This is the bonus chapter for reaching 1100 Powerstones.
--
High Airspace Above the City of the Holy Anthem, Cinder-Burner Battlefield.
Paul drove his axe into Cinder-Burner Ignis's magma carapace.
The dark red psychic energy of Resolve twined around the axe blade violently clashed with the crimson-gold Warp fire.
Sizzle-crackle-hiss!!!
The shrieking sound of energy annihilation echoed across the sky.
The Cinder-Burner let out a furious screech, swinging its giant magma arms in an attempt to swat him, but Paul was too fast.
The anti-grav suspensors of the Aquilon Terminator armor allowed him to execute directional shifts in mid-air that bordered on teleportation.
A successful strike meant an immediate retreat.
Never get bogged down in a melee.
This was Paul's tactic.
The Cinder-Burner was a physically-oriented Tzeentch Greater Daemon; its Fire of Order could incinerate the fabric of reality, and the defensive power of its magma carapace rivaled warship armor plating. This also meant its speed was relatively slow.
And Paul, bolstered by Spiral Power, was twenty-five percent faster than standard Custodian specs. Combined with the additional speed boost provided by the Pioneering trait...
"Grey Knights! Psychic binding!" Paul ordered over the regional channel.
The one hundred Grey Knights behind him ceased firing and simultaneously raised their Nemesis force halberds.
Azure psychic chains shot from the tips of the halberds, entangling the Cinder-Burner's limbs.
The Cinder-Burner attempted to break free, but in that instant of distraction...
Paul lunged forward once more, gripping the Watcher's Axe.
This time, his target was the joint of its right wing.
The Watcher's Axe was raised high, the azure psychic light condensing into a tangible blade of light. Carrying the radiance of the disruption field, he slashed at the Cinder-Burner.
CRACK!
A massive chunk of cinder-feathers from the Cinder-Burner's right wing was cleaved off.
Once detached from the main body, those crimson-gold feathers exploded mid-air into dozens of fireballs, but Paul had already retreated to a safe distance.
"Guaaaargh!!!"
The Cinder-Burner let out a roar of agony.
It looked at Paul, and for the very first time, an unmistakable... fury appeared in those burning Warp fireball eyes.
"Golden... bug... You have... enraged me..."
The Cinder-Burner opened its giant maw, blinding white light beginning to gather deep within its throat.
It was its signature ability: [Order Disintegration Breath], an authority of the Warp that incinerated the fabric of reality and reduced matter to its most basic particles.
Deep within the maw of Cinder-Burner Ignis, the blinding white light had gathered to its absolute apex.
The air within a hundred-meter radius began to distort.
"Golden... bug..." The Cinder-Burner's voice carried a hiss. "Before the mighty power of the Changer of Ways... be reduced to nothingne—"
Before it could finish speaking.
Paul moved rapidly. In the persistence of vision of Tobias and all the Blood Angels on the ground, the golden figure simultaneously appeared in three locations: his original spot, thirty meters to the Cinder-Burner's left, and directly below the Cinder-Burner's right wing.
But in reality, he was merely pushing the Pioneering trait to its absolute limit.
Azure psychic energy spewed from every joint of the Aquilon Terminator armor, trailing several brilliant streaks behind Paul.
The point representing Pioneering in the five-pointed star had now dyed his pupils pale blue.
BOOM!!!
The Cinder-Burner's breath finally erupted.
A blinding white pillar of light over five meters in diameter pierced through the sky. The air it passed through was completely ionized, forming a vacuum corridor hundreds of meters long. At the edges of the light pillar, the fabric of reality shattered and peeled away like glass, briefly exposing the mottled backdrop of the Warp beneath.
But Paul was completely outside its attack range.
When the light gathering in the Cinder-Burner's throat reached seventy percent, he had already anticipated the trajectory of the breath. In the eyes of someone possessing the Wisdom trait, a Greater Daemon's attack was as telegraphed as an announcement.
His psychic energy erupted once more.
Paul's figure left a trail of afterimages in the air as he, gripping the Watcher's Axe with both hands, instantly cut in directly beneath the Cinder-Burner's right wing.
There, the feathers he had cleaved off earlier had not yet fully regenerated, and the exposed wing bones were covered only by a thin layer of magma carapace.
"Grey Knights! Psychic interference!"
One hundred Grey Knights simultaneously raised their Nemesis force halberds, azure psychic ripples surging toward the Cinder-Burner's head like a tide, scrambling the Greater Daemon's perception of Paul.
The Cinder-Burner instinctively turned its head, attempting to track Paul with its breath.
But in that split second of delay...
Paul's Watcher's Axe descended.
The axe blade slipped through a weak seam in the carapace and cut into the Greater Daemon's flesh.
RIIIP!!!
At the root of the Cinder-Burner's right wing, a piece of magma carapace the size of a Thunderhawk gunship ramp peeled off entirely, exposing the muscle tissue flowing with searing energy beneath. The instant the carapace detached, it disintegrated into a sky full of sparks mid-air.
And Paul didn't remain idle. A second and third strike rained down, carrying extreme speed and the frenzied damage of the disruption field.
Paul madly hacked at the Cinder-Burner, which was suffering the vulnerability window of having just unleashed its ultimate attack.
"Arrrggghhh!!!"
The Cinder-Burner let out a roar of agony. A bone-deep gash was cleaved open at the root of its right wing, and crimson-gold daemon blood spewed out like magma. Blue-purple Warp energy began to surge frantically toward the wound, attempting to repair it.
"Your regeneration speed is much slower than that rotting hunk of meat in the Aru Industrial Zone," he coldly mocked, choosing to retreat. "Grey Knights, second round of interference. Target its left eye."
"Yes, sir!"
Another hundred psychic ripples.
The Cinder-Burner furiously swung its left arm to swat at the Grey Knights cluster, but those silver-grey figures had long since dispersed.
And Paul's phantom-like figure had already appeared at the position of its left carotid artery.
The fourth strike.
The fifth strike.
The sixth strike...
The battle devolved into a one-sided death by a thousand cuts.
Every time the Cinder-Burner tried to gather an ultimate attack, it would be interrupted by the Grey Knights.
Every time it tried to engage in close combat, Paul's speed was always a fraction of a second faster.
Every time a wound began to repair, a new cut would fall.
Its magma carapace was already covered in dozens of gashes of varying depths, and crimson-gold blood rained down upon hundreds of square meters of ruins below.
Although none were immediately fatal, the accumulated damage was slowly but surely grinding down the material body of this Greater Daemon.
"Damned... bug...!!"
The Cinder-Burner was enraged. Sky-piercing flames ignited around its body, attempting to blanket the entire airspace with an area-of-effect attack.
But Paul merely said a single sentence: "Too slow."
The Pioneering trait, bolstered by psychic energy, erupted once more.
Three afterimages simultaneously slashed toward the Cinder-Burner's spine from three directions.
The Greater Daemon instinctively protected its vitals.
But what it protected was exactly what Paul wanted it to protect.
His true killing blow came from below.
SQUELCH!!!
The Watcher's Axe struck from bottom to top, piercing into the soft underbelly of the Cinder-Burner where there was no carapace coverage. The disruption field entwined around the axe blade ran at maximum output, carving its way straight up along the spine.
"Gu... urgh..."
The Cinder-Burner's movements froze.
It looked down at the golden battleaxe piercing through its abdomen and protruding from its shoulder blade.
On the axe blade, the azure psychic energy of Pioneering violently clashed with its Warp essence, letting out a sizzling sound of annihilation.
"You..." The Cinder-Burner's voice carried a trace of... shock.
"I told you," Paul gripped the axe handle and twisted forcefully. "You're too slow."
BOOM!!!
The Cinder-Burner's massive body plummeted from the sky, crashing heavily into the ruined plaza below and kicking up a cloud of dust dozens of meters high.
It wasn't dead yet; a Greater Daemon-class Warp entity couldn't be annihilated so easily.
But this strike had at least heavily damaged its physical manifestation in reality, rendering it completely incapable of posing a threat for the foreseeable future.
Paul flicked the crimson-gold daemon blood off the blade, and looked up at the other battlefield.
Over there, Sanguinius's battle was also drawing to a close.
Mist-Weaver Calidus currently looked pitiful.
In its eyes constructed of stellar vortexes, the myriad of flowing stars had mostly dimmed. It had only its left blue-purple wing remaining; the right wing had been severed at the root, thick Warp energy leaking from the stump. The mist-patterns on its body flickered in and out of existence, clearly struggling even to maintain its physical form.
And its opponent.
Sanguinius hovered mid-air, his pristine white wings gently brushing the wind, the Blade Encarmine angled downward.
The Primarch's armor bore only a few smudges, and his amber-gold slit pupils were as calm as the abyss.
"Give up!!" Sanguinius's voice carried the tone of holy, pure judgment. "Your illusions are useless against me, your whispering corruptions cannot shake my will, your Warp authorities... before me, are nothing but child's play."
The Mist-Weaver let out a piercing shriek, erupting with its final reserves of blue-purple mist in an attempt to craft a final, ultimate illusion.
Sanguinius merely raised the Blade Encarmine silently.
"Let this serve as your ultimate punishment for invading the domain of the Imperium."
He needed no flashy maneuvers, nor did he need to gather his strength.
Gripping the Blade Encarmine, Sanguinius simply executed a straightforward thrust at the Mist-Weaver.
The Blade Encarmine, wreathed in pale golden light, pierced through the mist, through the wing, and into the Mist-Weaver's chest.
"Urgh... ahh...!!!"
The Mist-Weaver's shriek came to an abrupt halt.
It looked down at the pale golden sword blade buried in its chest, and for the first time, unmistakable... fear surfaced in its eyes.
"How... how could you possibly... see through the Changer of Ways'..."
"Because my will is untouched by your corruption," Sanguinius said softly.
He twisted his wrist.
The blade of the Blade Encarmine churned within the Mist-Weaver's body, and pale golden psychic energy erupted like a volcano.
"NO!!!"
The Mist-Weaver's body began to disintegrate, the corruption spreading outward from where the sword had pierced.
Blue-purple feathers peeled off piece by piece, the stellar vortex eyes extinguished one by one, and the mist-patterns faded away like fading colors.
Three seconds later.
This Greater Daemon of Tzeentch, which had shrouded the entire City of the Holy Anthem in illusions, thoroughly dissolved into a cloud of Warp energy and dissipated into the sky above the city.
--
We are still... Rank 14.
Please guys donate powerstones, we still have 3 days we cannot lose momentum right now when victory is just ahead of us!!!!!
I am just joking it is not that serious... or is it?
Also everyone does remember that I will be posting 2 more bonus chapters if we reach Top 10, in addition to the powerstones bonus chapter, right??