This is the bonus chapter for reaching 300 Powerstones.
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The Aru Industrial Zone, at the edge of the massive crater, inside the defensive wall.
Seranaphy Nori spat out the butt of his sixth cigarette.
The wound on his left shoulder had already festered and turned black. The gene-purification serum injected by the Apothecary Novitiate could only barely delay the rate of corruption. The rot on his cheek was expanding, and the red at the edges of his vision was growing thicker—the Red Thirst was eroding his sanity.
But he had no time to worry about that right now.
All his attention was focused on the green Warp rift at the bottom of the crater, which had now expanded to ninety-nine meters in diameter.
Just thirty seconds ago, the massive, rotting psychic pressure deep within the rift suddenly solidified.
Then, it violently began to squeeze its way out.
"All units... go to maximum alert," Seranaphy's hoarse voice echoed across the defensive line through the comms channel.
Beside him, [Paradox Player Not a War Criminal]'s mechanical augmetic eye flashed wildly. The dataslate showed the rift's energy readings climbing exponentially.
"Rocket artillery! Full salvo reload! Target the bottom of the crater! Wait for my mark! Self-propelled artillery! High-explosive rounds ready! Lock in the coordinates! Leman Russ tanks! Charge main cannons! Armor-piercing shells! PDF infantry! Fall back to the second line of cover! Equip fully enclosed hazmat masks! No one peeks their heads out without orders!"
The orders were relayed down the chain of command.
The remaining twenty-six thousand Crimson Dawn PDF soldiers, the two hundred-odd surviving Blood Angels, and the player technical elites brought by [Paradox Player Not a War Criminal] all entered maximum combat readiness.
When the Warp energy on the dataslate peaked, the Warp rift silently expanded by another meter. Then, they saw it.
The first thing to reach out was a giant hand.
A thick, pus-leaking giant hand with constantly proliferating rotting flesh.
The skin was a sickly grey-green, covered in bulging pustules and writhing fungal mycelium. The fingernails were mutated black keratin, half a meter long, the yellowish-green slime dripping from their tips splashing into the pus swamp at the bottom of the crater, stirring up even more bubbles.
The hand gripped the edge of the rift.
It squeezed tight.
CRACK-CRACK-CRUNCH!!!
The fabric of reality groaned under the overwhelming pressure.
The rift was forced open, its edges fracturing as even more putrid energy surged out like a bursting dam.
Its head squeezed its way out.
The gigantic head slumped crookedly, its face covered in rotting muscle and grey-green fungi. It revealed only a single, murky yellow eyeball, the pupil a constantly rotating rune of Nurgle. Its mouth was a gaping, cracked maw lined with rust-like fangs; when it opened to roar, pus cascaded down like a waterfall, mixed with spewed, writhing maggots.
Atop its head grew a crown of plague fungi, shaped like grey-green mushrooms, currently releasing clouds of spores. The dark green spore mist slowly diffused; wherever it passed, even the rocks began to soften, rot, and sprout fungal blooms.
It continued to crawl outward.
When its body was fully revealed, every witness, including the battle-hardened Blood Angels, felt a primal chill of revulsion stemming from their very life instincts.
According to [Paradox Player Not a War Criminal]'s visual estimate, its height reached around 19 meters.
Its bulk vastly exceeded that of a standard Imperial Knight. Its abdomen sagged heavily from accumulated plague pus and rotting flesh, spanning four to five meters in width. Its surface was covered in a humus-like carapace formed from congealed pus, decaying biological tissue, and Warp filth; its thickness visibly exceeded twenty centimeters. The carapace's surface crawled with wriggling maggots, drifting fungal mycelium, and constantly oozing sores.
Its arms were as thick as siege rams, every movement forcing foul-smelling slime to seep from the cracks in its carapace. Its legs were short and stubby, ending in hoof-like feet.
When it took its first step—
THUD!!!
The earth trembled.
Concrete defensive fortifications within a fifteen-meter radius cracked, and several PDF soldiers lost their footing and fell. Wherever its hooves trod, permanent plague-corroded craters were left in the ground, dark green toxic fungi breeding and spreading at a visible rate.
Dangling from its abdomen were dozens of carrion tentacles, woven from rotting viscera and Warp energy, swaying autonomously. Occasionally, they would snatch up Nurglings from the bottom of the crater and stuff them into its mouth to chew.
On its back were three pairs of vestigial membranous wings, riddled with pus-oozing holes, shedding a massive amount of plague spores.
It stood completely still, tilting its head back to let out a roar.
"Guaaaargh!!!"
The sound carried a sort of benevolent sigh.
A pungent, Nurglesque stench of decay instantly swept across the entire battlefield! The odor—a mixture of rotting flesh, moldy organic matter, and the essential stench of the Warp—spread over a range of more than three hundred meters!
Several PDF soldiers on the fortifications who accidentally inhaled the scent began vomiting violently within ten seconds, their skin erupting in festering red rashes!
"An unknown Greater Daemon of Nurgle," [Paradox Player Not a War Criminal]'s dry voice echoed in the regional channel. "But it's confirmed, it's Great Unclean One class... The diseases on its body are enough to turn an Agri-World into a Death World."
Seranaphy Nori gripped his power sword, the hilt creaking under his force. He looked at the defensive line, at the unconcealable fear in the eyes of the mortal soldiers behind him, and toward the distant Aru Hive.
Then, he took a deep breath and roared at the top of his lungs, "Blood Angels! Soldiers of the Crimson Dawn! Behind us are all the living souls on this planet who have not yet given up hope! It is the territory of the Imperium!"
He raised his power sword, aiming the tip at the fetid colossus.
"Today, we might die. But our deaths will buy time for the Imperial reinforcements that are on their way! Therefore!" Seranaphy, the Champion of the Fifth Company, roared as the festering wounds on his face split open, oozing yellowish-red pus. "Blood Angels, not one step back! For the Emperor! For Sanguinius!"
Atop the defensive line, over two hundred Blood Angels roared in unison, drowning out the Great Unclean One's bellow!
[Paradox Player Not a War Criminal] screamed, "Fuck it, let's just frag 'em, brothers! Rocket artillery! Full salvo! Fire!"
--
At that exact moment, at the ruins of the Conmo Psyker Dynasty Great Hall in the City of the Holy Anthem.
Nine Tzeentchian Daemon Lords surrounded the Cage of Logic. Their burning souls were nearly depleted, yet their laughter grew increasingly rampant.
"Give up, Sanguinius... Your gene-sons are being consumed by plague... And you will be trapped here forever, becoming the Architect of Fate's most beautiful collectible..." The Daemon Lord constructed of piled books flipped through its final pages.
But in the center of the cage, the Great Angel—his pristine white wings now stained with purple-black filth—suddenly raised his head.
Deep within his amber-gold slit pupils, that faint speck of pale golden light abruptly erupted!
Sanguinius spoke softly, his voice terrifyingly calm. "Your cage is built on the premise that knowledge is absolutely correct. But you forgot..." He slowly raised the Blade Encarmine. On the blade, the pale golden psychic energy that had been suppressed by Warp energy began to awaken like the rising sun! "When my Father forged me, one of the essences He bestowed upon me was the hope of the Imperium. And the hope of the Imperium!"
Sanguinius's wings violently unfurled completely!
All the filth disintegrated inch by inch under the wash of pale golden psychic energy, and the pure white feathers flowed with radiance once more!
"...has never needed to be logical!" He gripped the sword with both hands, channeling his entire Primarch-level psychic power and life essence into the tip of the Blade Encarmine! The pale golden light declared to the nine Daemon Lords, "Nor do I need to abide by the rules... you have set!"
He slashed down!
Striking toward the connection point of the chains where a fracture had long been buried!
CRACK! SHATTER! CRACK-CRACK-CRACK!!!
The hideous grins on the nine Daemon Lords froze.
They watched as the Cage of Logic, constructed from burning souls and woven with billions of axioms of knowledge, began to shatter. Starting from that minuscule connection point inside, countless web-like cracks fractured outward! The fissures spread faster and faster, instantly covering the entire structure of the cage!
"No... Impossible! This was personally bestowed by the Changer of Ways... How could knowledge... This is not in the plan..." The Daemon Lords frantically tried to reinforce the cage in terror, but their souls were already burned out; they were powerless to reverse it.
Sanguinius's second strike arrived!
This strike was unadorned, yet carried all the resolve and fury of a Primarch breaking free!
The pale golden sword light swept across! The instant the light touched them, the phantoms of the nine Daemon Lords were annihilated inch by inch, like pencil marks erased by a rubber! They were banished back to the depths of the Warp without even managing to let out a scream, and the price of burning their souls was enough to cause them to disintegrate entirely within the Immaterium!
The cage imprisoning the Great Angel shattered completely, turning into a sky full of drifting purple light dust.
Sanguinius took a step forward.
The Blade Encarmine hummed, thirsting to drink deep of more heretical blood.
He raised his head, his amber-gold slit pupils piercing through layers of hive structure to instantly lock onto the two massive, twisted Warp auras that had just descended deep within the City of the Holy Anthem. And toward the Aru Industrial Zone, he sensed that fertile, putrid, and deeply malicious green psychic energy.
"Three powerful Warp entities..." Sanguinius muttered to himself, his voice ice-cold. "What a... grand welcoming ceremony."
He didn't hesitate for a microsecond.
The wings on his back flapped violently, pale golden psychic power erupting as his figure turned into a golden flash piercing through the hive, diving straight toward the direction of the two Greater Daemons of Tzeentch!
And at the exact moment he broke free!
All the Blood Angels—whether it was Tobias Fane's Second Company fighting a bitter battle at the City of the Holy Anthem's defensive line, Amit's Fifth Company engaged in a bloody melee in the mid-hive, or Seranaphy's forces facing the Great Unclean One in the Aru Industrial Zone...
Deep within the gene-seed of every son, that connection originating from their Primarch father was re-established.
A warm, resolute, and power surged into the body of every warrior through their genetic link!
"This is..." Tobias Fane cleaved a Corrupted in half with his sword and looked up in astonishment. "Father... has broken free?"
Amit froze for a second, and then sheer ecstasy surged into his heart. He threw his head back and laughed uproariously, "Brothers! Father has returned! Blood Angels, with me, slay them all!"
At the Aru defensive line, Seranaphy was just preparing to lead the charge when he felt the rate of corruption at his festering left shoulder be forcibly suppressed by a warm power. Even the erosion of the Red Thirst momentarily halted.
He looked toward the City of the Holy Anthem, his eyes growing hot. "Father..." He immediately pointed his power sword at the striding Great Unclean One, screaming with every ounce of strength he had, "Our Father has broken free! Reinforcements are imminent!!"
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Damn we just touched Rank 20 and then slipped to 21 as soon as we touched 300 powerstones.
Don't stop if we complete a goal continue donating, I will post all of the bonus chapter whenever I see it since I am currently gonna go sleep.
Keep em powerstones coming, I feel confident we can reach Top 10 this week!