Chapter 365: Khorne's Blessing, Part 2
Chaos Gods were strange creatures. Sometimes a god acted like a cold, distant ex who wouldn't budge no matter how much devotion you threw at them.
But the second a god spotted some buff, tanned gym bro type, they'd latch on and refuse to let go, no matter how hard you tried to shake them off.
Exactly like now. The warlord had been groveling to Khorne for who knows how long, and all he'd gotten for it was a random overdose of power that turned him into a Chaos Spawn.
Kian hadn't said a single word to the guy, and Khorne just went ahead and slapped a blessing on him anyway.
"Screw you, Khorne! Get the hell away from me! I don't want your blessing!!"
Kian roared out loud, feeling his muscles and bones tearing apart, his whole body swelling under the strain.
That was just how these gods operated. Domineering CEO falls for the delivery boy, no explanation given, no refusal accepted.
Kian gritted his teeth, forcing his way through the agony of his own body expanding.
He could feel it, Khorne's raw, savage Warp energy pouring straight into him, staining his mind.
That pure, frenzied hunger for slaughter was tearing through his psyche, unraveling him from the inside.
Sure, he'd anointed himself with the Coolant Balm earlier, buffed himself with a strong sanctified state, but that flimsy protection was never going to hold against the actual god himself.
Kian couldn't take it anymore, and collapsed face-down on the ground.
He watched his own hand thicken, the skin turning red, faint scales pushing through, nails sharpening into points, edging toward something daemonic.
Kian bellowed, "EMPEROR!! Khorne's trying to poach me! Do something about it, damn it, or I'm about to get cattle-branded!!"
His stamina and willpower, against a god's direct outpouring, were like a tiny rowboat caught in a hurricane, moments from capsizing.
Right as his mind teetered on the edge of collapse, Kian let out one final desperate shout.
He didn't expect much to come of it, honestly. The Emperor was a busy man.
But to his complete shock, a burst of golden light erupted out of nowhere from his own body, pushing back the daemonic transformation already creeping over him, restoring him to human shape.
Kian felt it, a golden psychic force wrapping around his mind, giving him a foothold to breathe inside that red, blood-soaked psychic assault.
He let out a breath of relief. The Emperor had answered.
Guessed he actually had some pull with the Big Guy after all. A god trying to poach him, and the Emperor personally stepped in.
A gold current and a red current of psychic force wrapped around his body, both pulling at him at once.
These were two cosmic-scale entities, beings who could crush a planet with a flick of their fingers.
The Master of Mankind versus the God of Slaughter and War, both of them fighting over this one little piece they'd both taken an interest in.
With his own puny willpower caught between two of the biggest players in the universe, Kian's mind spun into a dizzy haze.
If not for the Emperor's psychic force shielding his mind, his soul probably would've been torn apart already.
Some indeterminate amount of time passed, and Kian's blurry vision suddenly shifted, resolving into some bizarre, surreal scene.
To his left stood a dark-skinned, gold-crowned tsundere little girl, gripping his arm, tiny fang biting her lip, glaring at him furiously as she dragged him toward herself.
To his right stood a towering, red-skinned, ripped gym-girl with an intensely predatory look in her eyes, both hands clamped on his shoulders, pulling him her way just as hard.
"Ohh dear, this, this... two lovely ladies, however am I supposed to choose?"
Kian found himself facing a genuinely major life decision. Go with the dark-skinned tsundere gold-crowned loli, or the towering red-skinned ripped gym-girl?
But Kian was a steadfast, loyal soldier of the Imperium, nothing like those keyboard warriors online who spout "loyalty" every other sentence and then bail the second someone asks if they'll actually go fight for the Imperium.
Old Kian here had put his actual body on the line, come to the Imperium in person, joined an Inquisitor's retinue, and served humanity for real.
There was no way a mere red-skinned gym-girl was going to make Old Kian break.
Kian shook loose, casting off the red gym-girl's grip.
"Sorry, Khorne-chan, I already belong to Emperor-chan. Please don't contact me again, I don't want him getting the wrong idea."
The dark-skinned gold-crowned tsundere loli lit up with triumph, wrapping both arms around Kian's and snorting smugly at the red gym-girl.
The two of them walked off hand in hand, happily, into a golden sun.
The red gym-girl watched their backs recede into the distance, eyes burning with resentment and fury.
"I finally fall for someone, and you make me lose THIS badly? Ugh!"
With that, the red gym-girl launched a cowardly sneak attack, swinging both hands and firing a beam of red light straight into Kian's body.
Kian yelped and blacked out completely, and right before the lights went fully out, he caught one last startled cry from Emperor-chan.
...
Some indeterminate time later, Kian's consciousness slowly stirred back to life, and when he opened his eyes, he found himself inside a tent.
His thoughts slowly reassembled themselves, piecing together the situation.
Probably, after he'd passed out, Luca's forces had recovered him and brought him here to rest.
"Wait, Emperor-chan! Where'd you—"
Kian looked around, saw no trace of the dark-skinned gold-crowned tsundere loli anywhere, then smacked himself in the face.
"Damn it, what the hell kind of dream was that, getting fought over by a tsundere loli and a gym-girl?"
Kian shook his head at himself, thoroughly unimpressed. But the moment he sat up, something felt off. His body felt way too light, and his field of view was all wrong.
He got to his feet immediately, staring at the furnishings around him, which suddenly all looked smaller, and the strange new elevation of his own perspective, this was...
He raised both hands and looked at them. They'd gotten noticeably thicker, more powerful. He swore there were abs on his fingers now.
Before, his hands had just been solidly built. Now they looked like something out of a Primarch's Regent-tier statue.
"No way. Don't tell me the god's blessing still stuck to me after all that."
He muttered to himself, hurriedly pulled up his system display, and his vision went dark.
Right there in his status window sat a new entry: Khorne's Blessing.
He mentally selected it to check the details.
Due to specific events, you have drawn the attention of a Greater Power, Khorne. He has bestowed his blessing upon you, and expects you to continue fighting to bring him further pleasure.
Blessing effects: Strength +8, Endurance +8, Corruption Accumulation Rank 1.
Corruption Accumulation Rank 1: gain 1 point of Corruption per second.
Kian's teeth ached just reading it. Strength and endurance boosts, sure, that counted as a positive blessing, and honestly matched Khorne's brand well enough.
But that ongoing corruption tick was genuinely awful. One point per second, indefinitely.
If that number ever crossed a hundred, was he going to sprout horns and turn into some kind of daemon himself?
And he had no idea how long he'd actually been unconscious. Had the corruption already stacked sky high by now?
He hurriedly checked his health status window for the corruption stat, and let out a breath of relief. It read zero.
Or rather, a dynamic zero. One second the value ticked up to one, and the next it dropped straight back down to zero.
Something was actively clearing the corruption off him as fast as it accumulated. Looking closer, Kian noticed a second entry sitting right beside Khorne's Blessing, labeled the Emperor's Blessing.
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