Rases's decision was incredibly decisive, and the results could not have been better.
After tossing Ka'Bandha's landing zone into the spawning pool at the southernmost tip of the planet, he breathed a heavy sigh of relief.
The lives of his companions weighed heavily on his shoulders. It was the kind of pressure that could crush a man, but thankfully, he had managed to withstand it.
'I won the battle of wits,' he thought. 'Squeezing the daemons dry all this ti wasn't for nothing. After casting so many flashy spells, I finally seized the most crucial opportunity. Now that the Four Gods are locked in a stalemate, the rest will be easy to handle.'
The Four Gods did not have many chances. They were here to hunt Souls, so it was impossible for them to project their power into reality and the ritual without limits.
Rational prescience ticked away like a countdown in Rases's mind, calculating the ti until the final Greater Daemon would appear.
"Found you, naless Thousand Son."
Within The Warp, Carlos had finally found the collection piece that the Lord of Change had been searching for.
When the ancient, two-headed blue eagle tore a path through the thousand-eyed Rift and entered this domain, the sorcerer who had made a fool out of the Blood God did not try to fight him. Instead, his first reaction was to turn and run.
He fled with such decisive speed that it even made Carlos pause in surprise for a mont.
He was not one of Kong Nue's brutish thugs; there was no need to resort to mindless slaughter right off the bat. Besides, according to the usual habits of the Thousand Sons, they would typically stand their ground with arrogant pride, relying on their imnse intellect to forge a path of hope. Who would just tuck their tail and run the mont they t?
In that brief mont, Rases had actually managed to flee beyond the reach of the thousand-eyed Rift.
Carlos clearly saw the Thousand Son toss sothing out of the Rift, causing his Soul projection to beco noticeably more ethereal to the naked eye.
"Decisive."
He chuckled. His crystal staff shimred with a faint light as the Rift, filled with fangs and staring pupils, surged forward to envelop his target.
In the blink of an eye, eight Lords of Change appeared. Together, the nine Greater Daemons completely surrounded the Thousand Son before he could fully escape.
"Tzeentch really thinks highly of ."
After his teasing remark, Rases glanced around and realized Carlos was the only familiar face. Having initially wanted to apply so pressure to Magnus or Ahriman, he could not be bothered to run anymore and simply brought out a Go board.
"Interested in a ga?"
Carlos approached the Go board.
Embedded within the board was a teleportation spell, engraved with a ritual that would allow the victor to leave.
Hmm, there were also certain obscure elents hidden within it that required careful study.
All nine Greater Daemons stayed their hands, gathering in a circle around the board with evident interest.
They could not see through it, but being unable to see through it was exactly what made the ga worth playing.
None of these Greater Daemons had any intention of starting a direct fight. After all, they were not Kong Nue's mindless brutes. Since their goal was to recruit a new colleague, they decided to use the Lord of Change's thods to teach their future coworker a lesson.
Do not be greedy. Escaping with a portion of yourself is enough; why demand perfection?
If you like to gamble, be careful you do not lose everything.
Carlos took a ga piece and made the first move.
He did not mind entertaining the Thousand Son for a bit.
Moreover, there was an anomaly that was genuinely surprising.
Who knew where the Accursed One had procured this collection piece. Even Carlos could not see his past or future, forcing the daemon bird to cast his gaze upon the present for the first ti in a long while.
He did not even know how long it had been since he last witnessed the imdiate changes of the present.
Rases rubbed his hands together. He actually was not very good at playing Go, but winning or losing did not really matter.
Ultimately, both sides would just be competing to see whose underhanded tricks off the board were more ruthless anyway.
He kept a close eye on the battlefields of his three companions, manipulating the state and direction of the board while waiting for the next opportunity to shift the tide of war.
"You guys better step it up, brothers. I am holding off nine Greater Daemons all by myself."
——
Bang!
A bolter shell pierced through a skull, dropping a Tyranid Warrior to the ground.
A five-man squad of Space Marines breached the ruins, swiftly executing the synapse creatures entrenched within.
These Xenos, which the lords referred to as Tyranids, were endless and fought as if they knew no fear. The only way to plunge them into confusion was by eliminating their synapse creatures.
Continuous artillery fire echoed outside the building, raining down relentless bombardnts from the heavy artillery positions.
Without their synapse creatures, these Xenos could no longer receive firing information relayed by their scouting units, naturally exposing themselves to the lethal shrapnel of the artillery barrage.
This extermination operation was a massive success. The next step was to use prothium to completely incinerate this Biomass.
But right at that mont, the battle-scarred building suddenly tilted to one side, instantly throwing the squad mbers out of their formation.
"More enemies! Stay alert!"
The squad leader sensed the danger, but his warning ca a fraction of a second too late.
Crash!
Ceramite armor was instantly shattered by the tips of razor-sharp claws.
Countless shadows darted out from the narrow gaps in the overlapping steel frawork.
In an instant, blood and severed body parts flew through the air. Even the superhuman reflexes of the Adeptus Astartes could barely keep up with the blinding speed of these strikes.
The squad leader, who was still capable of moving, rapidly returned fire. His soaring bolter shells shredded the torso of one of their attackers.
As the shadowy figure fell, the keen eyesight of the Adeptus Astartes quickly captured the physical appearance of the creature.
It was a beast ard with four scythe-like claws.
His pupils suddenly dilated. It was yet another deadly species they had never encountered before.
Fortunately, the squad leader's reaction speed was fast enough. After blasting open a gap, he quickly evaded the leaping strikes of the beasts. Before these assassins could launch a second wave of attacks, a torrential rain of bolter rounds tore into them from behind.
The ghost-like figures vanished into the gloom. They had burst forth suddenly, slaughtered three Adeptus Astartes, and disappeared just as quickly, leaving behind only a few of their own corpses and a gaping hole torn into the floor.
"These filthy, shaless Xenos!"
Orlando, who had arrived a step too late, cursed loudly. Before he could charge forward in a fit of rage, The Priest grabbed hold of him, forcing the Space Marine to stay put and wait for the Apothecary to recover the remains of their fallen battle-brothers.
"Move quickly."
Tyberos casually tossed aside the severed head of one of the leaping attackers.
These newly erged assassin units were causing massive problems for the army. However, what was even more troubleso was their Broodlord, which was devastatingly lethal to the command structures of the Mortals. They were pri targets that the Adeptus Astartes needed to prioritize neutralizing.
The troops rapidly redeployed. Yet, right beneath their feet, a different kind of rumbling vibration began to echo.
It was the sewer system. The enemy was mobilizing through the labyrinthine pipeline networks of the Underhive.
However, the Adeptus Astartes ignored the subterranean threat. They quickly advanced to the designated assembly area, a structural main axis within the defensive periter that possessed a much stronger load-bearing capacity.
Whoosh!
Amidst the roar of superheated air frantically battering the ventilation shafts, the vast quantities of prothium poured into the lower Hive City pathways were suddenly ignited, transforming the entire section into a raging sea of fire.
Creak—
The entire steel frawork let out an overwheld groan under the imnse strain. The scattered Adeptus Astartes squads quickly regrouped, silently watching as the landscape before their very eyes began to collapse downward.
After battling these Tyranid swarms for over two months, the elevation of the entire Upper Hive City had sunk by an average of nearly a kiloter.
The insectoid beasts kept excavating deeper underground, while the human defenders frantically poured prothium down their tunnels, turning the majority of the lower levels into bubbling pools of magma.
Humanity had once again achieved a trendous victory in their brutal clash against the Xenos.
And yet, the enemy seed impossible to fully eradicate.
Looking out at the endless swarms surging forth once more from the ruins toward the Forge World, everyone was painfully aware that this was rely the tip of the iceberg for this colossal Xenos invasion.
Fortunately for them, they only had to face this tip of the iceberg.
Everyone looked up.
The sky was choked by an ever-multiplying cloud of toxic green dust. Looking up from the surface, they could see the blinding white flashes of high-temperature combustion burning brightly in the atmosphere.
The spires of the holy sanctums that pierced into the cloud layers were already scorched cherry-red. Molten tal flowed sluggishly down their armored walls, pouring directly into the pre-constructed containnt layers.
This was the devastating aftermath of the Mortalis-class atmospheric incinerator missiles at work.
It was one of the most terrifyingly powerful Phosphex Weapons in existence. The highly volatile phosphex generated upon detonation would expand exponentially, rapidly covering the entire planet's atmosphere in an inescapable inferno. During the Great Crusade, the First Legion had long maintained a stockpile of these exact Exterminatus Weapons.
With the imnse computational assistance of Archmagos Cawl, a terrifying weapon that was originally ant to exterminate an entire planet was deployed with pinpoint precision, solely igniting the atmosphere directly above the Hive City.
When faced with endless swarms of enemy Air-Dropped Pods and an alien air force fully ford from the surface's harvested Biomass, Lord Romulus naturally executed this tactical counterasure. It instantly crushed the enemy's intent to press their aerial advantage, almost as if he inherently knew this exact strategy would yield the absolute best results.
Just like everything else before it.
The enemy's combat units, their operational patterns, and the precise thods needed to counter them.
As the supre commander, Romulus understood all of it with crystal clarity and formulated flawless counterasures for every threat, making it seem as though he had already fought on this exact battlefield countless tis over.
But the enemy was not so simple either.
"Our casualties have increased."
Kahurangi channeled the Synaptic ltdown technique taught to him by a certain unnad Thousand Sons sorcerer, directly annihilating an isolated swarm of beasts.
The results were highly gratifying, yet the Chief Librarian of the Carcharodons showed absolutely no signs of joy.
Because previously, this devastating spell could chain-react and destroy several command nodes in a row. Now, however, the enemy had actively adapted, integrating a psychic conversion process into each node that strictly limited the spell to locking onto a single target.
The enemy was adapting at a terrifying pace. Over this period, the commanders on both sides had constantly exchanged tactical maneuvers and counter-plays, proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that neither side was to be underestimated.
But it was blatantly obvious that the frail, overstretched forces of the Imperium were severely limiting the Elders' ability to perform at their peak.
Aside from the Elders accompanying this specific squad, the other Deathwatch units and their loyal battle-automata were deployed in completely different sectors to fend off the endless swarms. The sheer intensity of the war in those outer zones was even more horrific.
It was not that the Carcharodons and Black Templars did not want to offer more assistance, but they only had to look at their present situation to know it was impossible.
They looked around at their surviving comrades, grimly realizing that their numbers had already been reduced by nearly a quarter.
Under such dire circumstances, how could they possibly possess the strength to interfere in the Elders' god-like battlefields?
"Keep moving. Casualties are no excuse for failing our mission objectives."
Tyberos ruthlessly tore his gaze away from the broken ranks of the Ard Zealots. Following his command, the briefly assembled super-soldiers dispersed into the shadows once more.
At the sa ti, countless burning questions occupied the minds of the surviving commanders.
If such terrifying Xenos had ever entered the Imperium's sights, they definitely would have been heavily recorded in the archives, even if it had happened ten thousand years ago.
But why did the modern Imperium know absolutely nothing about them? And why were these warriors from ancient tis so intimately knowledgeable about their every weakness?
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