"This life... I really can't go on living like this for even another day."
On the other side, Guilliman sighed heavily.
He couldn't care less about the verbal clash taking place hundreds of thousands of light-years away between Sanguinius and Magnus.
In fact, he was in no mood to pay attention to it at all.
As for how to persuade that obstinate demon brother to redeem himself for humanity, that could be left entirely to Sanguinius to worry about.
Guilliman possessed absolute, unreserved trust in Sanguinius.
As for himself, he still had a mountain of urgent matters to address—the kind that only the Lord Regent of the Imperium had the authority to settle.
The moment the communication ended, Guilliman swiftly opened several faster-than-light channels capable of long-range transmissions.
Hologram projections lit up one by one around his command console, each screen representing a different war zone or a distinct threat.
Intelligence from across the galaxy—information long since collected, archived, and categorized by the Inquisition—now poured in like a breached dam, piling onto the Imperial Regent's desk all at once.
Intricate and chaotic.
It was, to put it simply, excruciatingly difficult to process.
Dealing with this intel was a real headache, but it had to be done.
Guilliman's gaze swept rapidly across the screens. His Primarch-level thought processing speed allowed him to complete a full read and initial assessment of a report within seconds.
The first report came from the direction of the Maelstrom, a handwritten briefing from Lord Commander Solar Macharius.
According to the intelligence, the Warp daemons and Chaos Astartes lurking deep within the Maelstrom, along with xenos pirates completely corrupted by Warp erosion, had launched an all-out offensive.
They were vast in number. Leveraging their familiarity with local Warp routes and planetary hydrology, they moved with extreme speed, using hit-and-run tactics to continuously disrupt the Crusade's advance.
Worse still, some had begun to scatter in all directions, attempting to bypass the blockades set up by the Imperial Crusade forces to launch surprise attacks on neighboring sectors.
Lord Commander Macharius promised in his report that he would focus on resolving this issue in the coming period.
Meanwhile, the Astartes representative, Lufgt Huron, also expressed full support for the operation on behalf of the Astral Claws and other participating Astartes Legions through a brief note attached to the end of the report.
Guilliman merely glanced at the specific battle plan they submitted, grasping the tactical intent within half a second.
Divide and encircle, launch simultaneous strikes across multiple points, and utilize the calmed Warp environment to counter high mobility with high mobility.
A clean, decisive plan.
Guilliman immediately set the report aside.
At least for now, the Maelstrom theater did not require his extra concern.
At the thought of this, Guilliman could not help feeling somewhat relieved.
Fortunately, the Legion of the Damned—the grandest repository of talent in the entire history of the Imperium—existed, and Adam had pulled them back from the dust of history using his reality-warping abilities.
Those heroes who had once fallen across various eras were now serving the Imperium of Man once more in living flesh.
Were it not for this, he would be several times busier than he was right now.
Withdrawing his thoughts, Guilliman picked up the second report.
Naturally, this report concerned the Necron threat, which held the highest priority at present.
Within the Imperium's domain, his brothers Ferrus Manus and Sanguinius were each commanding massive expeditionary fleets to deal with the largest, gradually awakening Necron Dynasties.
The tomb fleets commanded by those Necron Phaeron and Overlords, along with technology that surpassed humanity by untold ages, indeed required commanders of the Primarch level to handle properly.
As for those smaller, newly awakened Necron Dynasties, they relied on the mobility of their inertialess drives to pillage Imperial worlds everywhere, jumping from one star system to another like swarms of locusts.
Guilliman pulled up the holographic star chart.
On the map, dense concentrations of red glowing dots—representing activation signals of small-scale Necron Dynasties—spanned the entire galaxy.
Those red dots were still increasing at a slow but steady pace.
Facing such a troubling situation, Guilliman did not hesitate in the slightest.
His fingers swiped rapidly across the holographic interface, inputting redeployment command after redeployment command into the strategic system.
However, as his finger glided across a certain star sector, Guilliman's movements suddenly paused.
"This isn't right," he muttered under his breath.
Several high-ranking officers and scribes in the command post immediately looked up, turning their eyes toward their Regent.
Yet, Guilliman did not elaborate further.
He simply processed the thought in his mind.
Faintly, Guilliman caught the scent of something amiss.
His eyes narrowed slightly.
It was an intuition like that between archenemies—just as Ferrus could feel the presence of Fulgrim, and Sanguinius could sense Angron—Guilliman, at this moment, detected the presence of another hand hidden behind this complex maze of intelligence.
Something was covertly influencing the course of all these events.
But what use was such a judgment? And who was behind it? Could it truly be the name he was thinking of?
Guilliman's brow furrowed tightly.
Still, he was never one to let hatred and prejudice dictate his judgment.
King Konor and Lady Tarasha Euten of Ultramar—his adoptive parents—had spent their lives teaching him restraint and pragmatism.
It was precisely those teachings that transformed Guilliman from a killing machine filled with fanaticism and coldness into the outstanding statesman and commander he was today.
He would never allow his personal emotions to impact his upcoming decisions.
Guilliman took a deep breath, expelling those extraneous thoughts from his mind, and continued scanning through the intelligence.
Then, the red alarm on the command console rang out once more.
The sound was sharp and urgent, echoing under the vault of the command post.
Startled, Guilliman immediately raised his head to look.
Then, he released a soft sigh of relief.
This was a report sent from the Webway front.
Tribune Diocletian of the Adeptus Custodes reported the latest progress of the Webway offensive—the Custodes were steadily pushing forward, having cleared Chaos forces from multiple main arteries. However, the internal terrain of the Webway was far more complex than anticipated. Coupled with xenos and daemon forces that had lurked within for ten thousand years acting in mutual support, executing the next phase of the plan—locating Commorragh—might require more time.
Guilliman simply annotated the order with a brief "Continue the advance," set the report aside, and picked up the next one.
Looking down at it, a relieved smile finally broke across his face.
How had even the Orks joined in on the chaos?
Orks had always been one of the most tiresome creatures and enemies to the Imperium of Man.
Unlike the Necrons, who were new foes from an ancient era, or Chaos, which was an unholy taint from beyond the Veil—the Orks had been there since the very first day humanity stepped into the sea of stars.
Their entangled history with the Imperium was even longer than that of Chaos.
From the Ullanor Crusade during the Great Crusade to the War of the Beast later on, these spore-reproducing, brutal creatures seemed endless, constantly appearing in the most inconvenient places at the most inopportune times.
Unfolded before Guilliman on the holographic projection was a massive Ork Attack Moon.
Its volume was colossal enough to occupy the entire visual field of the screen. Crude metal plates and rough, giant ramming prows were haphazardly welded together on its surface, forming a ferocious, snarling face.
It floated silently in the void, resembling an ancient leviathan freshly torn from the Warp.
Guilliman's gaze scanned the caption text of the image, his eyebrow raising slightly.
[Location of Imagery: Armageddon.]
Having lived through the Great Crusade, he recalled the place after just a moment's retrieval from his memory.
So that was it.
It was this place.
Then it was no surprise at all.
Guilliman tapped the holographic interface lightly with his finger, marking the intelligence report with the highest priority, and dispatched the candidate he deemed most suitable without a second thought.
---
At this very moment, Armageddon.
On the surface.
"It seems we are fighting side-by-side once again," Sibyll said with a smile.
Her fingers were carrying out a final gear check at her waist.
As a psyker whose power far exceeded Alpha-level, Sibyll had gained immeasurable growth during her previous journey through the Crystal Labyrinth.
Her psychokinesis at this point was so powerful that describing it as plucking stars and reaching for the moon was no exaggeration.
Even so, she retained the ingrained habits from her time as an Inquisitor—personally inspecting every piece of equipment before heading onto the battlefield.
Beside her stood Commissar Yarrick, his expression stern.
Returning to Armageddon—the old deployment post where he had spent decades—did not cause a single ripple of emotion on the veteran commissar's face.
He remained deadpan, his sharp eyes staring straight ahead, as if prepared at any second to face an enemy even more ruthless than before.
His iconic bionic eye rested quietly at his side, while his naturally imposing aura was enough to make any soldier standing before him involuntarily straighten their spine.
The two stepped forward together toward the command platform.
The crisp clatter of their boot heels echoed through the air of the command post.
Below the platform, soldiers of the Armageddon 262nd Steel Legion—originally commanded by Yarrick and having charged into Nurgle's Garden alongside him during the Cadia Campaign—stood in neat formations, their military demeanor as solemn as ever.
Beside them, warriors of the Tempestus Scions led by Sibyll were likewise arrayed in formation, their faces resolute.
Looking as far as the eye could see across the staging grounds of Armageddon, dense ranks of military formations extended all the way to the horizon.
An iron tide reflected a cold sheen under the sunlight, while the battle banners of the Imperial Guard snapped in the wind.
In the far reaches of orbit, the Imperial Navy's transport fleet was unloading the final batches of supplies from the sky.
A grand war was on the verge of breaking out.
"'Ghazghkull' Mag Uruk Thraka?"
Muttering the Ork name that had already surfaced during the Ordo Xenos's preliminary investigation, Yarrick's gaze grew increasingly razor-sharp.
"Sebastian Yarrick?"
Meanwhile, on the other side, within that Ork Attack Moon, the colossal behemoth surrounded by countless equally massive Ork Warbosses—the legendary "Ork Prophet" Ghazghkull—opened his eyes as well.
At almost the exact same instant, both spoke simultaneously.
"I sure hope you're a worthy opponent."