Center of the Industrial Zone Battlefield.
Twenty Knight Mechs were still fighting fiercely. Half an hour ago, there were thirty-three.
Landon Atens sat inside the cockpit of the Dominus-class Castellan Iron Guard. The wailing of the Machine Spirit transmitted directly into his brain through his neural interface.
It was the trembling of deep-seated terror.
"The Machine Spirit is displeased..." The mechanical voice of the Tech-Priest in the co-pilot seat trembled. The cyborg was desperately manipulating the control console, trying to stabilize the erratic data streams. "Warp entity interference intensity... has reached 400% of the Machine Spirit's maximum tolerance!"
"I know!"
Landon gritted his teeth and pushed the control stick.
The eighteen-meter-tall titan of steel sidestepped, the Slaughterer of Fury's great-axe grazing right past its ion shield.
The skulls strung upon the axe blade let out ear-piercing shrieks. The sound instantly caused three separate electrical sparks to explode from the dashboard inside the cockpit.
"Tertiary energy bay damaged! Right leg servo-motor efficiency dropped by forty percent!"
"Shut up! Keep it steady!"
Landon stared at the red daemon on the holographic screen.
The sixteen-meter-tall Slaughterer of Fury was currently standing atop the wreckage of three Knight Mechs.
They were the Paladin Ironblood Guardian, the Warglaive Unyielding Will, and another Warglaive, Oath of Vigilance—all hacked to pieces within the span of two minutes.
Their ion shields had been as fragile as soap bubbles before that axe blade.
Once the ion shields shattered, what followed was pure butchery.
"This defies science..."
Landon muttered.
He was an elite nurtured by House Atens, studying Knight Mech operation, tactics, and mechanical principles since childhood.
Not a single technical manual inherited from the Great Crusade era, locked away in the family vaults, had ever recorded this kind of attack method.
"My lord, this is not science." The Tech-Priest's voice carried a hint of dread. "This is the malice... of the Warp. This Warp entity seems to abhor thought, abhor precision, abhor all orderly mechanical creations. Its very existence is a blasphemy against the Machine Spirit."
The Slaughterer of Fury seemed to hear their conversation.
It turned its head, three blood-red eyes locking onto Iron Guard.
The daemon whispered. Its voice bypassed all soundproofing equipment, echoing directly inside the cockpit. "I am going to dig you... out of there..."
It stepped forward.
Thirty meters with a single stride, cracking the earth beneath its hooves.
Landon reacted with extreme speed. The thermal cannon on Iron Guard's left arm charged up, and the disruption field on its right-arm Power Sword flared to maximum.
But the daemon didn't even try to block.
It simply opened its maw and unleashed a silent roar.
ROAR!
There was no sound, but there was a physical impact.
The intensity of its Khornate aura of slaughter spiked instantaneously.
Inside the cockpit, Landon felt as if his brain had been struck by a sledgehammer. Warm liquid gushed from his nose.
Even more terrifying was the feedback from his neural interface. The Machine Spirit was screaming.
It wasn't an alarm for a mechanical failure, but a form of biological terror.
Iron Guard's movements froze.
The disruption field of the Power Sword flickered erratically, and the charge progress bar of the thermal cannon began to reverse.
"No..."
Landon watched the red daemon drawing closer on the holographic screen, watched it raise its great-axe.
"Initiating... emergency ejection protocol..."
The Tech-Priest's voice was stuttering.
"No!" Landon roared. "A Knight of House Atens... never turns his back to the enemy!"
But before he could finish his sentence, the sound of tearing metal suddenly erupted from the roof of the cockpit.
A hand covered in red scales and burning with fury ripped through twenty centimeters of composite armor, tearing open the roof of Iron Guard's cockpit like peeling back the lid of a tin can.
Landon looked up.
He saw the canine face of the Slaughterer of Fury, its grin splitting all the way to its ears, and three eyes overflowing with pure lust for slaughter.
"Found you..."
The daemon said.
Then it reached its other hand in, reaching for Landon.
Right at that moment.
"By the bloodline of Psykers! By the souls of three hundred Psykers! In the name of the Emperor and Mankind!"
Riley Conmo's voice echoed across the battlefield.
Landon snapped his head to the side. Through the viewing port on the side of the cockpit, he saw the position where Riley was hovering in the sky erupt with unprecedented psychic brilliance.
That light was no longer pale gold.
It was a blinding white, as if trying to purify the entire world.
The blood seeping from Riley's seven orifices was no longer red, but burned with white-gold flames.
Her body was disintegrating. Starting from her fingertips, her skin, muscle, and bone were turning into motes of light inch by inch.
But the expression on her face was... peaceful.
She even wore a faint smile.
"Psionic Detonation!"
Scoria Kane's mechanical voice shrieked over the command channel. It was the first time Landon had ever heard the cyborg emit such a humanly terrified sound.
"She ignited her own psychic essence! And the essence of those three hundred Psykers! All units! Retreat! Retreat immediately! The blast radius of that thing will be at least five kilometers! The yield is equivalent to..."
Scoria didn't finish.
Riley Conmo cast one final look at the battlefield—at the Knight Mechs fighting bitterly, at the soldiers slaughtering and being slaughtered by daemons, at the two daemon lords deep in the industrial zone.
Her lips moved slightly.
Then, she transformed into pure light.
With Riley's original position as the epicenter, a halo of white light expanded outward at the speed of light.
Wherever the halo passed, space itself began to be purified.
The Warp corruption particles floating in the air, the reality-warping fields woven by the Tzeentchian daemon...
The residual ripples of the Khornate slaughter aura... all vaporized the instant they touched the halo.
When the white halo expanded to a radius of three hundred meters, it began to collapse inward.
All the Warp energy purified by the halo was forcibly compressed back toward the epicenter.
Compressed to its absolute limit, and then...
BOOM!!!!!!!
A sphere of white light expanded outward from Riley's position, its diameter reaching a full kilometer in a tenth of a second.
Inside the sphere of light, the temperature instantly spiked to a degree that could melt anything.
Everything caught within its radius—daemons, humans, machines, ruins—was instantaneously broken down into fundamental particles.
The Lord of Bizarre Mysteries reacted the fastest.
The moment Riley ignited herself, the Tzeentchian daemon realized what was about to happen.
Its nine arms waved frantically. The grimoire flipped to a specific page, the scepter pointed at the sky, the dagger sliced open a Warp rift, the hourglass inverted, the quill scribbled madly, and the mirror refracted reality...
It was trying to run.
But it was too late.
The yield of the psionic detonation far exceeded its calculations.
The moment the edge of the white sphere touched its body, the Lord of Bizarre Mysteries let out a shriek mixed with agony, fury, and... utter disbelief.
"This was not... in the calculations..."
Of its three heads, the one calculating frantically suddenly exploded, turning into a blizzard of flying digits and formulas.
The cackling head's laughter stopped abruptly, its mouth tearing open impossibly wide without emitting a single sound.
The slumbering head finally awoke, but it only had time to open its eyes before it was swallowed by the white light.
Six of the Lord of Bizarre Mysteries' nine arms vaporized instantly. The remaining three barely managed to construct a reality-warping shield.
But the shield only held for 0.3 seconds.
Then, its colossal body was engulfed by the white light.
The Slaughterer of Fury's reaction was entirely different.
When the white sphere expanded, not only did the Khornate daemon not retreat, it roared at the sky.
"BLOOD FOR THE BLOOD GOD! SKULLS FOR THE SKULL THRONE!"
It raised its great-axe and cleaved forward, directly attacking the sphere of light.
The hundreds of skulls strung on the axe blade burned simultaneously, unleashing dark red blood-flames that clashed against the white sphere.
The moment the two powers collided, the shockwave hurled everything within a one-kilometer radius into the air, including the Knight Mechs that hadn't retreated in time.
Landon's Iron Guard was pushed back over two hundred meters by the shockwave, plowing two deep trenches in the ground.
The tear in the cockpit roof was ripped even wider, but the red daemon's hand had already withdrawn. It was forced to commit all its strength to countering the psionic detonation.
"An opening..."
Landon coughed up a mouthful of blood, but his eyes lit up.
He saw it.
At the center where the white light clashed with the blood-flames, the Slaughterer of Fury's body was disintegrating. It was slow, but it was definitely happening.
Its skin split open, revealing the burning muscle beneath. The muscle fibers snapped one by one, and cracks began to appear on its bones.
"It's wounded!" Landon roared into the command channel. "Kans! Do it now!"
–
In the command vehicle, Kans Atens gripped the armrests so tightly his fingernails dug into the metal.
His faceplate display showed the real-time battlefield data.
Riley Conmo's life signs had vanished.
The array of three hundred Psykers had been completely annihilated.
But the effect of the psionic detonation... far exceeded expectations.
One daemon's energy signature had dropped by forty-seven percent, the other by thirty-three percent.
And both were temporarily pinned in place.
"Heavy Artillery Array!" Kans's voice was hoarse with excitement. "All units! Saturation bombardment! Target: Center of the industrial zone! Blow those two bastards back to the Warp!"
The order was given.
Thirty kilometers away, at the artillery positions of the Joint Command.
Sixty-two heavy artillery pieces adjusted their firing angles simultaneously.
The calibers of these guns ranged from 150mm to 380mm. There were towed pieces, self-propelled pieces, standard Imperial models, and ancient relics dug up from lost technological ruins.
But right now, they all pointed in the exact same direction.
The loaders shoved specially modified purification shells into the breeches.
"Open fire!"
THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD! THUD!
The rhythm of the bombardment was even denser than the first time.
Volcano Cannons, Earthshaker Cannons, Siege Cannons... a myriad of shells tore through the sky, leaving twisted contrails in the highly unstable air caused by the psionic detonation.
Then, they plummeted.
–
Center of the Industrial Zone.
The center of the industrial zone could no longer be called 'ground'.
The psionic detonation had leveled everything within an eight-hundred-meter radius. The extreme heat had melted the earth into glass-like crystallization.
The Lord of Bizarre Mysteries was half-kneeling on the crystallized ground. Blue pus oozed from the stumps of its six severed arms—it wasn't blood, but congealed Warp knowledge.
The Slaughterer of Fury stood beside it, leaning on its great-axe planted in the ground. The blood-flames burning around its body had dimmed significantly.
The dense barrage of artillery shells arrived.
The first 380mm siege shell scored a direct hit on the back of the Lord of Bizarre Mysteries.
The purification payload packed inside the shell activated upon impact, releasing a pale gold purification field.
"AARRGGHHH!!!"
The Lord of Bizarre Mysteries had never let out such an agonizing shriek.
A three-meter-wide crater was blown into its back. The edges of the crater weren't flesh and blood, but disintegrating digits, shattered formulas, and charred pages.
The second shell, the third, the fourth...
Shells rained down like a monsoon.
The flashes of explosions linked into a solid sheet of fire. Shockwaves layered upon shockwaves. Purification fields layered upon purification fields.
The two daemons were drowned in artillery fire.
They tried to resist.
The Lord of Bizarre Mysteries used its three remaining arms to construct a shield, but the shield shattered upon taking the third hit.
The Slaughterer of Fury tried to use its blood-flames to defend itself, but before the purification fields, the blood-flames melted away as rapidly as snow dropped in boiling water.
They began to fall back.
"It's working! Keep firing! Don't stop!"
Kans roared over the command channel, his voice distorted by sheer ecstasy. "Blow them into dust! Blow them back to whatever hellhole they came from!"
The bombardment lasted for three full minutes.
Over three hundred shells of various calibers were dumped onto the center of the industrial zone.
When the final shell fell, the ground there had been blasted into a massive crater twenty meters deep.
Acrid smoke, dust, psionic residue, Warp corruption particles... all these substances mixed together to form a fog so thick you couldn't see your own hand in front of your face.
The battlefield suddenly went quiet.
The surviving Knight Mechs—fifteen left from Groups B and C, six left from Group A—stood at the edge of the crater, their ion shields fully deployed, their weapon systems locked onto the center of the dense fog.
The Skitarii and Tech-Priests of the Mechanicus peeked out from behind cover. Scoria Kane's mechanical eye rapidly scanned the data streams.
Busir Hysman led the remnants of the decapitation strike force out of the underground tunnel exit, his purple robes covered in dust, his eyes glued to the thick fog.
Kans jumped down from his command vehicle and walked to the frontline, the servo-motors of his Power Armor emitting a faint hum.
Everyone.
Everyone who was still able to stand.
They were all waiting.
Waiting for the fog to clear, waiting to see the... corpses... of the two daemon lords.
"It's over..." Busir muttered, his voice dry. "It should be... over, right?"
"Energy scans indicate Warp corruption concentration has dropped by eighty-nine percent." Scoria reported. "The energy signatures of the two daemon lords... are so weak they're nearly undetectable."
"We won?" Landon's voice echoed from the cockpit of Iron Guard, trembling with the relief of a survivor.
"I think... we won." Kans took a deep breath, then slowly exhaled.
He raised his hand, preparing to order recon units into the fog for confirmation.
But right at that moment.
High up in the warehouse district, the cross-legged figure of Paul suddenly went rigid.
His eyes snapped open. Deep within his pupils, the pale gold of the Wisdom trait was operating at maximum capacity.
"Something's wrong."
Paul whispered.
His psychic perception punched through ten kilometers of distance, pierced the dense fog, and reached deep into the bottom of the crater blasted open by the artillery.
There, he saw two sources of malice.