.
The complexity required him to activate the holographic projection on the experimental bench. Three-dimensional flesh construct designs flashed in crimson. He destroyed and rebuilt them instantly.
With every modification, his movements grew more fanatical. He muttered to himself in a low voice.
He broke apart countless sets of genomes. Then he forcibly fused them! If they couldn't be fused, he added encrypted genes from his own blood and continued the forbidden fusion.
Strange whispers emanated from inside the cultivation pod, murmurs from unknown flesh.
Under continuous catalysis, Francis's anti-Warp flesh living armor was completed and born of his anger.
It stood over ten meters tall. Thousands of tiny eyes appeared all over its body. Three massive eyeballs dominated its head. Countless wriggling tentacles enveloped its form.
The ends of the tentacles were covered with sturdy carapace-like structures and incredibly sharp mouthparts.
Hiss.
Over a dozen auxiliary brain devices opened on its back. New brain wetware continuously gestated deep within the tentacles.
Francis rushed out of the laboratory, still stained with fresh blood and the scent of experimental chemicals.
"Immediately adjust course! Destination: Nurgle's Garden! Give me full power, we must arrive as quickly as possible!"
Magnus stood nearby. "This is too dangerous! You saw what happened before, you almost got caught! We can't stop them!"
Francis sighed with a tired expression. "Do you think I want to? But if we don't go, who knows how much longer Konrad Curze can hold on. If the old man keeps fighting them, Konrad Curze will lose his life. This time, we won't cause major destruction. I'll infiltrate alone, and you'll provide support from outside. Don't worry, this is a sure thing!"
A massive amount of information hit Magnus. His brain stopped functioning, still trying to digest the recent content.
The engines of the Blackstone Fortress roared to life. The massive warship began adjusting its direction, heading toward the corrupt depths of the Warp.
Green Warp rifts opened around the hull. The stench of Nurgle's Garden could almost be smelled.
Whoosh!
The Blackstone Fortress slowly approached Nurgle's Garden. The Warp rifts gradually closed, revealing a nauseating sight.
The entire garden seemed like an endlessly rotting land. Yellowish-green toxic fog permeated the sky, emitting a pungent stench. The ground was covered with festering pus pools and strangely wriggling fleshy vegetation. Every inch of land dripped with pus, emitting disgusting hissing sounds.
Tall, withered trees were laden with rotting corpses. Their skin was greenish. Green pus overflowed from their eye sockets, as if about to drip at any moment.
[End of Chapter]
Chapter 167: The Relaxing Feeling Unique to Gardens
Sizzle~
The hatch on the back of the flesh armor hissed open, revealing a writhing mass of pale tissue and strange tendrils that quested blindly into the darkness.
Pfft~
Francis stepped into the cavity. Immediately, countless protrusions latched onto his body, trembling with what felt like hunger.
They pulled him deeper as he descended, each tendril searching for its master, yearning to reconnect with him.
Finally, he was fully inside. The hatch sealed behind him with a wet, organic sound.
The flesh-and-blood construct, more than ten meters tall, rose to its full height. Thousands of compound eyes blazed with bioluminescent light as it released a deep, contemplative murmur.
When Francis emerged from the laboratory, he dragged countless tentacles behind him. The Thousand Sons warriors froze, their discipline shattered by the sight.
For a moment, they couldn't distinguish between the boy they knew and something far more profane.
His appearance was nightmarish. A single glance at his form made them feel mentally violated, as if their minds had brushed against something obscene. When they looked back at the entrance to the Garden, they were startled to find it seemed almost clean by comparison.
"Primarch! Is Lord Francis unharmed?" The warriors' voices wavered, uncertain as they looked toward Magnus.
"I... I don't know," Magnus replied, his tone darkened by concern.
He stared at the armored form, visibly alarmed. "I sense abominable psionic fluctuations from it, something utterly emotionless, driven only by base hunger."
"What exactly did he create?" one warrior asked.
Magnus's gaze remained fixed on Francis as he moved toward the Gates of Corruption. The Primarch's expression betrayed deep unease at what he could sense through the warp.
The Gates of Corruption loomed ahead, constructed from ossified bone and decaying flesh, emanating a reek of putrescence so thick it seemed almost solid. Diseased plants clustered around the entrance, their leaves crawling with insects.
"Try this strain on me," a green daemon called out to its companion as they emerged from the gates.
"This is the most classic plague from the benevolent Father. Once someone gets infected, dehydration takes them."
"Yours won't work, it's too slow," the other replied. "Use mine. Mine kills someone within seven steps!"
"Heh. So your plague ends before it even spreads."
Just then, the first daemon bumped directly into Francis's armor. Its intestines fell to the ground.
"Are you blind?!" it shrieked. "I'm the top salesman this month!"
The other daemon began to respond but stopped mid-sentence. It slowly raised its head and looked up at the giant mech looming before it, more than ten meters tall, covered in three enormous eyes and writhing tentacles.
"A GHOST!!" it screamed.
"Why is there a ghost here? HOW!!"
"It isn't sientific."
"There's a GHOST!! " other daemons shrieked, their voices rising in panic.
Francis remained silent, watching the creatures scatter with cold detachment. As expected, he thought. These devils are all cowards; they've even learned to play the victim card.
The tentacles wrapped around the first daemon and crushed it instantly.
Pfft!
It exploded like a bursting pastry, its pus sliding into the mouthparts of the tentacles.
Through their shared psychic connection, Francis sensed everything: the taste, the texture, the smell.
It stinks! So salty! Sticky, like eating aged stinky tofu.
For a moment, the calm armor began to tremble. Countless tentacles clinging to its surface twitched with sudden excitement. Francis's eyes widened behind the pilot chamber.
"Oh no! I was too hasty! The impurity genes weren't completely removed!"
Finally, the mouthparts on the countless tentacles released a low roar and waved wildly in the air.
Whoosh!!
The armor became like a wild horse, charging madly through the garden.
Everything in its path, pathogens, Nurgle cultists, minor daemons, was grabbed by the tentacles and pulled into the writhing depths before they could scream.
With each absorption, the armor expanded further, becoming increasingly monstrous and enormous.
...
Not far away, Typhon was directing his followers to build an altar. Daemons sat obediently, listening to his words.
"Our benevolent Father will grant you endless life!" he proclaimed.
"The Father will give you bodies that will never fall to disease."
"Our benevolent Father will..." He paused, producing a bowl of green liquid from the altar. "Drink this, and you'll become stronger."
Typhon poured the liquid carefully and handed it to the believers, speaking softly.
"Come. Let us drink this cup together."
Ton ton ton~
The believers drank with eyes gleaming with fanaticism. Their screams and the splash of liquids quickly replaced their chants, leaving only yellowish-green pus in their wake.
Typhon shook his head in disappointment at the sight.
"Alas, you all lack faith. You haven't fully embraced the Father's love, which is why you're like this," he said calmly. "However, it's alright. Those who come after will serve your benevolent Father."
He scooped up the remains from the ground and poured them back into the altar.
"Indeed, the world still needs us to vigorously spread the Father's word. They have no idea of his greatness."
He paused, lost in thought. "Us..."
Just as Typhon settled into his contemplation, a loud shout came from the side.
"Get out of the way!"
The noise infuriated Typhon. He turned to reprimand the intruder, but the moment he did, a massive shadow fell across him. He looked up and saw a giant-eyed monster, easily twenty meters tall, covered in tentacles, looming above.
It ran over him in an instant, leaving only scattered scraps of power armor in its wake.
"Stop! Stop right now!" Francis gritted his teeth and tried to exert control over the armor, but it almost completely ignored his commands.
The tentacles continued their frenzied consumption, his orders becoming distant echoes beneath the chorus of satisfied feeding.
Along the way, tentacles overturned the altars of Nurgle's followers, tore apart the daemons who worshipped there, and devoured them along with their offerings.
Like a raging flood, the tentacles swept away decaying plants and pools of pus.
With a whoosh, the giant tentacle monster began to roll and spin wildly through the garden like a massive spinning top, crashing through everything in its path.
Rotigus squatted by the pond of rotting flesh, where viscous pus flowed, and disgusting foam floated across the surface. Occasionally, a decaying corpse surfaced from the depths. He had waited here for an entire month for new subordinates to emerge, he wanted to launch an expedition for his beloved Father and prove who was the best.
Thinking of this, he excitedly tapped his stomach teeth, picked at one, and saw that it was stuffed with a mouse.
Puff puff puff~!
As daemons were about to emerge from the water, a gust of black wind blew past him. He blinked, and the pond in front of him was dry. Nothing remained inside.
Rotigus roared in immense anguish.
"Aaaaaah! Who! Who stole my people?!"
"Damn it!!! You beast!!!"
"I'm going to kill you!!!"
As he was about to seize someone else's pond of rotting flesh, he heard the same scream echoing around him.
Looking about, he saw that all twenty ponds had been devoured, and even half of the daemons guarding them had disappeared.
"Brute!!!" Rotigus bellowed.
"They're utter beasts!!! This must be a trick by those blue-haired bastards!!!"
"We must get our revenge!!! Kill those bastards!!!"
Rotigus roared in fury, leading the remaining daemons as he charged toward the crystal labyrinth.
At this moment, Francis's flesh armor had grown rapidly, like an inflating balloon, resembling a creature that could never be satisfied.
The armor's form became increasingly grotesque, barely recognizable as something that had once possessed any coherent structure.
Sitting inside, Francis felt as if he had been forced to drink three large bowls of soy milk. It was overwhelming and nauseating.
"I told you to stop!!!" he shouted.
"STOOOPPPP IITTTTT!!" However, he felt like he was on a roller coaster, drifting wildly through the garden in all directions.
Francis's enormous roar woke Mortarion, who had been sleeping beside the Plagueflower field. He hurriedly rubbed his eyes, confused.
"Huh? Am I homesick? Why do I hear Francis's voice?" he muttered.
"This must be a hallucination," he decided, patting his face. "I am scaring myself."
He accidentally dropped a piece of flesh. He quickly picked it up and put it in his mouth. "I can't waste it. Our bodies and hair are given to us by our Father, and we can't let our resources go to outsiders."
He then leaned against a tree and closed his eyes to sleep.
The plants here were extremely morbid and mutated, with petals composed of fragments of rotting flesh, emitting a cloying, sweet stench. The air was filled with dizzying, toxic gases.
This is perfect for helping me sleep, Mortarion thought contentedly. And the sickly bugs on the ground give me a massage every now and then. This is wonderful.
"Mortarion! You fool! I warned you, stupid, and you still fell for it!" Francis's voice came again, then disappeared in a flash.
Mortarion suddenly opened his eyes as a bold idea popped into his mind.
"Do you think I still care about the Emperor? But I have already taken on the form of the benevolent Father, how can I still think about him?" he muttered defensively.
"He's the one who interrupted my duel with my adoptive father. I can't possibly care about him."
"Absolutely impossible! I hate him so much!"
He didn't notice that without the giant corpse flower, the place no longer smelled quite so foul.
"Mortarion! Get out of the way!!" Francis's voice rang out again.
This time, Mortarion didn't even blink. He muttered to himself instead.
"It's all an illusion. It's all an illusion."
"It's all a test from my benevolent Father. I don't care at all."
"Absolutely not... Aa..."
Before he could finish speaking, he felt as if he had been struck by a Titan and was sent flying. He let out an extremely painful scream.
Bang!
Mortarion fell directly onto the temple spire. The massive, sharp Gothic roof pierced through his body instantly. He tried to struggle for a moment, but eventually drifted off to sleep.
"Mmm, the wind on the roof smells wonderfully pungent," he murmured contentedly.
"Not bad."
Deep within the decaying forest, low roars and the crackling sounds of consumption echoed continuously.
Tangled, Francis's flesh-and-blood armor was devouring rotting trees. The armor's tentacles, like countless hungry serpents, coiled around decaying trunks and tore long pieces away, swallowing the pus- and germ-filled wood directly into the depths of the construct.
The giant trees let out piercing screams. "Aaaaaaah!!!"
The gnawing sound was like bones cracking, terrifying in its persistence.
Francis "..."
From his current perspective, he estimated that the armor had grown to over thirty meters in length. It was covered with countless gaping, bloody eyes and sharp tentacles.
The sensation of uncontrolled growth pressed against his consciousness.
I was trying to sneak in to find some antidote, but somehow...
Sizzle~
A secondary brain activated on the armor. It had undergone enough corruption and transformed into a chaotic mass, then fell to the ground.
Immediately afterward, the armor produced another secondary brain and placed it in the original position.
[End of Chapter]
Want to read more than 50+ chapters right now!
patreon.com/cw/Mr_UmU
https://www.patreon.com/Mr_UmU
____
Want bonus chapters? You got it.
Goal: 350 – Achieved: 329 = 2 Bonus Chapters
📌 1 Power Stone on the Book Page = 100 on Chapter Pages!
!! VISIT the BOOK PAGE to donate your Power Stone.