Blue-purple psychic energy erupted from the daemon's body like a volcano!
It was no longer a controlled use of psychic power, but a pure, unadulterated outpouring of energy!
Crack! Snap! Shatter!!!
Dozens of psychic chains snapped in response!
The anti-psychic field fluctuated violently under the impact of this berserk psychic energy. Out of the three hundred Brothers of Silence, over forty let out simultaneous muffled groans as blood seeped from their noses.
They were tanking this massive shockwave head-on.
"Grey Knights! Replenish the chains! Brothers of Silence! Stabilize the field!"
Orders echoed one after another in the regional channel.
Meanwhile, Paul was kneeling on one knee, leaning on the Watcher's Axe with both hands, gasping heavily for air.
The backlash of chanting the True Name was far more severe than he had imagined.
His throat was completely torn open, his vocal cords ruined, and even his esophagus and stomach had been eroded with massive ulcers by the Warp syllables.
Fortunately, his Compassion trait was frantically repairing his throat, allowing him to continue speaking Aetaos'rau'keres's True Name.
"Graaaagh!!!"
Aetaos'rau'keres's shriek was no longer a mere sound, but a manifestation of Warp authority directly tearing through reality.
Blue-purple psychic energy gushed violently from its twenty-meter-tall demonic vessel.
It was the ultimate eruption bought by sacrificing every last soul fragment of Sacken Alar within this vessel, sacrificing portions of its authority from its contract with the Changer of Ways, and sacrificing all the Warp corruption accumulated in the City of the Holy Anthem Hive.
Crack! Snap! Shhh-shatter!!!
Out of a hundred psychic chains, fifty-seven snapped in an instant!
The azure psychic fragments that exploded as each chain broke rained down like a torrential downpour.
Those fragments continued to burn upon hitting the ground, searing smoking craters into the scorched concrete.
"Grey Knights! Replenish the chains!"
"New chains take three seconds to generate!"
"Brothers of Silence!!"
The regional channel was flooded with all sorts of shouts, feeling exactly like a chaotic voice call while raiding a boss on a computer.
Paul was still chanting the True Name.
"Ae... ta... os... rau... ke... res..."
Paul's voice had grown so hoarse it barely sounded human.
With every syllable uttered, his throat blew open again.
Faint golden blood, mixed with charred tissue fragments eroded by the Warp syllables, constantly seeped from the neck joints of the Custodian Terminator armor, streaking down the golden plating in shocking trails.
His throat was burnt to a crisp; his vocal cords were carbonized.
This was the price of chanting a Greater Daemon's True Name, especially the True Name of Aetaos'rau'keres, a Lord of Change who ranked among the highest echelons within the domain of Tzeentch.
But Paul kept chanting.
"Ae... ta... os... rau... ke... res..."
With every repetition, Aetaos'rau'keres's connection to the Warp was weakened by another fraction.
The blue-purple energy currents surging from the Warp rifts of Tzeentch's domain, attempting to reinforce it, were severed chunk by chunk.
This was a pure tug-of-war on the level of the soul.
Paul used his own psychic energy, his body frantically repaired by the Compassion trait, and the superhuman endurance granted by his Custodian augmentations to forcefully stall every single one of Aetaos'rau'keres's attempts to reconnect with the Warp.
"You... you... madman..." Aetaos'rau'keres's phantom three pairs of eyes flickered wildly, and for the first time, a clear sense of... confusion emerged amidst its ten thousand interwoven tones.
It didn't understand.
Why would a Custodian, even a perfect creation molded by the False Emperor's own hands, go to such lengths for a hive city on some fringe planet?
Why would he repeat the True Name chant over and over, fully aware that the backlash would permanently damage his soul?
Paul grumbled inwardly, I've finally experienced the difference between an Android Greater Daemon and an Apple Greater Daemon firsthand today.
He looked up at the twenty-meter-tall figure thrashing violently in the sky.
If it were a nameless 'Android' Greater Daemon, it would have lost all power to resist long ago under the triple suppression of the True Name binding, the anti-psychic field, and a hundred psychic chains.
But Aetaos'rau'keres was an 'Apple' Greater Daemon.
A named Lord of Change under Tzeentch, governing covert assassinations and reality distortion, having lived in the Warp for countless millennia.
An entity of this caliber, even if it was just a descended vessel capable of drawing upon only a fraction of its true body's authority, still possessed the strength to fight a Primarch—even if it would most likely lose.
Paul took a deep breath, the wound in his throat healing once more amidst the green light of Compassion.
He chuckled and opened his mouth again.
"Aetaos'rau'keres!"
Boom!!!
The True Name chains crashed down from the depths of the Warp as if physically tangible, clamping firmly onto the Warp anchor of Aetaos'rau'keres's contract with Tzeentch.
This time, Aetaos'rau'keres's struggles visibly slowed down.
The blue-purple psychic glow on its body dimmed by at least another forty percent, the demonic wings on its back began to peel away piece by piece, and the phantom three pairs of eyes grew blurry and indistinct.
The triple suppression of the anti-psychic field, the psychic chains, and the True Name chant had finally pushed the descended vessel of this mighty Lord of Change to the brink.
But it was only pushed to the brink; completely purifying it required one final strike.
"Now is the time..."
Helovia stood atop the ruins, looking up at the grueling tug-of-war in the sky.
She could see the faint golden blood constantly seeping from Paul's neck.
She could see the Brothers of Silence maintaining the field despite bleeding from their eyes, ears, noses, and mouths.
She could see the agony of the Grey Knight brothers, letting out a muffled groan every time they forged a new chain.
The little girl tightened her grip on her staff.
She pulled a vial from her left pocket. It was the potion Blood Angel had slipped to her inside the Thunderhawk gunship, telling her to drink it if she ever felt her psychic energy running low.
The vial was made of transparent glass, filled with a flowing silver energy fluid that slowly swirled inside, pulsing gently like a living creature.
Helovia didn't hesitate.
She popped the cork, tilted her head back, and downed the entire vial.
Gulp.
The moment the liquid slid down her throat...
Hum!!!
The little girl's body suddenly lit up!
It was an ethereal, pure silver radiance!
Her pupils began to change color within the light, transforming into a pristine, bright silver.
The two-toned glow swirled in her eyes, reflecting the twin moons that had just risen in the sky.
Aurelian IV's two satellites—one crimson as blood, the other pure as frost—now hung high above the polluted sky, casting down interwoven red and white moonlight.
Helovia raised her silver staff.
The nebula energy at the tip of the staff began to spin frantically, so fast that it formed a visible energy vortex.
In the center of the vortex, a point of pure silver light ignited.
It was... moonlight.
The moonlight of the Aurelian twin moons, remaining utterly pure even after piercing through the Warp-polluted sky.
"By the guidance of the stars and moons," Helovia began to chant, every syllable carrying the resonance of a magic circle.
"In the name of hope."
She formed seals with her hands in front of her chest. It wasn't any kind of psychic gesture from the Warhammer universe, but rather a magical sigil from entirely another universe.
With every seal she formed, the silver light around her grew a fraction more intense, and the moonlight at the tip of her staff became a fraction more condensed.
"I am Helovia Elnor."
The little girl's voice grew increasingly ethereal, but her gaze grew ever more resolute. She silently recited in her heart:
I am the last bloodline of House Alar.
I must do this for the Crimson Dawn.
For Mom.
For this world.
For salvation.
I am...
She paused, countless images flashing through her mind.
Her mother's hunched back.
Paul's smile when he handed the first potato to the worker representative.
Blood Angel's patient demeanor when he taught her how to read.
The sweat of the uncles and aunties in the base working overtime to produce ammunition.
And... the father she had never met, whose body was currently possessed by a daemon.
Helovia took a deep breath, pouring all her emotions, her lingering attachments, and her resolve into the final chant.
"—the one who will end this tragedy! Moonlight Sublimation Meditation!"
Boom!!!!
The two moons in the firmament cast down pillars of light simultaneously!
The crimson pillar cascaded like a waterfall.
The pure silver pillar surged like a torrent.
The two beams of moonlight intersected and merged at the silver nebula on the tip of Helovia's staff, undergoing a qualitative change.
The energy level contained within that nebula made Sanguinius, who was hundreds of meters away, instinctively narrow his eyes.
"A completely alien form of energy... it isn't psychic power, nor is it even a known radiation of the physical universe..."
The Great Angel rapidly analyzed it in his mind, his amber-gold slit pupils reflecting the silver nebula.
"...but its purifying properties against Warp entities are incredibly potent." Sanguinius could clearly sense that the Warp corruption in the air around the nebula was being fundamentally erased.
The silver nebula energy at the tip of the staff finally reached its critical point... and released.
A beam of interwoven red and silver energy, over ten meters in diameter, shot skyward from the head of the staff!
The beam was unimaginably pure. Wherever it passed, the blue-purple Warp pollution melted away like snow.
Even the corrupted whispers permeating the air were forcefully purified.
It shot straight toward Aetaos'rau'keres, who was locked down by the triple suppression in the sky.
And at the exact moment the beam brushed past Paul—
Paul raised his left hand.
Deep within his dark gold pupils, the pentagram spun to its absolute limit.
The psychic energies of his five great traits—Hope, Compassion, Resolve, Pioneering, and Wisdom—erupted from his body like a volcano, surging out through his left hand and injecting themselves flawlessly into the moonlight beam!
This was Paul imbuing the attack with his traits.
The Hope trait injected the beam with the conceptual certainty of purification.
The Compassion trait amplified its purifying energy, boosting its obliterating damage against profane Warp psychic energy by 300%.
The Resolve trait boosted the beam's stability by 300%, ensuring it wouldn't dissipate under the interference of the anti-psychic field.
The Pioneering trait carved out a vacuum channel for the beam straight through the null-field.
And the Wisdom trait...
...granted it the causality-defying property of an absolute hit.
Silver interwoven with gold.
Moonlight fused with psychic energy.
Purification operating in tandem with salvation.
"Now! Grey Knights! Pull the chains taut!" Paul shouted in the regional channel.
The command was instantly understood and executed.
All one hundred psychic chains simultaneously erupted with a final burst of azure light, deadlocking Aetaos'rau'keres's struggles.
Paul was waiting for the exact split-second the red and silver beam entered the anti-psychic field's range.
"Now! Five-trait psychic energy, conceptual burst!"
Hum!!!
The five-colored psychic energy infused within the beam detonated all at once!
Within a three-meter radius of the red and white beam, all rules were temporarily rewritten. The anti-psychic field's concept of psychic suppression was forcibly overwritten and replaced by the concept of energy passage.
The duration was just enough for the beam to completely traverse the field's coverage area.
Boom!!!
The Moonlight Sublimation Meditation beam, supercharged with the five-trait psychic energy, pierced through the field like a Spear of Judgment and blasted flawlessly into Aetaos'rau'keres's twenty-meter-tall demonic vessel!
Sizzle... hiss...
The instant the red and silver beam made contact with the demonic vessel, it was like pressing a red-hot branding iron into a block of ice.
Aetaos'rau'keres's carapace began to peel off in layers, turning to ash the moment they detached from its body.
The demonic wings on its back began to wither, the blue-purple feathers falling away like autumn leaves.
The profane runes across its body began to extinguish, each fading rune accompanied by a piercing Warp wail.
"No... impossible..." Aetaos'rau'keres's phantom three pairs of eyes flickered madly, its ten-thousand-toned voice filled with absolute disbelief. "This energy... this level of purification... this is already approaching..."
It couldn't finish its sentence, because the purification had already penetrated deep into its vessel, beginning to incinerate the very Warp essence it had used to descend.
"Aaaarrrggghhh!!!"
This time, it was a true agony stemming straight from the soul level.
Aetaos'rau'keres felt this portion of its Warp essence being stripped away at a fundamental level by the interwoven red and silver beam.
Its binding to this descended vessel was being forcibly severed.
Even the partial reserves of its essence stored within this vessel... were facing the threat of total purification.
Aetaos'rau'keres struggled to raise its head amidst the scouring torrent of the red and silver beam, its black hole-like eyes locking dead onto Paul. "No... impossible... What is... this power... You... cannot kill me... I am the favored of the Changer of Ways... my essence resides in the Warp... Even if this vessel is destroyed... I will return..."
Its voice was hoarse, carrying an eerie calm. "And you... dog of the False Emperor... That entity behind you... the one who gave the little girl that staff..."
Right before they disintegrated, Aetaos'rau'keres's phantom three pairs of eyes blinked simultaneously for the last time.
Through the torrent of moonlight, through the anti-psychic field, through the interference of the True Name binding, it captured a single... extremely obscure thread of a clue.
That clue pointed toward a specific region within the Warp.
There slumbered some unknown entity, radiating a faint signature identical to the aura of the staff in the little girl's hands.
"I see..." Aetaos'rau'keres let out a laugh. The smile was maddening and joyous, carrying ten thousand different tones. "An unknown energy system... the authority of conversion... a slumbering domain... Everything... is according to plan..."
It expended the absolute last dregs of its power to transmit this information back to its true body via its Warp link.
Then, it looked at Helovia, at the little girl who had unleashed this red and silver torrent of moonlight.
"Tell... the entity behind you..." Aetaos'rau'keres's voice grew lower and lower, its twenty-meter-tall vessel beginning to crumble like a glass sculpture under the scouring moonlight, shattering into tiny fragments. "The Changer of Ways... will find Him... This game... has only just begun..."
The instant its words faded.
Boom!!
Aetaos'rau'keres's descended vessel was utterly annihilated, reduced to the finest energy dust, dissipating into the night sky over the upper hive of the City of the Holy Anthem.
Only an imperceptible wisp of blue-purple psychic light drifted toward the still-expanding Tzeentch rift deep within the hive city.
Ding.
A crisp notification chime rang out in Paul's mind.
A blue interface materialized before his eyes.
[Purification Quest: Purification of the Alar Bloodline]
[Quest Requirement: Helovia Elnor's damage contribution against Sacken Alar (Aetaos'rau'keres's descended vessel) must be no less than 50% — Completed (Damage Contribution: 53.7%)]
[Quest Reward: 10 Billion Imperial Coins — Deposited to account: Paul Dawn]
[Current Account Balance: 10.273 Billion Imperial Coins]
--
Sanguinius stood three hundred meters away, quietly watching this scene unfold.
The Great Angel's eyes reflected the silver and red beam, the Grey Knights and the Brothers of Silence, and the golden Custodian who, despite kneeling on one knee, kept his spine perfectly straight.
Finally, his gaze fell upon the little girl with silver pupils suspended in mid-air.
"The Alar family's... last bloodline..." Sanguinius muttered softly to himself. "Father... is this your grand design? The five billion lives of a planetary hive city, the annihilation of a psychic family, all exchanged for a... hope... capable of wielding an unknown power to purify Warp corruption?"
He didn't know the answer, but he chose to believe.
Because other than that, there was no other logical explanation as to why the Emperor would know in advance that the Alar family had an orphan left behind.
Why He would dispatch an Imperial Custodian Praetor to bring her here, and why she just so happened to possess a power that perfectly countered a Greater Daemon of Tzeentch.
Everything was a part of the Emperor's grand chessboard. He, Sanguinius, Ferrus Manus, and every single person on this planet for the past eighty-plus years—they were all the Emperor's chess pieces.
The Mechanicus seizing the ownership of this planet from Ferrus Manus's hands... it had all been orchestrated from the start.
At this exact moment, Sanguinius finally achieved true clarity on why his precognition abilities had been blocked!
"So this was all your plan all along. Everything is within your grasp, isn't it, Father!" Sanguinius murmured.